Your workload is gigantic, you aren’t getting enough work done in the office, so why not SCHEDULE some work? If you have a simple task which you run every day (or night) you may be able to schedule it to run at a set time using the folling method, I am not too sure on other operating systems, but I got this to work on Windows 7 and ArcGIS 10.1.
Once you are sure your model runs you can do the following. In this example I will be doing a very simple buffer to illustrate the process.
1. Click on Model -> Export -> To Python Script and give it a name. In this case I will call it buffer.py.
2. Inspect the Python Script. In this case it looks like:
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# —————————————————————————
# buffer.py
# Created on: 2012-12-11 21:26:00.00000
# (generated by ArcGIS/ModelBuilder)
# Description:
# —————————————————————————
# Import arcpy module
import arcpy
# Local variables:
Input_DataSet = “Streams”
Streams = “D:\\Projects\\cra\\geodatabase\\CRA_current.gdb\\ConasaugaRiverWatershed\\Streams”
Output_Dataset = “C:\\modelbuilder\\output\\Buffer200Feet.shp”
# Process: Buffer
arcpy.Buffer_analysis(Streams, Output_Dataset, “200 Feet”, “FULL”, “ROUND”, “NONE”, “”)
3. Make sure that python is added to the path statement in Control Center -> Advanced System Settings -> Environment Variables
4. Open Task Scheduler
5. Click Create a Basic Task in the Actions Panel to the right. Give your task a descriptive name and a small description.
6. Determine when you want the task to run. Click Next. Then Select the time:
7. Select Start a program from the list of actions.
8. Select the script:
9: Finally at the end review your settings and click finish.
With any luck your scheduled task will run at the correct time. Please not that an ArcGIS license must be available for the script to run.
You can find the official ESRI Help page here