Scheduled tasks

Some of what Next Boards does happens in the background: sending e-mails, reminding people of due dates, running scheduled automations, reading the Inbox mailbox. This work is done by Joomla's own Scheduled Tasks, through the "Task - Next Boards" plugin that comes with the package.

If notification e-mails or reminders never arrive, the cause is nearly always here.

The tasks

Open System → Scheduled Tasks in the Joomla administrator.

Joomla's Scheduled Tasks list filtered to the Next Boards tasks, with their type, last run and next run

Task	Runs	Does
NextBoards - send notification emails	Every 5 minutes	Sends the queued notification e-mails. People who chose a daily digest get one e-mail a day, after 08:00 in their time zone.
NextBoards - due date reminders	Every 15 minutes	Notifies the assignees and watchers of open cards when a due date is near and when it has passed.
NextBoards - scheduled automations	Every 15 minutes	Runs the scheduled commands of board automations when they are due.
NextBoards - clean up notifications	Daily	Deletes read notifications, finished e-mail queue entries and old automation log entries.
NextBoards - e-mail to Inbox	Every 5 minutes	Reads the Inbox mailbox. Created when E-mail to Inbox is switched on.
NextBoards - reset demo data	Hourly	Re-seeds the demo data. Created only when the automatic demo reset is switched on.

The first four are created by the installer, under these titles. If one is missing, click New in the Scheduled Tasks list and pick its type; the types are listed as "Next Boards - Send notification e-mails", "Next Boards - Due date reminders" and so on. You can give a task any title.

Making sure the scheduler runs

Creating the tasks is not enough: something has to trigger Joomla's scheduler. There are two ways, set under System → Scheduled Tasks → Options.

Method	How it works	Good for
Lazy scheduler	Visits to the site trigger the tasks. On by default in Joomla.	Sites with steady traffic. On a quiet site, tasks run late or not at all at night.
Web cron or a server cron job	The server calls the scheduler on a timer, visitors or not.	Reliable timing. Recommended.

A server cron job that runs every minute looks like this:

* * * * * php /path/to/your/site/cli/joomla.php scheduler:run

Use the PHP binary your site runs on (8.1 or newer), and the real path to your site.

Checking that it works

In the Scheduled Tasks list, the Last run column of each Next Boards task should show a recent time.
In Next Boards, Configuration → Settings → Notifications & Email lists the tasks with their state: enabled or disabled, last run, and whether the last run failed.
To run a task at once, select it in the Scheduled Tasks list and use Joomla's Run Test button.

Options of the tasks

Open a task to change its frequency or its options.

Task	Option	Meaning
Send notification e-mails	Batch size	The most e-mails sent in one run.
Send notification e-mails	Site URL	The address links in e-mails start with, for example `https://example.com/`. Leave empty to use Joomla's Live Site setting, or the site's own address when the task runs from the web. Set it when the task runs from a server cron job and the links in e-mails are wrong.
Send notification e-mails	Site menu item ID	The menu item that opens Next Boards on the site, for recipients who cannot sign in to the administrator. Leave empty to find it automatically.
Due date reminders	Batch size	The most cards checked in one run.
Clean up notifications	Keep for (days)	Read notifications and finished e-mail entries older than this are deleted.

The plugins

The package installs three plugins and enables them. All three should stay enabled.

Plugin	Purpose
Task - Next Boards	Provides the tasks above. Disabled: nothing runs.
System - Next Boards Session	Lets the app ask you to sign in again in place when your session has expired, without losing the page you are on.
Installer - Next Boards Update Helper	Identifies your site to nextsoftware.dev when Joomla downloads an update. Disabled: updates are listed but cannot be downloaded, and Next Boards shows a warning.