Summary

Two main classes that hold information about agents:

• Agents rules (instances of Rule-Agent-Queue)
• Agent Schedules (instances of Data-Agent-Queue)

Suggested Approach

Agents rules define the background processing that is to be accomplished by agents in the system, including the activity that each agent should execute for the processing, its wake-up schedule, and its agent queue settings. Each agent that is listed in the Agents rule has one task it accomplishes (checking incoming email, updating status of work objects, etc.). The Agents rules apply to the entire system, no matter how many nodes the system has.

There are a number of Agents rules that are shipped with the system; as with all shipped rules, these are in locked RuleSets and cannot be changed. In order to allow customers to change scheduling intervals, or enable or disable the agents, the Agent Schedule instances are provided.

Agent Schedule data instances determine whether an agent is enabled, and (on a multi-node system) on which server node that agent will run. It is also possible to change the agent wake-up interval in Agent Schedules.

When Process Commander starts, the system looks for all the Agents rules. For each of these rules, the system looks for one Agent Schedule instance for each node.

If there is not an Agent Schedule instance present for a node, the system creates one by copying information from the associated Agents rule. Thus, if a system has five nodes, then for the Pega-RULES Agents rule, there will be five Pega-RULES Agent Schedule data instances.

After the Agent Schedules have been created, they provide agent information to the system. The system uses the Agents rules to define the Schedule instances. After the Schedules are present, the original values entered in the Agents rule for schedule intervals or enabling agents are not used; the system uses the information in the Agent Schedules only.

Important: The Agent Schedule instances must not be created by developers – they are created only by the system. Do not create or copy these instances!

For details on changing agents, see How to modify an existing agent.