Documentation

Task Manager

Visual Task Manager

The Task Manager is now a fully visual, live workspace for scheduling and monitoring background jobs — exports, imports, syncs, MongoDB ↔ SQL migrations, backups, and recurring maintenance tasks. Instead of a plain list, you get a real-time board with progress bars, throughput sparklines, a run history timeline, and drill-in log panes for every job.

Quick Start

Create your first scheduled task:

  1. Open Task Manager from the activity bar (or run "Open Task Manager" from the Command Palette).
  2. Click the + New Task button in the top-right to open the visual task wizard.
  3. Pick a task type (Export, Import, Sync, Backup, Rolling Compact, Migration, or a custom shell script).
  4. Configure source, destination, transformations, and options — each field previews live results as you fill it in.
  5. Set the schedule (one-time, cron expression like 0 2 * * *, or event trigger).
  6. Save and activate. The task appears on the board with a live status chip.

Visual Board Overview

The Task Manager board is grouped into swimlanes so you can see everything at a glance:

  • Running — jobs currently executing, each with a live progress bar, ETA, and throughput sparkline (rows/sec or bytes/sec).
  • Scheduled — upcoming runs sorted by next-fire time, with the human-readable cron description (e.g. "Every day at 2:00 AM").
  • Completed — last N successful runs; click any card to see the run log, throughput chart, and output artifacts.
  • Failed / Paused — problem lane with the error, the retry button, and quick actions (edit config, disable schedule, view stack).

Every card shows: task name, type icon, source → destination, last-run status chip, next-run relative time, and a mini-menu (Run Now, Edit, Duplicate, Disable, View History, Delete).

Live progress & throughput

Running jobs stream progress over Server-Sent Events, so the board updates without polling. Each running card shows:

  • Progress bar — percent complete, current row / total rows.
  • Throughput sparkline — last 60 seconds of rows/sec (or bytes/sec for GridFS jobs).
  • ETA — time-remaining estimate based on rolling average throughput.
  • Cancel — stop a job cleanly; partial output is preserved on disk.

Run history timeline

Open any task card and pick the History tab to see every past run as a horizontal timeline: green bars are successes, red are failures, yellow are canceled. Hover a bar to see start time, duration, rows written, and any warnings. Click to open the full run log.

Pop-out tasks

Any task can be popped out into its own OS window, so you can keep watching a long-running export while you continue working in the main VisuaLeaf workspace. Two ways to pop out:

  • From the card menu — click the “ Pop Out” icon on any task card.
  • From a running task — while a task is executing, drag its progress bar off the main window; it becomes a floating monitor window.

The popped-out window has its own compact layout — progress bar, throughput sparkline, ETA, current step, and a cancel button — and stays connected to the same SSE stream as the main board. Close the window at any time; the task keeps running in the background. Multiple tasks can be popped out simultaneously so you can arrange a “job monitor wall” alongside your primary workspace.

Pop-out windows respect the theme (light / dark) and remember their last position and size per task.

Task Manager dashboard showing list of scheduled tasks with status indicators

Task Types

The Task Manager supports various automation tasks for different data operations.

Export Tasks

Automatically export data from MongoDB collections to files.

Export task configuration showing collection selection and output options
Export Option Description
JSON Export to JSON format with optional pretty printing
CSV Export to CSV with configurable delimiters and headers
BSON Export in native MongoDB BSON format for backups
SQL Export as SQL INSERT statements for migration

Import Tasks

Schedule automated data imports from files or external sources.

Import task configuration showing file source and mapping options
  • File Import: Import from JSON, CSV, or BSON files
  • Field Mapping: Map source fields to destination fields
  • Data Transformation: Apply transformations during import
  • Upsert Mode: Update existing documents or insert new ones

Scheduling

Configure when and how often tasks should run.

Schedule configuration showing frequency options and timezone settings

Schedule Options

Option Description
One-Time Run once at a specific date and time
Hourly Run every hour at a specific minute
Daily Run once per day at a specific time
Weekly Run on specific days of the week
Monthly Run on specific days of the month
Cron Custom cron expression for advanced scheduling

Timezone Support

Tasks can be scheduled in any timezone. The Task Manager displays all times in your local timezone and handles daylight saving time automatically.

Task Monitoring

Monitor running tasks and view execution history.

Task monitoring showing running tasks with progress bars and statistics

Monitoring Features

  • Real-Time Progress: Live progress bars and document counts
  • Execution History: View past runs with start/end times and results
  • Error Logs: Detailed error messages for failed tasks
  • Statistics: Documents processed, skipped, and failed counts
  • Duration Tracking: Execution time for performance analysis

Task Status

Status Description
Scheduled Task is waiting for its next scheduled run
Running Task is currently executing
Completed Task finished successfully
Failed Task encountered an error
Paused Task is temporarily disabled

Task Actions

Manage tasks with various control actions.

Task actions dropdown showing run, pause, edit, and delete options
  • Run Now: Execute the task immediately, regardless of schedule
  • Pause: Temporarily stop scheduled runs
  • Resume: Reactivate a paused task
  • Edit: Modify task configuration
  • Clone: Create a copy of the task with new settings
  • Delete: Remove the task permanently
  • View History: See all past executions

Notifications

Get notified about task execution results.

Task notifications settings showing email and webhook configuration options

Notification Options

  • On Success: Notify when task completes successfully
  • On Failure: Notify when task encounters an error
  • On Warning: Notify when task completes with warnings
  • Email Notifications: Send results to email addresses
  • In-App Notifications: Desktop notifications in VisuaLeaf

Data Transformations

Apply transformations to data during export, import, or sync operations.

Transformation Types

  • Field Mapping: Rename or restructure fields
  • Data Type Conversion: Convert between types (string to date, etc.)
  • Filtering: Include/exclude documents based on conditions
  • Custom JavaScript: Write custom transformation functions
  • Aggregation Pipeline: Apply aggregation stages before export

Task Settings

Configure task behavior and performance options.

Setting Description Default
Batch Size Number of documents to process per batch 1000
Retry Count Number of retry attempts on failure 3
Timeout Maximum execution time before timeout 30 minutes
Concurrent Tasks Maximum tasks that can run simultaneously 2
Keep History Number of execution records to retain 100

Pro Tips

  1. Test First: Run tasks manually before scheduling to verify configuration.
  2. Use Incremental Sync: For large datasets, incremental sync is much faster than full sync.
  3. Schedule Off-Peak: Schedule heavy tasks during off-peak hours to reduce database load.
  4. Monitor First Runs: Watch the first few scheduled runs to ensure they complete as expected.
  5. Set Up Notifications: Enable failure notifications to catch issues quickly.
  6. Use Transformations: Clean and transform data during migration to avoid manual post-processing.

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