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How to Use New Advanced Job Scheduler Enhancements

I always get excited when a new release of the IBM Advanced Job Scheduler for i5/OS* (AJS) is available to customers. It’s compelling to think of customers all around the world taking advantage of the new features. I had the same feeling when we rolled out e-mail capabilities, multiple scheduling environments, Work Flow Manager and many others. Now with IBM i 6.1, AJS has received some new features and I’ll explain how to use them in this article.

For detailed information about AJS’s capabilities, visit IBM’s Job Scheduler for i5/OS Web site (www.ibm.com/systems/i/software/jscheduler/index.html).

Web Interface

Several key functions of AJS are now available from a Web browser. With a browser, you can remotely access scheduled jobs, job groups, scheduled job activity and activity log information for AJS. All of these functions can be used without installing System i Access for Windows* or Navigator for i. Everything you need to access these tasks is already installed on your i 6.1 system.

When listing scheduled jobs and scheduled job activity, any column can be used for sorting or filtering. This is great for selecting jobs that begin with certain letters and then sorting by the next scheduled date and time. While you can’t make changes to jobs this release, you have many ways to manage your scheduled jobs. The following list and Figure 1 demonstrate your options:

Properties—Displays all of the attributes that make up a scheduled job

Hold and Release Schedule—With this option, you can hold or release a scheduled job

Activity—Lists every time the selected job has run

Activity Log—Displays the activity log for the selected job

Run—Lets you run a job immediately and its completion won’t affect any dependencies; all resource dependencies must be met for the job to be submitted; a confirmation is required

Skip Next Run—Skips the scheduled run of the job. Using this option multiple times will continue to set the scheduled date further into the future; to reset the job back to its original schedule, use the Hold and Release options

Status—Displays the status information of a job while it’s running

Job Dependencies—Provides a list of the predecessor and successor jobs for the selected job

Delete—Deletes the selected job; a confirmation is required

AJS on the Web can be accessed through Navigator for i on the Web or IBM Systems Director Navigator for i5/OS within the Work Management task group. Refer to the Navigator for i tasks on the Web in the IBM i5/OS Information Center for 6.1 (http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/scope/i5os/index.jsp) for instructions on how to set up and work with the Navigator for i tasks on the Web. You can also access AJS on the Web tasks directly by specifying the appropriate task ID (task=id) as shown in Table 1. The URL to access AJS on the Web directly would look something like: http://hostA:2001/webnav/WnServlet?task=schjob where “hostA” should be replaced with the name or IP address of your IBM system running i.

With MSE, you can set up any number of scheduling environments running at the same time.

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