Several times are stored in the table for each ad-hoc task, and some data we want to expose more easily:

• timecreated - when the task was s (thanks to MDL-69170)
• firststartingtime - the time when the first attempt to run the task was made (thanks to MDL-80749).
• timestarted - the time the most recent attempt to run the task started.

To monitor the health of the system, it would be nice if some of this could be shown in Admin > Server > Tasks > Ad hoc tasks. E.g.

• time from task being schedule to actually completing is what users care about
• the total time distribution for how long tasks take - eg which tasks are consistently slow, or have a lumpy distriction
• what is the total run time for tasks, eg some tasks are fast but there are many of them (like forum email adhoc tasks). We want to know where to spend optimization time.

I guess the difficulty is that the task log display is used for both Ad-hoc and Scheduled tasks, and there is not really an equivalent for them.

Adding this to the SQL is not really a problem, It is just a left join. The question is how to dispaly it. I suppose options include:

1. Always add extra columns to the report, and live with them being blank for scheduled tasks.
2. Cunningly analyse the filter conditions being applied (Class name and/or Type) and show the extra columns only if everything in the report is Ad-hoc. Does report-builder support this?
3. Given up enhancing Moodle core, and everyone who wants this can write their own reports.