The Preferences dialog allows you to adjust aspects of AutoMate's performance to suit your individual system, requirements and tastes.
The dialog is separated into eight separate tabs (9 with Service Edition), each dealing with a separate category:
Task Speed: Adjusts the speed at which AutoMate™ executes each line of a running task. Occasionally, on slower machines, adding a delay between steps improves task reliability when interacting with other applications that may not be able to react to AutoMate™ fast enough. By adjusting this slider, it may not be necessary to add an explicit Pause step in your task.
Task Scan Rate: Adjusts the frequency by which AutoMate™ checks the system clock to see if a scheduled task should be triggered. This will increase or decrease the accuracy of a scheduled task, but if task timing accuracy is not important to you, then setting this lower could decrease the amount of CPU time that AutoMate™ uses (although it is already very low).
SendKeys Speed: Adjusts how much time AutoMate™ should wait in-between each key-press when sending keystrokes. On some faster machines, AutoMate™ may type the keys too quickly, flooding the keyboard buffer and causing unpredictable results. Increasing this setting will prevent this from occurring.
Logging Level: AutoMate™ does not issue error message boxes during task execution as it is designed to operate properly in an unattended fashion. Instead the errors and task results are sent to a log file. This setting adjusts how much information is sent to the log file – you should keep this setting low unless you are debugging a problem with the task, in which it may be useful to log All Events, since this will show the status of each individual step as they execute. To view the task log select View | Task Log from the Configuration Manager window, or click the View Log button from the toolbar.
Prompt to run task service at Configuration Manager startup: This option selects whether the Configuration Manager stops to prompt to user if they want to start the AutoMate™ Task Service (if it is not running) when the Manager starts. When unchecked, AutoMate™ will not ask you this and you must start the Task Service manually by selecting File | Start AutoMate™ Task Service.
Display confirmation on Task Service shutdown: When you attempt to shutdown AutoMate™, the program will confirm that you really want to stop AutoMate™ and suspend all automated processing. Unchecking this will option will prevent this confirmation box from appearing and close AutoMate™ immediately.
Display confirmation on delete task: Disables the prompt on deletion of a task from within the Configuration Manager.
Enable drag and drop operations in the Step Builder: When unchecked this will disable drag and drop support in the Step Builder window. If drag and drop support is disabled, add and move steps in the Step Builder by using the add button and the up and down arrow buttons.
Display indicator window when task is running: When unchecked, the small window that appears in the lower right of the screen when AutoMate™ runs a task that says AutoMate™ is currently running a task will not appear. Regardless of this setting, the AutoMate™ tray icon will be a green color when a task is executing.
Display AutoMate™ tray icon: This is a security feature to disable the A icon in the system tray. Preventing the display of the tray icon would prevent users from shutting down the AutoMate™ Task Service.
Enable wizard when creating tasks: By default, AutoMate™ will guide you through the process of creating a new task, stepping through the available triggers and configuring them, and provide the opportunity to set advanced options at the end. You can disable the wizard by checking or unchecking this option. When the wizard is not used, AutoMate™ creates a task named “Untitled Task”, which you can then edit and configure manually by double clicking on it.
Display errors from running tasks when Configuration Manager is open: If this option is selected, errors generated by a running task will be displayed in a dialog box while the AutoMate™ Configuration Manager is running. This greatly aids debugging. When this option is not selected, the error messages are quietly displayed in the status bar of the AutoMate™ Configuration Manager. All errors and messages are written to the log file regardless of this setting.
Disable Windows "Foreground Window Timeout" Feature: Windows 98 and Windows 2000 operating systems now implement a "Window Lock Timeout" feature, which prevents an application that a user is not currently interacting with from giving itself the keyboard focus. This can cause problems with AutoMate™, since functions like "Focus A Window" and "Message" will not have the authority to carry out its action unless you have directly interacted with AutoMate™ within the timeout period. Checking this option disables this feature for the entire operating system. This allows AutoMate™ to properly focus windows when the machine is unattended. Unchecking this option restores the timeout functionality to its original state. The AutoMate™ installation by default disables the "Foreground Window Timeout.”
Task File: Specifies the location of the task file that the Task Service and the Configuration Manager should use.
Log File: Specifies the location of the log file that AutoMate™ will log events to.
Default Script Folder: Specifies the default path for AutoMate™ BASIC scripts to be saved to and opened from when adding a script step into a task via the Step Builder (note that this only affects the default script path in the Step Builder, not during actual task execution).
This tab allows modification of the default username, password and domain information that AutoMate™ will use when a login step is not present in a task. This should be set to a user on the NT workstation or domain that does not need to change its password (configurable via the Windows NT User Manager). WARNING: If you are using the NT Service Edition and this information is not set and there are no login steps in your task, your tasks will not run! Also, the user specified in this entry must have rights on the system to perform the desired task (i.e. launch the requested programs, etc.)
Allows the viewing, addition, deletion, and modification of constants – both system defined and user defined. See the Constants section of the help file for more details.
Used to configure AutoMate™ to connect to an AutoMate™ Enterprise Server. AutoMate™ Enterprise Server is a separate software product used to connect together large network installations of AutoMate™ for easy tasks deployment and AutoMate™ administration network wide. Includes various Server log on options dealing with the servers IP address and the information to identify this machine and user to the network.
Used to password protect a task list. When this option is configured, AutoMate™ will prompt the user for a password when the Configuration Manager is loaded
Limit Log file size: If this is selected, AutoMate™ will take action to stop the log file from exceeding a specific size you set using the Log file should not exceed parameter. When the log file reaches this size, you can select to either disable logging until the log file is cleared (at which point logging will automatically resume), or have AutoMate™ “trim” (i.e. remove from the top of the file, the oldest messages) the log file by a percentage you specify.
Log File Viewer: By default AutoMate™ will use the Windows Notepad application to display the log file. In some cases this may not be satisfactory; you can enter a path to a different text file viewer (for example, Wordpad.exe) here.
NOTE: This option is only available on Professional versions of AutoMate™
Send email on task failure: When selected, AutoMate™ will attempt to send an email message containing details about the error that occurred to the email recipient. AutoMate™ must have access to a functioning SMTP mail server (enter the server address at the Server parameter). Recipients should be supplied to the Recipients parameter. The email can be sent to multiple people by separating their email address with a semi-colon.
Message Length: AutoMate™ offers two different email message types: verbose, for standard email clients, and brief, for limited text clients (such as pagers and cell phones). The verbose email will send the following information: the task that failed, the error message, the line the error occurred on, the computer name the error occurred on and when the error occurred. The brief email sends only the task name that failed, when it failed, and on what machine.
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