Seven housekeeping tips for Robot/REPORTS

If you set up Robot/REPORTS properly, and run critical operations on a regular schedule, you shouldn’t have any library size issues. For error-free, automatic operation of Robot/REPORTS, we suggest that you schedule all the daily, weekly, and monthly procedures on Robot/SCHEDULE. Keep in mind that you may need to tailor these general frequency recommendations to your operations. You can perform weekly and monthly procedures more or less often, as required.

The Robot/REPORTS Administrator Guide describes the full Operations Checklist. However, these seven items are probably the most critical:

1. Run the Good Morning Report daily for a snapshot of where you stand. If you call support and don’t have the report, it’s the first thing your Help/Systems Technical Consultant will ask you to run. If you’re not familiar with the report, take a look at the image below.
    
   
    
2. Run the REPARCHIVE command nightly, with the EXPIRED parameter specified after the night’s processing completes. This keeps your Robot/REPORTS database up-to-date.
    
3. Run the REPARCHIVE command nightly with the SHORTTERM parameter specified, after the night’s processing is done to assure reports are moving through their retention stages.
    
4. Run the REPARCHIVE command weekly with the LONGTERM or BOTH parameter specified after the night’s processing completes to help assure reports are moving through their retention stages.
    
5. Run the REPCLRHIST command monthly specifying the parameters values Y (Yes) and 30 to clean up all report processing and access history older than 30 days. (If you need to hold this history longer, you can adjust the parameter, but 30 days works well for many companies.)
    
6. Run the REPRMVRST command daily with a parameter value of 7. This puts all “restored” status reports back into SHORTTERM if they have been restored for longer than 7 days. (You can adjust this parameter if you need to keep data restored for a longer or shorter period of time.)
    
7. If you’re using Robot/REPORTS to create and distribute .pdf, .html, and .xls files to the IFS, be aware that Robot/REPORTS doesn’t automatically clean up those files. However, if you are using Robot/SCHEDULE 10, you can run the AGEIFS command to take care of the cleanup.The Robot/SCHEDULE AGEIFS command removes objects from IFS directories that have not been accessed for a specified number of days. Create a Robot/SCHEDULE job to run this command on a regular basis to make the IFS easier to manage. You can specify the objects to be deleted by name and object type, directory, and age.
    

Contributed by Dana DeSmidt, Technical Consultant