Prev
Next
Forums Integration / Customization IPA/ProcessFlow

Concatenating Jobs on a Process Flow

 4 Replies
 0 Subscribed to this topic
 52 Subscribed to this forum
Sort:
Author
Messages
Tony Rubi
New Member
Posts: 2
New Member
12/17/2013 7:38 PM
    We are creating a process flow and we need to concatenate a set of jobs, so that after the first job is completed the second one starts, and the third one starts after the second and so on...
    Now we are creating a process flow and passing each job as a system command node, then putting a user action node after it so that it checks if the job is still active (with a web run).  The entire flow is working fine except that we have to wait at least one hour from one job to the next as the time out in the user action cannot be less than one hour.
    Is there a way to concatenate them so that one job starts as soon as the previous one ends.
    Is there an event that gets fired when a job stops with normal completion?
    Bob Canham
    Veteran Member
    Posts: 217
    Veteran Member
    12/17/2013 7:57 PM
      Rather than starting your job using the system command, you can use WebRun. The jobrun parameters 
       can kick off a job and there is a &WAIT=TRUE parameter you can send so that the WebRun node doesn't move on until the job finishes.  If you do that, you can just string your web run nodes together to kick off several jobs. 
        
       The syntax is: 
       [CODE] FUNC=run&USER=&JOB=&OUT=xml&WAIT=true


      if you're using IPA you can also put 
      63
      in the success string field to know if it was a successful run or not.
      Kyle Jorgensen
      Veteran Member
      Posts: 122
      Veteran Member
      12/17/2013 8:01 PM
        Use the "WebRun" node to run the jobs. Set the 'wait' parameter to true. Have the output be XML. Have a node after the WebRun to check if the job completed normally (check for the string
        63
        which indicates the job completed normally. If all is well just connect to another WebRun node for the next job.

        We do this to automate back office reports that we publish in LBI as well as automate large chunks of our payroll processing.
        Tony Rubi
        New Member
        Posts: 2
        New Member
        1/2/2014 3:18 PM
          Thanks for the tip!
          Now I have a couple of questions...
          1) What if I don't get the STATUS 63? Should I loop back to the WebRun?
          2) We put the WAIT in a job that took 42 minutes but the system only waited 13 minutes and then kicked in the next job. Why it didn't wait long enough?
          Thanks for the help!
          Kyle Jorgensen
          Veteran Member
          Posts: 122
          Veteran Member
          1/2/2014 3:43 PM
            A status other than 63 means something went wrong with the job. You'll probably need to code the flow to notify someone to take a look at what's wrong. Something to note about these status codes; just because you got a status of 63 doesn't mean that the job did what it was suppose to. It just means the job finished successfully. However, every record could have encountered an error and wrote to an error file. We've incorporated a standard of doing a double-check on batch jobs. 1.) did the job finish successfully? 2.) did the job encounter any critical data errors?

            If you use the 'wait' parameter, you'll need to make sure that the job timeout setting in WAS is set sufficiently high enough to accomodate your longest running job. I know that the setting is in WAS, unfortunately I'm on the programming side of our house and can't point you to the exact place where you set it. Perhaps others on this forum can.

            Here's what the different job status mean: 
             
Status Translations :
00 : running
30 : Waiting
31 : Waiting Step
32 : Waiting on Time
33 : Waiting Recovery
34 : Needs Recovery
35 : Invalid Parameters
36 : Queue Inactive
37 : Hold
60 : Recurring Skipped
61 : Recovery Deleted
62 : Cancelled
63 : Normal Completion