Task groups

New in version 4.4.

Task groups can be used to control the transcoders that a specific job should use. It may be expanded in the future to include not only jobs and transcoders, but also other types of tasks and resources.

  • A task group identifies a set of jobs and the resources available to those jobs.
  • Jobs are identified by a criteria on the group.
  • A job can belong to multiple groups, but only a single group for each type of resource. If a job satisfies the criteria on multiple groups, then the job belongs to the group with the highest priority.
  • A transcoder can belong to any number of groups.
  • A job will only use resources from the group(s) that it belongs to.

Creating a task group

Task groups are referred to by name. Each group should specify a job criteria and a number of transcoders, and a priority if needed.

PUT /task-group/imports
Content-Type: application/xml

<TaskGroupDocument xmlns="http://xml.vidispine.com/schema/vidispine">
  <job>
    <type>PLACEHOLDER_IMPORT</type>
  </job>
  <transcoder>
    <id>VX-1</id>
  </transcoder>
  <transcoder>
    <id>VX-2</id>
  </transcoder>
  <priority>MEDIUM</priority>
</TaskGroupDocument>

Task group criteria

Task groups can have multiple criteria. A job must then satisfy them all to be considered being part of that group. The selections in a criteria form a logical OR.

For example, to restrict jobs that are either imports or exports, and from the admin or bulk-import user, to transcoder VX-1:

<TaskGroupDocument xmlns="http://xml.vidispine.com/schema/vidispine">
  <job>
    <type>PLACEHOLDER_IMPORT</type>
    <type>EXPORT</type>
  </job>
  <job>
    <user>admin</user>
    <user>bulk-import</user>
  </job>
  <transcoder>
    <id>VX-1</id>
  </transcoder>
</TaskGroupDocument>

This is evaluated as:

(type:PLACEHOLDER_IMPORT OR type:EXPORT)
AND
(user:admin OR user:bulk-import)

Job criteria

Jobs can be matched on:

  • Priority - To include jobs with a certain priority.
  • Type - To include jobs of a certain type.
  • User - To include jobs created by a specific user.
  • Group - To include jobs created by a user in a specific group.
  • Data - To include jobs with certain data.

Task group priority

A job will use resources from the task group with the highest priority and a matching criteria. If two task groups have the same priority then the groups are ordered by name in alphabetical order, and the first one is picked.

Job problems

If a job cannot run because the transcoders available to it are offline, then a transcoder offline problem will be created. The problem will contain the name of the group and the job id(s).

This allows you to see which group/transcoder(s) a job is blocked on. For example:

GET /job/problem
<JobProblemListDocument xmlns="http://xml.vidispine.com/schema/vidispine">
  <problem>
    <id>35113</id>
    <type>TranscoderOffline</type>
    <job>VX-115770</job>
    <data>
      <key>taskGroup</key>
      <value>imports</value>
    </data>
  </problem>
</JobProblemListDocument>