Offers graphical, centralized monitoring and control of
System i events

Help/Systems, developer of the Robot Automated Operations Solution for the System i, announces the release of Robot/NETWORK 10, the newest version of its network control, monitoring, and management software. Robot/NETWORK 10 offers a new, easy-to-use graphical interface that allows users to consolidate operational events so they can monitor and manage their network of System i servers from a central location.

The Robot/NETWORK Explorer is the primary navigation tool for Robot/NETWORK 10. It displays the current network configuration as an expandable tree of Hosts, Nodes, products, packets, reports, and other system items, with menus and toolbars for fast access to network control options. New Robot/NETWORK Wizards help users connect to Hosts, configure Nodes, and apply product updates and license codes. From the Explorer, users can distribute and manage both updates and license codes for all of the Help/Systems products on their systems.

For complete visual detail, the Robot/NETWORK Map Center allows users to customize their own graphical view (map) of the entire network, or any portion of it, to display both status traffic and network communication between Hosts and Nodes.

Users can display the Robot/NETWORK Status Center from either the Explorer or the Map Center to display and respond to Host and Node statuses quickly. Users can respond to statuses for the products on a system, a specific product and system, or across all systems and products. Users also can escalate status issues by sending a pager, text, or e-mail message using Robot/ALERT; issuing an SNMP trap; or calling a user defined program.

Robot/NETWORK interfaces directly with the other Robot products to provide complete, centralized control of all of the operational issues in the network. Using the graphical Robot/SCHEDULE Explorer with Robot/NETWORK, users can monitor and manage the job schedules on any system in their network from their PC, making it easy to standardize and control their network job schedule. Robot/NETWORK also offers network-wide control of automated report management, message management, and system monitoring through its Product Master interface with Robot/REPORTS, Robot/CONSOLE, and Robot/MONITOR.

Robot/NETWORK 10 works with i5/OS security to offer enhanced security for internal objects, including both predefined and user-defined security roles.

Leads the way in automated ops and business intel

Widely acclaimed for its groundbreaking contributions to automated operations and business intelligence software for the System i, Help/Systems is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2007. Help/Systems’ CEO Janet Dryer recently shared her thoughts on what has made Help/Systems succeed, year in and year out.

“Many of the software companies in existence in 1982 when operations automation pioneer Dick Jacobson founded Help/Systems are gone. But, we’ve done more than survive; we’ve thrived. Let’s look at some reasons for this success.

“First and foremost, a business must have customers. Our customers are a loyal group. Some of them have been with us since the System/38 days. And, word of mouth from a happy customer is a wonderful thing. Our customers are our greatest evangelists for our software.

“What keeps customers happy? Excellent, caring service and quality products. Our sales and customer service representatives are second to none. We know that happy employees make happy customers. But quality products are important, too. In 1992, Help/Systems was the first software company in the United States to be certified under the ISO 9001 standard. Today, the Robot Automated Operations Solution leads the world in System i automated operations, as does SEQUEL for business intelligence.

“The platform on which our software runs is also important. The integrated architecture of the System i is renowned for its stability and reliability, with over 99.9% uptime. IBM continues to integrate the newest technologies into this system and has increased its scale by huge factors.

“Going forward, our success and longevity mean that our customers can rely on us as a partner for the long haul. I’m confident that we’ll have even more impressive things to remember at future anniversaries. We’ve got the people and the skills to make it happen, and we’re just as passionate today about excelling as we were back in 1982.”

Newly centralized data processing relies on the Robot Products

For over 30 years, Tree of Life has provided retailers throughout the United States, the Caribbean, and now Canada, with the products, services and the marketing edge that adds to their bottom line. As the nation’s leading distributor of natural, organic, specialty, ethnic, and gourmet food products, Tree of Life has helped thousands of retailers, from the smallest independent stores to the largest supermarket chains, meet the constantly growing demand for products that help Americans to “live well.”

In the data center at company headquarters in St. Augustine, Florida, John Kinnaird, National Operating Center Manager, is responsible for supporting both hardware and software for their IBM System i. John notes that there’s been a great deal of change in how IT is set up and run at Tree of Life since he was hired. “When I started working for Tree Of Life about seven years ago, everything was decentralized. Each of our distribution centers had its own data center, ran their own AS/400, and ran their own copy of the software.

“Shortly thereafter, we started the Regional Operating Centers project that consolidated all of the processing into two regional centers in St. Augustine and Dallas. Now, we have consolidated all the processing onto a partitioned System i Model 570 in St. Augustine, where we run all of the warehousing, distribution, and financial applications for 12 distribution centers. The System i also hosts a production partition for our Canadian operations as well as a data warehouse partition and a development partition.

“Our core system is a warehousing and distribution system called NTS, the National Tree System that was written in-house. We have several other applications such as JD Edwards World for financials and E3 for purchasing.”

Getting started with operations automation
When the divisions were decentralized, some facilities were using the Robot products and some were not. Among the divisions that were using the products, there were various degrees of success. As Tree of Life began to consolidate the processing to one centralized system at their headquarters, the company soon realized that Robot/SCHEDULE, Robot/ALERT, and Robot/NETWORK would help make the company a true 24/7 operation.

John works with Jennifer Weatherly, Operation Analyst. Jennifer spoke about centralizing Robot/SCHEDULE jobs, “We had several different jobs set up on different partitions. We wanted to convert all jobs from all partitions to a master system [on the Robot/NETWORK Host], where we put the jobs in one location and then send them out to the appropriate partition. [Help/Systems] Tech Support was instrumental in teaching us how to send the existing jobs—including OPAL code, library lists, job environments, date objects, reserved command variables, and so on—up from the Nodes (partitions) to the Host to create the master. Now we set up new Robot/SCHEDULE jobs, and changes to existing jobs in the master, and then send the job or jobs back to the Nodes. This setup helps us work efficiently with jobs that we maintain on a regular basis. At one time, if we had a job that existed on more than one partition, we had to change the job on each partition. Now, we change the job once and send it down to the node or nodes. With 12 divisions running 8,000 jobs on a daily basis, this is a big help.”

The next step: automating report management
Tree of Life also implemented Robot/REPORTS to manage their reports. Jennifer explains, “Tree of Life had Robot/REPORTS, but the company was not utilizing the product when I started six years ago. I began by reading the manual and trying to set up reports. Whenever I ran into a roadblock, I’d just pick up the phone and call Help/Systems Technical Support. I was pleasantly surprised to find someone always available. I didn’t waste valuable time on hold. Even after normal support hours, you usually get a call back in a half hour or less.

“Because of the 12 divisions, we have a lot of reports. We are trying to eliminate printing so many reports. We have about 80% of our reports available for online viewing and we use Robot/ALERT to e-mail reports to users, customers, field sales support, and others.”

John adds, “We have had a tremendous reduction in printed reports since we started using Robot/REPORTS. Not only are we saving paper, but people have a lot better access to the reports now—especially people who are out in the field. We had no way of getting printed reports to a lot of our salespeople. Now they can view the reports online. That’s a big benefit for us.”

Jennifer explains another project they are completing, “We have to get monthly reports out to our customers. In the past, a group of employees would come in on a weekend, print cover statements, and break down a 700-page report by customer for mailing. Now we use Robot/SCHEDULE, Robot/ALERT, and Robot/REPORTS to accomplish the same task. We’re saving on printing, postage, and overtime.”

Jennifer and John prove that the Robot products help them live well in the data center, just as Tree of Life products help people live well at home.

By Barbara Davey

Is there a simple way to check that a Robot/SCHEDULE job completed normally every morning at 5 a.m.?
If you are using Robot/SCHEDULE 9.0 and Robot/ALERT, this is a good way to check:

1. Create a second Robot/SCHEDULE job (Job2) that runs the RBASNDMSG command. Make the message text something that would indicate the job you are monitoring (Job1) has not run. Schedule this job to run every day you want to monitor Job1 and choose a time for it to run.

2. Edit Job1. Add the RBTBCHUPD command to the command entry panel as the final command. Use this command to put a Schedule Override Code of Omit (O) on Job2.

The result is that when Job1 runs normally, Job2 will be omitted (and you will not be paged). However, if Job1 does not run, Job2 will page you. If you also need to monitor if Job1 terminates, put a Robot/ALERT device name on the Control Options panel for Job1.

With Robot/SCHEDULE 10.0, you can use the new Job Monitors to specify that the job must complete by 5 a.m.

How does Robot/SAVE handle journaled files during backups?
On the Backup Set Definition panel, there is a parameter that tells Robot/SAVE whether or not to save changed files that a being journaled. The default value is yes (Y).

Is there a quick way to display my system’s serial number, model number, feature code, and logical partition?
If you use the Robot products and RBTSYSLIB is in your library list, enter the command RBO to display the Robot Products Menu and press function key 9 to display this information.