nnCron is an advanced scheduler, scripting tool and automation manager. Besides possessing the traditional scheduler features (starting programs, displaying reminder messages and opening documents at specified time), nnCron also can:
- start any program as a service,
- run tasks as if they were started by specified user,
- shut down and hibernate the computer or put it into sleep mode at a specified time,
- "wake up" the computer in order to run a task,
- display/hide/close/kill/minimize/maximize and hide specified windows to system tray,
- display messages on screen and write them in a log file,
- work with clipboard, files and registry,
- emulate keyboard input and mouse activities,
- dial and hang up,
- use the system speaker to make beeps of specified length and frequency,
- play audio files,
- sync system time,
- assign a specified priority to a process,
- terminate any running process,
- restart automatically after fatal errors.
nnCron can be used as system event monitor: it can keep track of files, flags, windows, processes, mouse activities, periods of idle time, keyboard shortcuts, getting online/off line, insertion of disk in a drive, presence of a host in network (ping), amount of free space on a disk, etc., etc.
nnCron understands cron table format (Unix) and is managed with easy-to-edit text crontab files. However, for those who prefer to work in a GUI environment, the program has a graphical shell which can be used to remove, add, edit and run tasks, set up reminders, change program settings.
nnCron has its own powerful (Forth-compatible) scripting language, allows to use VBScript/JScript, as well as regular expressions, and can be further extended with plugins.
nnCron can be started as a system service or as a regular standalone application.