Job Priorities

TickerQ lets you tag jobs with a TickerTaskPriority via the [TickerFunction] attribute. Priority is surfaced in the dashboard and metrics, and the scheduler treats long-running work specially.

Priority Levels

public enum TickerTaskPriority
{
    LongRunning,  // Executes on a separate long-running path
    High,         // High priority (metadata today)
    Normal,       // Default priority
    Low           // Lowest priority
}

Today, only LongRunning has special scheduling behavior. High, Normal, and Low all share the same worker queues; they are primarily used for:

• Observability in the dashboard and logs
• Filtering/analytics
• Future scheduling strategies

Setting Priority

In Function Attribute

[TickerFunction("CriticalTask", taskPriority: TickerTaskPriority.High)]
public async Task CriticalTask(
    TickerFunctionContext context,
    CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
    // Tagged as High priority for observability
    await DoWorkAsync(cancellationToken);
}

Long-Running Work

Use LongRunning for CPU-bound or very long-lived tasks:

[TickerFunction("RebuildSearchIndex", taskPriority: TickerTaskPriority.LongRunning)]
public async Task RebuildSearchIndex(
    TickerFunctionContext context,
    CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
    // This job runs on a separate long-running path
    await RebuildIndexAsync(cancellationToken);
}

Under the hood, LongRunning jobs are dispatched via TaskCreationOptions.LongRunning and bypass the regular worker queues (TickerQTaskScheduler.QueueAsync), so they do not block short-lived jobs.

When to Use Each Priority

• LongRunning – heavy CPU work, long IO-bound pipelines, index rebuilds.
• High – important business jobs you want to highlight in monitoring.
• Normal – default for most application jobs.
• Low – background/low-importance jobs you may deprioritize in dashboards.

Notes

• Priority is defined on the function via [TickerFunction]; scheduled TimeTickers inherit the priority from their handler.
• Changing priority on the attribute affects future scheduling but does not retroactively change existing persisted jobs.