TABLE OF CONTENTS:
• Job Scheduling
• Dependency Processing
• Enterprise Scheduling
• Advanced Scheduling Tools
• Management Reporting
• Job Properties
• Integrations
• Other Capabilities & Functions
• Support Services
Your jobs need to run on time and in the right order—your own job depends on it. You also need to maintain service levels, reduce operator errors, and coordinate jobs across servers and platforms with precision. The reasons to initiate a scheduling automation project are obvious, especially to those tasked with the increasingly complex chore of submitting jobs manually. You need a solution with centralized control backed by industry-leading automation.
This checklist helps you distinguish between Robot Schedule and other IBM i job scheduling and batch management software so you can make the best decision for your company. Fortra also has solutions for enterprise scheduling projects. For more information, please contact your sales rep.
| JOB SCHEDULING | Others | Robot |
| Create calendars to define working and non-working days, week number, and fiscal month-end dates. | ✓ | |
| Run jobs from an initial start date and then every x number of days (working, non-working, fiscal, or calendar) at a specific time of day. | ✓ | |
| Run the job at regular time intervals throughout the day or limit the runs to a selected time range. | ✓ | |
| Specify the days of the week or the weeks of the month on which the job runs. | ✓ | |
| Run jobs on unique dates throughout the calendar year. | ✓ | |
| Build unpredictable date jobs to create quarterly cut-offs. | ✓ | |
| Create reusable date objects that can define dates to run or exclude a job. | ✓ | |
| Run a job on specific day numbers each month such as the 5th and the 15th. | ✓ | |
| Select the type of day to run the job: calendar or fiscal calendar days, working days, or non-working days. | ✓ | |
| Hold, skip, release, omit, or next a job from its normal schedule. | ✓ | |
| Run jobs at certain times of the day based on different days of the week. | ✓ | |
| Run jobs on the first, second, third, fourth, or last day of the month for a specific day of the week, like the first Friday or last Friday, at a certain time of day. |
✓ | |
| Run jobs multiple times in a day. | ✓ | |
| Use exception scheduling if a run day for the job falls on a non-working day. You can select to not run the job, run the job on the non-working day, run the job on the working day before the non-working day, or run the job on the working day following the non-working day. | ✓ | |
| Select to run the job only within a specific time range. | ✓ | |
| Create a submit-delay model job to capture jobs (ad hoc) that users submit and delay them until a convenient run time. | ✓ | |
| Check to see if a subsystem or user-submitted job is active prior to submitting by attaching an OPAL object with exceptions to the job’s run schedule. If so, delay the job. | ✓ | |
| Create calendars and enter up to 40 holidays in addition to the normal non-working days in the week. | ✓ | |
| DEPENDENCY PROCESSING | Others | Robot |
| Build an event-driven schedule with dependencies/triggers so that jobs run only after certain prerequisite conditions are satisfied. | ✓ | |
| Specify more than one set of prerequisites by using AND/OR logic for a reactive job based on another job, file event, directory event, user dependency, or non-IBM i event. | ✓ | |
| Combine event-driven jobs with scheduling features. | ✓ | |
| Specify prerequisite conditions to which the job should react, such as normal or abnormal completion, running, delayed, skipped, and more. | ✓ | |
| React to file additions, deletions, changes, or reaching a threshold in libraries or the IFS. | ✓ | |
| Use reactivity chain filters to add scoping to complex job streams. | ✓ | |
| Drill into reactive jobs streams and update prerequisite statuses if necessary. | ✓ | |
| Group common jobs together in their correct processing sequence through a group job that uses scheduling or dependency features. | ✓ | |
| Select to submit the group of jobs at the same time, one immediately after another, without regard to any abnormal terminations. | ✓ | |
| Submit each job in the group only after the preceding job in the sequence completes normally. If a job fails, processing stops. This allows for single-threaded processes without the need for a single-threaded job queue. | ✓ | |
| Define exceptions at the group member level. | ✓ | |
| Hold/omit members of a group. | ✓ | |
| ENTERPRISE SCHEDULING —when combined with Robot Schedule Enterprise or Robot Network— |
Others | Robot |
| Create agents for Windows, UNIX, and Linux. | ✓ | |
| Create event-driven scheduling across IBM i, Windows, UNIX, and Linux. | ✓ | |
| Create event-driven scheduling based on file creation, deletion, and changes on IBM i, Windows, UNIX, and Linux. | ✓ | |
| Create event-driven scheduling based on daemons or services starting and stopping. | ✓ | |
| Create event-driven scheduling based on the success or failure of Microsoft SQL Server jobs. | ✓ | |
| Transfer files between Windows, UNIX, Linux, or IBM i servers. | ✓ | |
| Create event-driven scheduling across multiple IBM i systems or partitions. | ✓ | |
| Launch Windows, UNIX, and Linux scripts from IBM i-based scheduling. | ✓ | |
| ADVANCED SCHEDULING TOOLS | Others | Robot |
| Create custom, shareable dashboards and configure them with a number of data elements, including numerous filtering and presentation options. | ✓ | |
| Select all or part of your job schedule and display it in a job flow diagram to quickly visualize your jobs streams on demand. | ✓ | |
| Select the option to make job flow diagrams live to watch a job stream as it flows through the system. | ✓ | |
| Allow filtering throughout the web interface to just those jobs you assign as critical. This list of critical jobs can also span systems, giving focused visibility into just those jobs that are important. | ✓ | |
| Build a forecast for future dates and times of job activity. | ✓ | |
| See the completion history for all batch jobs. | ✓ | |
| Drill into history logs, spooled data, and job logs from job history. | ✓ | |
| See the percentage completed for a job that is currently running. | ✓ | |
| Track jobs submitted by end users. | ✓ | |
| Calculate submission parameters automatically. | ✓ | |
| MANAGEMENT REPORTING | Others | Robot |
| Report on projected run activity for a time period defined by a forecast. | ✓ | |
| Report on all jobs scheduled to run within a specified date and time. | ✓ | |
| Report on jobs that have not run since the selected date, based on the available history for the job. | ✓ | |
| Report on the history of jobs that were run this week. | ✓ | |
| Report on all jobs scheduled to run this week. | ✓ | |
| List changes to jobs and who made them. | ✓ | |
| Use reporting to document your job schedule and comply with government regulations and privacy laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and PCI. | ✓ | |
| List secured objects and authority levels. | ✓ | |
| Summarize the total number of jobs, jobs that ran, jobs that ended abnormally, and job deviations. | ✓ | |
| List jobs that have completed normally or abnormally for a given date and time range. | ✓ | |
| Generate Service Level Agreement (SLA) reports based on job underruns, overruns, and late starts. | ✓ | |
| Create guest dashboards to provide executives with visibility into user-defined metrics without requiring an IBM i profile. | ✓ | |
| JOB PROPERTIES | Others | Robot |
| Enter a description, notes, and comments to identify each job. | ✓ | |
| Specify default job submission options, including job description, job queue, message queue, library list, message reply options, user profile, job priority, current library for the job, accounting code, and initial ASP group. | ✓ | |
| Define escalation procedures for when a job ends abnormally (requires IBM i message queue or Robot Alert). | ✓ | |
| Assign jobs to applications by entering an application name. | ✓ | |
| Enter data to be copied to the job’s local data area (LDA) when the job is submitted. | ✓ | |
| Execute a sequence of commands in a job. | ✓ | |
| Include dynamic parameter variables that are substituted with the actual value at the time the command is executed. | ✓ | |
| Define your own variables or select from a list of pre-defined dynamic variables when creating a job. | ✓ | |
| Pass new values for dynamic variables by using a command. | ✓ | |
| Define command sets (groups of commands that can be used by multiple jobs). | ✓ | |
| Use OPAL, the built-in scripting language, for resource checking and more advanced scheduling needs. | ✓ | |
| Use OPAL to update dynamic variables. | ✓ | |
| Create data area definition objects that define user fields to segment a data area or LDA. | ✓ | |
| Specify output options for jobs that produce print files, including an output queue, print text, or number of copies. | ✓ | |
| Use the job date calculator to change the job date so it differs from the system date. | ✓ | |
| Specify how, when, and to whom reports should be distributed. | ✓ | |
| Set up a banner page that prints as the cover page of a report. | ✓ | |
| Specify distribution instructions for each recipient, including the days of the week/month that the recipient is to receive the report, the number of copies to be printed, or the output queue to which the copies are sent. | ✓ | |
| INTEGRATIONS —when combined with Robot Network— |
Others | Robot |
| Create consolidated job schedule reports across multiple IBM i systems or partitions. | ✓ | |
| Manage your job schedule across multiple partitions from a single pane of glass. | ✓ | |
| Send jobs, scheduling objects, and system setup information among systems, receive statuses from other systems, and provide cross-system reactivity. |
✓ | |
| Set up a job on a node system, test it, and then send it for distribution to other systems. | ✓ | |
| Send events to enterprise via SNMP. | ✓ | |
—other integrations— |
||
| Launch and control interactive screens (requires Robot Replay). | ✓ | |
| Run Domino agent processes directly from Robot Schedule. | ✓ | |
| Integrate with EnterpriseOne. | ✓ | |
| Integrate with SAP. | ✓ | |
| Integrate with Automate Schedule (formerly Skybot Scheduler). | ✓ | |
| OTHER CAPABILITIES & FUNCTIONS | Others | Robot |
| View forecasted, running, and completed jobs from a graphical web interface on any mobile device. | ✓ | |
| Define security to restrict access to product functions and job data. | ✓ | |
| Define user authority to specific jobs. | ✓ | |
| Secure an object using an IBM authorization list. | ✓ | |
| Select the authority to grant to a user profile for a job or function: display only, change, exclude, or delete. | ✓ | |
| Export jobs and applications to the RBTMRGLIB library, transfer the library to another system, and import the jobs. | ✓ | |
| Export jobs and scheduling objects to an XML file on your PC and import them to another IBM i. | ✓ | |
| Export all scheduling objects of a specific type (for example, all calendar objects or all date objects). | ✓ | |
| Export jobs individually, by group, or by application. | ✓ | |
| Use command line interfaces to interact with your schedule. | ✓ | |
| Use calendars with Robot Schedule utility programs that your programs can call to calculate dates. | ✓ | |
| Convert IBM i scheduling. | ✓ | |
| Learn batch submitted jobs from menu system. | ✓ | |
| SUPPORT SERVICES | Others | Robot |
| Access complete online help for easy reference. | ✓ | |
| Work with a designated support consultant. | ✓ | |
| Call for live support during business hours. | ✓ | |
| Take advantage of 24/7 after-hours support. | ✓ | |
| Download software updates for new features and fixes. | ✓ | |
| Receive online technical alerts. | ✓ | |
| Use product setup and upgrade assistance. | ✓ | |
| Increase your knowledge with product certification testing. | ✓ | |
| Attend industry and product webinars. | ✓ | |
| Get discounts on classes and event fees. | ✓ | |
| Read white papers, case studies, how-to documents, and other helpful resources. | ✓ | |