Periodicity: Specifying Automatic Job Repetition  

Use

To run your job not only at a particular time, but also to repeat it at regular intervals, you can specify a periodicity, or frequency of repetition. This can be specified in Define Background Job in Transaction SM36 (CCMS ® Jobs ® Definition).

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       1.      Start the process of specifying when the job will start by choosing the Start condition button.

       2.      Choose the button at the top of the Start Time screen for the type of start condition you want to use (Immediate, Date/Time, After job, After event, or At operation mode) and complete the start time definition.

       3.      For the job to repeat, check the Periodic job box at the bottom of the Start Time screen and choose the Period values button below it to define the frequency of repetition (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or another specific time-related period).

       4.      Choose the “Save” button in the Period values to accept the periodicity and return to the Start Time screen.

When a periodic job’s start time is After event, the system repeats the job every time the relevant event is triggered.

A periodic-job series is not interrupted if one of the jobs terminates abnormally. The background processing alert monitor warns you if any jobs abort, but if the job was not executed at all, there will be no following job. For more information, see Displaying Job Alerts.

Start-Time Windows and Job Repetition

If you schedule a job with a start-time window (that is, a range of time rather than a particular time) and want to have the job repeated, the background processing system adjusts the start-time window so that its length remains constant and is relative to the respective start time.  If you specify a start-time window of six hours, then each repetition of the job will also have a six-hour start-time window, starting when the job repetition is scheduled.

You cannot use the start-time window to limit the time of day during which a job is repeated. Scheduling a repeatable job to run between 10:00pm and 6:00am does not guarantee that the job will be repeated only within this time period. Rather, the full start-time window will be applied to all of the repetitions of the job according to the rules above.

For example, you schedule a job to run between 10:00 this evening and 6:00 tomorrow morning and to be repeated every hour. The job will be triggered to repeat only after it has started the first time. At 10:00, the job starts. At the same time, the system schedules it again for 11:00. The start-time window for the job has been adjusted to 11:00 and 7:00.

As the system schedules each repeated job, it adjusts the start-time window to remain the length you specified. The repeat job for 1:00am, for example, will have a start time window of 1:00 to 9:00.

To limit the job to the time period between 10:00 and 6:00, you could define a job that schedules separate jobs to run each hour from 10:00 to 6:00. None of the jobs should be periodic.

To limit an automatically repeated job to a particular time window, you’ll need to write a program yourself to schedule the jobs. Your program could schedule a separate job for each repetition that falls within the time period. For more information, please see the manual Programming with the Background Processing System.