crribs.com

Excellent writeup of a PHP app that interfaces with the Windows Task Scheduler.  I’m going to have to double check on his use of the Task Service object.  I thought it was only COM accessible in Task Scheduler 2.0 (the new version, that comes with Vista or Windows 7, or Server 2008).  I thought in XP (which included the Task Scheduler 1.0 – the schtasks.exe or the good old Scheduled Task’s folder) that either the Task Service COM interface had to be accessed with a lower level language, or possibly the Scheduled Task’s accessible via WMI (but not through the schtask folder interface).  Its possible thats the task scheduler this code uses for access.  If thats the reality, then you may not see all the tasks you may have entered using the GUI interface, using this tool.  More on that later.
http://codesnob.wordpress.com/2009/05/18/displaying-windows-task-scheduler-tasks-with-php/

Get a comma seperated, consolidated file with all of the configured
scheduled tasks within your domain.  Will also work in a workgroup, you
just need to be sure that you have configured a network username and
password and can authenticate successfully as an admin on that machine.
Save the following as a '.bat' file, in its own folder, along with a file named
'servers.ini'.  In th servers.ini file, simply list the machine names for those
machines you want the schtask report from.  Run it, and you should get a
text file that could be parsed through and imported into a database, or
just useful for auditing purposes.

scheduled task studio - windows scheduled task manager

So there arent many options out there for managing Windows Scheduled Tasks. There is the bizarre Tasks folder- a special folder in xp and server 2003 that you can access on remote machines if you have admin rights (so not on xp home edition…**arghh**). You can use the schtasks.exe command line interface…
You can spend 200 or so dollars on the Task Scheduler version of Sql Sentry (http://www.sqlsentry.net/event-manager/windows-task-scheduler-enterprise.asp – very nice program imo- especially the sql agent/task scheduler version. i used the trial version for 1 sweet month… then got my allocations request denied…).
There is Task Scheduler Pro (http://www.liebsoft.com/Task_Scheduler_Pro/)- which is 500 dollars (minimum license purchase: 5. each license costs 100 dollars… when I inquired about pricing last).
There used to be EMCO Remote Task Scheduling… But I recently noticed that it was not available anymore via the EMCO Software website (http://www.emco.is/). It had a price tag (if I remember correctly) of somewhere around 150 dollars per license.
The point is- not many options if you are on a budget and need some advanced management-ability for the windows task scheduler. The company I work for uses it and Sql Server Agent exclusively for our (extensive) job-scheduling needs.
So I’m building one. Here is the (very rough) initial layout. Ive got all the standard management capability plus visual schedule management. As soon as I verify that I can redistribute the components used, I’ll post the source. As of now, I havent gotten to remote task management (the machine is hardcoded in right now), but the goal is to be able to get a complete overview of the enterprise’s scheduled task in one view, or be able to manage individual machines, etc. Id like to add job-chaining and alerting, as well as log-aggregation. If youve ever looked at the SchedLgU.Txt (the task scheduler’s log file- c:\windows\SchedLgU.Txt – its a mess to parse through. If anyones written a comprehensive parsing regex- I’d love to look at it ).
More on this later.