Zeta Scheduler (ZS) is an application that helps you in starting tasks at predefined times and with various dependencies. In contrast to the Windows Task Scheduler, ZS has more/other features that makes it more flexible, providing features that are not available otherwise.

ZS consists of two applications: An application called Zeta Scheduler Manager (ZSM) and an application called Zeta Scheduler Scheduler (ZSS).
ZSS is a console application that is running on each computer that you want to run scheduled tasks. ZSM is a Windows GUI application that is running on one computer to manage all computers running ZSS.
In addition, a central Microsoft SQL Server database is being accessed by all ZSS and ZSM instances to read and write configuration settings.

Zeta Scheduler allows for defining tasks that can execute either depending on date/time settings or depending on each other. The follown modes are supported:
1. Run once at a given date.
2. Run yearly at a given date.
3. Run monthly at configurable days at a configurable time.
4. Run daily or weekly at given weekdays at a given time.
5. Run hourly every n hours.
6. Run at a variable dates/times. This is a highly configurable mode, where you can set weekdays, month days, and multiple hours and minutes independently.
7. Run at system start, n minutes after the computer started.
8. Run dependent on another task. This mode allows to chain multiple tasks, allowing to start a certain tasks only upon success or failure of a previous task.

Each task can be configured to generate notifications upon successful finish and/or when finished with errors. Notifications can be sent to any of the following targets:
1. By e-mail to one or multiple receivers.
2. A log file.
3. A database table. (To e.g. evaluate later with 3rd party tools).
4. The window event log.
Each notification can be configured to be sent to multiple targets simultaneously with configurable notification texts.

The concept of a "job" contains all the definitions of an actual task to be scheduled. A job is contained in a global repostitory of jobs, allowing to easily assing one job to multiple tasks (optionally on different computers) thus simplifying the creation and assignment of tasks.
A job contains the following major settings:
1. Name and category - Helps in categorizing and quickly finding jobs.
2. Program file, command line, startup folder - The core definition of the application/script to execute.
3. Result ranges - To specify the exit codes that you consider as "success" and as "failure".
4. User login information - To run the process as another user.

A "Computer" identifies a machine that is running the ZSS application. In the central ZSM management application you can create an arbitrary number of computers and assign tasks to it.
Settings fo a computer contain:
1. An IP address or host name.
2. A friendly name.
3. A description.
4. A flag to activate/deaktivate all tasks.

For most settings (like job definitions or notification settings), you can use placeholders that are expanded during runtime. This enables you to minimize hardcoding of information, making the application easily transferable to other systems.
Some example placeholder among the more than 70 placeholders include:
1. Environmental information like computer name, environment variables, operation system version, IP address.
2. Global information like current date or time.
3. Path information like current ZSS file and folder path.
4. Task information like name or last result.
5. Job information like ID or user name.

Various other features
1. Detailed result history of tasks that ran in the past. The history is stored in the database so that you can use 3rd party tools to further process the results.
2. Ribbon UI for easy usage.
3. Great, fast, responsive support from friendly support engineers.

The license of this software is Free, you can free download and free use this automation software.