AOS Scheduling Manager
A good scheduling tool is a vital component of an automated operations
strategy and should be an integral part of any move to unattended operations.
AOS Scheduling Manager is an extremely powerful tool developed for IBM’s
iSeries and designed to optimise use of processing and operator resources.
Use of this tool can remove the need for operator attendance overnight,
at weekends or over holidays, with resulting reductions in staffing costs,
while operator time previously devoted to scheduling activities can be
redeployed to more productive areas.
"Ours was an extremely busy systems environment. With the implementation
of Syan’s automation software and Scheduling Manager in particular,
the operation began to run very smoothly. Within a few months, we managed
to get rid of the night shift and this improved operator morale tremendously."
Superdrug, London
Benefits
- Increased control over the operation and greater ability to plan
ahead
- Reduced risk of operator error, particularly with regard to complex
scheduling scenarios
- Increased fault tolerance, with less risk of overnight failures since
all job dependencies and parameters are handled automatically
- Greatly reduced need for manual involvement in scheduling - some
sites are aiming at reducing the involvement from one or two man-days
a week to half a man-day per month
- Unattended operations facilitated, even for ‘restricted state’
tasks
- Use of processor and operator resources optimised through the automatic
capture, scheduling and prioritisation of user jobs
- Computer operations work processed in more consistent manner through
increased automation of scheduling, since all jobs are run in the appropriate
order even in the most complex scenarios
- More secure approach to scheduling with increased automation and
the removal of the need for operators to have access to secure user
profiles
- Early warning of processing bottlenecks through schedule forecasting
- Total flexibility of scheduling virtually any iSeries job or command
- Ability to revise schedules instantly to meet changing company requirements,
without the need to retrain scheduling staff
AOS Scheduling Manager Highlights
Functionally rich scheduling system
AOS Scheduling Manager handles workloads across single or multiple networked
iSeries systems. Single and multiple jobs may be executed with full handling
of inter-job dependencies. Processes can be automated to run at specific
times, on specific dates, interactively or in batch mode. The incorporation
of pre-defined job schedules provides a greater consistency of processing.
"From spending one or two days a week in scheduling purely for
that week, this has already been reduced to half a day a week and our
objective is to reduce it further to half a day a month. It is also estimated
that use of the AOS Scheduling Manager has reduced opportunity for operator
error by as much as 30%."
Royal Bank Of Scotland Commercial Services
Flexible handling of job dependencies
Jobs may be run according to the completion of other jobs, successful
or otherwise, even if the other jobs are on a different iSeries. The incorporation
of job dependency checking facilities provides fault tolerant processing
capability.
Ability to run jobs with user defined parameters
Some processes need to be run with parameters. AOS Scheduling Manager
enables these parameters to be retrieved at run-time and passed to the
process.
Optimised scheduling of jobs submitted by users
Jobs run by users can be incorporated into AOS Scheduling Manager and
can then be scheduled to run at the optimum time
Automatic prioritisation and re-routing of jobs to nominated
queues
Where and when user jobs are run can be controlled outside of the application
from which the jobs originated.
Support for complex systems
For complex systems, cross-machine dependencies, processing windows and
batch runs may be co-ordinated. This means that a schedule can be started
from one iSeries and result in schedules being run on all of the other
iSeries in the network.
Control from a single screen
The job scheduling console enables automated jobs to be monitored, changed
and controlled from a single screen.
Full audit reporting
AOS Scheduling Manager allows the production of audit reports showing
current and completed jobs, exceptions and failures.
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