Have you ever wondered how program changes will impact your application or your job schedule? Are you involved in maintaining your batch environment? Does your job schedule documentation need an overhaul? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, perhaps it’s time for you to take a look at ABSTRACT, Help/Systems’ programming and analysis tool set for the System i.

What is ABSTRACT?
ABSTRACT is a tool set that allows you to build a “where-used” database that tracks object relationships and other valuable information regarding files, fields, and how they are updated. If you write “home-grown” applications or are responsible for maintaining other people’s code, you can use ABSTRACT to create the documentation you need to manage your environment as efficiently as possible.

Once you have installed ABSTRACT on the System i, select an interface to use. You can install the iSeries Navigator plug-in, the WDSc plug-in, or work directly from a 5250 command line. Next, select the library (or libraries) you want to load into the ABSTRACT cross-reference repository. Once this information is loaded, you can view where-used and used-by relationships.

The object reference options give you a top-down view of your application. The where-used options display your fields or objects from a bottom-up perspective. The LOADXREF command captures information about your application’s programs, files, and other types of objects, such as menus, SEQUEL views, queries, or job schedule entries.

Simplify your development tasks
Once you build your cross-reference, you can use this information to pinpoint how critical changes will affect your application, determine where changes need to be made, automatically re-create all objects affected by physical file record layout changes, or generate a graphical flowchart for documentation purposes.

ABSTRACT also simplifies file analysis. ABSTRACT provides information about your database, display and printer files (including external and internal file layouts), and database and member definitions. ABSTRACT can create exception reports to pinpoint potential problems with your applications or ABSTRACT cross-reference data. You can search source and message files using the Find String option.

Interface with Robot/SCHEDULE
You can load your Robot/SCHEDULE batch environment into your cross-reference repository. Use the command LOADJOBSCD to load your Robot/SCHEDULE jobs from ROBOTLIB into ABSTRACT.

When your batch environment is loaded, you can work with objects referenced by your jobs. For each scheduled job, all programs and commands that are executed within the job are listed. In addition to the programs and commands, other object types, such as job descriptions, job queues, output queues, user profiles and message queues can be listed. If you need to change any of these types of objects, you can list which job(s) would be affected easily.

If you are using the iSeries Navigator or WDSc interface, you can create a flowchart (using ABSTRACT’s built-in flowcharting tool or Microsoft Visio) of objects used by a job or the program cross-reference data. Select the object, job, program, or file to chart and right-click to generate a flowchart.

Another option when working with an object such as a job description or job queue, is to display “where-used” information. This option is available in the traditional 5250 interface, the iSeries Navigator interface, and the WDSc interface.

Finally, if you prefer the WDSc interface, you will see the same information, plus you can review a source flowchart that will show you a visual representation of your program.

In summary
Whether your main responsibility is your job schedule or maintaining a complex application, take advantage of the power of ABSTRACT. Start using the cross-reference repository, file analysis, where-used, and flowcharting options to understand data relationships more fully and to work more efficiently in your environment.

Contributed by Jill Martin, Technical Services Manager

Forecasting options and the new *INTERNAL forecast

A Robot/SCHEDULE forecast shows you the run activity scheduled for all Robot/SCHEDULE jobs over a time period you specify.

To make its forecast, Robot/SCHEDULE uses the job schedule, job completion history, and any information you add for user jobs, remote prerequisites, and members of remote groups. A forecast also can include a run-time analysis of each active subsystem. The run-time analysis uses the subsystem’s description to predict job queue wait time.

Creating a forecast
To build a forecast, simply specify the time period for the forecast. In Robot/SCHEDULE 10.0, you can specify the time period two different ways:

• Forecast Length lets you choose a number of days or hours. (This was the only option available in previous versions of Robot/SCHEDULE.) This forecast starts the moment you submit it and goes forward the specified number of days or hours. Jobs that are currently running and their reactive jobs are included.
• Forecast Period lets you enter from and to dates and times. With this option, the jobs included in the forecast depend on the date and time values you select. Group control and prerequisite jobs must be within the forecast period or their members/reactive jobs will not be included in the Forecast.

For example, suppose you have a job that runs at 8:00 on Mondays, with an average run time of 60 minutes, and another job that reacts to the successful completion of the 8:00 job, usually starting about 9:00. If you create a forecast using a Forecast Period that begins at 8:30 on Monday, the reactive job will not be included in the forecast because the 8:00 job (its prerequisite) is scheduled outside of the Forecast Period.
With either option, you can schedule the forecast build in Robot/SCHEDULE or submit it to batch immediately.

OPAL and schedule forecasts
Robot/SCHEDULE jobs that use OPAL might perform differently when they run compared to when the forecast was created.

For example, suppose you have OPAL code that checks the status of a job queue and skips the job if the job queue is held. If the job queue is held at the time the forecast is built, the job is not included in the forecast. However, when the job actually runs, the OPAL is evaluated. If the job queue is not held, the job will run.

Subsystems and schedule forecasts
At the bottom of the Create Forecast panel is a list of active subsystems. Forecasts automatically include all jobs from all subsystems, even those that do not appear on this list.

Robot/SCHEDULE uses this list to identify the subsystems for which it should perform run-time analysis. Run-time analysis attempts to determine job queue wait time to arrive at a more accurate start time for a job.

For example, suppose a job is scheduled to be submitted to a single-threaded job queue (only one job can be active at a time) at 4:00, but the forecast shows it starting at 4:45. Through run-time analysis, Robot/SCHEDULE discovers that another job that normally runs for 55 minutes is scheduled to be submitted to that same job queue at 3:50. The forecasting process determines the job will be delayed by 45 minutes. However, if you remove the job’s subsystem from the list on the Create Forecast panel, the job is forecasted to start at 4:00. (Removing a job’s subsystem from the list doesn’t exclude the job from the forecast, it only prevents the build process from doing run-time analysis.)

Once the forecast is built, you can view it on the Schedule Forecast List panel. The schedule forecast list shows each job scheduled to run during the forecast period, its start time, and its expected run time. You can adjust the forecast by changing start and run times. This lets you perform “what if” scenarios without affecting your schedule. You can even update the actual Robot/SCHEDULE job record.

*INTERNAL forecast
Robot/SCHEDULE 10.0 automatically creates a special internal forecast called *INTERNAL every time it starts and at 12-hour intervals at 11:00 and 23:00. The *INTERNAL forecast covers the next 24-hour period and is designed to be used by the Schedule Activity Monitor (SAM) and Robot/SCHEDULE job monitors.

SAM provides a visual reference to see that your jobs are running as expected. Whether you’re new to Robot/SCHEDULE or are an experienced user, SAM can help you monitor your job schedule. You can use SAM to monitor all the jobs you have set up using Robot/SCHEDULE. SAM can display information about jobs that are running, waiting to run, completed, failed, or forecasted.

Job monitors let you monitor your job schedule for specific events, such as jobs that run too long, complete too quickly, or start later than their scheduled start time. You can specify the criteria for each job at setup time. You also specify what Robot/SCHEDULE should do if it identifies a job monitor event.

The Late Start job monitor uses the *INTERNAL forecast to identify jobs that start later than their scheduled run time. If you add or change a job for which you want to specify a Late Start job monitor, you must include the job in a new build of the *INTERNAL forecast before it can be monitored.

Because the *INTERNAL forecast is used by Robot/SCHEDULE, you cannot modify or delete it. However, you can build a new *INTERNAL forecast at any time. You can even print the *INTERNAL forecast from the Schedule Forecast print dialog.

Contributed by Jean Monson, Maintenance Software Engineer

Now provides network-wide job schedule control

Help/Systems, developer of the Robot Automated Operations Solution for the System i, announces an enhancement to Robot/SCHEDULE 10, the automatic computer operator, job scheduling, and batch management software. Now, Robot/SCHEDULE interfaces directly with the Robot/NETWORK 10 graphical user interface to allow users to manage the job schedules on any system in their network; receive statuses from other systems; and provide cross-system reactivity.

Users define their network Host systems and their Nodes during Robot/NETWORK setup. When a Robot/SCHEDULE user connects to the Host system, the Robot/SCHEDULE Explorer tree displays the Host and its Nodes. The Robot/SCHEDULE Product Master on the Host system allows users to define jobs once and then distribute them and their associated objects to the Node systems or other Hosts. A new Send To Wizard walks the user through the send process, making it easy to distribute jobs, scheduling objects, and setup instructions to multiple systems. The ability to manage jobs from the Product Master helps users standardize and control their network job schedule.

Users can access the Node systems from the Explorer, allowing them to work on the systems as if they had connected to them directly. Menus and toolbars provide fast access to network control options—for the Host system, the Product Master, or the Nodes.

Robot/SCHEDULE’s consolidated reporting option allows users to consolidate selected data from multiple Nodes into a single report. Users can use the consolidated reports for comparisons of job processing, cross-system reactivity, and security events from multiple systems in the network.

If I need to re-use a tape before its original expiration date, can I expire it manually in Robot/SAVE?
Yes, Robot/SAVE lets you expire a tape manually. Go to the Save Media Management Menu and select option 2 (By Volume Name). Locate the volume that you want to expire and enter a 9 next to the volume. A warning displays that the volume and its history will be removed. Press Enter to remove the history and expire the tape.

When you do this, you remove all the history for the objects saved on this tape. At this point, the data is still on the tape, but Robot/SAVE allows you to re-use the volume. The tape is reserved for the system on which you manually expired it.

I am trying to join two files using a derived field. SEQUEL ViewPoint displays the following error: “File xxx is not referenced in the JOIN specification.” How do I avoid the error so I can run the view?
Click OK to close the error message. Then, on the menu, select Options > ViewPoint Options > Design Tab. Un-check both “Ensure files are joined” and “Enable auto joining” in the File Join Options section. This allows the view to run with the derived join.

I have a Type 1 backup, with libraries that have objects to encrypt and libraries that do not. What is the most efficient way to set this up in Robot/SAVE?
To make your backup efficient, use one sequence number for all the libraries that do not have encrypted objects. Then, use another sequence number for the libraries that need encryption.

Is there a way for me to display just my monthly jobs in Robot/SCHEDULE?
It depends on how the jobs were set up. If your monthly jobs have a specific value in the application field, you can list them easily by doing a Robot query on this field. If your monthly jobs are scheduled using the DAYNO scheduling option, you could query that value. We recommend that when you set up Robot/SCHEDULE jobs you develop a naming convention that works for your installation. If monthly jobs are important, consider starting all job names with a dedicated character to identify them easily.

New Robot/SCHEDULE GUI provides drill-down access and more!

Have you had a recent business audit on the production control (job scheduling) area of your computer operations? Is your management team asking for reports detailing who changed what batch job for night processing? Did the auditor ask about who has access or authority to change the jobs in the schedule? Did the auditor ask for a report that lists all the jobs that ran last night?

Manual or semi-automated schedules
If you are running a manual schedule, it is very difficult to provide timely and accurate information. It is even harder if you have written your own utility to run your schedule! The auditor has no sympathy about how much work you will need to do manually to provide the answer to his or her questions.

There are many ways to submit jobs to batch on the System i platform. You can use the IBM SBMJOB command; you can use the built-in job scheduler (WRKJOBSCDE); and there many job schedule software packages for sale. The problem is that most of these options provide very little, if any, historical information about the changes to the schedule or the actual running of the jobs. The auditor still needs the information.

Automated schedules
If you have Robot/SCHEDULE, these questions are not hard to answer. And, if you have Version 10.02, it is even easier. The new graphical user interface makes it easy to cut and paste information into Excel. You can provide answers in minutes, if not seconds. The following Robot/SCHEDULE features typically are used by those who must comply with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) audits:

1. The Good Morning Report. Robot/SCHEDULE’s Good Morning Report summarizes your night batch processing. It shows the number of jobs that finished normally and the number that finished abnormally. It also provides a list of the jobs that did not complete normally.
2. Security. Robot/SCHEDULE has its own security system, above and beyond i5/OS object-based security. Its job security controls who has access to the job schedule and you can produce a report that lists access control.
3. Job Completion History. Every batch process that runs on your system is tracked in job completion history, including jobs submitted by end users and those submitted by Robot/SCHEDULE. The history provides information about start/end times and dates, as well the duration of the job.
4. Audit Logs. Robot/SCHEDULE maintains audit logs that track schedule changes and actions on the schedule. It even tracks when an operator forces a job to run immediately.
5. Product Master. The Product Master allows you to create jobs on one partition and send them to another. Many people use this as a change control mechanism for batch jobs. You can create a job on the development partition, test it, and then send it to the production partition. These activities are logged in Robot/SCHEDULE (10.02 or higher) and Robot/NETWORK 10.0.

Capture changes to production control schedule
So, how easy is it to get this information? Using Robot/SCHEDULE’s new graphical interface, open the Audit Log window, shown in Figure 1. Highlight the data you want to show the auditor. Right-click and copy this information to the clipboard. In seconds, you have captured the changes to your production control schedule!

Once the entries are on the clipboard, simply open Microsoft Excel, your e-mail client, or another program and paste your data, as shown in Figure 2. Most auditors seem to prefer receiving information in Excel format.

Capture job history
Robot/SCHEDULE Job Completion History is another handy list of data for auditors and managers. Most of the time, you don’t think about this data, but when you need it, it’s really great to have. The Job Completion History is revolving group of records about your batch processing. The Good Morning Report, job schedule forecasting, and other reports get information from the job history. You can easily copy this information to Excel, just as in the Audit Log example above.

Robot/SCHEDULE makes it easy
As many of you have learned, Robot/SCHEDULE helps you take the final step toward providing the information management and auditors need for your production control environment.

Contributed by Tom Huntington, Vice President of Technical Services

Is there a way to submit the RBT650 report from a CL program? I run this report as part of my yearly Sarbanes-Oxley audit and it would be great if I could automate it.
The Completion Message Listing report (RBT650) prints all the completion messages that have occurred on the system. You can run it from a CL program by doing a call with the correct parameters, as follows:

CALL RBT650 Parm(’caaaaaabbbbbbjjjjjjjjjjggggggggggX’)

Where:

c = completion code

a = beginning date in system date format (000000 for no beginning date)

b = ending date in system date format (000000 for no end date)

j = job number (10 blanks for no job number)

g = group name (10 blanks for no group name)

X = required end marker

Note: If you plan to set this up as an annual job, you might want to replace the dates with reserved command variables. If you do this, when you edit the call command on the Command Entry panel, be careful to keep the same number of spaces within the parameter string as shown above.

How can I easily enter a new license code for the Robot products?
If you have the most current version of the RBTSYSLIB library, it’s easy. From a command line, type RBO, press Enter, and press function key 10. The panel lists all of the Robot products you have installed and their current release and modification levels. Choose option 1 for License Code Entry. Press function key 11 to display the entry panel in “Cut and Paste Mode” to easily paste in the license code. You don’t need to worry about which program or library needs this information, you just need to remember RBO, F10.

(By the way, RBTSYSLIB updates itself automatically any time you install, update, or convert any Robot product.)

If you are wondering what release and modification level of a product is currently shipping, visit www.helpsystems.com/support/releases.html.

If you have to comply with Service Level Agreements, check this out!

When you are doing the day-to-day management of your batch processes—especially if you need to comply with Service Level Agreements (SLAs)—the new job monitors in Robot/SCHEDULE 10.0 can be very helpful. They can help answer questions such as:

• Did Job A complete on time?
• Did Job B complete too quickly?
• Did Job C start later than the forecasted start time?

You don’t need to use job monitors on every job. That would be overkill. But, you should use them for your critical jobs.

Setting up job monitors
When you set up the job monitors for a job, you specify the monitoring criteria (job overrun, job underrun, or late start). These options are independent of one another: you can use one, two, or all three. You also specify what Robot/SCHEDULE should do if it identifies a job monitor event. Robot/SCHEDULE can end a job or notify you by sending a message to the job’s message queue; sending a text, e-mail, or pager message via Robot/ALERT; or by sending a status message to the Robot/NETWORK Status Center.

When a monitored job reaches one or more of the criteria defined on the Job Monitors tab, Robot/SCHEDULE takes the specified action and enters a record in the job monitor event log. You can display this log from the Robot/SCHEDULE Explorer toolbar.

The Job Monitor Events Report lists all monitored events that have occurred on the system. You can specify whether to purge the job monitor log automatically, and how many job monitor events to retain in the log, on the General System Defaults window.

The Job Overrun monitor
The Job Overrun monitor detects jobs that run longer than their specified maximum duration, or complete later than a specified time of day. If the job does not meet the duration or completion time, the notification process begins. This type of check is ideal for long-running processes, such as backups or end-of-month processing. It is also good for processes that must complete by a specified time to avoid SLA penalties. For instance, your SLA may require data to be uploaded to the customer’s Web site by a specified time or you will incur a fine.

The Job Underrun monitor
The Job Underrun monitor detects jobs that complete in less than a specified minimum run time. This monitor is designed to be used with applications that rely on data that is sent to the System i from another server. If the data does not arrive on time, the files are empty. When the Robot/SCHEDULE job starts the application, it runs with great performance, but terrible results. Applications that perform data polling are notorious for this type of problem.

The Late Start monitor
The Late Start monitor detects jobs that start later than their scheduled run time by the amount of time you specify, or that start later than a specified time of day. This monitor is designed to notify you if a job has not started within the time parameters you specified. The “must start by” option is not valid for EVERY-type jobs.

Note: The Late Start monitor uses the *INTERNAL forecast to identify jobs that start later than their scheduled run time. If you add a job for which you want to specify a Late Start job monitor, the job must be included in a build of the *INTERNAL forecast to be monitored.

Effect on “dummy” jobs
To achieve similar results in earlier versions of Robot/SCHEDULE, you might have created “dummy” jobs that ran only if an important job did not finish on time. You can continue to use this approach in Robot/SCHEDULE 10.0, but we think you’ll find job monitors better and easier to implement.

Note: If you have been using the Help/FACTS, “Using the Robot Automated Operation Solution to Meet Service Level Agreements,” you’ll find that job monitors offer more options after you convert to Robot/SCHEDULE 10.0.

Contributed by Tom Huntington, Vice President of Technical Services

Although SEQUEL executive dashboards are most commonly used to track business indicators, they also can display operations data to help you streamline and improve your System i operations. In fact, a SEQUEL executive dashboard could be a crucial tool if you must comply with Service Level Agreements (SLAs). This article describes how key performance indicators stored in the database files the Robot products maintain can be incorporated into SEQUEL executive dashboards.

Manage job schedules and batch jobs
The sample Robot/SCHEDULE dashboard (below) displays metrics to help you evaluate job scheduling and batch management. It can help you answer many interesting operations questions.

* How automated are the batch jobs on my system? The pie chart (1) and a corresponding list (2) show how many batch jobs are submitted by users compared to how many batch jobs are submitted by Robot/SCHEDULE. You can use this information to judge your progress on automating batch job management. You can drill-down from either of these objects to see which users are submitting their own jobs.

* Are my Robot/SCHEDULE jobs completing successfully? Table 3 and pie chart 4 give you information about the completion status of Robot/SCHEDULE jobs, including normal completion (Complete), abnormal end (Terminated), setup errors (Error Setup), warnings (Warning), and jobs that were skipped because of OPAL programs attached to the job (Skip OPAL).

* What’s happening with my long-running jobs? Jobs with an average run duration of more than 30 minutes are summarized in table 5. This table averages job runs over the past 30 days.

* Have there been any warning events in the last week? Table 6 summarizes warning events over the last seven days, with information on job name, number of events, and message text. A date object or a calendar that is expiring would display.

* How are my jobs set up? Table 7 and graph 8 break out jobs by types including jobs that are on hold, group jobs, reactive jobs, and other (primarily jobs scheduled by date and time). This information gives you an idea of the overall makeup of your schedule. In general, a schedule with a higher percentage of group and reactive jobs is more automated.

Track important message statistics
The Robot/CONSOLE dashboard (below) summarizes a variety of message statistics.

* What volume of messages does the QSYSOPR message queue handle? Table 1 and graph 2 show the number of messages QSYSOPR receives each day.

* How many messages do other monitored queues receive? Table 3 displays a count of messages for each monitored queue. If a queue has an extremely high number of messages, it may indicate a problem. You can drill down into the data to determine the root of the problem.

* What is the message count by message severity? Graph 4 displays summary totals for each message severity level on the QSYSOPR message queue.

* What are the most common message IDs on my system? Are these automated? The Message ID Count summary table (5) shows how many times each message ID was received, along with message text. Messages with a blank message set field indicate common message IDs that have not been set up in Robot/CONSOLE and present automation opportunities.

* How quickly are messages being answered? The Average Response Time summary (6) shows the average response time for the first shift. If it is above the acceptable limit, you should take corrective action.

Design your own Robot dashboards
These are just a few examples of how you can use SEQUEL to create operations dashboards. There are many other possibilities. For example, you could create a different Robot/CONSOLE operations dashboard to identify security errors and resource issues. Or, you might create a Robot/SAVE dashboard to monitor your backup operations.

Dashboards can include almost any imaginable statistic and formatting. They’re easy to customize according to your needs. If you have

SEQUEL and at least one Robot product, you can start tracking your operations metrics right away. Contact SEQUEL Technical Support at 952-933-0609 to request a save file that contains the SEQUEL objects shown in this article.

Makes it easier to learn, use, and manage the product

Robot/SCHEDULE 10 introduces a new graphical user interface (GUI). Although most users are comfortable with Robot/SCHEDULE’s traditional green screens, there are a lot of great reasons to try the new GUI. These fall into two main categories: overall ease of use and new features available exclusively through the GUI.

Ease of use
* Data organization. The Robot/SCHEDULE Explorer tree lets you see jobs organized by application or group job.

* Navigation. The menu system is always available as is the Tree View in the Explorer window. And, when you are working with a Robot/SCHEDULE job, you are just one click away from all its properties. If all the properties do not all fit on one screen, they are available on tabs. This makes it easier to look at control options, output options, reactivity, exception scheduling, and so on.

* Filters. Robot/SCHEDULE 10 lets you use filters to narrow long lists down to the exact data that you are seeking. Filters can be saved and reused. If you want to pay special attention to jobs in the accounting application that start with a J, you can easily set up a filter that incorporates both of these criteria.

* Pop-up menus. The right-click pop-up menus spell out—in plain English—actions and functions. You don’t have remember if the Print Job function on the Job Schedule List is option 13 or 14.

* QuickView. The QuickView section of the Explorer window shows you a summary of information contained in the currently selected object without making you open a properties dialog.

* Saved customizations. Many windows in the Robot/SCHEDULE 10 GUI save not only their size and position, but also the size and position of table columns.

* Multiple windows. You can have multiple instances of the same window (for example, Job Completion History) open at the same time, with each window having a different filter.

* Sorting. Many tables allow you to choose which column Robot/SCHEDULE should use to sort the table. Robot/SCHEDULE also uses a type-ahead algorithm to make positioning to an item in a list as quick and easy as possible.

Features available only through the GUI
Robot/SCHEDULE 10 provides a number of features that are available only through the GUI.

* Command sets. Command sets allow you to share a set of commands among jobs without entering them for each job.

* Schedule Activity Monitor (SAM). SAM is a configurable window that lets you see the state of Robot/SCHEDULE directly. This window combines aspects of Job Forecasting and Job Completion History to show you jobs that are going to run, jobs that are currently running, and jobs that have completed. If you are responsible for the daily operation of Robot/SCHEDULE and have to track this information, you will love this!

* Blueprint. The new job blueprint feature lets you visually inspect your jobs and the interactions between them. If you used the “Export to Visio” feature in Version 9, this is a much improved area. The blueprint is built into the GUI (so you no longer need Visio), and the job representations are cross-linked to useful functions like Schedule Override Codes and Job Properties. If you are managing the schedule and are concerned about dependencies and relationships, this will be an important feature for you.

* Export/Import. You can export Jobs and Scheduling Objects to XML files on your PC. You can then switch to a different system (or partition) and import these files. It’s a new way to move jobs between systems/partitions. It is especially useful if you haven’t implemented Robot/NETWORK on your systems. Plus, if an object refers to other objects (such as a Job that refers to a Calendar or a Job Environment), you can choose to export all of these objects at once.

* Wizard. The Job Creation Wizard presents the necessary job settings in a logical order and explains each step of the process. If you are a new user (or have a new person starting on your team), this is a great way to start learning the important features of Robot/SCHEDULE.

* Audit Log Viewer. The Audit Log Viewer lets you more easily respond to your SOX auditor’s requests. The Viewer lets you sort and filter auditing data dynamically.

* Host Mode. Host Mode lets you manage all the Robot/SCHEDULE environments on each node from the Robot/SCHEDULE GUI connected to your Robot/NETWORK host (this requires Robot/NETWORK 10). In host mode, you can maintain the Robot/SCHEDULE product master, drill down to maintain your Robot/SCHEDULE data on the node system, print consolidated reports, or use the Send To Wizard to copy a job from one system to another (or to send a packet).

Contributed by Matt Bresnan, Software Development Manager

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