How do I auto-start my Commerce Minions?

Question

I've configured a Minion for my Sitecore Commerce solution. We're on 8.2.1.

It's set up like this:

  {
    "$type": "XYZ.Commerce.Plugin.Custom.Policies.QueuePolicy, XYZ.Commerce.Plugin.Custom",
    "ConnectionString": "[redacted]",
    "WakeupInterval": "00:05:00",
    "QueueName": "preprod",
    "Models": {
      "$type": "System.Collections.Generic.List`1[[Sitecore.Commerce.Core.Model, Sitecore.Commerce.Core]], mscorlib",
      "$values": [
      ]
    }
  }

I've been following this guide: https://websterian.com/2017/06/08/sitecore-commerce-erp-integration-an-approach-part-1-integrating-orders-and-customers/

Wherein it states:

Minions are designed to be run on schedule, the default is every five minutes but this can be changed in your environment file as per this example…

But this doesn't appear to be enough. My Minion still needs to be kickstarted via a post (as described elsewhere in the same linked article).

So I must be overlooking something. How can I ensure, my Minion is always up and running on a specified interval, in plain configuration?

Answer 1

You need to reference your minion inside configure method (found in the Commerce.Engine project, Startup.cs):

You will have something like:

public void Configure(
       IApplicationBuilder app,
       IConfigureServiceApiPipeline contextPipeline,
       IStartNodePipeline startNodePipeline,
       IConfigureOpsServiceApiPipeline contextOpsServiceApiPipeline,
       IStartEnvironmentPipeline startEnvironmentPipeline,
       ILoggerFactory loggerFactory,
       IOptions<LoggingSettings> loggingSettings,
       IOptions<ApplicationInsightsSettings> applicationInsightsSettings,
       IOptions<CertificatesSettings> certificatesSettings)
       {
         //your code
         startEnvironmentPipeline.Run("yourminion", _nodeContext.GetPipelineContextOptions());
       }

Answer 2

An additional note: For Sitecore Commerce XC 9 (not 8.2.1 as in original question), it is no longer necessary to invoke it from the Commerce.Engine project, as long as you've run the Bootstrap command (located in the SitecoreCommerce_DevOps Postman collection) to get the configuration loaded to SQL Server. After that step your minion should run as normal.