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ironmansoftware / universal-automation

Universal Automation is the PowerShell-first automation platform.
https://ironmansoftware.com/universal-automation/
MIT License
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Scheduling with Random Delay #87

Open Windos opened 4 years ago

Windos commented 4 years ago

Is your Enhancement request related to a problem? Please describe

When scheduling some scripts, I don't want their precise timing to give away that they have been automated.

e.g. Tweets linking to blog articles from the back catalog, it feels more natural for these so go out sometime between 1 PM and 2 PM. This makes it feel like a human posted them... if they always go out at bang on 2 PM? Yeah, that's a bot!

Describe the solution you'd like

Add an option to schedules for a random delay of <timespan>.

Scripts would fire at the time specified in the cron expression + a random amount of time between NOW and the specified timespan.

This mimics the option presented via the task scheduler (and I specifically called out missing this when moving to cron scheduled in Azure Functions :( )

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Describe how this would improve your Universal Automation Quality of Life

More flexibility = more happy!

Describe alternatives you've considered

... getting cron expressions to support this natively?!

martin9700 commented 4 years ago

I think this feature is also nice in keeping scripts from all kicking off at the same time. Jenkins has a "H" feature you put in a slot and it'll pick a random number for that. Put H in the minute column and any minute between 0-59 is chosen.