Any solutions out there batch schedules on paper?

[neorichieb1971]

Hi all,

I'm trying to find a solution for work but I can't find anything online due to the keywords used being utilized in different ways.

I work in I.T and we have a scheduler (MS Excel lol) which extracts data from a database on a daily basis and creates a paper schedule. The guy who wrote it has moved on and it only runs on XP.

So I want to find a solution that does it today!!!

So what sort of program can create a list of events on a paper schedule based on rules (calendar day etc) to extract a list of programs that need to run on a particular day?

Everything I google about batch processing is about windows batch processing and automation systems. Neither of which is what I am looking for. I want the ghetto version.


Thanks if you have any ideas.

[GaijinPunch]

Sounds like it's good that your guy left. Windows has a Job Scheduler that AFAIK, is kinda lame, but sounds a lot more intuitive than what you have now. Linux has cron which is ancient, and works just fine, but that sounds like it's not an option.

[neorichieb1971]

Sounds like it's good that your guy left. Windows has a Job Scheduler that AFAIK, is kinda lame, but sounds a lot more intuitive than what you have now. Linux has cron which is ancient, and works just fine, but that sounds like it's not an option.

We use paper schedules. Where you actually run down it like a shopping list. What I want is a program where you can program in the list and create a paper schedule out of it.

What your talking about we have those things already. But one of the systems is so archaic we do actually run programs with commands, tick it of the list, and go to the next one.

The problem is, the person in charge of the schedule program that extracts a Universe schedule and puts it into Excel has moved on, nobody knows how to update it and I want to take control of that aspect. Unfortunately management will not want to change how it fundamentally works. So it must stay as a paper schedule.

As I understand it, the database in Universe looks at the date/day/julian and extracts what runs on that day and outputs this to excel. But the problem is if I search google for batch processing list/editor or something it comes back with automation solutions.

[GaijinPunch]

Your description is definitely too vague to know exactly what to do. (I have no clue what a paper scheduler is). The long term solution would be to learn from the many lessons your company has just learned. Document everything, don't let only one person know how to do something, and don't stick to archaic solutions. It's just a matter of time until you're right where you are now.

Something I've done before in a similar situation: call the person involved. Did he leave on good terms? Maybe you can take him out for a beer and a hand job to even things out?

For the immediate, seeing as how I know almost nothing about Windows, I do know the basics of computing. Do you know how this thing starts? Is it definitely in Excel? If it's in Excel it's likely in a macro. But... Excel macros don't just run on their own. Something has to be starting it, no?

[neorichieb1971]

A paper schedule is just what it is.

Its a list of program names on a piece of paper that looks like a check list.




The JOB ID in the left corner is the scheduler ID, but since this is a mockup done in google sheets I just put *** in there. When the job scheduler program runs it outputs these references to the list if the job is scheduled on that day.

"Comments" column has job dependencies, time dependencies and other job names a particular job cannot run against. In this example all entries just have start times, as I was extracting these jobs from the main schedule in this mock up.

Ref Column would have a link to online documentation for the job.

You write the start and end times of the job and the print spooler numbers in the right hand columns.


As its stands a schedule similar to something above is auto generated from the system on which these programs run and it exports the data to a Excel spreadsheet. And that becomes the schedule for that day. The schedules are different everyday.

So what I want is a program that can do that in 2016.

I'm not very good at explaining things so sorry about that.

[GaijinPunch]

I would guess you'd have a very hard time finding something exactly like this since it is the definition of reinventing the wheel. Windows already does this stuff via Job Scheduler. However, it doesn't sound like it's something that's hard to code, assuming you are able to code. In fact, if I had to do something like this I'd do it in Python.

[TransatlanticFoe]

You mention a database. It's relatively easy to get Oracle to run a query and output as a CSV, which you can load into Excel. Scheduling it can be done within Oracle or externally via something like Cron. I guess the same is true of similar database technologies.