Any large business or organisation that wants to manage their workload effectively and with the least amount of room for error might choose the ActiveBatch Automation tool. Being a consultant I feel that It aids in task automation and has the flexibility to change in response to varying company requirements. It helps to save huge time by doing all the repetitive tasks on daily basis. During the patching activity the schedulers can be stopped. It also help by alerting us if any system/job is down so that SLA can be saved. Overall ActiveBatch Automation stands as a dependable cornerstone for ensuring the seamless operation of our tasks.
If batch jobs are heavily used then this product is highly recommended since it maintains dependencies between jobs, notifies if there are any failures, and puts the next batches on hold if previous dependent jobs fails.
String handling / parsing. I find myself using PowerShell to do a fair amount of text parsing (particularly if manipulations are needed) - not necessarily a bad thing, but certainly a place where ActiveBatch could be improved.
Debugging - or lack of it! With no stepping debugger, it can be a longer process than many other programming / scripting environments: rather than simply stepping through and observing state changes, I find myself inserting logging steps to excess, then having to clean them up once the error is found.
The perennial - Documentation! While a near-universal complaint for *any* software, ActiveBatch's developer documentation is somewhat spotty - just where I need detail, I find summary-level info. There is lots of documentation (as there should be for a tool with such a wide range of applications), but it is in mixed formats (some PDF, some CHM), and the descriptions of specific fields within job steps is often little more than I can get in a tool-tip in the GUI. Allowable ranges, expected formats for string data, and similar helpful details are inconsistent.
The KnowledgeBase at ASCI's web site often has examples which answer the questions I have, but not always - and not always under the search terms one would think to use.
Even though the CA Workload Automation GUI is simple and easy to use, it looks outdated and has limited features such as customizing dashboards and saving particular user settings.
CA Workload Automation lacks performance and is often slow to edit jobs or to refresh screens and sometimes requires admin to restart service agents for background processes.
I would like to see CA Workload Automation in one screen with all the information the user wants to see and have this customized and saved for every user. Rather than having to build a view and search criteria for every new job that is added.
I would like a feature or configuration that you can setup different types of notifications for job failures such as text message with different levels of severity.
We can easily add new plans/jobs in our batch schedules. Also, coordination with reporting and QA jobs is simple to do. Building schedules, restarting jobs, triggering dependencies is easy to understand. The system is very stable and allows us to easily see overall processing times.
The workload automation solution is based on the specific needs of an organization, as well as the features, capabilities, and costs of various solutions. A thorough evaluation process and consideration of these factors can help ensure the selection of a solution that aligns with overall business objectives and meets the specific needs of the organization.
CA Workload Automation stacks up very well compared to Cisco/Tidal, BMC and is far superior to crontab. CA Workload Automation has easy initial setup, efficient job management and scheduling, supports multiple applications and environments and improves business critical needs including SLA, increasing productivity while decreasing processing workload times and failures. CA Workload Automation also integrates well with Automation Change Control Expert or ACCE which is a nice migration tool to have if you're managing jobs in the thousands.
ActiveBatch can automate intricate procedures and minimise manual involvement, which can boost an organization's production and efficiency.
Organisations can save money by using ActiveBatch to automate operations, which lowers the expenses of manual labour and potential mistakes.
Implementing ActiveBatch could come with hefty up-front expenses including licencing, instruction, and consultancy fees, which could have a short-term negative impact on ROI.
