Tasks

You can reach this page from the Administration menu, or from a Site Overview page using the Troubleshooting dropdown button, Tasks option.

The Tasks page is a centralised view of all scheduled tasks in your Panopticon installation. Every automated action Panopticon performs — site information refreshes, extension update checks, backups, file scans, email summaries, and more — is implemented as a task that runs on a schedule. This page lets you see and manage all of them in one place.

The task list

The list can be filtered by:

• Search: Filter by task type name.
• Site: Show tasks for a specific site, or only system-level tasks (tasks not associated with any site).
• Task Type: Filter by a specific type of task (e.g. akeebabackup, filescanner, joomlaupdate).
• Enabled: Show all tasks, only enabled (published) tasks, or only disabled (unpublished) tasks.

Each row in the list shows:

• Site: The site the task belongs to, with its internal numeric ID. System-level tasks (those not associated with any site) are labelled System.
• Task type: The internal type identifier of the task, such as akeebabackup or joomlaupdate, along with a human-readable description.
• Enabled: Whether the task is currently active. Click the toggle to enable or disable a task.
• Last status: The result of the most recent run. Possible values are OK (green checkmark), Running (yellow spinner), Never run (blue clock), Will resume (the task ran out of time and will continue next CRON invocation), or Failed (red icon, click for details).
• Execution counts: The number of times the task has run, and the number of times it has failed.
• #: The internal numeric ID of the task, sortable.

System tasks vs site tasks

Tasks fall into two categories:

System tasks are not associated with any particular site — they perform actions for the Panopticon installation itself, such as backing up the Panopticon database, rotating log files, sending pending web push notifications, and refreshing update information for all sites. System tasks are labelled with a robot icon and the word "System" in the site column.

Site tasks are associated with a specific site and perform site-specific actions such as taking Akeeba Backup backups, running the PHP File Change Scanner, or scheduling update emails.

ℹ️ System tasks cannot be deleted. Deleting them would break core Panopticon functionality. You can disable them, but be aware that doing so will prevent the corresponding background process from running.

Task types

Common task types you will see in the list include:

Type	Description
akeebabackup	Takes a backup of a site using Akeeba Backup Professional
filescanner	Runs the PHP File Change Scanner on a site using Admin Tools Professional
corechecksums	Checks core file integrity on a Joomla! site
joomlaupdate	Installs a pending Joomla! core update
wordpressupdate	Installs a pending WordPress core update
extensionsupdate	Installs pending extension/plugin/theme updates on a site
extensioninstall	Remotely installs an extension on a site
refreshsiteinfo	Refreshes the general information for all sites (PHP version, CMS version, extensions list, etc.)
refreshinstalledextensions	Refreshes the list of installed extensions for a site
databasebackup	Backs up the Panopticon database to an SQL file
logrotate	Rotates and prunes old Panopticon log files
sendmail	Sends a queued email (update notification, etc.)
sendwebpush	Sends queued web push notifications
uptimemonitor	Checks whether sites are responding to HTTP requests
updatesummaryemail	Sends a scheduled update summary email for a site
actionsummaryemail	Sends a scheduled actions summary email for a site
selfupdatefinder	Checks whether a new version of Panopticon is available
usagestats	Sends anonymous usage statistics

Managing tasks

Site-specific tasks (backup schedules, scanner schedules, checksum schedules, update summary tasks) are more conveniently managed from their dedicated pages:

• Backup Tasks — for Akeeba Backup schedules
• Scanner Tasks — for PHP File Change Scanner schedules
• Core File Integrity Check — for Joomla! core checksum schedules
• Scheduled Update Summary — for update summary emails
• Scheduled Action Summary — for action summary emails

The Tasks page is best used for monitoring the status of all tasks at a glance, enabling or disabling tasks, and diagnosing failures.