Question

I am using the default service GroupsManager and Group to scan through all groups in a domain, check if a group does not have an owner and in that case set a default owner.

The number of groups in the domain are almost 2000 and this causes me a timeout. I have tried a try/catch statement inside the loop that processes the each group, but Google kills the script on the timeout.

I am happy to do this in batches, but how can I actually continue to execute my script once a timeout has occurred? Or am I supposed to monitor the execution time and use some sort of sleep?

Or do I have to face the reality and restart the script after each timeout.

Really need a response to this, thanks!

/ Don Pedro

Answer 1

You shouldn’t let the script time out but instead try to process a limited number of items at a time on a specific time interval using a timer trigger.

Well I guess you could answer that this is more easily said than done … but it is actually very simple :

1. determine approximately how many group you can check in about 3 minutes (max execution time is 5′ but it’s always better to keep a comfortable margin)
2. Count the processed groups and put this counter value somewhere… preferably in scriptProperties
3. setup a timer trigger every 10 minutes or so that calls your function starting with the group indexed by the number you just memorized (the trigger can be set programmatically and removed as well or manually in the ressource menu of the script editor).
4. kill the timer when you have reached the end of your task (again manually or programmatically)

Hoping this will give you enough indications to start with.