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ASG

In the Know with Manual Automation

I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but manual automation sounds like the epitome of an oxymoron. How can you have "manual" and "automation" in the same phrase?

I've long been a proponent of automation, and many hours have been spent creating the Advanced Job Scheduler (AJS) into a tool that IT shops can use to automate their day-to-day operations. But as much as I love to enable shops to automate their everyday mundane tasks, I've come to realize some functions must still be done manually. For instance, entering data, checking the data's accuracy, waiting on approvals, etc., are manual tasks performed by many IT personnel as well as non-IT personnel.

To make it more confusing, many manual processes of a business are intertwined with automated processes. Although most of the time it isn't documented, the combination of manual processes and automatic processes results in a predefined workflow. This can become a nightmare when relying on communication and availability between non-IT personnel and IT personnel. A common scenario would be a non-IT person entering accounting information. When finished, they'd call IT to print a preliminary general ledger report. The non-IT person would validate the data and then call IT again to run the updated program and produce the master general ledger report.

To eliminate the hassles and inconveniences of having manual processes intermingled with automatic processes in the same workflow, AJS was enhanced in V5R4 with a workflow manager. This tool allows you to define these types of processes. You can give those responsible for the manual tasks the ability to control the entire flow of work. A workflow within AJS is defined as a sequence of manual and automated steps. Each step can have predecessor and successor jobs. A major feature of an AJS workflow is the ability to notify personnel when a step has started or completed. This lets them know when it's their turn to manually complete a task or how the workflow is progressing. Notification can also be sent if a step hasn't started by a specific time or if the entire workflow is taking longer than it should.

A Closer Look
Let's take a look at the new workflow feature in AJS using the scenario described earlier. The new feature is found in the AJS plug-in within iSeries* Navigator. If you don't have iSeries Navigator loaded, refer to Connecting to iSeries>iSeries Navigator>Getting to Know iSeries Navigator> Installing iSeries Navigator in the iSeries Information Center (http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v5r4/index.jsp) for installation instructions. Also refer to Systems management> Work management>Manage work>Manage job scheduling>Schedule job with Advanced Job Scheduler>Install the Advanced Job Scheduler in the iSeries Information Center for help with installing the AJS plug-in.

In our example, we'll notify recipients using the Notification feature of AJS. One recipient (Wes) represents the accounting person and the other recipient (Mary) represents the IT person. First define these recipients in AJS with their respective e-mail address. To enable AJS to send e-mail notifications, refer to Systems management>Work Management>Manage job scheduling>Schedule jobs with Advanced Job Scheduler>Set up the Advanced Job Scheduler>Specify a mail server to use for notification in the Information Center.

To eliminate the hassles and inconveniences of having manual processes intermingled with automatic processes in the same workflow, AJS was enhanced in V5R4 with a workflow manager.

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