Batch job monitoring

Process Chain Monitoring in SAP Focused Run is possible via Job And Automation Monitoring which is available as of SAP Focused Run 3.0 FP02.

You can launch the Job & Automation Monitoring app in the Advanced Application Management section in the Focused Run launchpad.

When you launch the app you will be asked for a scope selection for which you can specify the systems for which you want to activate Process Chain Monitoring.

To start the setup of Process Chain Monitoring click on the settings button.

In the settings popup click on the pencil button under Technical Systems.

In the next popup select the system for which you want to configure process chain monitors by clicking on the area as shown below.

In the next screen , in the Monitoring tab click on the + sign to create a new filter to activate data collection.

Now provide a filter name and then in Job Type select SAP BW Process Chain and save.

After creating the filter move to Alerting tab and click on the + sign to create a new alert.

You can create the following types of alerts.

Critical Execution Status: The Execution Status is rated green, if a job finished successfully and red, if the job execution did not finish, i.e., aborted. It is rated yellow, if a job finished with warnings or errors without aborting.
Critical Application Status: The Application Status is rated green, if a job successfully processed the application data. It is rated red, if e.g., an ABAP job execution writes errors into the application log and yellow, if there are warnings, but no errors.
Critical Delay: The Start Delay rating is rated green, if the technical delay of a job (e.g., in case of an ABAP job the time passed until a job gets a work process assigned) did not exceed the threshold defined.
Critical Runtime: The Run Time is rated green, if the runtime of a job did not exceed the threshold defined.

To create the alert first select the alert type.

Then in Alert Filters section provide the BW Process Chain name for which you want to activate alerting. Also you must provide the job type as BW Process Chain. You can optionally enter further filters like Execution User, Executable Name, ABAP Client and whether it’s a Standard Job or not.

Note: With Job & Automation monitoring you can create alerts for Standard ABAP jobs as well. The filters Executable Name and Standard Job is applicable only for ABAP Job type.

Optionally you can also set Notification Variant, Alert Severity and enable Automatic Alert Confirmation in the Alert Settings section.

Optionally you can also provide Resolution Instructions in the Alert Resolution area.

If you select alert type Critical Delay or Critical Runtime you also have to enter the thresholds.

Finally click on the Save button to save and activate the alerting.

Note: When we activate monitoring of process chain by creating the filter in the Monitoring tab, we activate data collection for Process Chain monitoring. This will enable data collection of all process chains of that managed system. You can see status of all process chain runs for that system in the main page of the Job & Automation Monitoring app. Additionally and optionally you can create/enable alerting in the Alerting tab to alert on specific process chain failures.

Note: Since the launch of Job & Automation Monitoring in Focused Run 3.0 FP2 the old Job Monitoring feature has been renamed to Job Monitoring ABAP Only. The Job Monitoring ABAP Only functionality is completely deprecated as of release of Focused Run 4.0.

For more details on Job & Automation Monitoring you can refer to SAP documentation here.

<< This blog was originally posted on SAP Focused Run Guru by Manas Tripathy (Simac). Repost done with permission. >>

This blog will explain SAP Focused Run capabilities for batch job monitoring. The first part of the blog explains the functional capabilities. The second part covers the technical setup of batch job monitoring.

Batch job monitoring in SAP Focused Run is part of Job and Automation monitoring:

After opening the start screen and selecting the scope you get the total overview:

Click on the top round red errors to zoom in to the details (you can’t drill down on the cards below):

Click on the job to zoom in:

Systems overview

Click on the system monitoring button:

On the screen, zoom out on the overview by clicking the blue Systems text top left:

Now you get the overview per system:

Batch job analysis

Batch job analysis is a powerful function. Select it in the menu:

Result screen shows 1 week data by default:

The default sorting is on total run time.

Useful sortings:

Total run time: find the jobs that run long in your system in total. These most likely will also be the ones that cause high load, or business is waiting long for to finish to give results.
Average run time: find the jobs that take on average long time to run. By optimizing the code or batch job variant, the run time can be improved.
Failure rate: find the jobs that fail with a high %. Get the issues known and then address them.
Total executions: some jobs might simply be planned too frequently. Reduce the run frequency.

By clicking on the job trend icon at the end of the line you jump to the trend function.

Job trend function

From the analysis screen or by selecting the Trend graph button you reach the job trend function:

Select the job and it will show the trend for last week:

You can see if execution went fine, or not, and bottom right see average time the job took to complete.

Technical setup of job monitoring

For batch job monitoring settings, open the configuration and start with the global settings:

Here you can see the data volume used and set the retention time for how long aggregated data is kept.

You can also set generic rating rules:

Activation per system

In the activation per system select the system and it will open the details:

First switch on the generic activation for each system

Activation for specific jobs to be monitored

Now you can start creating a job group. First select left Job groups, then the Plus button top right:

Add a job by clicking the plus button and search for the job:

Press Save to add the job to the monitoring.

Grouping logic

You can group jobs per logical block. For example you can group all basis jobs, all Finance jobs, etc. Or you can group jobs per system. Choice is up to you. Please read first the part on alerting. This might make you reconsider the grouping logic.

Adding alerting to job monitor

The jobs added to the group are monitored. But alerting is a separate action.

Go to the Alerting part of the job group. And an alert. First select the Alert type (critical status, delay, runtime, missing a job). Assign a notification variant (who will get the alert mail), and decide on alert grouping or atomic alerts.

If you do not specify a filter it will apply for the complete group. You can also apply a filter here to select a sub group of the job group.

Based on the alerting you might want to reconsider the grouping.

Monitoring Number of Long Running Jobs

In SAP Focused Run there is no standard way of monitoring number of long running jobs either in System Monitoring or in Job Monitoring

With Job Monitoring you can monitor if a specific job is running for more than specific amount of time, but we can’t monitor if there are more than a specific number of jobs that are running for more than a specific amount of time.

And in System monitoring we can only monitor if there are more than a specific number of cancelled jobs or job in status running but we can’t monitor long running jobs.

However, the Focused Run Guided Procedure Framework provides a pre-build plugin by which you can create a custom guided procedure to check the number of long running batch jobs in a managed system.

Setup of long running jobs

To access Guided Procedures App navigate to Advanced System Management area on the Focused Run launchpad and click on the System Management Guided Procedure App.

Then on the Guided Procedure app navigate to Guided Procedure Catalog page.

On the Catalog Page click on the + button to create a new custom guided procedure.

In the next pop-up screen provide a name and description. Optionally you need to select a package if you want to transport your guided procedures e.g. from DEV Focused Run system to PROD Focused Run system.

Then back in the Guided Procedure Catalog screen click on the guided procedure you just created to open it for editing.

In the guided procedure edit screen click on Edit button.

In the Properties section provide a name for the step and a description as shown below.

Then in the Step Content section click on New button to add a step.

In the next popup select the plugin ABAP Long Running Jobs and provide the threshold for time range as long running Job. You can also specify the graphic type as a table or as a bar chart. After selecting, click on Ok button to continue.