The Job Manager

The Job Manager allows you to automate several tasks which can be time consuming such as importing, validating and performing conflict analysis and resolution operations. You can schedule such tasks at desired times and these actions can be automated without interaction. Like anything you take the time to automate, this will help ensure that the exact same series of steps is performed on any package.

• Scan for Dependencies - analyzes a Windows Installer package for dependent files, just as is done in the Application Manager. This information is used primarily to enhance the quality of any future Patch Impact Analysis scans for this package.

• Directory Monitoring - watches a directory and imports any packages found within. It generates a report that captures the state of the package at the time the report is generated. If you wish, these reports may be used in e-mail notifications which may be sent when a Job finishes execution.

• Validation - verifies the internal data integrity of a Windows installer package by performing validation scans using a specified cub file.

• Best Practice Detection - this uses ACE files that scan for best practices against a package to enforce Microsoft Windows Installer standards (limited to a single package).

• Conflict Detection - performs conflict detection against selected packages.

• Import - imports a specified package (supports all but MSM files) into the Application Catalog (limited to a single package).

• Resolution - performs automatic conflict resolution on one or more MSI packages.

To schedule a reoccurring job, you need to choose the start time when creating the job and then use the "schedule" option from the "Manage Jobs" tab in order to see options to have a job reoccur.

You can schedule jobs for off hours, or to have them run right away. As your application catalog grows, the importing, scanning and resolving tasks can become more and more time consuming. Particularly in environments where you have a very large number of packages and OS snapshots to work with, the ability to schedule these tasks for after you go home could make you very happy.

Summary

FLEXnet AdminStudio 7 Enterprise is a significant step forward for those of us that spend time repackaging applications for deployment. Some of the many tools that can make us more successful, can also make the work more tedious. The tools offered by FLEXnet AdminStudio 7 Enterprise Edition can contribute greatly to alleviating this pain. If all this still isn't enough for you Workflow Manager expands on this further by adding package request, assignment, management and reporting capabilities to the web interface provided by AdminStudio. AdminStudio 7 offers an excellent set of integrated tools which provides unique and innovative features for package development, quality assurance and management. Download an evaluation copy from here (note you must check the provided box on the download form in order to evaluate the additional features of the enterprise edition.) 

Bob Kelly
12/15/2005

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