SPO Tools - Job Man

SPO America's »Job Man«

The Solution to Efficient Job Scheduling
Standard SAP® functionality does cater for submission and execution of jobs, however this is mostly a manual process. The tools available for job monitoring are limited and require the operator to have detailed knowledge of the job schedule. In the event of job failures, the process to restart jobs and their successors is manual and time consuming. Job scheduling requirements vary on a daily basis, therefore it is imperative to be able to respond to such changes in the most efficient way possible. SPO experts have been accommodating system tuning and optimization needs for many years in R/2 as well as R/3 environments. One of the results of these efforts is a new concept which enhances the standard SAP functionality and comprehensively covers the entire functionality of job management.
The JOBMAN concept provides user-friendliness and flexibility in its dynamic functionality and is aimed at making the tasks of job scheduling, administration and management effortless. This generic solution is adaptable to any SAP user's needs to form a custom-built software product.

Benefits

Reduction in Operational Costs
Reduction in Batch Processing Time
Multiple Job Schedule Execution
User-friendly On-line Interfaces
Comprehensive Management Tools
Automated Job Scheduling
Interfaces to External Systems

Features
Complete Job Organization Maintenance of job information is required on a regular basis. This often requires job details to be recaptured. A Job Master infrastructure facilitates the organization of jobs and storage of job-related details such as job name and description, program, job class and priority, BDC session, output parameters, documentation, restart instructions, job criticality and support group details. Jobs are classified and grouped by application and job type in the Job Master. Job details are extracted from the Job Master and dynamically exist in job schedules.

Job Schedule Definition
Job scheduling requirements vary daily based on the type of processing day, resulting in job dependency changes. This requires jobs to be changed frequently, which imposes the risk of input errors, it also results in unnecessary delays in processing.
In order to eliminate the need to recapture jobs and their dependencies, a Schedule Master is required and is used to define the various job schedules that may be executed. These schedule are dynamically recreated whenever dependencies are changed. The schedule types envisaged are: Regular (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly, Non-Business Day), Special (Ad-hoc, Scratch Pad) and Automatic (Event-initiated schedules for internal and external interfaces).
Jobs selected from the Job Master are assigned specific program variants and execution sequences based on job dependencies and make up the dynamic job schedules.
The Schedule Definition Interface is designed with an integrity check facility which performs a complete check of job details and dependencies in schedules.

Dynamic Calendar Based Processing
Job scheduling requirements for a particular day are dictated by processing periods such as: a business day, the last business day of the fiscal week, month or year end, a non-business day, etc.
A Processing Calendar provides flexibility for processing based on Fiscal or Roman calendar date dependencies and is the driver that controls the automated loading of any of the regular job schedules.
The Processing Calendar is easy to load and is based on client-specific processing requirements such as fiscal closing periods, holidays, shutdowns and weekend processing. The Processing Calendar also defines and maintains the processing date parameters for the duration of an entireprocessing cycle, regardless of system date.

Comprehensive Scheduling Controls
A prerequisite for the smooth execution of job schedules, is that the operator always has complete control over the entire job schedule or of selected jobs in the schedule.
This interface features a dynamic cascade display of all the jobs in the loaded schedule, from which jobs may be viewed or maintained for temporary overrides such as variant and dependency changes. This display is dynamically updated with the status of jobs.
The entire schedule may be loaded, checked and generated or normally terminated.
Ad-hoc jobs may be selected for execution from any special schedule at any time. Individual jobs may be manually started, canceled, deleted, held, released, force started or force completed. In the event of job failures, all jobs canceled are regenerated on request, in the correct order of execution and restarted at the point of failure.
An Operations Log provides an interface for administration, operations and development personnel to capture incident reports and to communicate special instructions between all parties involved.

Job Schedule Monitoring
Monitoring of jobs is an essential part of Job Scheduling and requires a real-time status of all scheduled jobs in one display. An overview of all the scheduled jobs is provided in the dynamic cascade display format described above, highlighting the real-time status of every job in the display which is updated dynamically. Individual jobs may be viewed on request, providing details of: job execution parameters, Job Log and custom Processing Log information, Documentation, Restart Instructions, Job Criticality and dynamic Support details.
A summary of job activity is provided by displaying only the active and canceled jobs.
BDC sessions generated in the current schedule may also be displayed via this interface along with their current status and transaction details. The current processing calendar details may also be viewed via this interface.

Job Schedule History
History of processing is usually necessary for problem determination and resolution, but is often not available when required or is incomplete.
A selected processing day's entire history may be viewed at once, providing the same features as the Job Schedule Monitoring does, as well as job disposal information. The number of history archives kept is based on schedule type and may be modified by system configuration.

Full or Semi Automated Operation
Automation is a key factor if smooth and cost-efficient job scheduling is to be achieved. Tasks that are repeated frequently should be automated where possible.
Manual intervention may be required in case of processing irregularities or late changes. The design for the following functions supports manual and automated operation:

Loading a schedule at the start of a new cycle
Starting execution of an evening cycle
Purging of history, processing and operations logs, as well as SAP jobs and logs
Automatic initiation of BDC sessions generated by scheduled jobs

Enhanced Job Dependency Features
Job dependencies which define the job execution sequence have been expanded to allow jobs to be dependent on all of the following:

Completion of a single job
Completion of multiple jobs
End of processing of a single BDC session
End of processing of multiple BDC sessions
Immediate execution
Time based
Start of the evening cycle
Arrival of external files
Triggered on-line from user interface
Manual start from operator console

Authorization Profiles and Audit Trails
Job scheduling functionality by nature compromises the integrity of applications and data, if not adequately restricted for use by authorized personnel only. In order to achieve the security required and at the same time maintain flexibility, multiple-level authorization profiles are provided for the different types of users and their access requirements. These profiles may be assigned for viewing or maintaining of the various functions described, based on roles and responsibilities - i.e., operations, development, system administration, calendar main- tenance.
Audit trails are included for all the maintenance interfaces.

Support Group Call-out Interface
In the event of a job failure, the appropriate support group needs to be notified based on the severity of the job criticality and a specific call-out protocol must be adhered to, in order to resolve the problem and resume processing as soon as possible. A Support Group Callout system is provided and is comprised of a Support Group Register, Support Personnel defined to the Call-out system, as well as the effective-dated Callout Roster. The current callout sequence is retrieved dynamically.

Comprehensive Reporting Interface
Reporting is a vital component of the job scheduling administration and management functions. The ability to extract key information in crisis situations as well as during normal operation of a computer system is invaluable.
More than 40 reports are featured, which consist of screen prints of all the maintenance interfaces, as well as report utilities such as: job schedule status reports, schedule reports, job and program crossreferences, job documentation and support group registers.
An interface to external viewing and printing software packages is also available.

Automated Housekeeping and Utilities
Housekeeping is an unpopular but necessary function of any computer system, which is why the following features were included for job scheduling operations.

Job schedule cleanup at the start of a cycle
Automated loading of a new job schedule
Purging of history and SAP jobs
Purging of all log information
System backup, restore and transport utility
System Configuration

Compatibility with SAP Job Scheduling
The SPO job scheduling concept was designed to enhance and not replace existing SAP functionality. For this reason, it has been developed to be absolutely compatible with the SAP job scheduling functionality. The implementation of this functionality will not conflict with the delivered SAP system in any way.

If you want to learn more about Job Man®, please go to the About SPO page and fill out the form. We will provide you with additional information ASAP.

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