SAP PaPM Cloud Standard Model – Cron expression for Process Scheduler

[Gene_Herrera]

Hello SAP Community!

This blogpost for the SAP Profitability and Performance Management Cloud – Standard Model (SAP PaPM Cloud SM) will introduce the enhancement of our Process Scheduler. As you have read in the last blogpost of 2024 Recurring Process and Multi-Selection of Activities in Process Scheduler, we have introduced the improvements of the Process Scheduler with regards to scheduling a job in recurring scenarios and being able to select multiple activities.

We are happy to announce the latest improvements in the Process Scheduler which we are adding the cron format of scheduling a job to accommodate our customers' needs . To support this feature, we have added a new field called Schedule Type, where users can select between One Time, Repeat Interval and Cron type for job scheduling. Let’s take a look at these different schedule types below:

One Time
This schedule type is basically almost the original state of the Process Scheduler when it was initially introduced in this blogpost Process Scheduler: Execution made easy by Scheduling a “Job” in SAP Profitability and Performance Ma... which allows the user to configure a one-time job. Moreover, you are now capable of selecting multiple activities inside the process template/process instance that will run sequentially as introduced in the recent enhancement. Here’s how to create a job using One Time schedule type.

After maintaining the fields and choosing CONFIRM button, the created job will be visible in the job list panel with “Scheduled” state.

Once the planned launch date and time is reached, the state of the job will be in “Completed” status while the Run Status and the Result in the job details panel will be populated.

Repeat Interval
This schedule type was the enhancement we have mentioned in this blogpost Recurring Process and Multi-Selection of Activities in Process Scheduler - we can schedule a job in recurring scenario using Human-Readable Date Formats. Here's what it looks like:

In this job example, we are scheduling a recurring job of every 5 minutes from 16:25 to 16:35 which will give us a total of 3 runs. After selecting the CONFIRM button, the job will be created with the "Scheduled" status and the "Repeat Interval" column will be populated with the schedule parameter we maintained in the "Add Process Schedule" dialogue. After the "Active Until" date and time was reached, the state of the job will be in "Completed" state and all the runs will be updated with run status and results. 

Spoiler

Note: If the "Active Until" field is not maintained, the job will run indefinitely or until the job has been deleted in the Process Scheduler screen.

Cron
This schedule type was introduced to accommodate scheduling of jobs recurrently in a more complex way. You may refer to this documentation to know more about using Cron Format.

The Cron schedule type will introduce the following new fields:

1. XS Cron Expression - This is a free text field to which the users can input their cron expressions (In the example above, it means the job will run every hour at 12:00 to 09:00 UTC between Mondays to Fridays).
2. Active Since - Specify the date and time when the scheduled job will start running. This field is not mandatory. If left blank, the first recurrence will be schedule at the earliest possible time after the job creation according to the maintained cron expression. 
3. Active Until - Specify the date and time when the scheduled job will stop running. This field is also not mandatory. If left blank, the job will be running indefinitely, or until deleted.

Spoiler

IMPORTANT! Cron uses the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). If you are to use Cron as schedule type, the time that you have to enter in the cron expression field should be in UTC. 

If you want to use Cron but do not know how to write one, we got you covered! You can use the "Generate Basic XS Cron Expression" picker beside the XS Cron Expression field . This option is introduced to help our beginner users to use this schedule type. Bear in mind that the picker cannot do all the combinations that technical users can produce manually. Since it is a free text field, after you have generated a cron expression using the picker, you can still edit the cron expression according to your requirements. You can pick from Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Yearly options. Let's talk about it one by one. 

Daily
If you choose Daily as frequency, it will run everyday at a given time. As shown below, I'm choosing to run the job daily at 08:00. 

Since my system time is in UTC+08:00, when I hit CONFIRM, the generated Cron expression will be scheduled at 12:00 UTC. 

Weekly
If you choose weekly as frequency, you can run a job in a specific time and day/days of the week. For my example below, I will run the job at 18:00 every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please see below:

The generated cron expression will look like this. 

Again, it does not look like I chose 18:00 as the maintained time but 10:00 since the cron generator will automatically convert the maintained system time to UTC time. 

Monthly
If we choose monthly as frequency, you can run a job in a specific time in specific day/days of the month. In my example below, I want to run a job at 18:00 every 1st, 10th, 15th, 20th and 30th day of the month. 

The generated cron expression will look like this:

Yearly
If you choose yearly as frequency, you can choose the specific time, months and days of the month accordingly. In my example below, I want to run my job on the 1st, 15th and 30th of January, June and December at 18:00. 

The generated cron will look like this:

After selecting the CONFIRM button, the state of the job will be in "Scheduled" state and the XS Cron Expression column header will show the maintained cron expression.

And there you have it. Like and share this blog post with your colleagues who may be interested in this new feature. This information is also available in our Application Help. 

Thank you!