Job Scheduling and Approvals

Added in version 1.2.0

Oftentimes jobs will need to be run at a later date or periodically, or require approval from someone before they can be started. To this end, Nautobot offers facilities for scheduling and approving jobs.

Job Scheduling

Jobs can be scheduled to be run immediately, at some point in the future, or at an interval.

Jobs can be scheduled through the UI or the API.

Scheduling via the UI

The Job Scheduling views can be accessed via the navigation at Jobs > Jobs, selecting a Job as appropriate.

The UI allows you to select a scheduling type. Further fields will be displayed as appropriate for that schedule type.

If Recurring custom is chosen, you can schedule the recurrence in the Crontab field in crontab syntax.

If the job requires no approval, it will then be added to the queue of scheduled jobs or run immediately. Otherwise, the job will be added to the approval queue where it can be approved by other users.

Scheduling via the API

Jobs can also be scheduled via the REST API. The endpoint used for this is the regular job endpoint; specifying the optional schedule parameter will act just as scheduling in the UI.

curl -X POST \
-H "Authorization: Token $TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "Accept: application/json; version=1.3; indent=4" \
http://nautobot/api/extras/jobs/$JOB_ID/run/ \
--data '{"schedule": {"name": "test", "interval": "future", "start_time": "2030-01-01T01:00:00.000Z"}}'

For custom interval, a crontab parameter must be added.

start_time becomes optional when interval is set to custom.

--data '{"schedule": {"name": "test", "interval": "custom", "start_time": "2030-01-01T01:00:00.000Z", "crontab": "*/15 * * * *"}}'

Job Approvals

Jobs that have approval_required set to True on their Meta object require another user to approve a scheduled job.

Scheduled jobs can be approved or denied via the UI and API by any user that has the extras.approve_job permission for the job in question, as well as the appropriate extras.change_scheduledjob and/or extras.delete_scheduledjob permissions.

Changed in version 1.3.0

The extras.approve_job permission is now required for job approvers.

Note

Jobs that are past their scheduled run date can still be approved, but the approver will be asked to confirm the operation.

Approval via the UI

The queue of jobs that need approval can be found under Jobs > Job Approval Queue. This view lists all currently requested jobs that need approval before they are run. To approve a job, select it and click the button to approve. Please note that you will be asked for confirmation if a job is being approved that is past its scheduled date and time.

If the approver is unsure what a job would do, a dry run can also be started via that same view.

Approval via the API

Approvals can also be given via the REST API. The endpoints to approve, deny, and dry run a scheduled job are found on the scheduled job endpoint under approve, deny, and dry-run, respectively.

curl -X POST \
-H "Authorization: Token $TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "Accept: application/json; version=1.3; indent=4" \
http://nautobot/api/extras/scheduled-jobs/$JOB_ID/approve?force=true

The approval endpoint additionally provides a force query parameter that needs to be set if a job is past its scheduled datetime. This mimics the confirmation dialog in the UI.