Managing jobs in progress

The Tasks in Progress view lets you see and manage jobs that are currently executing. All jobs execute in the background. While they are executing, you can use the Tasks in Progress view to view, obtain information about, and cancel or abort jobs. If a job fails, the Tasks in Progress view shows the failed job until you delete it. Double-clicking on the job shows any error messages.

When jobs are executing in the background, you can close the BMC Server Automation Console and the jobs continues to run. When you open the console, if jobs are currently running in the background, the Tasks in Progress view displays information about them.

Before you begin

To cancel any job, a role must be granted both Read and Cancel permissions for that type of job. For example, to cancel a Deploy Job, your role must be granted DeployJob.Cancel and DeployJob.Read.

Information in the Task in Progress view

The Tasks in Progress view provides various information about the jobs that are executing in the background. The following table presents the information provided in the Tasks in Progress view for each task in progress.

Column	Description
Progress	Progress bar shows how much of the job or task has executed.
Activity	Status of the job or task. This column provides values such as Running, Cancel Pending, Completed Successfully, Completed With Errors, and Completed With Warnings.
Start Time	Time when the job began.
Name	Name of the job that is executing.
Type	Type of job.
User	User who executed the job.
Role	Name of the role of the user who executed the job.
Priority	Job execution priority level (available priority levels are Critical, High, Normal, Low, and Lowest).
MAC Address	(Provision Job only) Media Access Control address (MAC address) is a unique identifier assigned to most network adapters or network interface cards by the manufacturer.
Waiting for approval	When you submit a job that requires BMC Remedy ITSM approval, the job is blocked until approval notification is received from BMC Remedy ITSM. The job displays a status of Waiting for Approval. Additional statuses are possible if BMC Server Automation is configured to integrate with BMC Remedy ITSM.
Host Name	(Provision Job only) Name of the host on which the job is executing.
Device Type	(Provision Job only) The provisioning technology being used to provision the server — PXE, JumpStart, or NIM.
Device Description	(Provision Job only) Description of the device being provisioned.

To cancel or abort jobs in progress

Select one or more jobs listed in the Tasks in Progress view. Use Shift-click or Control-click to select multiple tasks.

Click Cancel.
In the displayed message, click either Cancel after tasks finish or End tasks now. The Cancel after tasks finish option sends out requests to cancel tasks and allows time for threads to shut down. The End tasks now option triggers a more forceful and immediate termination of tasks.

Note

When you try to abort a compliance job by clicking End tasks now, the results are not saved. But when you select a long-running compliance job and click Cancel after tasks finish, the results of the finished components are saved and the remaining job execution is aborted.

For a Batch job, the Cancel after tasks finish option waits for child jobs to be cancelled and only then cancels the parent job, while the End tasks now option terminates the parent job first and then also terminates the child jobs. When you cancel after tasks finish or end task an executing Workflow Job, a request to cancel the associated workflow process is sent to BMC Atrium Orchestrator, and process termination messages (with a status of either CANCELLED or COMPENSATED) are returned to the Workflow Job run log. A child job cannot be cancelled if it has already started executing.

To pause and resume jobs in progress

You can pause a running job, or group of jobs, to enable resources to be used by more critical jobs, or to modify the runtime execution priority of a job.

For example, consider the following scenario. The default priority for Deploy Jobs in your environment is Normal, yet you have a Deploy Job which needs to be executing immediately. There are a lot of other jobs running at this time, so to ensure that your Deploy Job is executed as efficiently and quickly as possible, you do the following:

Pause the other non-critical jobs
Pause your Deploy Job and change the runtime priority to HIGH
Resume your Deploy Job
Resume the other jobs after your job has completed

Note

To pause and resume any job, a role must be granted both Read and PauseResumeExecution permissions for that type of job. For example, to pause and resume a Deploy Job, your role must be granted DeployJob.PauseResumeExecution and DeployJob.Read.

To pause and resume a job in progress, complete the following steps:

Select one or more jobs listed in the Tasks in Progress view. Use Shift-click or Control-click to select multiple tasks.
Click Pause .
If desirable, click Modify Runtime Priority to change the execution priority for the job.
When ready, click Resume Execution to resume the job.

To close the Tasks in Progress view

Choose Close on the tab or right-click the Task in Progress view tab and choose Close . If a job begins when the Tasks in Progress view is hidden, a dialog informs you that the job has started running in the background.