ActiveBatch Workload Automation vs. Fortra’s Automate

Any large business or organisation that wants to manage their workload effectively and with the least amount of room for error might choose the ActiveBatch Automation tool. Being a consultant I feel that It aids in task automation and has the flexibility to change in response to varying company requirements. It helps to save huge time by doing all the repetitive tasks on daily basis. During the patching activity the schedulers can be stopped. It also help by alerting us if any system/job is down so that SLA can be saved. Overall ActiveBatch Automation stands as a dependable cornerstone for ensuring the seamless operation of our tasks.

Incentivized

Anything where automation would be helpful, I'd recommend. If you're doing a task over and over again, Automate can likely work and do it for you. It helps to keep things running exactly the same so that when failures occur, they can easily be traced to their source.

Incentivized

• Makes scheduling easy to understand, follow, and rerun jobs when necessary.
• Allows for cross-team coordination of scheduled tasks which reduces errors.
• Makes stopping jobs easy when needed for server/database downtime.
• Scripting enables us to easily change email addresses for failed job alerts.
• Nested plans/jobs make creating and changing dependencies simple.

Incentivized

• Wiki pages
• Blogs
• Articles
• Triggers
• Building crons
• Automating daily tasks

Incentivized

• String handling / parsing. I find myself using PowerShell to do a fair amount of text parsing (particularly if manipulations are needed) - not necessarily a bad thing, but certainly a place where ActiveBatch could be improved.
• Debugging - or lack of it! With no stepping debugger, it can be a longer process than many other programming / scripting environments: rather than simply stepping through and observing state changes, I find myself inserting logging steps to excess, then having to clean them up once the error is found.
• The perennial - Documentation! While a near-universal complaint for *any* software, ActiveBatch's developer documentation is somewhat spotty - just where I need detail, I find summary-level info. There is lots of documentation (as there should be for a tool with such a wide range of applications), but it is in mixed formats (some PDF, some CHM), and the descriptions of specific fields within job steps is often little more than I can get in a tool-tip in the GUI. Allowable ranges, expected formats for string data, and similar helpful details are inconsistent.
• The KnowledgeBase at ASCI's web site often has examples which answer the questions I have, but not always - and not always under the search terms one would think to use.

• There should be more tools around system stability and recovery.
• Better ways to manage resources to prevent OS crashes.
• Automate backups internally without tasks.
• System failure alerts if the machine crashes or reboots.

Incentivized

We can easily add new plans/jobs in our batch schedules. Also, coordination with reporting and QA jobs is simple to do. Building schedules, restarting jobs, triggering dependencies is easy to understand. The system is very stable and allows us to easily see overall processing times.

Incentivized

It's just very easy to use, extremely versatile, and very reliable. It's hard to find use cases where it won't work.

Incentivized

My colleague contacted them directly, I only know hearsay on this but it was not good.

Incentivized

Support is very helpful and responsive, although using the tool is very user-friendly, so I hardly use the service.

Incentivized

The workload automation solution is based on the specific needs of an organization, as well as the features, capabilities, and costs of various solutions. A thorough evaluation process and consideration of these factors can help ensure the selection of a solution that aligns with overall business objectives and meets the specific needs of the organization.

Incentivized

It has similar usage cases and functions. However, many tools are stuck behind paywalls and always try to upsell you to the next version. It's very upsetting. Even if it's cheaper, whenever I try to replicate the functionality, I get that annoying message, "not available in this version." As an IT professional who needs approval for every purchase, I can't keep asking for upgrades to existing tools.

Incentivized

• ActiveBatch can automate intricate procedures and minimise manual involvement, which can boost an organization's production and efficiency.
• Organisations can save money by using ActiveBatch to automate operations, which lowers the expenses of manual labour and potential mistakes.
• Implementing ActiveBatch could come with hefty up-front expenses including licencing, instruction, and consultancy fees, which could have a short-term negative impact on ROI.

• Positive: Reliability on FTP jobs - really important on bank files.
• Negative - annual support a little pricey - but not unusual for this level of software.
• Positive: Does not require a dedicated administrator, especially after the jobs are created and tested. I perform other job duties and this rarely interferes with them.
• Positive - Since it is easy to learn and use it makes it easy to have a back up administrator

Incentivized