ActiveBatch by Redwood Reviews

The primary use case of using ActiveBatch Workload Automation Software is that it enables IT teams to define, schedule, and execute a wide range of batch jobs and workflows, including file transfers, database changes, and application integrations (and much more), all from a single central platform. 

The software can automate mission-critical business processes with ease. My work environment has a large number of applications that must be handled simultaneously. In this scenario, the software really helps to monitor all the processes, which reduces manual intervention and human error while increasing productivity.

My organization's IT operations have been made more efficient by Active Batch, which automates time-consuming, repetitive procedures. The active batch may assist in making sure that crucial activities are carried out in the proper sequence and at the appropriate time with the use of features like job dependencies, event triggers, and notifications. 

Additionally, the software offers real-time monitoring and reporting features that let IT teams keep tabs on the progress of their batch operations and workflows. 

Overall, the software helps organizations improve the reliability and performance of their IT systems.

The Active Batch Workload Automation Software has a feature that I truly appreciate: it automatically distributes workloads over various servers and resources, improving performance and ensuring that the necessary resources are used for the right jobs. 

The software also supports a wide variety of platforms and applications, including Windows, Linux, Unix, and many more popular enterprise applications, making it a flexible and versatile solution for automating critical business workflows. I highly recommend the software.

While ActiveBatch is a robust and comprehensive workload automation software, I feel that it will be of great help if it is improved in the following areas:

As more organizations are moving towards a cloud-based infrastructure, ActiveBatch could incorporate more capabilities that support popular cloud platforms, such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. 

Active Batch could also offer deeper integration with DevOps tools to enable more streamlined and automated software development processes. 

Apart from these enhancements, everything about the software is highly appreciated.

I have been using this solution for the past six to 12 months.

Most of the jobs are for the automation of processes, but we also use it for IT operations, including monitoring. We execute over 20,000 jobs daily.

It's moving data files and doing a lot of calculations in hydrology and the like. The business users are maintaining their own jobs, setting them up, configuring, and maintaining them. They only contact us, in IT,  if there are any problems. 

ActiveBatch is completely on-prem but the rest of our organization has many different kinds of infrastructure and locations, both in the cloud and in 16 countries. We have about 4,000 employees.

The automation has saved us many hours although I can't say exactly how many.

We're able to create workflows without coding.

I would imagine it has also resulted in an improvement in workflow completion times as well.

Our IT organization is using it for monitoring. We get information by running checks using ActiveBatch to obtain information to provide to the monitoring systems. It helps us keep systems up and to receive early warning about problems.

We use the main job-scheduling feature. It's the only thing we use in the tool. That's the reason we are using the tool: to reduce costs by replacing manual tasks with automated tasks and to perform regular, repetitive tasks in a more reliable way.

It's quite customizable because it supports many different platforms and technologies, and it covers almost everything we need to set up different jobs in our environment. We are using it mostly for our Windows and Unix servers and we are using different triggers, for example, Apache ActiveMQ. It is used by many different applications and systems. We use various databases, including Oracle, SQL Server, Microsoft, as well as Active Directory.

We are at the beginning of implementing agents in our Azure cloud. We haven't used that part very much yet but it will be used. We are moving more and more systems from on-prem to the cloud, so it will increase gradually.

It could be easier to provide dashboards on how many jobs are running at the same time; more monitoring.

We've been using ActiveBatch for at least 10 years. We're on version 11 but we are planning to upgrade to version 12 in a couple of months. 

I'm not an end-user, I'm just responsible for making sure it's working. I troubleshoot if something is wrong and I do upgrading and installing.

It's pretty reliable. If it's organized and configured in an optimal way it works pretty well, but it requires a lot of planning. For example, you have to make sure that end-users don't have too many privileges because they can mess things up. It's very important to plan carefully before implementing.

We have had some issues in one of our installations in Germany, but they are still on version 10, which is quite an old implementation. They will replace that with the new version 12 in the near future.

The scalability is quite good. You can add more agents. We haven't had any performance problems or issues with it.

The number of jobs and the number of applications that take advantage of ActiveBatch are growing constantly within our company. 

Other than scheduling in Windows, I don't think our company had a previous solution.

ActiveBatch was already implemented when I came to this company, but I have been here for a couple of upgrades.

Some parts of the setup are straightforward and some parts are more complex. The main features are pretty straightforward to set up but when it comes to the features that require an internet information server, it's a bit more tricky to set the secure connections and certificates, etc. We struggled a bit with that but we had good support from the vendor. They were able to make it work.

The implementation itself doesn't take a long time, but it takes a lot of planning: Security, execution agents, and the like. 

There are two of us who work with ActiveBatch maintenance, but it's not a full-time responsibility. We have between 100 and 200 people who transact with it. Some of them have read-only access so that they can view the jobs.

I also have experience with CA Workload Automation. It has been some years since I worked with it but it's the same concept and the same features but doing things in slightly different ways. 

Start with a simple, small version and try some simple tasks to see how effective it is.

Using  ActiveBatch I have learned that the potential for reducing costs using an automation tool is huge, and that when the business becomes aware of it they really embrace the product.

ActiveBatch helped us to streamline our IT workflows and improve overall efficiency. It is the most essential tool in our Infrastructure now. 

The best part of ActiceBatch is its user-friendly Interface, which feels easy to use even for a user with limited technical experience. 

We can configure and design complex workflows. 

It also offers pre-built templates and wizards which can be used to easily and quickly create automated workflows. 

ActiveBatch also includes the option to implement it in on-premises, cloud, and hybrid deployments.

Managing the workload and monitoring the tasks were very difficult with manual interventions. Now, by using ActiveBatch, the process is automated and it runs tasks on a scheduled basis. We can set tasks for daily, monthly, or weekly runs. 

This powerful and reliable tool can be implemented in small businesses and large enterprises that are looking to automate their IT workloads. 

It is used to trigger tasks at specified frequencies, We have also integrated ActiveBatch with different services and applications.

There any many outstanding features in ActiveBatch. For example, error-handling functionality has decreased the errors and issues triggered, which has improved the accuracy of the results. 

ActiveBatch is a valuable tool in our organization as it has increased efficiency and time consumption. It handles large workloads, and batch jobs and automates transfers effortlessly. 

The alerting feature helps notify and address the status of the jobs running and keeps the operations uninterrupted.

After upgrades we are facing a few issues and errors triggered, so focusing on this would be appreciated. Some of the advanced features in the user interface are a bit confusing even after referring to the documents. 

Improvement in support is much needed; there is a lack of training videos that would help us gain more understanding of the product. 

Sometimes, triggering fails and we have to face a lot of issues, Initially while setting up installation we will be confused. 

Integration with other applications should be improved

I've been using ActiveBatch Workload Automation for approximately two years.

We have a security project where we need to perform daily scans on a number of our servers and network infrastructure components and keep a check on their health and status. We have implemented the ActiveBatch to perform endpoint security scans on our environment for each and every component and provide us with a detailed report stating their health as well as updating on that server and components that need upgrades. We have scheduled the scans to take place every 12 hours on a daily basis and provide the major stakeholder with detailed reports. 

ActiveBatch has really improved our project by automating the endpoint security scans on our servers and also other components of our environment. 

Being a security project we should have a complete picture of the health of each and every component as well as the servers that need to be upgraded to avoid any malware attacks on non-upgraded servers due to existing vulnerabilities. This has saved associates a number of critical business hours that can be used to concentrate on critical business tasks rather than spending them performing repetitive security scans.

The automation feature is a very valuable feature as the associates do not have to worry about performing repetitive tasks (i.e. endpoint security scans on a daily basis) that would take several hours to complete on a daily basis.

It is also faster and more efficient in conducting endpoint security scans compared to associates who perform it manually, reducing the scope of error and also providing a detailed report on each and every component present in our environment. The reports are very detailed and visually appealing that is shared with major stakeholders.

This product is the gold standard of all the automation tools around. You can schedule jobs easily. It is faster and also more efficient. The product also provides a detailed dashboard after the endpoint security scans are performed. 

The only service that needs improvement is integration support. There are very few documents that provide us with detailed information on the troubleshooting of errors that occur during integration with the existing environment. The team could create more documents and also publish blogs to support customers with queries. 

I've used the solution for less than a year.

As a QA engineer, monitoring logs in the production environment was one tedious task. This was time-consuming and required lots of manual effort. However, using ActiveBatch Workload minimized the downtime and maximized productivity.

Job scheduling is another major advantage of this tool. At the time, there were nightly batch jobs like Trigger Service, User Service, Notifications Service, and many more, which were easily handled by ActiveBatch Workload and made our job simple and effortless. We currently have 25 jobs running on this platform with different environments.

There were more than 20 bots developed for the closure of tickets, and every bot has to be run on different environments. Using ActiveBatch has improved our job scheduling and reduced the manual effort of closing similar kinds of tickets. This way, operation costs are significantly reduced. Anyone can now run the bots and complete the automation work with zero knowledge.

We work with different time zones. This tool helped to schedule the jobs irrespective of a timeframe as this tool supports all time zones, and the jobs are scheduled accordingly.

We used to monitor the dashboard every hour to report in which task the orders failed, and huge task failures were to be immediately reported. 

Using this tool, if there are any huge failures, we immediately get an email notification, and the proper team will be informed, at which time they can act accordingly. It helped us to stop having to monitor the dashboard each and every hour. This helped us to avoid huge impacts on our business.

We also have integrated three different applications and are able to fetch information without any issues.

Setting up the software was hard. This could still be made easier. At times, the email alerts won’t work properly. There should be proper documentation for the email workflow.

The new version looks good, however, it has lots of lag and often crashes - unlike the older versions. 

Exporting the documents in .jpg format was a bit difficult.

Customer Service could be better.

It's been one year since I’ve been using ActiveBatch Workload Automation. It made my job easy by providing automation for job scheduling and monitoring.

As of now, the product looks stable, and it works well in all environments. This is a go-to product for all organizations.

Organizations with more than 1000-1500 employees can scale easily.

Customer service could be better as I have faced some issues at times.

Positive

I have used Selenium previously. However, job scheduling, monitoring dashboard, and email alert features were not there. This is the major reason why I switched to ActiveBatch.

The initial setup was complex as we wanted to set it up on different environments like Windows and Linux.

This was implemented through an in-house deployment, and I would rate the process eight out of ten. The level of expertise was high.

I have not been in touch with the financial team who would monitor ROI. This is unknown to me.

The pricing was high for organizational purposes, and the set-up cost was okay. 

I have used Selenium, and there were many drawbacks, so I switched to this application as it made my work easy and simple. 

I have no concerns about the application, as it has worked very well for me and my team. I recommend the solution to others. They could take advantage of this application by reducing their manual work.

We used the solution extensively in material planning, material transfer, SCM activities (such as outsourcing, purchasing, OEM reworks, production planning, manufacturing BOMs, work order closures, calculating and identifying SLE of material, scrap stores, customer and supplier tracks, finance, invoice billing, and securely managing data processing and data transfer). 

The main issue we encountered was that we users could not customize the software as needed as different organizations have different working cultures and different aerospace standards to maintain. Therefore, for any new improvements, we had to contact the service engineer and discuss the requirements. Except for this, the other functions were fantastic, with a little software training to understand the purpose of each function.

I'd like to share positive feedback on this, since the negative side is so minor. On the positive side, this tool is very much necessary for all manufacturing and production companies, and I strongly recommend it as the uses and functions of this tool are vast and can be used in almost all departments in the organization, including stores, business development, SCM, purchase, PPC, manufacturing, quality, finance, program management, and so on.

It has definitely improved my working culture by easily getting the job done.

The automation of ActiveBatch workloads is great. 

The user interface is exceptional; it is very secure and data leak-proof, which is very important to any organization. It is very useful in sending confidential files through FPP servers. 

There are no multiple login issues. You can easily identify who is accessing your login, if any. 

It aids in the great planning of our daily activities.

One more important feature is to get the summary report and presentations, which greatly helped in improving production work.

The product should be improved by providing a customization option. It would be very helpful in getting our own options as required.

The software can still be more user-friendly. By providing training, we could explore as many options as possible, and the mistakes could be more easily avoided.

Pricing can be minimized a bit.

Instead of having to upgrade each of the execution agents, there should be a mechanism in place where the agents are automatically updated when a new version is released.

Otherwise, it is very good software.

I've used the solution for over a year.

The stability is good.

I'd rate the scalability eight out of ten.

Customer support is pretty good. We have no concerns.

Positive

As the organization changes, we tend to use the most efficient software which is available. 

The initial setup was pretty straightforward, with no major difficulties encountered.

We handled the setup in-house.

The product is definitely worth the money.

The product is a bit costly.

I've also evaluated SAP HANA, ERP, and Oracle.

ActiveBatch has a fantastic interface allowing us to efficiently create, manage and monitor workflows. It also offers a drag-and-drop visual workflow designer, enabling users to create complex workflows without coding quickly.    

We can integrate this with various platforms and technologies, including Windows, Linux, Unix, and SQL Server, and this makes it a flexible tool that can be used to automate a variety of IT processes. 

ActiveBatch helped us automate and schedule routine tasks such as data backups, file transfers, database updates, and report generation, which frees IT staff to focus on other studies.

The most valuable feature of ActiveBatch Workload Automation software is its pre-built job steps. The software comes with an extensive library of pre-built job steps that can be used to automate processes in various systems and applications. Due to this, users won't need to create their scripts, which can save time and lower the possibility of errors.

ActiveBatch is a little complex. A steep learning curve can be associated with using ActiveBatch, and it may take some time for a few users to become proficient with the tool.    

Apart from that, I can easily say that ActiveBatch is the best in the business. 

I've used the solution for more than a year.

Overall it is a stable, great solution.

It is a very good, scalable solution.

Technical support is great.

Positive

Previously I was using a different solution.

I switched since that solution was slow and also the cost was more.

The setup is straightforward.

We deployed the solution with the help of an expert.

This solution is better compared to other software.

We mainly evaluated options based on the cost and flexibility of the software.

We have around 20 scheduled jobs we run every few hours. These include our price fetching jobs, market tracking jobs, subscription checking jobs, profit calculation jobs, etc. These are pretty long scripts with complex instructions to handle multiple data from a different database, microservice APIs, and many public market exchange APIs. All this data crunching was difficult to perform and maintain before ActiveBatch, however, once we started using ActiveBatch workload automation software, scheduling these jobs and tracking data crunching became easy. 

ActiveBatch has improved our organization by making job scheduling and API integrations very easy to use and to get started with. Earlier, we needed to assign these tasks to a high-paying highly-skilled resource. Now, we can train anyone to do the same job with very little effort. Our operation costs are significantly reduced because of ActiveBatch. Now, anyone can complete automation tasks without much knowledge of how computer API works and with no knowledge of coding. This has made our automation easier.

Some of the features we found useful for our use case are:

• Job scheduling. It has helped with scheduling complex jobs with simple scripts.
• API integration. It is very easy to set up regular Rest API calls and data gathering.
• Time Savings. Tracking multiple servers for downtime and multiple jobs logs is very time-consuming. We have to switch between multiple tabs and applications for all this. However, ActiveBatch made it very easy to track the downtime of our own services and logs of our cron jobs very easily. 

Overall, we found these valuable

Some improvements can be made to the user interface. I personally love to see ActiveBatch keep up with current trends in UI development. 

Also, some improvements can definitely can be made to make ActiveBatch more beginner friendly.

The custom theme could be a new feature suggestion for ActiveBatch.

Apart from these, I don't have any suggestions for ActiveBatch. They did a pretty good job of giving the best state-of-the-art features. All of these features are very well thought out and very useful

I've used the solution for two years.

The stability is great.

The scalability is great. We are onboarding new users, and our number of jobs is growing. We have not faced any problems.

Technical support offers great support with a fast response time.

Positive

ActiveBatch is the first software of this nature that I have used. 

The initial setup is straightforward.

We handled the implementation with an in-house team.

ActiveBatch gave us a good ROI in our organization.

The features provided in ActiveBatch are worth buying, and the cost makes sense for the number of features provided.

We did some research on VMware and IBM Workload Automation.