disabling a task in a databricks job

[dpc]

Hello

I have jobs that perform a number of activities.

Sometimes I want to disable one or more of these activities.

I can do that easily in an app like ADF.

Reading around I cannot find an easy way to do this although, what I've read suggest that it was a 'soon to be expected' feature as far back as 2023, but maybe I've missed something

How do I do this is Databricks as I would have thought this is a fairly basic requirement.

Thanks

[Raman_Unifeye]

No such Toggle to disable/enable task. 

If you use DAB, its easy to comment out the task and redploy.

[dpc]

Thanks @Raman_Unifeye 

Do you know if there are any plans to add this feature?

[Advika · Accepted solution]

Hello @dpc!

There isn’t a built-in toggle to disable a task at the moment. For one-off runs, you can try the following options:

• Using UI: Use Run now with different settings and select only the tasks you’d like to run.
• Using the API: Use the only field in the run-now endpoint to trigger specific tasks.

For any updates on feature availability or timelines, please share this as feedback here or check with your Databricks account team.

[Coffee77]

I'd go with @Advika suggestion to use different params to configure your tasks to be optionally executed based on those parameters. You can include IF/ELSE tasks for easily implement that. 

Other options, valid but not very cool are 1) Cloning jobs and delete tasks 2) Deploy from DAB but previously removing tasks 3) Edit jobs in YAML directly in Databricks UI and comment or remove tasks

[Raman_Unifeye]

None of the options are as straightforward as the UI one. 

Using UI: Use Run now with different settings and select only the tasks you’d like to run.

Yet again, I personally use DAB one as it is convenient to me.

[dpc]

Thanks. I like the UI option. It's not a permanent disable but it will be good enough

[rgabo]

Hi folks, this is Gabor from Databricks here!

We've recently launched Disabled tasks which lets you disable an task indefinitely so that it won't run the next time the job runs on a schedule. Simply specify "disabled": true in the job's configuration or click the "Disable" action in the UI and it should work as expected.

Hope this helps!