Important Control-M Information for Year-End 2023

12 November 2023

BMC is alerting all users of Control-M products to special year-end procedures. If you have any questions about this technical bulletin, contact BMC Customer Support at 800 537 1813 (United States or Canada) or call your local support center.

Creating New Calendars

For each Control-M regular and periodic calendar at your site, ensure that entries exist for both 2024 and 2025. Create them if they do not exist. The entries can be either real or dummy entries that contain at least one day set to Y. These entries are required for the following reasons:

• At the end of 2023, Control‑M products might attempt to read calendar entries for 2024.
• During 2024, Control‑M products might attempt to read the calendar entries for 2025.

BMC recommends that you complete any necessary modifications before the beginning of 2024.

Retaining 2023 Calendar Definitions

BMC recommends retaining your 2023 calendar entries until mid‑2024 or later. At the beginning of 2024, Control‑M products might attempt to read entries for 2023.

Handling of Periodic Calendars

At the beginning of 2024, jobs might be scheduled incorrectly if you use periodic calendars. For example, if a calendar contains one or more periods that cross a boundary year (starting in one year and continuing in the next year), the job definition cannot assume that the beginning of the period coincides with the beginning of the year. To avoid this problem, remove the 2023 periodic calendar entry as soon as it is no longer needed.

Customizing Hard-coded Dates

Jobs might be scheduled incorrectly if specific dates are defined in job definitions. Hard-coded dates that are applicable to 2023 might not be appropriate in 2024.

For example, a job that is defined with a specific day and month but without a specific year (such as the seventh day of the tenth month) was meant for 2023. You might need to modify the date to 2024.

Review these definitions so that they will work correctly in 2024.

Customizing Control-M Variables

If you created any Control-M variables for 2023, review them to see if they need to be modified for 2024.

Preventing Deletion of Conditions (Events) with Date 0101

Some sites use static prerequisite events (previously known as conditions) that are not date-related (for example, SERVER-IS-UP). Early versions of Control-M products used the date 0101 to indicate these static events/conditions. Therefore, you must not erase such events/conditions with a date of 0101 because, in this scenario, they are intended to be static.

Set the Ignore New Day Conditions parameter to Y, and insert a list of event/condition prefixes that are not to be erased in the Ignore Conditions file. Events/conditions with a date of 0101 that are not in the Ignore Conditions file are deleted at the beginning of the year.

For more information about the Ignore Conditions file and the New Day procedure, see New Day Procedure.

Performing Daily Maintenance Tasks for Deletion of Old Conditions (Events)

Ensure that the maintenance job that you use to delete old events (previously known as conditions) from the active environment does not contain hard-coded dates such as these:

%%A = %%CALCDATE %%DATE -X

ctmcontb -deletefrom "*" 0101 %%A

You can also delete multiple events/conditions from the Control-M client.

Daylight Savings Time Support

For jobs that have job time zone support and run at locations that use Daylight Saving Time, update the Daylight Savings Time dates in the TimeZone.dat file in the relevant Control-M/Servers, Control-M/Enterprise Manager Servers, and all Control-M/Enterprise Manager Clients.

For information about updating Time Zone information, see BMC Knowledge Article 000200669.

For more details about Daylight Savings Time support, see Defining Daylight Savings Time Support.

Where to Get the Latest Product Information

To view the latest BMC documents, see the Support Central website at http://www.bmc.com/support. Notices such as flashes, technical bulletins, and release notes are available on the website. You can subscribe to proactive alerts to receive e-mail messages when notices are issued or updated. For more information about proactive alerts, see the Support Central website.