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Custom Calendar

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LauraPat
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7/6/2016 3:37 PM

Because we don't have a true job scheduler (like Tidal - which works awesome with Lawson!) - I'm looking for a way to create a custom calendar and have programs key off of that to determine whether a program should run or not based on whether it is a holiday, etc.  We have jobs that we do not want to run on holidays and as far as I can tell there is nothing in the Lawson job scheduler for that.  I was thinking of create a custom database calendar - that could be updated once a year via a Lawson form, to indicate holidays, etc and then have the program key off of that to determine if it truly should run or not.  has anybody done this?  Does anybody have any other ideas?  Thanks in advance! - Laura

jaherb
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7/6/2016 5:58 PM

Laura....   I do a lot of bi-weekly scheduling of jobs which the Lawson scheduler is not flexible enough for that.   I do this by using a custom table in which I track the last time the job was run.  At the completion of the job, it will update this table with the run time and date.  When the job starts again, I check the table and if it has not been at least 13 days, I end the job.   You could use something like this table to track your companies holidays and internally in the program check the entries and end the program if desired.   

 

You could build your table and index it by the company holidays you observe.  I have use this at several clients, when I did work for Lawson, and have had no issue with it.

The table I use looks like this... FIELD NAME             DESCRIPTION/VALID VALUES                  UPDATED BY ZHJ-PROG-ID            Alpha 5                                   Element: Prod Id ZHJ-DESC               Alpha 20                                 Element: Desc ZHJ-DATE               Numeric 8  (yyyymmdd)                   Element: Date ZHJ-TIME               Numeric 8                                Element: Time ZHJ-NUMERIC            Numeric 5 Element: Numeric ZHJ-TEXT               Alpha 70 Element: Text ZHJ-USER-ID            Alpha 10  (Lower Case)                Element: User Id ZHJPARM FILE INDEX NAME      KEY FIELDS    DESCRIPTION / SUBSET CONDITION           USED IN ZHJSET1   PROG-ID                                                      DESC ZHJSET2   PROG-ID           DESC           DATE

LauraPat
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7/6/2016 6:07 PM
Thanks - I like this idea.  This is kind of the way I was heading.  So basically all we'd have to do is enter those holidays/dates that we do NOT want the program to run and use the PROG-ID/DATE to key in on and if there is an entry for the program/date - I would have to program stop running.  Thanks again for your help.  At my previous employer we had Tidal Job Scheduling software and it worked great with Lawson - we could set up all the  custom calendars (period end/holiday, etc) and only run the actual jobs on those days - but you're right - Lawson's job scheduled is severely limited.
jaherb
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7/8/2016 3:43 PM
That is correct.... Lawson job scheduler leaves a lot to be desired...

This process has worked very well for me over the years... It does require the creation of this custom table however. It is very flexible and you can index the table anyway you desire to meet your requirements. I have managed to stay with the format I showed above and have not needed to get into holiday detail such as you are doing... but I think this would work fine for you as well. Hope it works out for you...  You would need to set up a Quick Paint of the table to maintain it as well.  

Jim