Atif Khan

A project I supported moved from IBM to Accenture, and the client chose Stonebranch as their new workload scheduler. The client sponsored my training on Stonebranch, and I moved to Accenture along with the project. I handled the migration and validation from IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, exporting all the files related to different objects, including jobs, job streams, workstations, calendars, resources, and events. I then sent them to the vendor to convert them to Stonebranch XML files, after which I imported these into the Stonebranch controller and validated them from the runbook.

We decided to create jobs directly in SAP from Stonebranch instead of mapping existing jobs from SAP. This resulted in extra jobs in Stonebranch compared to IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, but it was worth it as we saved on future efforts of creating jobs in SAP first and then in Stonebranch. There were a few issues with the first go-live, including authentication issues and missing accesses.

This ongoing project involves providing BAU support as a Stonebranch administrator. I've helped my team grow by providing regular training on Stonebranch and ensuring our clients are satisfied with our support. I've troubleshooted issues and offered Stonebranch consulting for new scheduling and automation requirements. I've also resolved issues related to SAP Remote Function Call (RFC) connections, large spool output failures, and jobs stuck in a queued state.

I've also automated Level-1 activities related to monitoring and operations by introducing email notifications and new custom dashboards for different application teams. I've also integrated ServiceNow with Stonebranch for self-service functionalities: application teams can now perform various tasks without involving the Stonebranch team or logging in to Stonebranch themselves; they can simply click a button on their ServiceNow ticket or submit a ServiceNow form.

• Implemented an extra threshold parameter:

We faced a challenge where the business required two cut-off times for a long-running job, but our tool only supported one. I devised a solution by using the Late Finish parameter to auto-cancel jobs after 30 minutes. Then, I created sleep jobs and task monitors to handle the second threshold at 15 minutes.

• Automated recovery of in-doubt SAP jobs:

Whenever our agent's service restarted, running jobs would go into an "in doubt" state, requiring manual confirmation from functional support teams. To streamline this, I created an SAP task that automatically checks the status of jobs on another SAP instance. The task sends an alert to the team and marks the job as successful once completed in SAP, reducing downtime and improving business continuity.