SCHEDULING PROCESS CHAINS VIA UC4 AUTOMATION TOOL

Introduction:

In a functioning BW system, several processes occur regularly. Using process chains, we can automate complex BW process flows with event-based processing, control and monitoring of processes centrally. A process chain is a sequence of processes scheduled in the background of an event.

Some of these processes trigger a particular event, which in turn can trigger other processes.
Process chains can be planned and monitored periodically with the automation tool UC4. UC4 enables connectivity to any application, database and operating system and can support a growing business. It can effectively integrate all business applications.

Content:

UC4 is a powerful application planning tool that meets the needs of operators, developers and system administrators throughout the application lifecycle. UC4 Job Scheduling is a service that allows a company to schedule and monitor group jobs on computers. The timer can automatically run and manage jobs by processing completed job control script files and statements.

I will explain the architecture of UC4 to make it easier to use.

Remote agent:

On each target machine, the UC4 agent connects to the automation engine.

Operations Manager:

This is a management console that monitors the operation of all scheduled batches and the status of the automation engine.

Service Manager:

The service management console provides the communication status of each agent with the remote agent through communication processes.

Jobs:

Jobs are the basic building block of UC4. A job must be created for each executable program (for example, FTP, database download). A job contains all the information needed to run a program or script on the server and process its output.

Job plans (process flows):

Process flows are equivalent to job flows and can perform any number of jobs. When jobs and process flows are added to process flows, these objects are called process flow components.

Usually, the scheduling and monitoring of process chains can be done via SAP GUI. We can use the UC4 tool if we have multiple process chains whose frequencies varies as hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and those chains can be monitored and triggered automatically as per the required scheduled timelines.

If we face any issues in triggering or failures of process chains, we will be notified immediately via mail with the issue description and so the corrective action will be taken from our end. Even, the job completion mails will also be notified to us via mails.

Steps to schedule:

• Open the UC4 automation tool by entering the username and password.
• Choose any time triggered or weekly or monthly chain based on the frequency of your chain.
• Right click on the chosen chain and click on duplicate.
• Open the duplicate object and change the job name as SAP.
• Please ensure that the chain which you chosen to duplicate doesn’t gets changed.
• Change the process chain name (your chain)
• Enter the agent (Ex: BW STW staging system) and provide the login details.
• Choose document -> contacts -> enter your team notification mailing address.
• Under notifications, you can enter the mailing address to send the success and failure of process chains.
• Save it and the object will be created.
• Now, we need to schedule the process chain under the schedule package (Ex: DAILY SCHEDULE, WEEKLY SCHEDULE, MONTHLY SCHEDULE).
• After entering the required package, add a new row and enter the process chain name.
• We need to schedule the frequency as per our requirement. The schedules can be like Periodic calendar, Schedule daily, Schedule weekly, Schedule monthly.
• Save the object and it will start working after the turnaround time.

Conclusion:

So, we can automate the process of scheduling the process chains via UC4 tool. Hence, in case of multiple chains which runs on different frequencies, we can easily monitor the same.