Congratulations on taking the first step towards implementing comprehensive enterprise job scheduling by downloading a trial of Automate Schedule. (Don’t have the trial version yet? It’s fully featured and free for 30 days.) There’s a lot that you can do with Automate Schedule, and we want to make sure you have the chance to completely evaluate if it’s the right solution for you. This article will walk you through how to get started scheduling your enterprise jobs with Automate Schedule.
If you would like to get a live demo of the software (highly recommended for trial users), head over here.
Automate Schedule also ships with a built-in user guide in the form of help text. Click on the little question marks on any page or access help under the menu in the right corner under your user name.
If you have downloaded the trial but haven’t installed it yet, head on over to the knowledge base for full instructions including a video.
Scheduling Your First Job
To help you get started as quickly as possible, we’ve already installed some demo jobs for you to use as templates. However, you will have to do some setup before you can run these in your own environment. The short video below takes you step-by-step through the process to get your jobs ready to run and shows you how to run them.
You will also see how to look at the history of a specific job—including details on every time the job has run—and how to access the job log. Learn more about the importance of logging job history here.
Job Suites
A job suite is a group of jobs that are scheduled together. This reduces the amount of time you need to put into maintaining your schedule, since you can manage it at the top level. Many Automate Schedule users organize their enterprise schedules into daily, weekly, and monthly suites.
The video below walks you through how to create job suites in Automate Schedule, including how to easily set up dependencies between member jobs.
Agent Event Monitors
The ability to handle complex dependencies, including those that span multiple servers, is a key advantage Automate Schedule provides over other types of job scheduling tools. Building this kind of job schedule allows your enterprise to run more efficiently by eliminating delays. For example, in the video you will see how to set up a job that reacts to a file arrival. If you were using an automation solution without event-driven capabilities, you would probably need to either manage the dependency with time-consuming custom scripting, or build a delay into the schedule to ensure the file has arrived before the next step in the process begins. Even with the delay, if the file doesn’t arrive on time, the whole process could fail.
Using agent event monitors, you can schedule a job to begin immediately after a specified event like a file arrival, eliminating delays and improving accuracy. (Of course, if something does go wrong in your schedule, Automate Schedule can send you a notification immediately.) Read more about the benefits of event-driven scheduling here.
Setting up FTP Jobs
Now that you’ve got the hang of creating and running jobs with Automate Schedule, we suggest you test out scheduling a task integral to almost all businesses: file transfers. Many Automate users find that scheduling FTP jobs is one of the best ways to save time and improve productivity. For example, you can read about how one financial services company was able to reduce administrative overhead and eliminate the third shift just by using Automate Schedule to automate file transfers.
In the next video you will learn how to secure, automate, and integrate your transfers within your enterprise job schedule.
Migrating Your Existing Jobs
A lot of you are probably already using some kind of job scheduler, whether that is a built-in tool like cron on your UNIX servers or homegrown scripts. The good news is, you can probably migrate existing jobs from your automation tool into Automate Schedule so you don’t need to start over with your automated processes.
If you’re using cron, you might want to consider a free 30-minute Cron Migration Consultation. In the call with one of our experts, you’ll get the chance to discuss how best to make the switch from cron to more sophisticated job scheduling with Automate Schedule.
Fortra Support can also help you migrate tasks from Windows Task Scheduler or most other schedulers that are available today. Just export your schedule to a .csv, .txt, or .xml file type and send us the file. We'll run it though a conversion program and send you a file that is formatted for the Import Center in Automate Schedule. The Import Center will help you migrate your jobs into Automate Schedule so that you don’t have to recreate them one-by-one.
What Should You Automate Next?
We hope that the Automate Schedule trial has inspired you to introduce more automated processes into your organization. Here are some additional resources on the advanced capabilities that Automate has to offer:
On-Demand Webinars
Automate Schedule Application Interfaces: A Critical Tool for Centralizing Job Scheduling
How Web Services Automation Streamlines Your Enterprise
How to Achieve PCI Compliance with an Enterprise Job Scheduler
Getting Internal Approval for an Enterprise Job Scheduler
Case Studies
Improving Informatica ETL Processing with Automate
Automate Brings Real-Time Operations Reactivity to Energy Solutions
Bumble Bee Seafood Enjoys Easy Implementation and Top-notch Support with Automate Schedule
See Automate Schedule in Action
Get a personalized demonstration of Automate Schedule