Z-Cron

It isn’t too late nor too early to reap the benefits of automation, specifically the one designed to run certain tasks based on the user’s schedule. The strength of such tools specifically lies in being able to work on an essentially set-and-forget basis: you spend a bit of time setting up your automation and parametrizing it to your needs, and the program will do the rest once everything’s settled.

Z-Cron works on that basis: setting everything up is straightforward enough to do, so all that remains is getting a little creative with your automation. Perhaps you wish to schedule backups, execute a certain batch file weekly, set up FTP transfers, and so forth — just a few of the many available use cases.

I’ll admit that’s a bit of an overused saying, yet I can’t help but feel it’s really quite appropriate here. Deciding what tasks you can successfully delegate to the program is a conundrum in itself, and some trial-and-error with this experimentation isn’t uncommon.

Click Task and decide how you want to go about assigning your first job to the software. Set a label and description, then choose a program or batch file to execute. To help streamline the process, the Tools menu has a series of utilities for you to take advantage of.

Their uses range from setting an alarm and checking a web page to creating restore points, pinging a host, shutting down a remote system, and so on.

The next step is, of course, scheduling your jobs. You can activate a set task based on a date and time, but you may also set up Autostart, which essentially triggers the task upon detecting a program’s launch.

As you may have already realized, there’s a lot you can do here. The workflows that Z-Cron is capable to assist with are numerous, so feel free to experiment and see how the software can be useful for you.