Plesk Panel Tutorial – Configuring Scheduled Tasks in Plesk

A scheduled task is nothing but cron job’s Plesk Panel counterpart. As the name suggests, a Scheduled Task allows you to configure scripts/commands to run automatically on your web server at a desired point of time without any intervention from any external sources.

These are highly effective in dealing with tasks which are repetitive in nature. Configuring a scheduled task is a one-time effort, but you can reap the benefit for as long as you require by scheduling the same to run for any number of occasions.

In this tutorial, our first of the Plesk series, we will be outlining the steps involved in setting up scheduled task in Plesk Panel interface.

STEP 1: Login to your Plesk Panel interface with the credentials supplied by your web hosting partner. On the top menu listing, click on “Websites & Domains” tab.

STEP 2: Scroll down and expand “Show Advanced Operations” section. The “Scheduled Task” icon can be located on the right hand side. Click on that icon.

STEP-3: You would first need to select the administrative user account through which the task would get executed. Click on the username. It will open”Tools” interface.

STEP-4: There will be two icons listed under “Tools” section – 1. Schedule New Task, 2. Settings. You would need to configure the settings first, before creating a new task.

STEP-5: Click on “Settings” and then input the desired email address you wish to be notified at each time a scheduled task gets executed. By default, your admin email associated with the hosting account will be selected to receive the notifications. You can, however, override the default email by selecting the third radio button – “Send To The Email I Specify”. Input the new email address and click on the “OK” button. It will take you back to the previous page (Scheduled Tasks > Tools).

STEP-6: To create a new scheduled task, click on “Schedule New Task” icon. Provide the task execution timing details in the designated text boxes (marked as  Minute, Hour, Day of the Month, Day of the Week etc). Enter task execution commands/scripts in “Command” input box.  Please note that all the input boxes here are mandatory. Also, make sure that you have ticked the check-box “Switched On” before clicking on the “OK” button.

To validate the successful configuration, return to “Scheduled Tasks” interface and you will now be able to see the recently configured scheduled task listed in the “Tasks” table.