---
title: Scan data to trigger tasks
description: In addition to the fine-grained scheduling facility, IDM provides a task scanning mechanism. The task scanner lets you scan a set of properties with a complex query filter, at a scheduled interval, and then launches a script on the objects returned by the query.
component: pingidm
version: 8.1
page_id: pingidm:schedules-guide:task-scanner
canonical_url: https://docs.pingidentity.com/pingidm/8.1/schedules-guide/task-scanner.html
keywords: ["Scheduled Tasks", "Triggers"]
---

# Scan data to trigger tasks

In addition to the fine-grained scheduling facility, IDM provides a task scanning mechanism. The task scanner lets you scan a set of properties with a complex query filter, at a scheduled interval, and then launches a script on the objects returned by the query.

For example, the task scanner can scan all `managed/user` objects for a specific date, and invoke a script that launches a task on the user object when that date is reached.

The task scanner runs a scheduled task that queries a managed object, then launches a script based on the query results. Scanning tasks are configured in the same way as standard scheduled tasks, as part of the schedule configuration *(tooltip: You can create and change schedule configurations over REST at the openidm/scheduler/job endpoint, or directly in conf/schedule-schedule-name.json files.)*, with the `invokeService` parameter set to `taskscanner`. The `invokeContext` parameter defines the scan details, and the task that should be launched when the specified condition is triggered.