Background Tasks and Migration Progress
Cortex runs long-running work as background tasks, so it can carry on after you leave the page. The task you will most often watch is a Migrate Data run, which copies records from one data source into another. Cortex provides a page to follow that progress and to pause, resume or retry the task.
Viewing background tasks
Open Admin → Background Tasks. The View Background Tasks page lists the tasks Cortex knows about.
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Created Date Time | When the task was created. |
| Last Updated | When the task was last updated. |
| Name | The task's name, for example the migration it belongs to. |
| Status | The current state, shown with a status icon — for example In Progress, Paused, Complete, Failed, Accepted or Pending. |
| Type | The kind of task, for example Migrate Data. |
| Run Context | Background for a task started as a normal background task, Foreground for a run started from the Migrate Data screen. The tooltip on the value says which. |
| Summary | For a Migrate Data task, a progress bar with the completion percentage and the estimated time remaining. |
| Actions | Row actions: pause, resume, edit, delete and retry. |
Row actions appear according to the task's state and your permissions:
- Pause is offered for tasks that are new, in progress, or waiting to be retried. Resume replaces it once a task is paused.
- Edit and Delete are only available to users with the matching permissions for the Background Tasks admin section.
- Add background task appears in the page header for users who can edit background tasks.
Estimated time remaining
For a Migrate Data task, Cortex shows how much longer it expects to take, for example "about 12 minutes remaining". The estimate is recalculated as the task runs and is written in a compact form:
about 45 seconds— less than a minute to goabout 12 minutes— less than an hour to goabout 1 hr 5 min— less than a day to goabout 2 days 3 hr— longer runs
While a task is paused, the estimate is followed by (paused).
The estimate reflects how fast the task is actually processing records rather than wall-clock time: time spent paused is excluded, so a long pause does not distort the estimate once the task resumes. Cortex only shows an estimate once it has something to work from — at least one record processed and a few seconds of actual processing time — so a task that has just started shows only its progress bar and percentage.
Where progress and the estimate appear
- Background Tasks list — in the Summary column, under the progress bar of each Migrate Data task.
- The task dialog — open a task with its edit action. The Record Status tab shows a progress bar, a
completed / total records (n%)counter and the estimated time remaining, together with Pause and Resume. The tabs beneath split the records in the run into Pending, In Progress, Complete, Failed and Accepted Failures. - The Migrate Data dialog — while a foreground migration started from a data source's result list is running, the same estimate appears under that run's progress bar.
Requirements
- Migration runs require the migration / platform features in your Cortex license. Without them, Migrate Data is not available.
- Viewing, editing and deleting background tasks each require the corresponding permission.