The purpose of Job & Automation Monitoring is to provide a central Job Monitoring solution for all SAP products to complement local job scheduling. It gives transparency about the current status of the different automation processes (for simplification called “jobs” in the later text) regarding execution status, application status, start delay and run time.
The basic concept is to collect individual job execution data and related exceptions and give a rating for the execution (the runtime is rated based on historical data). The rating of the latest execution is propagated to the job definition level. You have the option to drill down from the job to the list of executions. Finally, you have a direct navigation to the corresponding job instance in the executing service for a more detailed analysis, which gives you the option to stop a not ending execution or restart a failed execution. To offer these two fundamental job management actions directly from the central monitor is planned.
Value add: Job & Automation Monitoring helps - with a unified user experience using a common look-and-feel and handling pattern - to ensure all automation processes across the different products are running successfully. This is especially valuable in integration scenarios of multiple products of the SAP Intelligent Suite, where each product runs customer-specific jobs and you do not use a central job scheduler (as then you could do the monitoring using the central scheduler).
Job & Automation Monitoring in SAP Cloud ALM collects data for these job types:
Job & Automation Monitoring in SAP Cloud ALM collects data for these solutions and products.
The Overview provides a summary status regarding job execution for the services in scope. It shows the status of the latest execution of every job with regards to the Execution Status, Application Status and Run Time. On top it displays the number of alert situations, i.e. jobs for which an alert had been created, that is not yet confirmed.
When clicking on a card for a service, you are navigated to the Monitoring view and see the list of jobs/automations for the service sorted by Execution Status rating in a descending order. If you click on a number within a card you will see the same list, but sorted and filtered by the aspect.
If you directly navigate to the Monitoring view, you see the list of jobs/automations (for all services in scope) rated based on the status of their latest execution with regards to the Execution Status, Application Status, Start Delay and Run Time. For every line you see the number of open alert situations.
By clicking on a name, you drill down into the list of executions of the selected job/automation sorted by planned start time. By clicking on the information icon next to each execution, you can view further details and navigate directly to the job in the managed cloud service or on-premise system* by clicking on the Run ID value.
*Note: If you use a SAP Web Dispatcher please maintain the URL of the Web Dispatcher as Logon URL for the respective System in SAP Cloud ALM Landscape Management.
In Monitoring in the job list view you can filter the list for specific jobs and have the option to define this list as favorite. After you have created the favorite by pressing the * icon, go to the home page and set a speaking title and subtitle (via the star icon) for the card.
From the favorite card you can forward navigate to monitoring, namely to the list of jobs that you have defined as favorite.
Use the Analysis view to identify those jobs that have the longest response times and highest number of exceptions. A trend icon indicates, if the failure rate or response time is up or down in the time frame selected taking the mid point of the time frame as comparison point.
For any job it offers aggregated information on total and average run time, number of executions and number of failed executions (regarding Execution Status or Application Status) and the resulting failure rate. By clicking on the arrow at the end of every line, you can drill down into various trend charts for the metrics.
Use the Exceptions view to check for exceptions of the services and systems in scope.
To get exception data collected in general please follow the instructions provided in Integration & Exception Monitoring. In case of issue with the view, please report it via component.
To get exception data collected related job exceptions, no additional configuration is needed as those are collected together with the job execution data. Currently the following job types are supported:
On click on the rating icon you are forward navigated to the list of exceptions related to the job execution.
*Prerequisite: ST-PI 7.40 SP20 or higher is implemented in the managed on-premise system and in /n/sdf/alm_setup use case Exception Monitoring is activated.
Use the Alerting view to check the job execution related alerts for the services in scope. You can configure to get alerted, if a job has a red or yellow Executions Status, a red or yellow Application Status, if its Run Time or Start Delay exceeds a defined threshold.
You can adjust the Alert Name for example to indicate what you have configured, e.g. the filters used, but note that in the alert Object Details the name of the job is contained and in the alert list UI, you can filter for the content of the object details, i.e. the job name. The name of the job is appended into the notification mail subject. The notification body contains information on the alerted job run and a link to the alert.
Job execution data that has arrived at SAP Cloud ALM Job & Automation Monitoring is evaluated every minute, so that alerts are raised almost immediately. (How quickly data arrives depends on the job type. For ABAP Jobs and S4 HANA CE Application Jobs you can configure in the sending system the periodicity of collection (could let it run every minute). For other use cases like SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation and SAP Build Process Automation monitoring data is sent instantly, i.e. event based.)
Alerts are raised per job and alert type and contain all failed executions of a specific job. From the Run Id value, you can navigate to the corresponding job execution in the managed cloud service, just like from the job execution popup in the monitoring application.
By default a downstream action (like email) is triggered "At new occurrence", i.e. when there is a change to the event rating (to red or yellow). As a consequence no new notification is sent on consecutive failures of the same job. If you need a new notification at every job execution failure, you can configure to get the event action triggered "At every occurrence".
Question: In the Overview view, I see for every managed component in scope one card. What is the motivation for this?
Answer: Monitoring provides you a central overview on the job ( automation execution status of all services / systems that you have selected into your scope. Consequently, you can quickly understand, if there are issues in specific managed components. From the cards you can forward navigate to the monitoring view, which is then filtered by the service.
Using Favorites you can define groups of jobs (cross service / system) if you want to have a special focus on a subset of jobs / automations.
Question: In the Monitoring view, I see the list of jobs. Why has every job four ratings?
Answer: Monitoring groups the different executions of a job and rates the job definition according to its latest execution. The ratings indicate if the latest execution
Question: I like the monitoring application, but I want to look at it only, if there is an issue with a job. How can I get alerted or notified in such cases?
Answer: Expand the Configuration pane and there the section Managed Components. For every individual managed component you can create events and maintain filter conditions (e.g. restrict on Job or Executable names) and the "Event Actions" in order to get alerted and / or notified
In general an alert is raised immediately after the event occurs, for example:
* the "Critical Application Status" event is raised also at the end time of a job execution, even though the critical message might have occurred during job execution without the job ending.
Question: Can I get alerted, if an SAP Intelligent RPA job or SAP Build Process Automation job execution has a notifier failure?
Answer: Yes, such a case is indicated by a red Application Status Rating, which can be alerted on (see here).
Question: Can I see exception message details that occurred at job execution in the monitoring application and quickly navigate to the message details?
Answer: Yes, if exception details have been collected (subject to job type and configuration settings) then this is indicated by a slightly different icon on job execution level in columns Execution Status or Application Status. On clicking the icon you drill down into into Exceptions view and see the details (e.g. ABAP Job Log or ABAP Application Log messages).
Question: Can I do long term trend analysis on job run times and failure rates?
Answer: Yes in the Analysis view you can see
Question: Can I show long term trend on job run times and failure rates in an external dashboard?
Answer: Yes, you can use analytics-api for Job & Automation Monitoring to get aggregated data and see
See here a Grafana Job & Automation Monitoring dashboard with 4 panels and its configuration.
Question: What information is offered for SAP Business Workflow monitoring? How to use the application?
Answer: See here a short demo on how to use the application for SAP Business Workflow monitoring.
Question: Currently we use SAP Solution Manager and SAP BPA by Redwood for Job Management. However, according to SAP Note 3216013 end of Mainstream Maintenance for SAP BPA by Redwood is 31.12.2024 and SAP Solution Manager maintenance will end 31.12.2027. Will SAP Cloud ALM offer a similar functionality?
Answer: SAP Cloud ALM offers standardized ALM functions focused on operational efficiency and is free of charge for SAP customers (see here). For process automation SAP offers SAP Build Process Automation, but this product is not a successor or replacement for SAP BPA by Redwood or another external job scheduling tool like Tivoli, which have a very strong focus and a broad range of features for efficient batch process (chain) execution. To replace an external scheduler, you need to look in detail at the features and functions to decide, if you can manage job scheduling as follows:
For a high level overview on SAP Build Process Automation Job Scheduling and Integration with SAP Cloud ALM see here.
Note, that:
Question: We use the IBM Tivoli Workload scheduler (TWS) and would like to explore the option to replace TWS with the SAP Job Scheduler Service. Is this possible?
Answer: External schedulers offer a wide range of connectors to job executing systems and capabilities to build job chains and react on the result of jobs within a chain. The focus of the SAP Job Scheduler Service is different. It basically offers to trigger the execution of jobs on a regular basis. For this a cloud application needs to expose an action endpoint (HTTP/REST endpoint) that can be called from the SAP Job Scheduler Service.
Long-running jobs can be separated from the cloud application process by using Cloud Foundry Tasks. The service offers a REST API and a dashboard for managing jobs and tasks.
SAP Cloud ALM for Operations plans to offer central monitoring of the jobs and tasks that are scheduled using the SAP Job Scheduler Service.
Further details regarding the SAP Job Scheduling Service are available at:
Question: We use SAP Solution Manager for Job Scheduling Request Management and document the scheduled jobs (using the versioning option offered). We have integration with an external ticketing system and external scheduling. Will we be able to use SAP Cloud ALM to replace SAP Solution Manager?
Answer: It is not on the roadmap of SAP Cloud ALM standard to replace all of SAP Solution Manager's Job Management capabilities, but partners are welcome to extend SAP Cloud ALM via APIs.
The core capability of SAP Cloud ALM for operations is to offer central monitoring. As of now ABAP based jobs (cloud as well as on-prem), BW process chains as well as SAP Build Process Automation automations can be monitored. Further job and automation types will follow and it is also planned to offer basic (central) Job Management:
We believe that the above sketched basic job management offering covers the operation requirements of a SaaS solution, where customers are responsible for a subset of jobs only, namely those that process customer specific application data and which business end users can schedule locally.
If central scheduling is still needed, we think, that the (request) management of the centrally scheduled jobs should be handled by the central scheduling tool.
In a nutshell we recommend to use
Question: We use SAP Solution Manager for Job Monitoring. Will we be able to use SAP Cloud ALM to replace SAP Solution Manager?
Answer: See this document that goes along Configuration Guide Job Monitoring 7.2 and tells, if such monitoring is offered in SAP Cloud ALM or not. If not, if it is planned.
Please note, that SAP Cloud ALM for Operations differs from SAP Solution Manager Operations in so many ways that it can hardly be compared, especially as SAP Cloud ALM for Operations continues to evolve. Job & Automation Monitoring aims to be simple to use and provide out of the box generic monitoring and analysis for the various SAP cloud and on-prem products regarding the execution of jobs and automation artifacts. If you need, you can configure events/alerts for specific jobs and trigger various downstream actions.
For more details on prerequisites, setup, housekeeping, and customer support, please check the Job & Automation Monitoring - Setup & Configuration page.
