Groups—Overview
Robot Schedule lets you group several jobs together under the control of a group control job. The group control job contains the run schedule for the group; it can also contain the control options for all jobs in the group. By entering those values only once, you save time and avoid errors. Note: While you can monitor and manage your groups in Robot Schedule for Insite, you create and edit them in the Explorer or IBM i versions of the software.
Groups are very flexible. When you're running a job as a member of the group, you can use exception scheduling options to create exceptions to the schedule on the group member record. For example, you can attach a date object to the member that indicates dates the member should NOT run. The group continues just as if the member were no longer part of the group. In addition, you can attach OPAL objects that can skip or delay a job unless conditions are just right.
If you have Robot Schedule on a remote IBM i, group members can reside on those systems. The capability to include group members on remote systems allows you to have a master job that controls the running of remote Robot Schedule jobs. If you have Robot Schedule Enterprise, you can do the same thing with your Windows, UNIX, and Linux servers. Jobs that run on your servers can be part of a group. In fact, you could have a group control job that controls nothing but server jobs.
The group control job shows a status of running until all members of the group, including members on remote systems, end. If all the jobs in the group complete normally, the group control job shows a status of Completed (C) on the Group History page. If any member ends abnormally, the group control job shows a status of Terminated (T).
Tip: We recommend that you limit the number of jobs in a group to a maximum of 99. If you have a larger number of jobs that you logically group together, you can set them up in multiple groups so that one group control job reacts to the completion of another. Since the group control job does not have a status of Completed until the last member finishes normally, it makes it easy to have another group control job react to the completion of the first. In addition, you can change which jobs are members of a group without affecting the group that reacts to it.
There are two different types of groups in Robot Schedule: dependent and independent. They're described below.
Dependent Groups
The most common type of group is a dependent group. You might have a dependent group that controls the execution of procedures. You can easily enter procedures such as monthly, quarterly, and annual closings as dependent group jobs.
By scheduling these procedures as group jobs, you can document their submission options, programs, and processing sequence. And, you can enter job text to further document each job. Robot Schedule runs the procedure exactly as you have instructed, and you have the benefit of crash protection.
A dependent group provides crash protection because Robot Schedule stops processing the group if any job in the group fails. The next job in the group is not submitted until the previous job has completed successfully. Each job in the group is dependent on the jobs before it.
Example
If a program in your group of monthly closing procedures fails, Robot Schedule can stop processing the group and notify you. You can then fix the problem and restart the group at any job in the group. To do so, you just select the schedule override code Start now with this Member for the job. Robot Schedule resumes processing the group at the selected job.
Independent Groups
The second type of group is called an independent group. With this type of group, Robot Schedule submits all jobs in the group at the same time. The jobs in the group are not dependent upon each other; each job runs without regard to the completion status of the other jobs in the group.