Background job monitoring and analysis for functional consultants

Monitoring background job is one of the basic knowledge point for any SAP consultant because as you schedule a job, it is expected to run successfully, but in several instances, it fails. We need to understand how the job screen looks like and how you can analyse or monitor a job.

SAP: User Menu

• Go to the T-code SM37
• Fill the below details as required.
  • Job Name
  • User Name (who scheduled the job).
    You can put * in both fields to get details of all jobs scheduled by all the users.
  • Select the Job Status checkboxes for which you want to monitor the job:
    1. Scheduled (for any future date)
    2. Released
    3. Ready
    4. Active
    5. Finished
    6. Cancelled
  • Put the date range/or after event as per the requirement.

Or explicitly mention the program name (if you have)

The jobs matching your criteria will be populated.

Job Overview screen

This screen usually contains of the below columns:

• Job Name: The name of scheduled job
• SPOOL: The data processed/being processed by this job
• Job Document: Any job document (if available)
• Job CreatedB: User who scheduled the job
• Status: Current status – finished/active/released/cancelled/etc
• Start Date: The date on which job is scheduled to run/date on which the job started
• Start Time: Time at which job is scheduled to run/time at which the job started
• Duration (sec.): Total duration of job in seconds
• Delay: Duration due to which the job was delated in seconds and was not started in time. It may have several reasons, such as:
  • Maintenance mode
  • Rolling kernel switch
  • Subsystem isolation
  • Imminent downtime
  • Server not available
  • Server group not available
  • Server group does not exist
  • Server group contains no servers
  • System was not available, etc
• Cli: The SAP client in which the job is scheduled to run/is running
• Reason for Delay: The reason for delay will be populated in this column as per the above reason list.

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Analysing Job Failures in SAP (T-Code: SM37)

Click on Job Log button to trace the error due to which job was cancelled.

The Standard Menu bar

The log will show you the exact time at which the job terminated along with the reason. You can take help from Long Text button in the Standard Toolbar, Message number/Message Type combination to further determine the error.
 

Job Log of a selected job

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Job correction of an Active Job

The scheduled job can be checked and corrected in the system. Follow the below procedure in order to do so:

• Go to T-code SM37 and select the desired job
• Select the (active) job which is causing the issue
• Click the Job->Check status (Ctrl+Shift+F12) in the Menu Bar
• This will display the result in the Status Bar and will repair the Job status if it finds any issue 

Job > Check Status of an Active Job

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Job and Work List Analysis

Go to the t-code SM50 to retrieve the active Work Processes. It will help you with the time and the total number of active work processes in the summary screen.

Standard display options for Work Processes in SM50

When you want a technical analysis of a work process, select the line/double-click or click on the WP Info button on the standard toolbar.

Selecting Active Work Processes only will select only the work processes which are in ‘running’ state (and not in ‘waiting’ or any other state). This screen will help you find out the number of times a job failed so far. As you go further, you may find the options as Memory/Database Statistics, Runtime/Application information, etc. This is a straight-forward approach to find out the load of the scheduled job.

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