Before you can use the scheduler, it needs to be instantiated (who'd have guessed?). To do this, you use an implementor of ISchedulerFactory.
Once a scheduler is instantiated, it can be started, placed in stand-by mode, and shutdown. Note that once a scheduler is shutdown, it cannot be restarted without being re-instantiated. Triggers do not fire (jobs do not execute) until the scheduler has been started, nor while it is in the paused state.
Here's a quick snippet of code, that instantiates and starts a scheduler, and schedules a job for execution:
Using Quartz.NET
// construct a scheduler factory
ISchedulerFactory schedFact = new StdSchedulerFactory();
// get a scheduler
IScheduler sched = schedFact.GetScheduler();
sched.Start();
// construct job info
JobDetail jobDetail = new JobDetail("myJob", null, typeof(HelloJob));
// fire every hour
Trigger trigger = TriggerUtils.MakeHourlyTrigger();
// start on the next even hour
trigger.StartTimeUtc = TriggerUtils.GetEvenHourDate(DateTime.UtcNow);
trigger.Name = "myTrigger";
sched.ScheduleJob(jobDetail, trigger);
As you can see, working with Quartz.NET is rather simple. In Lesson 2 we'll give a quick overview of Jobs and Triggers, so that you can more fully understand this example.