What is Remote Administration?

Remote Administration provides the ability to administer an AutoMate client from any machine on a TCP/IP network where the AutoMate Task Administrator is running.  Once connected to a remote AutoMate, a user can add, remove and modify managed tasks, modify the associated steps of the managed task, and even enable/disable triggering and run tasks on a remote machine.

AutoMate is really a collection of several separate applications, all working together to act like one cohesive unit.  Two of these applications are the AutoMate Task Administrator (AMTA.exe) and the AutoMate Task Service (AutoMate5.exe).  The Task Service is responsible for maintaining a task database, global application preferences, and watching for conditions that would cause a defined task to trigger.  It also spawns, maintains and monitors running tasks. It has no direct user interface, and is meant to operate quietly in the background until needed.  Communication with the Task Service is achieved using an AutoMate 5 client application that connects through TCP/IP on port 7477 (although this is configurable). The AutoMate Task Administrator is one such client application, and provides a "front-end" to the Task Service.  The Task Administrator provides the user an easy way of adding and removing tasks, editing task steps, organizing managed tasks in folders, setting Task Service preferences, and much more.

Normally, when a user starts the Task Administrator, it attempts to contact the Task Service on the same machine as the Task Administrator (i.e. localhost).  When a user clicks the Connect option, another Task Service can be specified to connect to.  In this way, the Task Administrator doesn't really care what Task Service it is connected to - whether it is the local machine or another machine is irrelevant.  All the functionality you have for the local machine is available on any machine once you connect to it.

Client Access License (CAL) users are restricted to using only the AutoMate Task Administrator to connect to a remote AutoMate Server.  The license prohibits the installation of the Task Service and related support files on a CAL machine.  Therefore, when started, the Task Administrator does not attempt to connect to the local machine, and instead immediately asks which remote AutoMate server the user wishes to connect to.  The license does, however, allow the Task Administrator to connect to an unlimited number of remote AutoMate Servers to configure, maintain and run tasks remotely.

See Also:

Configuring Remote Administration

Using Remote Administration

Running Tasks Remotely

Creating a New Task