Self-Service Automation – What’s Good for End Users is Great for IT Operations
What is Job Scheduling Software?
Job scheduling is a type of software that automates the critical backend processes that your business relies on—like end-of-day (EOD) scripts, batch processes, cross-platform workflows, and more. An IT job scheduler enables unattended job execution that optimizes resources to run jobs in a sequence, at a specified time, or based on a trigger.
Learn the Key Terms to Understand Enterprise Job Scheduling >
Why a Job Scheduler is a Must-Have for Businesses
It can often feel like you’re constantly playing catchup. And as modern enterprises grow more complex and the pace of business increases, the volume of systems, applications, and data to manage can feel overwhelming. Automating your enterprise with a centralized job scheduler is one of the easiest ways to get—and stay—ahead of the game.
Read on to learn the six reasons why job scheduling is no longer a nice-to-have but a must-have.
Benefits of an IT Job Scheduler
The biggest advantage of enterprise job scheduling is that organizations can better define, manage, and monitor their critical batch processes in one solution that orchestrates their entire schedule. A job scheduler helps IT support critical processes to align with business objectives, helping your team:
- Boost productivity by minimizing time spent on routine IT tasks
- Reduce job failures to avoid downtime
- Maintain customer satisfaction and meet SLAs
- Optimize resources and focus on more strategic tasks
- Better analyze performance metrics
- Codify critical workflows to ensure business continuity
- Centralize the oversight of critical batch processes
- Enforce enterprise security
Job Scheduling Features
Enterprise job scheduling software orchestrates the execution of processes across multiple platforms and applications with ease. When assessing your organization’s needs for job scheduling, it’s important to understand the capabilities a job scheduler can bring:
- Application Integration
Bring critical applications together with the ability to connect through either REST API or .NET API. - Resource Based Scheduling
Specify which resources are required to run your processes—like disk I/O, memory utilization, database lock contention, and network bandwidth to name a few—a job scheduler takes care of the rest. - PowerShell Support
Windows PowerShell is the standard for automation and administration of Microsoft-related applications, look for the ability to natively execute PowerShell scripts. - Date Specifications
With the use of natural language, you can use any date specifications you want—like “WEEKDAYS,” “FIRST DAY OF MONTH,” and “3RD WORKDAY OF PERIOD”—instead of complicated codes. - Setups
Setups make it easy to define a stream of jobs that can be managed as a single entity. A job scheduler takes care of all the details of sequencing and scheduling the individual jobs. - Parameters
When an operator or end user requests a job, “fill-in-the-blank” forms are used to obtain values for a job’s parameters and ensure the correct values are passed to scheduled jobs. - Event Monitoring
Track the event-driven nature of your job schedule. The scheduler watches for a certain condition on a computer or in the network. When it sees that condition, it will react accordingly to move the workflow forward. - Dependencies
A job can depend on the completion of another job, the completion of a remote job, or the ability to depend on the value of a variable. - Job Execution History
Track all processes that run across your systems to query the history immediately and update as soon as processes complete. - Notifications
Get alerts to issues or problems—like failures, successful completion, jobs taking too long, stalling, or running too quickly—so you don’t have to hunt down answers and can troubleshoot immediately. - Load Balancing
A job scheduler should provide complete server load balancing to off-load jobs to servers that are less busy, thus enabling you to make the most efficient use of your resources.
Continue Learning: The Top 12 Things You Should Know About Automated Job Scheduling >
Job Scheduling Software Use Cases
Explore helpful resources to learn more about job scheduling use cases that show you where you can best implement a job scheduler at your organization.
How to Configure a Job Scheduler for Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Compliance
Holiday Season Enterprise Job Scheduling
Still Deploying PowerShell Scripts Manually?
How to Choose the Right Job Scheduler
Choosing any type of new software can be a daunting task. Implementing new technology should help your business run efficiently but making the wrong choice could cost you more than just dollars. With the right steps, you’ll be able to choose the best fitting solution for your goals and avoid getting stuck with buyer’s remorse. To help you on your automation journey, we’ve outlined an approach to help set you up for success.
Keep Reading: 4 Steps for Choosing the Right Job Scheduler >
Evaluating Your Current Job Scheduling Software
If it’s not broken, don’t fix it, right? Well, when it comes to your job schedule, things might not be running as smoothly as it seems—and it could be costing you. The following resources are designed to help you take a careful look at your native schedulers, proprietary automation tools, and homegrown scheduling scripts to determine if they’re creating value or falling short.
The State of Your Job Scheduling Software – Evolution, Stagnation, or Slow Death
Determine the state of your current job scheduling software to decide if it’s time to make a switch.
FAQ: Enterprise Job Scheduling Software Maintenance and Support
You might have some questions about the way your tool is supported or why the maintenance costs are the way they are. We’ve put together an FAQ to take out some of the confusion.
4 Questions to Determine the Real Cost of Homegrown Job Scheduling Software
Using homegrown job scheduling software? Ask yourself these four questions to determine the real cost.
Alternatives to Native Job Schedulers
Feeling held back by native schedulers that offer limited capabilities and can only automate processes for a single application? A comprehensive job scheduling solution can orchestrate and centralize the disparate tools that are critical to your IT operations to modernize your automation environment, simplify the complexity of your scheduling, and scale your business for growth. Learn more:
Windows Task Scheduler Alternative: How JAMS Takes Job Scheduling to the Next Level
Replacing Your Legacy Scheduler for Better Batch Scheduling
Native Scheduler Showdown: Breaking Down Automation in Task Scheduler, SQL Agent and Cron
SQL Server Agent vs. JAMS Job Scheduler
Migrating to a New Job Scheduler
Migrating to any new software can be a daunting task. Especially when you have thousands of batch jobs to convert. But migrating to a new job scheduler doesn’t have to be a nightmare. Check out these resources that show you how a transition can be more like a dream.
4 Things You Should Know When Preparing for a Job Scheduler Migration
Gearing Up For a Legacy Scheduler Migration
5 Steps to a Smoother Job Scheduling Transition
Batch Scheduling
Batch scheduling—also known as batch processing—refers to a job scheduling tool’s ability to process larger volumes of data, called batches. Batches include thousands of automated jobs and processes like scripts, loads, tasks, file transfers, and other multi-step workloads. The advantage of batch scheduling comes from its ability to execute large amounts of data—including complex job—reliably, and without the burden of manual oversight. Using batch scheduling as part of your job schedule is great for less time-sensitive processes that involve lots of data, such as ETL processes, order fulfillment, file transfers, or report generation.
The JAMS Difference
Why choose JAMS for job scheduling? JAMS is a powerful job scheduler built on leading edge technologies—and is a top-ranked workload automation solution. Our centralized job scheduling works across all platforms, applications, APIs, and scripting languages—making your batch jobs more reliable. Whether they’re looking to consolidate their toolset or looking to customize a solution without building a job scheduler from the ground up, IT pros choose JAMS.
Give Job Scheduling Software a Try
JAMS orchestrates your entire workload to better help you define, manage, and monitor critical jobs.