Creating the plans for the first time

About this task

See Creating plans for an example of creating plans for the first time. This is a summary of the steps:
  1. Decide how far the long-term plan will extend.

    The long-term plan can span 1 day to 4 years from the date of the last uncompleted occurrence. If you begin with a plan covering too long a period, the task of creating the plan can become unnecessarily cumbersome. However, if you do not look far enough ahead, you will not benefit from the planning functions of the long-term plan.

    A good compromise is 5 weeks or 75 000 occurrences, whichever is less. It provides planning capabilities for the near future without being too great. This can be particularly useful, for example, at end-of-month or holiday processing. With this period, the long-term plan can be extended every 7 days for 7 days and will always cover a calendar month. However, if 5 weeks proves to be too short or too long, you can always adjust the look-ahead period to a more suitable length.

  2. Decide when the current plan will start.
    The current plan is a second-by-second schedule of all operations. It drives all automatic HCL Workload Automation for Z activities, such as:
    • Submitting and tracking of jobs and started tasks
    • Completing operations on nonreporting workstations
    • Providing information to workstation operators
    • Recovering failed jobs
    When you decide the start time for the current plan, you should note that:
    • All scheduled jobs with no predecessors are normally submitted immediately by HCL Workload Automation for Z when the plan is created, unless they are time-dependent operations.
    • Long-term plan occurrences with input arrival time before the current plan start time but deadline time after the current plan start time, are given the status UNDECIDED. HCL Workload Automation for Z does not automatically submit jobs with this status. This situation applies only when a current plan does not yet exist.
    • A long-term plan occurrence with input arrival time before the current plan start time and deadline time also before the current plan start time is assumed by HCL Workload Automation for Z to have completed. It will be marked as completed in the long-term plan and excluded from the current plan. This situation applies only when a current plan does not yet exist.

    Avoid scheduling occurrences in the long-term plan before the start of your first current plan. The current plan can then start at the date and time that you want HCL Workload Automation for Z to begin its scheduling activities.

  3. Decide how far the current plan will extend.

    The current plan can span from 1 minute to 21 days from the time of its creation or extension. HCL Workload Automation for Z brings in from the long-term plan all occurrences with an input arrival time that is within the period you specify. HCL Workload Automation for Z then creates a detailed schedule for the operations that are contained in these occurrences.

    If you are extending the current plan, HCL Workload Automation for Z also carries forward, into the new plan, any uncompleted occurrences in the existing plan. Therefore, the current plan could contain information on occurrences back to the creation of the plan if there are uncompleted occurrences.

    To decide what time span your current plan should have, consider:
    • The longer the plan, the more computing resources required to produce it.
    • Changes in the long-term plan are reflected in the current plan only after the current plan is extended.
    • You cannot amend occurrences in the long-term plan that have an input arrival time before the end of the current plan.
    • Plans longer than 24 hours will contain two occurrences of daily applications and can cause confusion for your operations staff.
    • Short plans must be extended more frequently.
    • The current plan can contain a maximum of 32 760 application occurrences.

    Normally, a plan of 24 hours is a good compromise. However, in very large installations, 24 hours might be too long. You might then consider a current plan covering one shift.

  4. Create the plans as described in Creating plans.
  5. Consider getting HCL Workload Automation for Z to schedule the batch jobs that extend the plans. For example, you could run the job that extends the current plan every day at 06.00, and run the job to extend the long-term plan weekly.
  6. Extend the current plan a few hours before it ends, so you have time to look at the reports.
The following steps describe what to do when you make changes:
  1. Is the change temporary?
    1. Yes: continue with step 2.
    2. No: change the application database. Do you want the change to affect the current plan?
      1. Yes: continue with 1.c.
      2. No: modify or extend the long-term plan.
    3. Are you adding or deleting occurrences that are in the current plan?
      1. Yes:
        • Modify or extend the long-term plan.
        • Use the MCP panel to add or delete occurrences.
        • Replan or extend the current plan.
      2. No:
        • Modify or extend the long-term plan.
        • Replan or extend the current plan.
  2. Does the change affect the current plan?
    1. Yes: use the MCP panel.
    2. No: modify the long-term plan online.