We have automated about 1,425 jobs. I’ll have to admit that I know
virtually nothing about SAP and how it is implemented. We run, to my knowledge, the traditional
accounting functions and payroll/personnel and some other modules. All I did was discuss with our users what they
were currently doing and how that would translate into various UC4 objects. The SAP scheduling has been replaced with UC4
scheduling and dependency relationships.
We chose not to use all of
the UC4 SAP functions and to leave the existing SAP jobs unmodified so that
they could continue to develop and execute them with or without UC4.
All of the jobs use a common
Include in their Process tab that contains the R3_ACTIVATE_JOB NAME and R3_GET_JOB_SPOOL
FILE functions. The jobs have nothing
coded in their SAP tab. We have a number
of repeating executions of tasks, i.e. every 15 minutes throughout the day, and
these are a scheduled Event objects that use the ACTIVATE_UC_OBJECT function in
their ! Process tab.
There are lots of places
where a process flow needs to stop for some type of manual verification. A Script object was created that checks to
see if the execution is a restart. If it is
not, a STOP MSG function is executed and the process flow will block. When it is ready to proceed after the
required verification, the blocked task is simply restarted via the Monitor and
since it is a restart, the script ends normally.
We have automated all but
about 15% of our current SAP portfolio.
I expect that the remaining work will also be converted and I am just
waiting on a request from our users.
A small utility program was
written that read a list of job, plan and event names along with basic
scheduling and repeat requirements. The program
read the list, actually a csv file, and it generated the required XML for subsequent
IMPORT. It was very basic and the only
subsequent object editing was adding the various tasks to the process flows. Many of the generated flows only contain a
single task, a job, and they needed no further editing.