Job Activity

The Job Activity pane displays information about jobs presently in the production schedule. To see jobs that have been defined but that are not currently scheduled, you need to open the Jobs pane.

Note: Remember that the security rights of a user will always affect what they are allowed to see in TA. The Job Activity pane may show all jobs currently scheduled or only the jobs owned by the user and the user’s workgroup, depending on the user’s security policy.

The messages that display information about each job and group use different colored text to indicate their status, with a row background color of white. For example, carry over job rows display a background color of light gray.

Job groups are presented in bold with an expand or collapse button in the first column. All jobs in a job group are slightly indented and can be collapsed into and expanded from the group.

Use the scroll bars to view all the columns in the Job Activity pane. The Job Activity pane makes a large amount of important job information easily accessible. In the case of estimated start times and durations, the values displayed are periodically updated as new data becomes available. You can also press the F5 key for an instant refresh.

The Job Activity pane displays can be customized through the Preferences dialog. For more information on how to customize the Job Activity pane, see Job Activity Preferences Dialog. If the schedule in the Job Activity pane is a “forecast” for a future date (Forecast Only option selected when creating a schedule), then the word “Forecast” displays after the date in the pane title bar.

Note: See Job Life Cycle in the Events chapter to understand the phases a job goes through in TA.

Job Activity Interface

Accessing the Job Activity Interface

From the Navigation pane, select Operations > Job Activity to display the Job Activity pane. You can double-click a job in the Job Activity pane to open its Job Details dialog.

Note: When you view a particular day in the production schedule, all jobs that have not been launched on previous days will also appear (unless you have filtered them out). This includes jobs in Active, Waiting On Resources, Waiting On Operator, Waiting On Dependencies, Stopped, Held, Agent Unavailable and Agent Inactive states.

Buttons

The Job Activity pane contains these buttons:

Refresh – Refreshes the Job Activity pane.

Expand All – Expands all levels on the job groups displayed on the Job Activity pane.

Collapse All – Collapses all levels on the job groups displayed on the Job Activity pane.

Filter – Displays the Job Filter dialog to customize the data that displays in the Job Activity pane.

View Time By – Displays the View Time By dialog. Allows you to view jobs according to the time zone of the Master doing the scheduling, the TA client you are using or an agent that you select.

Prior Day – Displays the production schedule for the day before the one currently displayed.

Next Day – Displays the production schedule for the day after the one currently displayed.

Select Day – Displays the production schedule for “today” or any other day.

Print – Displays the Reports pane to view and print the contents of the Job Activity pane. For more information, see Monitoring Production.
Top – Brings the job folders to the top level.

Graphical View – Displays a graphical view of the Job Activity pane.

Search Field

Use the Search field at the top right of the Job Activity pane to display job records based on the search string specified in this field.

TA allows you to perform a full path search in the Job Activity pane, if sysval 234 is set to Y. The full path search is disabled by default (sysval 234 set to N).

Note: Searching for tags is similar to searching a job by name. A user can search for a tag using wild card characters.

A tag match on a parent job incorporates the child hierarchy for that job.

A tag match on a child job incorporates its parent hierarchy but no other siblings (unless they match the tag).

Columns

The order of the columns listed in the Job Activity pane can be rearranged from the Job Activity Preferences dialog.

The Job Activity pane contains these columns:

SLA Status – Indicates the SLA status for each job instance based on one of these SLA levels the job instance reaches during its life cycle.
- None – This level is assigned to a job instance without an SLA Time window.
- On Time/Met – This level is assigned to a job instance when it completes on time.
- At Risk – This level is assigned to an in-progress job instance which is at the risk of violating the SLA Time window.
- May Breach – This level is assigned to an in-progress job instance which may breach the SLA Time window.
- In Risk – This level is assigned to a job instance that completes within the SLA Risk window.
- In Breach – This level is assigned to a job instance when the job instance completes within the SLA Breach window or beyond the SLA Risk window in the absence of SLA Breach window.
- Breached –This level is assigned to a job instance that completed beyond the SLA Breach window.
Note: All the job instances assigned with the SLA status At Risk or higher level are marked as Critical.

Job No. – The job number is the instance identification number of the job or group occurrence. Each occurrence or instance of a job is assigned a unique tracking number when it is added to the schedule to distinguish it from any other occurrences of the job. It is possible that the same job may run several times during a day.
Name – The name of the job.

Status – The present status of the job. The color of text used for each job and Job Group is based on its status. You can customize the status colors and sort order using the Preferences dialog.
Current Est Start – The estimated start time as of the current moment in time. This start time value is updated every minute.

Est Duration – The estimated duration for the command or executable as specified in the job definition. If the job has run more than once with the same command or executable, the estimated duration is the historical average of the job’s previous run times. You can also manually set the estimated duration time of a job in its definition.
Reruns – Tracks the number of times that a job has run.

Est Start – The estimated job time calculated using the estimated launch times and estimated durations of preceding jobs. This value is created at the time the production schedule is compiled.

Time Zone – The assigned job timezone. The time value adjusts the timezone offset into Master time.

Note: TimeZone indicates the timezone of the agent or adapter, depending on which one the job is using for its execution.

Last Changed Time – The date and time when the job or the job group was last modified.

Job Time Zone – The timezone the job was run in.

Act Start – The job’s actual start time after it has launched.

Act End – The actual ending time and date for the job occurrence.

Act Duration – The actual time that it took for the command or executable to run. The actual duration is used to calculate the historical average of the Est Duration field in the job’s definition. The actual duration value is 0 until after the job completes.

Note: The displayed value for the Actual Duration value of a job is updated every 90 seconds.

Date – The production date of the job. If the job does not execute until the next day, this date stays the same, since it represents when the job was scheduled to run based on its calendar or when the job was inserted as an unscheduled job.
Time window – The time window during which the job can run as defined in the job’s definition. The default, 12:00 AM to 11:59 PM, effectively means the job is eligible to run anytime during the day.
Agent – The name of the agent or agent list associated with the job, as specified in the job definition. This field displays the agent list name prior to the job running and then displays the chosen agent from the list after it is launched.
Queue – The queue that the queue manager assigns to the job. The queue to which the job is assigned depends upon the job’s properties, and the way that the queues are configured to assign jobs using queue filters.

Priority – The job priority as defined in the job’s definition. Job priorities are only relative to the job priorities of other jobs within its queue before running.
Runtime User – The user account that the job runs under when it executes.

Scheduled By – How the job entered the schedule.

There are three options:
- Event – The job was inserted by an action that was initiated by an event.
- Calendar – The job was compiled into the schedule according to its calendar.
- On Demand – The job was an ad hoc insertion through either operator action or the command line.

Owner – The user who owns the job. If the job is owned by a workgroup, the owner of the workgroup. Note that this column does not display the workgroup name itself, but the owner of the workgroup.

Parent Group(s) – All of the parent job groups that the job or job group belongs to. If the job or job group belongs to several job groups, the group path is shown.
Command/Program – The command, program or script that the job will execute, as specified in the job’s definition. The command path is relative to the agent machine on which the job runs. The command data includes any command parameters.
Exit Code – The exit code that the command returns when the job is complete. The exit code is one way of determining whether the completion status of the job is Completed Normally (the exit code equals 0) or Completed Abnormally (the exit code does not equal 0). The exit code can be any integer value.
Job Full Name – The full directory path to the job and its job group name.

Job Type – The type of job.

Parent Group – The immediate parent job group that the job or job group belongs to.

Job Class – The job class the job is assigned to, if any.

Alias – An alternate name for the job, as set in its job definition. The job alias is limited to eight characters and due to this limitation is often used in the command line mode to refer to a job.
Predecessors – The job dependencies that have to be fulfilled before this job can run. This job will not run until the Predecessors have fulfilled the conditions set in this job’s definition.
Successors – Jobs that use this job as a job dependence. This job must fulfill a certain condition before Successors can run.

Group Instance – The group instance number applies only to jobs and groups with a parent group. As opposed to the day instance number (also known as the job ID) which is unique, the Group Instance is relative to other jobs in the parent group.
Agent Instance – The agent instance number applies only to broadcast jobs. For more information on broadcast jobs, see Controlling Production. The Agent Instance is relative to other jobs run by the same agent.
Agent List – The name of the agent lists associated with the job.

Ext ID – This number corresponds to the External ID field in a job’s Job Details dialog. This number is the process ID number that the Windows operating system assigns to the highest level process within the job. If this is a SAP or PeopleSoft job, the Ext ID is the same as the SAP or PeopleSoft job ID.
WaitOp – Indicates if a job is waiting for the operator to release it.

Calendar – Displays the name of the calendar associated with the job instance.

Tags – Displays the comma separated business activity tag names and the filter tag names (sorted in ascending order of the tag name).

Note: Each column can be sorted in either ascending or descending order. Click any column name to change the column sort. For example, click Name on top of the Name column. The items in the column alphabetize from z to a. Click Name again and the items alphabetize from a to z. For a column that is numerical, the sort changes from earliest to latest time, or latest to earliest time.
Business Activity Tags – Displays the comma separated business activity tag names (sorted in ascending order of the tag name).

Filter Tags – Displays the comma separated filter tag names (sorted in ascending of the tag name).

Is Critical – This flag indicates whether a job is critical or not (/N).

On Critical Path - This flag indicates whether a job is on the critical path of any other downstream job (/N).

Job Activity Preferences Dialog

Open View > Preferences from the main menu bar while viewing the Job Activity pane to display the Job Activity Preferences dialog.

Columns Tab

Click the Columns tab and choose which columns are displayed in the Job Activity pane and in what order they appear. A checkmark to the left of a column title indicates that it will be displayed in the pane. No checkmark indicates that it will not be displayed.

To rearrange the order in which the columns are displayed, select the column and click the up or down arrow.

Status Color Tab

The Status Colors tab lists every possible status a job can have. From the drop-down menu to the right of each field, you can select the color to represent that status in the Job Activity pane.

Grid Background Color Tab

On the Grid Background Color tab select an option from the drop-down menus to the right of each field. You can select the color to represent the grid background color in the Job Activity pane.

Navigation Context Menu

When you right-click in the Navigation pane while viewing the Job Activity pane, the Navigation context menu displays.

This context menu contains the same options displayed when you right-click in the Job Activity pane, see Job Activity Pane Context Menu, in addition to these options:

Save View As – Displays the Save View dialog to name the view that you would like to save. See Save View Dialog.

Export – Saves the data in the current pane as an ASCII text file. You can then use the file data in other applications.

Preferences – Displays the Preferences dialog for the Job Activity pane. See Job Activity Preferences Dialog.

New Root Folder – Displays the New Root Folder dialog to name the new root folder that you would like to create in the Navigation pane.

Save View Dialog

The Save View dialog is displayed by selecting the Save View As... option in the context menu available after selecting the Job Activity option in the Navigation pane. Use this feature to save the user's viewing preference settings for the current state of the Job Activity pane.

Saved views are listed in the Navigation pane beneath the Job Activity option. A user can use only the views they own, that are owned by a workgroup that they belong to or made available to the public.

Name – It is recommended that a view be given a descriptive name to help identify its purpose and usage.

Owner – Views can be owned to individuals or to a workgroup.

Public – Select this option to make the view available for other users.

Once a view has been saved, additional context menu options to delete or update changes to an existing view are available to any selected view. A user can only modify or delete views owned by that user although a superuser can delete other user’s views by impersonating that user.

Job Activity Pane Context Menu

When you right-click in the Job Activity pane, the Job Activity context menu displays.

The Job Activity context menu contains these options:

Details – When in the Jobs pane, displays the Job Details dialog for the selected job occurrence. Alternately, you can display these dialogs by double-clicking the individual job record.
Statistics – Displays the Job Statistics dialog showing the number of scheduled and unscheduled jobs in the present day’s production schedule.
Go to Now – Sets the job pane’s date to the current date.

View PERT Diagram – Displays the PERT Diagram for the selected job or job group occurrences.

View Critical Path – Displays the Critical Path Diagram for the selected job occurrences.

View Double Tree Diagram (One Level or All Levels) –Displays the Double Tree (One Level) diagram or Double Tree (All Levels) Diagram for the selected job occurrences.
View Gantt Chart – Displays the Gantt Chart for the selected job group occurrences.

View Status Board – Displays the Status Board for the selected job group occurrences.

View Grouping Diagram – Displays the Grouping Diagram for the selected job group occurrences.

View Radial Tree Diagram – Displays the Radial Tree Diagram for the selected job or job group occurrences.

View Radial Graph Diagram – Displays the Radial Graph Diagram for the selected job or job group occurrences.

Job Control – Displays a submenu with options for manipulating jobs. For more information on job control menu options, see Job Control Submenu.

Child Job Control – Displays a submenu with options for manipulating child jobs and groups. For more information on child job control menu options, see Child Job Control Submenu.
Insert Job into Schedule – Adds one new occurrence of the selected job into the production schedule irrespective of the job’s (or job group’s) calendar setting or number of times the job is scheduled to repeat during the day. When a job or a job group is added to the production schedule, an incremented occurrence number appears next to the job occurrence within parentheses.

Example: Job A (2).

By default, users can override the job parameters when inserting the job into the schedule. To change this default behavior, assign the Administration > Security Policies > Job Control > Adhoc Job Deny Parameter Override security function. When this function is enabled, the Parameters field becomes read-only, preventing overriding of job parameters.
Remove Job(s) from Schedule – Removes the selected job occurrence from the production schedule. If you wish to remove all future occurrences of the job within the schedule, select the All option in the Confirmation dialog. The job occurrence cannot be removed unless it has a pre-launch status.
Require Operator Release – Holds the job until an operator releases it. The job will not run until it is released. When all the job’s dependencies are met, and it is ready to run, its status is Waiting On Operator. The information in the Operator Instructions field (Description tab) can inform the operator of any external requirements that need to be met before the job is released.
Track Critical Path For Job – This indicates whether the job is critical or not.

Override Job SLA – When selected, this option displays the JobRun Override SLA dialog to let the user set the Jobrun time window and the SLA time window. This operation can also be done from within the Override tab of the Job Details dialog.

Change Jobrun SLA End Time – Use this option to extend or reduce the end time of SLA breach window of the jobrun based on the time duration selected from Add hours/mins or the Subtract hours/mins.
- Add hours/mins – This provides the list of time duration (15 mins, 30 mins, 45 mins, and 1 hour). Choose one of these options (x) so that the Jobrun SLA window gets extended by x mins/hours.
- Subtract hours/mins – This provides the list of time duration (15 mins, 30 mins, 45 mins, and 1 hour). Choose one of these options (x) so that the Jobrun SLA window gets reduced by x mins/hours.

Refresh – Updates the data in the Job Activity pane.

Filter – Displays the Job Filter dialog to filter the job occurrences that are displayed in the Jobs pane according to criteria you select. You can also custom-sort job occurrences. For more information about the Job Filter dialog, see Job Filter Dialog.
Print – Displays the Reports pane to view and print your jobs. Has the same function as the Print button on the toolbar. For more information, see Monitoring Production.
Print Selected – Displays the Reports pane to view and print your job selections.

Select All – Selects all records in the Job Activity pane. If job groups are present in the Job Activity pane, a prompt to expand or collapse the job groups is shown once, when you select this option.

View Time By – Selecting View Time By displays the View Time by Agent dialog. From here, you can choose to view job times according to the time zone of your Master, current TA client or an agent that you specify.
Group Display – Selecting Group Display brings up the Group Display submenu. The menu options are as follows:

Expand Selected – Expands one level on the selected job group, displaying its child jobs. If multiple groups are selected, only the first group selected is expanded.

Collapse Selected – Collapses one level on the selected job group, hiding its child jobs. If multiple groups are selected, only the last job group selected is expanded.

Expand All – Shows all levels on the currently selected group, respectively.

Collapse All – Hides all levels on the currently selected job groups to hide all child jobs.

Prior Day – Displays the production schedule for the day prior to the day currently displayed.

Next Day – Displays the production schedule for the day that follows the day currently displayed.

Select Day – Displays a calendar to select the date whose production schedule you want to view.
List Instances – Lists all job instances.
Successors – Advises which jobs, if any, are dependent on the currently selected job.

Graphical View – To view the Graphical View option for a job group in job activity, you must have defined the business view for the group in job definition. For more information, see Business Views Pane Interface.

Job Control Submenu

When you select Job Control from the Job Activity context menu, a submenu is displayed.

Note: The submenu options displayed for jobruns with a Waiting on Dependencies status are also displayed for jobruns with a Terminate Waiting status. The submenu options displayed for jobruns with a Waiting on Resources status are also displayed for jobruns with a Terminate Ready status.

This submenu contains these options:

Override – Overrides all unmet dependencies and changes the selected job status from Waiting On Dependencies to Waiting on Resource or Waiting On Operator. For jobs undergoing termination, selecting the option overrides all unmet dependencies and changes the selected job status from Terminate Waiting to Terminate Ready. The job must have the Waiting On Dependencies status or Terminate Waiting status for this job control function to be available. For information on overriding individual dependencies, see Job Details – Dependencies Tab.
Hold/Stop – When a job is in the Held or Stopped state, the execution of the job will not begin or continue until it is manually released. Because Windows does not support the pausing and resuming of a process, the Hold or Stop option is not available for Windows jobs.
- Hold – Changes the selected job status from Waiting On Dependencies, Waiting On Resource, Terminate Waiting, Terminate Ready, Agent Inactive, or Agent Unavailable to Held. When a job group’s occurrence is selected, places all waiting jobs in Held status, and all active jobs in Stopped status.
- Stop – Changes the selected job status from Active to Stopped.

Release/Resume – This command recommences the execution of a job at the point at which it was stopped (suspended). On non-Windows agents, the Release or Resume command can also take a job in the Held state and release it so that it will launch once all of its dependencies have been met. Because Windows does not support the pausing and resuming of a process, the Release or Resume option is not available for Windows jobs.
- Release – Changes the selected job status from Waiting On Operator or Held, to Active (with an intermediate Scheduled state). When a job group’s occurrence is selected, Release changes the job group’s status from Waiting On Operator to Active (with an intermediate Scheduled state), and changes all child job statuses from Waiting On Group to Scheduled.
- Resume – Changes the selected job status from Stopped to Active. Also changes the selected job status from Held to Waiting On Dependencies (with an intermediate Scheduled state). When a job group’s occurrence is selected, changes its status from Held to Active (with an intermediate Scheduled state). All child jobs that were Stopped become Active, and all that were Held become Waiting On Dependencies.

Cancel/Abort – Prevents or stops a job from running in the production schedule. TA agents react differently when a job with child jobs is aborted, depending upon the agent type and operating system.

Type of Agent	Abort Behavior of Jobs
Agent for Windows	When TA launches a job, a Windows Job Object is created that spawns the actual job process. Aborting the job in TA , destroys the job object and kills the job process. If you abort a job on Windows, all of its child processes are aborted also.
Agent for Unix	Aborting a job sends a SIGTERM (request to terminate) message to the job and its child processes before sending a SIGKILL message that actually kills all of its child processes. The interval between the SIGTERM and SIGKILL signals can be configured. More information on configuring agent parameters is available in Installing Agents chapter of the Tidal Automation Installation Guide.

Cancel – Changes the selected job status from Agent Inactive, Agent Unavailable, Deferred, Held, Waiting On Operator, Waiting On Dependencies, Terminate Waiting, Waiting On Resource, Terminate Ready to Cancelled. Cancelled jobs do not run in the production schedule.
Abort – Changes the selected job status from Active or Stopped to Aborted, and kills the active job process on the system.

Note: Avoid excessive aborting of job processes as this may lead to system instability. Instability may appear after more than 10 job aborts. Restore system stability by rebooting the agent machine.

When selecting Cancel or Abort you can choose to release the selected job’s dependents. If you choose to release, the dependent job will no longer be dependent on the job you are canceling or aborting.

Cancel Pending – Stops or prevents a job instance from running but overrides the dependencies in the job stream so that a job group’s children consider the parent to have completed normally. In a job group, all of the children are set to the Cancel Pending status. Once all of the dependencies of the jobs in Cancel Pending status complete, the jobs are set to the Cancelled Normally status which is considered the same as Completed Normally.
Cancel/Abort All – Prevents all occurrences of a job that are not complete from running in the production schedule. When you select Cancel/Abort All, you can choose whether to release the selected job’s dependents. If you choose to release, the dependent job will no longer be dependent on the jobs you are canceling or aborting.
Revert to Scheduled – Reverts a cancelled job, terminated job, or a job with the Cancel Pending status. The job enters the Active or Waiting On Dependencies status if the Master is in production day. If the Master is not in production day, the job enters the Scheduled status. This option is disabled for jobs that are not revertible.
- Revert group only to Scheduled – Reverts a job group with the Cancel Pending status, cancelled job group, or terminated job group only. The job group is set to the Active or Waiting On Dependencies status if the Master is in production day. If the Master is not in production day, the job group is set to the Scheduled status and the status of the children are not changed. This option is disabled for job groups that are not revertible.
- Revert group and children to Scheduled – Reverts a job group with the Cancel Pending status and its children, a cancelled job group and its children, or a terminated job group and its children to one of these statuses.
- Active or Waiting On Dependencies – if the Master is in production day.
- Scheduled – if the Master is not in production day.

Rerun – Changes the selected job status from Aborted, Completed Normally, Completed Abnormally, Error Occurred, or Terminated to Active (with an intermediate Scheduled state). A new instance ID of the job is not created. You cannot rerun a job with the status of Externally Defined, Orphaned or Skipped.

Note: When a group that requires resources has completed, it releases its resources. Rerunning a child of that group will not cause the group to try to reclaim resources.
Terminate – Terminates the selected job immediately and sets the job status to Terminated and the job group status to Terminating. This option is enabled only for jobs or job groups in a Waiting state. The job group remains in the Terminating status until all of its immediate children reach a Done state. For more information about how Terminator jobs work, see How it works.
Set – Changes the selected job or job group completion status. The selected status can affect all other jobs dependent on that job or job group. When a status is changed with this command, an asterisk appears after the new status. For example, Completed Normally*. You can choose from these: Completed Normally, Completed Abnormally, Externally Defined, Error Occurred, Orphaned or Skipped.

Child Job Control Submenu

When you select Child Job Control from the Job Activity context menu, a submenu appears.

Note: After selecting a child job control action from the menu, a context dialog confirms the success or failure of the action.

This submenu contains these options:

Release All Children Waiting on Operator – Changes the status of all the children of the selected job group from Waiting On Operator to Active (with an intermediate Scheduled state).
Revert All Cancelled Children to Scheduled – Changes the status of all the children of the selected job group from Cancel Pending, Cancelled, or Terminated to Active or Waiting On Dependencies, if the Master is in production day. If the Master is not in production day, the status of the job group’s children is set to Scheduled.
Rerun All Child Jobs With Status – Changes the status of all the child jobs of the selected job group to Active or Waiting On Dependencies. The selected option can affect all other jobs dependent on that job or job group. A new instance ID of the job is not created.

You can select one of these options:
- Completed Abnormally
- Error Occurred
- Orphaned
Note: When a group that requires resources has completed, it releases its resources. Rerunning a child of that group will not cause the group to try to reclaim resources.