Optitask is the Swiss Army Knife ® of IT task automation. If you can imagine it, you can probably do it with Optitask… without any programming!

The Optitask advantage is: all the flexibility of programming, without the hassle and the learning curve.

 The Demonstration: A Simple FTP Task to Download a Log File Nightly

Learn how Optitask makes short work of many task automation problems through this brief walk-through. We will show you how to create a new automation task right out of the box.

First, start the Optitask Management Console. Note that you can work with an Optitask server locally, or remotely, by simply providing a server name. Optitask is truly an enterprise grade tool.



Now you can see Optitask's Management Console. This is not a complicated programmer's IDE with endless options and source code windows. You control everything using the tree view on the left hand pane.



To get started creating a new task, first expand the "localhost" node. Then Right-Click on the "Tasks" item. You will see this menu:



Click on the "New Task" selection. You will see the New Task window, which allows you to create a task and to name the task:



The one necessary property of a Task is a Trigger. A Trigger determines when your task runs.

Select a nightly routine - you want to grab the file every night at 1 AM.

So click on the Triggers list item on the left, and then press "+" above the list of triggers to add a trigger:



You will see the "New Trigger" dialog, you'll select a "Schedule" type trigger, and then you will set the daily schedule:



Next, you need to set up the tasks for downloading the log file. Right-click the "New Action" selection.



Then you will see the list of possible actions in the New Action dialog. Select "Connect" from the list of possible actions to create an action that makes an FTP connection to your web server, and click OK.



This shows the "FTP connect" task that you just created. Now right click on it to get at its properties.



Once you have created an "FTP Connect" task, you can set up its connection parameters, such as host address, user name and password:



Now in similar fashion, add two more Actions to the Task: one to download the log file, and a final action that disconnects the FTP session.



Finally, you probably want to test your task. You can easily do this by simply executing the task manually:



That's it! You have just successfully created a background task that downloads a log file from a server by FTP once a day.

Without any programming!