Hello Community,
We've been hard at work developing VDM v10. Most of the focus in this upcoming release has been on automation. Our goal was to make it more efficient to create and manage Jobs, Executions and Schedules.
What's Different?
Jobs and Schedules are no longer one and the same, they've been separated. We're also introducing a new term "Execution".
Here are the key definitions we'll be using for automation in V10:
Job: One or more Views and their Executions.
Example Job: You want to run a Performance Analysis Report, Inventory Report, Collections Report and a Dialer Report for a 10 different sets (Executions) of Client Numbers and output formats.
Execution: A set of parameters and export formats that are "executed" for a View against a selected Database Connection Profile.
Example Execution 1: You want to run the Performance Analysis View with a Client Number parameter of ABC123, against Database DEF, export the Detail Grid to Excel, and email it to the Director of Operations.
Example Execution 2: You want to run the Performance Analysis View with a Client Number parameter of DEF456, against Database ABC, export the Finished Report to PDF, and email it to the Dialer Manager.
Schedule: The date, time and interval you want to Job.
Example Schedule: You want to schedule the job to run the 3rd Thursday of every month starting on June 4th.
So How Will All Of This Work?
Glad you asked, let's walk through an example together.
Say we want to add a new Execution to an existing Job. First, we open up our Job and see what it's doing. In the example below we have 4 Views, with one of the Views disabled (unchecked), the ContactAnalysis-InboundCallAnalysis-Hourly.vdm report is selected and has 2 Executions. Next to the Executions we see the Execution's Properties.
The Executions can be created and managed manually, and global or bulk changes can be easily made by selection multiple executions and adjusting their properties.
Look a bit scary? Don't worry, we have you covered. We've created an Execution Wizard that'll walk you through the three step process of creating an Execution:
Step 1: Give the execution a Name, select the Database and the Controls you'd like to Export.
Step 2: Name the Output File, set the Export Location, select your Export Formats and adjust any of the additional optional properties.
Step 3: Apply the parameters (if any) for the Execution.
That's it, you're all set and you've created a new Execution.
How Do We Schedule The Job?
Another great question! Let's schedule the Job to run today May 29, 2020 at 3:00pm and continue to run every Friday. First step is to go to the Calendar and select New Appointment:
Set the Subject, add a Note, and set the Start and End Times. Then Click Select Jobs:
What a second, End Time? Yes, in v10 VDM will be able to attempt to run a job every minute between the start and end time, until it's had a successful Execution. This is to help those folks that have things go bump in the night (like unscheduled maintenance). VDM v10 won't give up if it fails the first time.
Next, select as many Jobs as you'd like for this Schedule and Click Finish. In this example I've selected 3 Jobs.
Set your Recurring schedule, click OK and then Save and Close.
That's it, you're all set. Your Jobs have been scheduled to run and are easily Viewed and Edited from the Calendar.
Our goal with v10 is to simply the management of scheduled reporting. You'll have the ability right click and reprocess failed Jobs and Executions, reschedule all your jobs in a few seconds and visually see what succeeded and failed without scouring over thousands of logs.
I'm hopeful this "insight" into VD v10 has been helpful. Speaking of "Insights" there's a major new feature coming to v10 that we've been keeping under wraps. You guessed it, we're calling it Insights. It will be a one stop shop for accessing all your Views' Data Grids, Charts, Visualizations and Finished Reports...without searching through emailed attachments or network drives, and no waiting for your reports to run. I'm planning on introducing you to Insights in the next couple weeks. Until then, have a wonderful weekend Community.
We always appreciate your feedback and questions.