5. Background Generation with FEM

Ticking Background Run in the Generate Documentation dialog sends package generation to the Capital Integration Server (CIS) as a task under the flexible execution model (FEM), instead of running it on your client. Use it for big packages, packages you rebuild often, and anything you want scheduled or triggered.

Three ways to start a background package

1. Background Run in the Generate Documentation dialog.
2. Web services: schedule generation through the CIS web service API (the reference is WebServiceDevelopment.pdf in the doc folder of the Capital install).
3. A web service task on a trigger, for example build a Change Explorer package whenever a design's release level changes against its baseline. The CIS task is PackagingTask; the capital-sa-headless skill covers driving CIS tasks over REST.

The traps

It uses the server's configuration, not yours. A background package does not honour the client's Publisher configuration; it uses the configuration of the machine running CIS. If you tuned attributeList.xml on your laptop and ran in the background, your change is not in the package. This is the strongest single reason to keep Publisher configuration in one controlled, central place (see 7. Where Publisher Reads Its Configuration).

Paths are resolved on the worker. Output and resource folders are interpreted on whichever machine executes the task. In a master and worker setup that can be any worker, so both paths must be shared network locations that every worker can read (resources) and write (output). If a package seems to have vanished, the task status window (Capital > Layout > Tasks) tells you which machine produced it.

Same operating system on both ends. Client and server must run the same OS platform, or file parsing fails.

Licences are still consumed for the duration of the task, exactly as in an interactive run.

Checking the result

A CIS task can report success without producing what you wanted; the capital-sa-headless skill records several Capital tasks that report SUCCESSFUL having done nothing. Confirm a background package by opening the output folder and the package itself, not by the task status.