Scheduling jobs

You may be wondering how the platform processes the event queue. What picks them up? How often are they processed? In order to make things happen automatically, ServiceNow has a system scheduler. Processing the event queue is one job that is done on a repeated basis.

Tip

ServiceNow sometimes creates extra nodes that only process events. These concentrate on the processing of things such as e-mails, enabling the other application nodes to better serve user interactions.

To see what is going on, navigate to System Scheduler > Scheduled Jobs > Today's Scheduled Jobs. This is a link to the Schedule Item [sys_trigger] table, a list of everything the system is doing in the background. You will see a job that collects database statistics, another that upgrades the instance (if appropriate), and others that send and receive e-mails or SMS messages. You should also spot one called Events Process, which deals with the event queue.

A schedule item has a Next action Date and Time field...