When you are developing for the cloud, sometimes it is useful to create tasks that run in the background while your main application remains available for end users or presentation.

If you had full control over the VM that your web server was running on, then adding a background task as a script would be relatively simple. When you use Azure or other cloud options to host your website, you publish your code to a platform that behaves like a physical web server but you lose administrative control of the servers themselves. How then can you add a background task? Microsoft's answer is to use a WebJob.

WebJobs allow you to run a program or script as a separate process that is still associated with your web app. This means that your script can run side by side with your web app and can be deployed in the same way at the same time. You can use WebJobs for an API app or a mobile app as well. This gives you the kind of flexibility you would have when using your own on-premises web servers without all the headache that comes with patching and maintaining them as with many other platform-as-a-service offerings.

Later in this video, we will look at how to deploy a WebJob using the Azure Portal. However, it should be noted that you can also develop WebJobs using Microsoft Visual Studio or use the Azure WebJobs SDK for event-driven background processing in your applications. Using the SDK, you can integrate your web app with more Azure features while simplifying the coding required.

Remember the scripts would normally run at the command line. The fact that WebJobs are built into your web app means that you can scale easily with the option to include the jobs with each instance. The choice is yours.

As a convenience, you can always look at the history of your WebJob. That way you can keep an eye on its progress from the Azure Portal in the WebJob details page or programmatically.