SOTS is how much off the cpu time can be dedicated to tasks other than the continuous/scheduled tasks. It covers a lot of pieces, such as ethernet comms, messaging, trends, serial comms, pc connection for upload/download and online, etc. The higher the percentage assigned, the higher the ratio of cpu time available for background tasks vs. cpu time dedicated to continuous. Message instructions placed in the continuous task can be set to execute as soon as last message completes or errors, but in all of the processes we have, i don't need data that quickly, so i still put them in scheduled tasks so i don't use more cpu on comms than i really need.