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Routines FAQ

Q1: How can I review the schedule for the nightly MinistryPlatform routines in my database?

Reviewing the status of any routines (SQL Server Agent jobs) is a level 2 task. Here are instructions on where to locate the routine.

  1. Log on to your SQL Server and open SQL Server Management Studio.
  2. Locate SQL Server Agent and expand its tree.
  3. Locate the Jobs folder and expand its tree.
  4. The scheduled routine provided by MinistryPlatform is titled "MinistryPlatform.Daily Routines" (or something similar). If you right-click this item and choose properties, you'll be able to review the schedule from within this dialog. Contact Support to request schedule changes for any MinistryPlatform routines.
Q2: How can I review whether or not a routine is currently running?

This can be performed on your SQL Server by your church's server SPoC or your level 2 provider.

  1. Log on to your SQL Server and open SQL Server Management Studio.
  2. Locate SQL Server Agent and expand its tree.
  3. Locate and expand the Jobs folder.
  4. Right-click the specific job and click View History.
The history will tell you how regularly the services are running. You can determine from this whether or not the service may need to be restarted or if everything is functioning correctly.
Q3: Who or what is SVC MNGR in the Audit Log?

If you see an Audit Log entry for a record that indicates it was changed by the user "SVC MNGR", that means one of our nightly routines created or updated the record. Here is a list of nightly routines that record Audit Log changes in this manner:

  • Household: If two Households share an address, a copy of the address is created and assigned to one household. The copy will have an "SVC MNGR" Audit Log entry.
  • User: If a user account is "in recovery" for more than a organization-specified number of days, a nightly routine eliminates the temporary password and sets In Recovery to False. These changes are recorded in the Audit Log as "SVC MNGR".
  • Donation Distribution: If a donation distribution is assigned to a pledge by a nightly routine, this update is recorded in the Audit Log on the Donation Distribution record as "SVC MNGR".
  • Contact: If we detect that a contact record has two Participant, Donor, or User records the nightly routine will "split" that contact record in two and create another Contact record and Household record. The copy is recorded in the Audit Log as created by "SVC MNGR" and is assigned to the proper Participant, Donor, or User record. This ensures the church sees this unusual situation as part of normal duplicate record clean-up.
  • Group Participant: The nightly, automated promotion routine Audit Logs any Group Participant records it impacts with "SVC MNGR".
  • Event Participant: If you chose Register into Series for an event, the Event Participant records added to subsequent events are created by "SVC MNGR".
  • Event: When you exceed an Event's Participant Expected value in the row on the Event Participants table, this routine turns off Event registrations and sets Registration Active to False.
Q4: How can I get a nightly routine to run early? For example, before it's scheduled to run tonight.

In SQL there's a SQL Job Agent. Find the job routine, then right-click the job and click Start from that dialog box.

Q5: Our server was down for some time last night, and I'm concerned our daily routines may have failed. How can I see if they ran, and how can I run them again if they didn't successfully run the first time?

A system administrator can do the following to re-run routines:

  1. Go to your SQL Server, and log in to SQL Management Studio.
  2. At the very bottom is the SQL Server Agent. Expand that to see Jobs. Expand that to see all the scheduled jobs on your server.
  3. For any job that you want to see the success or failure status of, right-click it, and click View History. The Log File View opens and you'll see if the job was successful (green check mark) or if it failed (red circle with white x).
  4. If you need to run a routine:
    1. It's best not to run during peak usage.
    2. Right-click the job you want to run.
    3. Click Start Job at Step [step number](typically it is started at step 1).
If it's a routine that runs daily and you don't need it to run today, consider waiting until it runs itself tomorrow or after hours to avoid performance issues during peak system usage.