Meridian Enterprise can be customized to provide extended functionality with the Meridian Task Server. The Task Server is a service that can be installed as part of a Meridian installation. It can run on any computer on a LAN.
By customizing Meridian events with VBScript, Meridian client applications can use the Task Server for processes that do not require user interaction or that are best offloaded to the Task Server computer, freeing the client computer for use by the user. The Task Server can be instructed to run predefined tasks that can be controlled by arguments that are determined by the customization code.
After submitting a task to the Task Server, the client application will continue, leaving the execution of the task to the Task Server. The Task Server will autonomously run all submitted tasks. It does not require any communication with the client that submitted the task, and it will not provide any feedback to the client about the result of the task.
Executing a task with the Task Server has these main advantages:
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Ease of deployment and maintenance: No software or configuration is required on the client computer (for example, the client needs no email software).
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Performance: Tasks do not use any resources of the client computer that submitted the task.
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Flexibility: Tasks can be invoked from both PowerWeb and PowerUser.
The Task Server is not suited for operations that require:
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Interaction with the user
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Returning a result
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Confirmation when executed (success or failure)
The Task Server service itself does not perform tasks. It can be thought of as a central task controller, able to receive incoming task requests from client applications and to delegate those tasks to specified extensions. Tasks are performed by special ActiveX components called task server extensions. Task server extensions extend the Task Server with specific task functionality. The functionality does not rely on the configuration of the client workstation.
