Service Trigger
Description
Launches a task when the specified service starts, stops, pauses, resumes or stops responding. You can select a currently running service by way of the provided drop-down or enter the service name manually. To indicate partial service names, wildcard characters can be used (for example,. * or ?).
Practical usage
Frequently used to monitor service applications for unexpected crashes. For example, if the specified service suddenly stops, a task can launch and execute a Services - Start activity to restart the service as well as run a Email - Send message activity to email a message regarding service stoppage to the appropriate recipient.
Parameters
General
| Property | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Service state | Options | Specifies
the service action to monitor. The available options are:
|
| Service name | Text | Specifies the name of the service to watch. The provided combination list box accepts manual text entry or the service can be selected from the drop-down list of open services. Wildcard characters * and ? can be used to indicate partial service names. For example, entering e*.exe will watch for all processes starting with the letter e. |
| Include device and file system drivers in list | Yes/No | If selected, device and file system drivers will be included in the list of services. |
Behavior
| Property | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Enable Trigger | Yes/No | If selected, the trigger will immediately be active upon creation. If disabled, the trigger will stay inactive until it is manually enabled. This parameter is selected by default. |
| Trigger on startup if condition is true | Yes/No | If enabled, the system will act upon conditions that already exist upon startup of the current trigger. For example, if the Notepad window is already open on the desktop, a newly created Window trigger set to monitor for the existence of a Notepad window will immediately launch the task as a result. If disabled, the trigger will ignore the open Notepad window upon startup. This parameter is disabled by default. |
| Trigger after the condition has been met | Text | If enabled, specifies how many times the trigger condition must be met before the task is started. For example, if a Window trigger is set to monitor for the appearance of a Notepad window and this parameter is set to 3, the task will not launch until the third instance of Notepad appears on the desktop. |
Additional notes
AMTrigger
When this trigger is activated, it automatically passes the AMTrigger object to the task. AMTrigger is a standard Automate Desktop dataset and can be used much like the datasets created by the Database - SQL query activity and Email action. The fields of AMTrigger can be used within a task to determine specific values, such as whether or not the task was started by a trigger, which trigger started the task, when the trigger was activated and other properties. AMTrigger populates a unique set of field–value pairs for each Automate Desktop trigger. The following table lists the ones specific to this trigger. For more details about a specific AMTrigger field–value pair, click the associated link.
| Name | Type | Return |
|---|---|---|
| AMTrigger.Action | String | Returns the action that took place to cause the task to trigger. |
| AMTrigger.FileName | String | Returns the full path and file name (also known as Path to executable) of the service that activated the trigger. |
| AMTrigger.ServiceDisplayName | String | Returns the Service Display Name of the service that activated the trigger. |
| AMTrigger.ServiceName | String | Returns the Service Name of the service that activated the trigger. |