How to Schedule Process Chain to run at multiple selected times a day periodically by copying the job

Scenario:

The CSTCTR DELTA Meta chain needs to be scheduled to run at 12:45 and 21:30 daily.

Procedure:

Scheduling of Initial job at 12:45:

Go to Planning View, enter into change mode and select “Maintain Variant” from the context menu of the start process.

Select “Change Selections”.

Give the appropriate periodic selections for this job so as to schedule it to run daily at 12:45 save it and come back.

Now Schedule the chain by clicking the “Schedule(F8)” button..

Sometimes you may notice an error “Job BI_PROCESS_ABAP could not be scheduled. Termination with returncode 8” at the bottom of the screen.

This is because the Program RSPROCESS is to be scheduled as job BI_PROCESS_ABAP under user RFC_RET (Sometimes you may notice other user instead of RFC_RET).

This is because usually “BW Background” user is used for scheduling the process chains.

We can change the “Execution User” appropriately by choosing the menu option

Process Chain > Attributes > Execution User and the radio button for the BW Background User or the radio button for Special User select the appropriate user and schedule as shown below.

We can notice the appropriate success message as shown below once the chain is successfully scheduled.

Now, this scheduled job can be displayed by selecting the “Displaying Scheduled Job(s)…” option from the context menu of the Start Variant as shown below.

Scheduling of job copy at 21:30:

Now we need to copy the above job and schedule the copied job appropriately.

Select the Job and choose “Copy” from Job Menu options as shown below.

( Note: The same can also be done using the ‘Repeat scheduling’ option highlighted below )

This job can be noted in SM37 job monitor with Scheduled status as highlighted below.

Select this job and choose “Change” from Job Menu to give the required scheduled conditions i.e.,21:30

Now, specify the appropriate Start Condition to schedule it periodically as required.

Once successfully saved, you can note it with “released” status in SM37.

We can crosscheck this once again by selecting the “Displaying Scheduled Job(s)…” option from the context menu of the Start Variant as shown below.

These two periodic scheduled jobs can be observed.