Moodle - Scheduled Tasks (cron jobs): When do they run?

Here is a list of scheduled tasks that run automatically for various processes related to Moodle - all times are Pacific.

  • Enrolment in Moodle courses: Students are added or removed from courses, depending on their status in Agresso. This occurs until 1 month past a course's end date. – daily at 8:15am, 11:15am, 2:15pm, and 5:15pm (correct as of 2020-07).
  • Moodle cron runs every 20 minutes – this includes forum post emails (unless you have it set to digest then you get 1 email later in the day - approximately 5:00 pm).
  • ACCS: Moodle course shells are automatically created based on data in Agresso once a week on Sunday at 6:45am. A course shell is created if the course is 12 months out or less. Note that in Moodle Course Full Name = Service + [Program Owner + Year(Program Offering Start date) + "-" + Last Character(Service Offering) + (Program Offering Delivery Mode: IF “FACETOFACE” THEN “OC” ELSE “OL”)] + Service Offering StartDate + Service Offering Description.
  • Open courses (courses automatically open, or "go live" to students, on their course start date) – daily 3:30 am.
  • Quickmail (when email gets sent) – almost instantly. Quickmail emails will also go out if course is closed. Reply back will be to instructor's royalroads.ca email.
  • MBZ files (Moodle course backups) - they will be cleared out the first day of every month on Credit, Archive, and Professional Studies (csonline) sites.
  • Grade Approver - approver changes are updated in Moodle daily at 11:05am, 3:05pm and 6:05pm.
  • Finish grading button - shows the next day after the course ends (the end date inputted in Agresso not Moodle). If course setting is set to Separate groups, view each cohort in drop down menu to see button.
  • Tasks Timelines pages - generated 17 weeks + 1 day before course start date.

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