Custom Timer Jobs in SharePoint 2013

In this article I’m going to explain about creation of custom Timer Jobs in SharePoint 2013 with step by step.  Today I am going to create a timer job that will execute every 5 minutes and creates task in task list of the SharePoint site whichever the site we activated the timer job feature.

What is Timer Job?

A Timer Job is a periodically executed task inside SharePoint Server. It provides us a task execution environment. For example, we can execute tasks like: sending emails every hour, data updating every day, creating reports every week, etc.

By default some Timer jobs are in SharePoint Web Application. Those are,

ü Send mails
ü Validate sites
ü Delete unused sites
ü Health analysis
üProduct versioning
üDiagnostics 

     These tasks will have execution periods like,

 ü  Minute
ü  Hour
ü  Day
ü  Week
ü  Month

Step1:-

    ü  Open Visual Studio and create new project like below shown figure.

   Step2:-

   ü  Select language as visual c#.
   ü            Click on “Office/SharePoint”.
   ü            Select “SharePoint2013-Empty Project”.
   ü            Give name as “SPCustomTimerJob”
   ü            Click on “OK” to create project.

Step3:-

   ü  Provide the site URL to the project where you want deploy the solution.
   ü  Click on Validate button to check the connectivity.
   ü  Select the trusted level to deploy solution check the “Deploy as Farm Solution” because it              has highly trusted than Sandbox solution.
   ü  Click on “Finish”.

Step4:-

              ü Right Click on project name select “Add” then “New Folder”.

   ü  Give the folder name as “SPJobs”.

Step5:-

  üRight Click on “SPJobs” folder and add one class file.

Step6:-

   ü Select the class Template and name it as “TimerJobClass.cs”.
    ü  The class file is created.

  

Step7:-

    ü  Inherit the SPJobDefinition class from SPCustomTimerJob.

    ü  Add the three default constructors of SPJobDefinition class to SPCustomTimerJob.

    ü  Over ride the Execute method in SPCustomTimerJob class.

    ü  Our main code we will keep it in Execute method of the SPCustomTimerJob.

Step8:-

    ü  Right click on Features and “AddFeature” and name it as “SPTimerJobFeature”.

Step9:-

    ü  Select the scope of the Timer job as “WebApplication”.

Step10:-

    ü  Then go to the Feature properties and make “False” the “Active On Default”.

Step11:-

    ü  Right click on the “SPTimerJobFeature” and select “Add Event Receiver”.

    ü  Name it as SPTimer.

Step12:-

If you observer here the SPTimerjobFeature1EventReceiver class extends the SPFeatureReceiver class.

By default all the Methods are commented out, un-comment the methods that you want and add the code inside the method

    ü  FeatureActivated

    ü  FeatureDeactivating

    ü  FeatureInstalled

    ü  FeatureUninstalling

    ü  FeatureUpgrading

Step13:-

   ü  In FeatureActivated method i used SPSecurity.RunWithElevatePrivileges.

   ü  And instantiated the WebApplication and site.

   ü  Implemented two methods create and delete the job are CreateJob() and DeleteJob()

Step14:-

  ü Right click on project name and click on “Deploy” to deploy the solution into the site.

Step15:-

   ü  Go to the Central Administration.

   ü  Select the Application Management then click on the “Manage web applications”.

Step16:-

   ü  Select the web application in which the solution is deployed.

   ü  Click on “Manage Feature”.

Step17:-

   ü  You can find the Feature whatever implemented in visual studio.

   ü  Then click on “Activate” button.

Step18:-

   ü  Then the feature activated as shown in below figure.

   ü  Then click on “OK”.

Step19:-

   ü  Now go to the list to check whether the task is created or not in below shown figure.

TimerJobClass.cs

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Text;

using System.Threading.Tasks;

using Microsoft.SharePoint;

using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration;

namespace SPCustomTimerJob.SPJobs

{

    class TimerJobClass:SPJobDefinition

    {

        public TimerJobClass() : base() { }

        public TimerJobClass(string JobName, SPService Service) : base(JobName, Service, null, SPJobLockType.None)

        {

            this.Title = "Timer Job Task complete";

        }

        public TimerJobClass(string JobName, SPWebApplication web):base(JobName,web,null,SPJobLockType.ContentDatabase)

        {

            this.Title = "Timer Job Task complete";

        }

        public override void Execute(Guid targetInstanceId)

        {

            //base.Execute(targetInstanceId);

            SPWebApplication webApp = this.Parent as SPWebApplication;

            SPList taskList = webApp.Sites[0].RootWeb.Lists["TaskList"];

            SPListItem newtask = taskList.Items.Add();

            newtask["Title"] = "NewTask" + DateTime.Now.ToString();

            newtask.Update();

        }

    }

}

SPTimerjobFeature1.EventReceiver.cs

using System;

using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

using System.Security.Permissions;

using Microsoft.SharePoint;

using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration;

using SPCustomTimerJob.SPJobs;

namespace SPCustomTimerJob.Features.SPTimerJobFeature

{

    [Guid("65cf2a1a-6a7e-4426-b63d-9f0be40f85f7")]

    public class SPTimerJobFeatureEventReceiver : SPFeatureReceiver

    {

        const string JobName = "SPTimer Job Task";

        public override void FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)

        {

            try

            {

                SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()

                {

                    SPWebApplication parentwebApp = (SPWebApplication)properties.Feature.Parent;

                    SPSite site = properties.Feature.Parent as SPSite;

                    DeleteExistingJob(JobName, parentwebApp);

                    CreateJob(parentwebApp);

                });

            }

            catch (Exception ex)

            {

                throw ex;

            }

        }

        public override void FeatureDeactivating(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)

        {

            try

            {

                SPWebApplication parentwebApp = (SPWebApplication)properties.Feature.Parent;

                DeleteExistingJob(JobName, parentwebApp);

            }

            catch (Exception ex)

            {

                throw ex;

            }

        }

        private bool CreateJob(SPWebApplication site)

        {

            bool jobCreated = false;

            try

            {

                TimerJobClass job = new TimerJobClass(JobName, site);

                SPMinuteSchedule schedule = new SPMinuteSchedule();

                schedule.BeginSecond = 0;

                schedule.EndSecond = 59;

                schedule.Interval = 5;

                job.Schedule = schedule;

                job.Update();

            }

            catch (Exception)

            {

                return jobCreated;

            }

            return jobCreated;

        }

        public bool DeleteExistingJob(string jobName, SPWebApplication site)

        {

            bool jobDeleted = false;

            try

            {

                foreach (SPJobDefinition job in site.JobDefinitions)

                {

                    if (job.Name == jobName)

                    {

                        job.Delete();

                        jobDeleted = true;

                    }

                }

            }

            catch (Exception)

            {

                return jobDeleted;

            }

            return jobDeleted;

        }

    }

}

Thank You...!