Many Astoria commands are run as background processes, rather than interactively.
Running a command as a background process is useful when the process may take substantial time to complete. This allows the user to work while the process completes.
Some commands are always run in background. Some commands, such as Export and Where Used, can also be run interactively.
Many background processes issue an email to the job submitter or job owner when the batch job completes, indicating success or failure and other job details.
Many background commands can be run according to a schedule. See Scheduling a Batch Job.