VisualCron takes a lot of work off my hands for not too complicated processes.
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Our customers regularly upload files to our SFTP-server. These are files of type zip, pdf, CSV and others. Visualcron jobs written by me process these supplied files. E.g. zip files are unpacked. Files are checked for validity and consistency. The files are sent to a backup server.Some file are sent to a printer. Other files are send by E-mail to colleagues. Some file are edited by a graphic editor and send back to the customer.
Pros
- VisualCron can pack and unpack files from many types of packing methods.
- Clear job scripts with complex constructions can be written in VisualCron
- VisualCron provides a clear graphical overview of the situation of all jobs.
- VisualCron clearly indicates when a job has run into an error.
Cons
- VisualCron should more specifically indicate the root cause of an error.
- If copying a file goes wrong, VisualCron reports 'can't copy file'. I expect 'no read permissions from original' or 'no write permissions from destination'.
- VisualCron offers no way to execute a Job script line by line
- In VisualCron, nested loops cannot be created.
Return on Investment
- With VisualCron, I need 3 times less time to get file processing right.
- If a VisualCron job goes wrong I need twice as much time to find the problem.
- Visualcron does not run on Linux but on Windows which can make an upgrade and reboot take up to 6 times as long.
Alternatives Considered
Quadient Inspire
Other Software Used
Quadient Inspire, Ubuntu Linux, Microsoft Windows
