ActiveBatch by Redwood Reviews

ActiveBatch Workload Automation is a standard scheduling tool that you have on the market. The ultimate goal is to run everything powered through ActiveBatch Workload Automation, but we are always constantly trying to move from our legacy processes, which always takes a lot of time and effort. However, all of the new processes we are focused on implementing through ActiveBatch Workload Automation.

One of the most valuable features of this solution is the versatility of the prebuilt jobs.

Any product is going to have some room for improvement, no matter what. I see the company has already ventured into AWS and they're constantly trying to improve the managed file transfer which they have recently improvised. I think they bought a software called JSCAPE and they're trying to improve it, which is good. 

I am not sure if JSCAPE would be part of the base product but currently, you have to buy a separate license for it, which doesn't make sense. If it was Microsoft, ServiceNow, or integrating with other software vendors, I would understand but JSCAPE is now in-house and I'm not sure if they can justify having a separate license for JSCAPE. I would probably expect them to be packaging JSCAPE into the base product. They did switch over from a perpetual license model to a subscription model, which hurt the company a little bit. Nobody is offering the perpetual model anymore. As long as the transition is fair for both the companies, I think it should be fine and not burn us out.

I have been using ActiveBatch Workload Automation for a few years.

ActiveBatch Workload Automation is scalable.

The scalability of the solution is good.

The technical support was difficult if you wanted to escalate the issue, it takes a little bit longer to escalate. Their service model does not allow for everybody to be on the hotline all the time. I understand that, but unfortunately, with a production system, that's what it is. If there is a bug, you want that hotline as soon as possible, because we don't know the impact of it. If it can widespread, if there is an issue, or if it's contained within one or two jobs. Luckily this has not been the case. 

It's all same architecture and framework of which you built upon several things. If there's a problem with it, you want to know it way before it impacts the other jobs.

I like ActiveBatch Workload Automation's licensing model because they're not holding you down on an agentless model or agent model, where every server needs to have an agent. That's the main selling point of the solution and I hope they stay that way.

I have evaluated other solutions, such as Control-M.

I rate ActiveBatch Workload Automation an eight out of ten.

I rated ActiveBatch Workload Automation high because the licensing model is way better than other solutions, such as Control-M or other companies that charge a lot more. I like their agentless model because most of the scheduling companies put in the rules saying, that for each server you touch, you need an agent. Otherwise, they cannot communicate, and will not work. This is a large advantage for ActiveBatch Workload Automation their Agent model is great.

We use ActiveBatch to run the data warehouse production batch schedule, which is 24/7. We run, on average, about 200 distinct workflows each day to update the warehouse. And once the warehouse tables are loaded, we trigger our business intelligence reports and our analytics reports. We also use ActiveBatch to run a software tool called iCEDQ for data quality, as well as some Alteryx jobs.

Our production servers are in a co-location, and the solution is deployed onsite there.

Before we had ActiveBatch, we used the Informatica Workflow Scheduler, and we would have to start a downstream workflow, but have it wait for the completion of the first one by a trigger file. So "Workflow B" would be waiting for a control file that said "Workflow A" is done. If we had to do reruns — sometimes we would create a control file by mistake and that would throw off the next day's run — and we'd have to do manual reruns. With ActiveBatch, it's very easy to say, "Workflow A is done, run B," and onward: "Run C, Run D," as soon as they're done. You don't need to worry about whether a control file was created, or how long is the job going to wait for. It gives you much simpler and easy-to-understand control of the flow of jobs, as they run.

Using ActiveBatch hasn't really reduced our code base because we would be developing these workflows in Informatica if we weren't using ActiveBatch. But the scheduling and integration into the batch schedule for something new are much simpler and save us a little bit of time, now that we have everything developed, for the most part. We may go a month without adding anything to our schedule and we may go four or five months without adding anything to the schedule, but it gives us an easier understanding of the flow of the data and helps us make sure dependencies are met in a more straightforward fashion than through the Informatica scheduler.

ActiveBatch hasn't really improved our job success rate percentage. If a job fails, we still get our failure messages from Informatica, and in some cases from ActiveBatch. The biggest benefit is that the biggest issue we were having was the timing of all of the downstream applications from the warehouse, and it has greatly improved that.

And it has saved man-hours, although it has not reduced headcount. It has saved man-hours in that situation when we would have issues and our old scheduling solution would break down because of them. This allows us to not have to worry about how to start the downstream applications, based on the warehouse. I would estimate it saves us about 20 hours per month.

One of the valuable features is the ability to trigger workflows, one after another, based on success, without having to worry about overlapping workflows. 

The ability to integrate our BI, analytics, and our data quality jobs is also valuable. We used to have everything set up just based on time: Run the data warehouse until five in the morning, run BI at 5:30 in the morning. There were times that we missed the deadline so that when the BI jobs would run, the data would be incomplete, or we had a big gap in time where we were missing out on starting early. It has really saved us a lot of man-hours compared to when we would have a data issue and we would have to manually restart all of the downstream jobs, after the warehouse.

ActiveBatch also provides us with a single pane of glass for end-to-end visibility of workflows. That simplifies the process when we check to see if things have run or how they're running. The Map View feature makes it easy to see what the dependencies are. It's helpful to have a visual, top-down look, from start to finish, at what flows are running when you need to look into that.

In terms of the unlimited bandwidth, as far as I can tell it's handled all of our volume without any issues whatsoever. For the analytics stuff and the business intelligence stuff, I don't keep track of how many jobs they have running each day. I can only really check the warehouse, but as far as I can tell it has handled the total volume of our needs without any issue whatsoever.

We use event triggers and file events, and one job we have uses email triggers. Especially for the business side, if they have a list of call center people or a list of promotions or some costing information that they need loaded into the warehouse, it allows us to say to them, "We don't need a dummy file and we don't need a blank file. Whenever you have a file ready to go, just put it on a shared drive and the job will automatically pick it up." So it simplifies our interactions with the business and allows them more flexibility to get their work done. The triggering doesn't so much reduce delays but it alleviates the need either to have the business create a dummy file or to code the job in such a way that if it doesn't find a file to run each day, it won't error-out or have to send an informational message. If we get a file a day, or if we get five files in a day, or if we only get one file every six months, the job just runs when the business has the data available, without our having to worry about it.

We also use an Oracle trigger, although we've had inconsistent performance with the Oracle trigger. It had to do with the timing of the Oracle logs. The Oracle trigger function wouldn't work because Oracle had a lock on the archive log file. We have had a couple of cases where we had to remove that Oracle trigger function from our schedule. But we still use it for some cases.

The thing I've noticed the most is the Help function. It's very difficult, at times, to find examples of how to do something. The Help function will explain what the tool does, but we're not a Windows shop at the data warehouse. Our data warehouse jobs actually run on Linux servers. Finding things for Linux-based solutions is not as easy as it is for Windows-based solutions. I would like to see more examples, and more non-Windows examples as well, in the Help.

I have been using ActiveBatch for almost five years.   

Stability has been excellent. In the four or five years I can't even think of a time when the scheduler went down. We use two agents for production, and a scheduler and two agents for tests, and I can think of maybe three times that we had to reboot one of the agents. But I can't think of a time when the scheduler actually went down.

It seems very scalable. We use a very small portion of the functionality and the available types of jobs. Of the job steps in the library, we only use about 2 or 3 percent of them. We bought it for a specific purpose and it served our purpose quite well.

We have used the technical support. On a scale of one to 10, I'd give the Knowledge Base a six or seven. I would give the actual support folks an eight-and-a-half or nine.

It just depends on who you get to respond to your question or to your issue. We've had folks that have been excellent and have pinpointed the problem right away and given us a clear solution to our problems. And there have been times when we have gotten someone who doesn't quite understand the product and it feels like we're providing them more answers than they're providing us. That's been rare but I can think of at least one case where we had to say, "Can you put somebody else on or ask for some help on our question?" And they eventually did, but it was kind of frustrating. But for the most part, it's been fine.

Ninety-five percent of the warehouse jobs that we run that were Informatica jobs have been replaced with ActiveBatch. We have a couple of jobs with some specialized logic that we haven't taken the time to figure out how to do in ActiveBatch yet. Of the 200 workflows, we run a day, 190 of them or so run through ActiveBatch.

We have seen ROI with the solution. It has simplified the warehouse job flow, our analytics workflow, as well as our business intelligence and data quality workflows. I don't know the exact cost per year of the solution, but it has simplified and made things much easier to understand in terms of dependencies among our data flows.

The breakthrough for us was when we were able to take completely different software tools and integrate them into one long flow of data. We have our Informatica jobs which then trigger some PLC to SQL jobs in ActiveBatch, but they also trigger Alteryx jobs, which is its own software tool. It can integrate and execute iCEDQ, which is its own software, as well as Tableau. The ability to trigger those jobs from completely different software tools, in one flow, has saved us a lot of time and a lot of headaches.

Don't be afraid to dig in and try things. I said one of the weaknesses is the Help, but the Help function has helped me figure a few things out. We have jobs that update the pager email to go from an offsite pager to an onsite pager and back again. So don't be afraid to take the time to try to figure something different out. There are some useful things in the Help.

I'm the primary person using ActiveBatch in the warehouse. A month ago, we had a lot more people using it, but in the travel industry we've already had some severe layoffs. There were 10 people using ActiveBatch. They were all data analysts or data quality analysts, and I am the data warehouse developer. There were also business intelligence developers.

ActiveBatch helps in scheduling the job processes in a great manner and also helps in executing various tasks. The tasks can be related to data processing, file transfers, or system management. 

It arranges all the complex tasks in the correct order and looks after the dependencies of tasks on one another. This is very useful for businesses involving many or multiple systems. 

The tool facilitates integration between various other databases, systems, or applications. Integrated systems work together very smoothly. ActiveBatch provides a real-time analysis and monitoring feature that ensures that users are informed of any issues in the automated execution process.

ActiveBatch Workload Automation is truly a powerful tool when it comes to automation. The way we manage work has completely changed after using this tool. 

Execution of workflows has become smooth and simple. The overall result after using ActiveBatch at our organization is fabulous. The business processes have improved more than ever before. 

The user interface is really incredible. It is easy to use even with limited technical expertise. This tool allows us to create any type of complex workflow with ease. 

Built-in job steps and integrations are some of the best features of ActiveBatch. This single feature has saved a lot of time for me. Real-time monitoring ensures that the user is aware of the status of the workflows. 

ActiveBatch has strong security and access control options. We can easily define who can access and modify the automation processes. 

It ensures that data is safe from intruders. It makes sure that there is no data leakage during the automation process. The tool has an exceptional documentation and support team. 

The customer team is always responsive and they are available to resolve any type of issues faced by the users. The documentation is very well-organized and it helps the users to find answers to any of their questions without taking any other help. 

This powerful tool has saved us a lot of time and resources. This is a feature-rich solution that delivers outstanding results.

Providing some detailed training materials could be very helpful for new users who have very limited technical information about the tool. 

Enhancing the features of cybersecurity could be of great use. Scalability and adapting to the changing demands can be improved. The user interface can be enhanced so that it can be accessible to beginners. Providing customizable dashboards and tools can be helpful. 

Integration with other platforms can be improved. Allowing users to create their own custom job steps can be of great use.

I have been using this automation tool for the past nine months.

The scalability it provides is fabulous and reliable.

I switched to this automation tool due to the fact that ActiveBatch had all the features I was looking for. The automation process was smooth and error-free with ActiveBatch. This saved a lot of time and resources and has improved the overall performance.

ActiveBatch Workload Automation enables us to automate and manage a wide range of business processes. 

It helps in automating complex workflows that may involve multiple tasks. The platform provides a smooth integration between various other systems, applications, and their databases. 

It is best suited for hybrid IT environments. 

ActiveBatch provides robust job scheduling capabilities. It allows the users to schedule and execute the tasks at specific times. The platform ensures that tasks are assigned to the respective resources efficiently. 

Error Handling is one of the best standout features of ActiveBatch.

ActiveBatch Workload Automation has truly been a transformative solution for my organization. 

It has completely changed the work environment. It has made work much easier and faster. The time taken by the tasks to get executed has gradually decreased over time. 

Managing the complex workflows and arranging the job processes has become easier. The platform handles a wide range of automation tasks, ranging from simple job scheduling processes to complex processes. 

The integration capabilities and reliability of the software are exceptional. 

The built-in templates have been of great help in speeding up the automation processes.

ActiveBatch's integration capabilities are impressive. It can connect smoothly with various other systems. It ensures that data flows smoothly between the systems. This has improved the overall data accuracy. 

The reporting and monitoring features have been a game-changer as it helps to keep track of the job status. This helps in identifying the issues and resolving them as soon as possible. This ensures that the task execution runs smoothly without any interruptions. 

The way ActiveBatch handles and adapts to the changing demand is remarkable.

The user interface can be improved so that it is more appealing and accessible to new users. 

Enhancing the debugging tools can help users to identify the issues more effectively. 

Improved mobile access can enable us to monitor and handle workflows with ease. 

Machine Learning features can be added in the future and offering advanced customization could be of great help. 

Pricing of the product can be made transparent so that new users can get an idea about the operational costs associated with the product.

I have been using ActiveBatch Workload Automation for the past seven months.

The overall scalability provided by ActiveBatch is great.

I switched from a previously used solution to a more modern automation solution like ActiveBatch due to the fact that the features in ActiveBatch were more advanced and it helped me resolve all the issues. 

The previous automation tool could not adapt to the changing requirements. With ActiveBatch, the work has become truly exceptional.

In terms of ROI, ActiveBatch has given significant value to the organization. There have been reduced operational costs and improved efficiency. It has allowed us to allocate the resources more wisely.

I'd advise users to start by knowing what the actual requirement is and thoroughly assess the automation needs. New users should take advantage of the demos and trial versions so they get an idea of the platform.

The task scheduling was manual earlier, and it was a very difficult and time-consuming task to schedule jobs. Even after this process, it was difficult to find out what was wrong if the job/task has been failed. With the help of ActiveBatch Workload Automation, the entire workflow automation has been automated, and we can schedule our entire process from a single point of contact with features like real-time monitoring. We're streamlining IT operations, getting centralized security, and having quick and reliable integration features that are game changers in the industry.

Active Batch has helped us in a lot of ways. For example, earlier, the process was very time-consuming, and we needed to always have some resources to monitor everything. We needed a resource to schedule, and the entire workflow was not easy. With ActiveBatch, we schedule the tasks automatically and monitor them efficiently to track the tasks in real-time. Mainly, we have streamlined our entire IT operations. Now, we don't always need a resource to schedule or manage things. It does its tasks on its own, and even we can track and audit them efficiently and effectively.

There are many features I found very useful. It was the automatic scheduling of jobs and monitoring in real-time that were very useful. It has streamlined the entire IT operations. A lot of organizations are getting help from this. For developers, it is easy to orchestrate the workflows and the integration has been very easy. We can easily integrate ActiveBatch workload with any tool without any headache. We can optimize existing scripts also. Auditing is made simpler for administrators now.

Whenever there is an overload, we are seeing crashes happening. It is something that has to be taken care of. 

Triggers play a predominant role in doing an automated task after an event. It was eventually used to erase the boilerplate code, however, unfortunately, the triggers are not very reliable in ActiveBatch. It is not performing what it had to do at certain times. 

The application is a bit complicated and it is not very user-friendly for beginners. That might be a disadvantage until they get familiar with it.

I've used the solution for six to 12 months.

We did not previously use a different solution. 

ActiveBatch is the best in terms of reliability and helps with cost-cutting. The licensing was a complete green flag for the product from my side.

We did not evaluate other options.

I am the administrator handling all of the ActiveBatch-related activities. It is used for all of our processes, scheduling, and basically all of the automation.

The schedule is good because you don't miss any issues. Let's say you reboot the server and there are still things pending, they will resume. From a scheduling point of view, it is pretty good.

The reporting needs to be made easier, such as by including a dashboard. As it is now, I have to go to each and every folder in order to see the reports. If I had a higher-level view, such as Tableau-based reporting, then it would be very useful. Right now, it is built-in with the existing GUI and it is very limited. If they were to detach that and provide the data with a template report then that would be the best way to go.

The interface is not that user-friendly and is a little tough to navigate.

In the future, I would like to see support for mobile alerts so that we don't have to log in to find out whether there is a problem.

I would also like to see more support for cloud-based environments. For example, we might want our workflow to include Snowflake from Amazon. So far, all of our work is on our on-premises servers, whether it is moving a file or running a database. We are now extending out and would like to use ActiveBatch to bring in more controls. Examples include using Snowflake or Redshift in my workflow. That would be very helpful.

I have been using ActiveBatch for approximately 13 years, since 2007.

Overall, it is quite stable. Over the years, we have had very few issues with stability.

Our company is small, with perhaps seven or eight people using ActiveBatch. We have hundreds of jobs running and we haven't had any problems. The scheduler continues to do its job.

The technical support is pretty good.

The initial setup was very straightforward and never gave me a problem.

The setup and maintenance are done in-house. We have overnight support group from India and they manage the nightly processes using ActiveBatch.

We are currently paying a yearly fee, although they are greatly increasing their prices and changing to a subscription-based model. Currently, we are paying approximately $7,000 yearly, which includes support.

Before choosing ActiveBatch, we looked at a couple of products and run a pilot with Control-M. 

We look at different products and this is definitely a very good one. I do not have much familiarity with the cloud-based solutions but on a Windows platform, this one is pretty good.

Overall, this is a good product but there are a lot of improvements that can be made to the interface to make it more user-friendly. Also, if I were rating the reporting then I would only score it a six and a half. Finally, we do need a solution that can reach out to cloud environments.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use ActiveBatch Workload Automation primarily for managing work schedules.

ActiveBatch Workload Automation improved the organization I worked in because it's able to manage complex workflow automation even with a lot of cross-dependencies and hundreds of processes running. ActiveBatch Workload Automation is a very good tool in the Windows environment.

I found ActiveBatch Workload Automation to be a very good scheduling tool. What I like best about it is that it has very less downtime when managing many complex scheduling workflows, so I'm very impressed with ActiveBatch Workload Automation.

An area for improvement in ActiveBatch Workload Automation is its interface or GUI. It could be a little better.

There isn't any additional feature I'd like to see in the tool, except for the GUI, everything looks good.

I've been using ActiveBatch Workload Automation since 2009.

ActiveBatch Workload Automation has very good stability.

ActiveBatch Workload Automation is a scalable solution.

The technical support for ActiveBatch Workload Automation is very good.

We didn't use a different solution before using ActiveBatch Workload Automation.

The initial setup for ActiveBatch Workload Automation was straightforward.

Our deployment for ActiveBatch Workload Automation was done in-house.

I've seen ROI from ActiveBatch Workload Automation. It's a very good tool.

I don't have information on the licensing costs of ActiveBatch Workload Automation because a different team handles that.

We evaluated other solutions, but we went with ActiveBatch Workload Automation because it suits our environment.

I'm using version 12 of ActiveBatch Workload Automation.

Ten to fifteen people use ActiveBatch Workload Automation within the company. Between three to four people take care of the deployment and maintenance of the solution. Right now, there isn't any plan to increase the usage of ActiveBatch Workload Automation.

My advice to anyone looking to implement ActiveBatch Workload Automation is that it's a good tool for small requirements, for example, a few hundred scheduling workflows. For that, it should be a good tool, with good stability.

I'm rating ActiveBatch Workload Automation as eight out of ten.

Mainly we have used ActiveBatch for automating the deployment of different environments like production staging and QA. Earlier, we used it to have different software for each environment. This used to consume a lot of time, however, after using ActiveBatch we can manage everything under a single piece of software. The monitoring and alerting features are a great help to get complete insights and hassle-free for work. 

With the help of ActiveBatch, we have come up with cool automation starting from file transfer and pipelining the scripts with more test cases, had helped our company to grow many folds with the same resources.

Earlier, we had around four to five different tools to manage our automation which was all replaced by ActiveBatch. It is great. Even the resources required to manage those tools were reduced to a great extent and now, with only two employees, we are managing end-to-end automation. 

Our team is mainly into the automation of the entire application which usually takes around 20 minutes to complete. When ActiveBatch was used, it was done in less than five minutes. We were able to complete it before the deadlines we had and even our clients are happy with the results we produced.

Almost all the features are great. That said, if we wanted to select the best, then the monitoring feature which gives complete insights in a single dashboard is the most helpful. It helps to detect immediately if something goes wrong instead of waiting for someone to report it. 

The ROI of the application is more than what we used to spend for the entire year and its reasonable pricing has helped us to use it to its maximum. 

We are able to integrate it into multiple third-party tools like email, backup, tracking systems, SharePoint, Slack alerts, etc.

The help center and documentation are not that helpful. If we had some more user-friendly explanations and more video tutorials about how to set up and debug items, that would be ideal. 

The preset job step types make designing easy, while the steps of the job that allow scripts and code to be run allow for a wide range of additional functionality. This can be made better with more example scripts and pre-coded samples. 

If a few AI tools can be integrated with the product, it would enhance the entire product setup time and debugging issues.

I have used the solution in a previous company for more than a year. In my current company, I've been working with it for the past six months.

The product is very mature. There are a few bugs however, none of them are roadblocks. It can be resolved by some workaround.

There are no scalability issues. It easily can be used in a company with more than 1,000 employees.

They have very good customer service. We had an issue while setting up and we connected with their support team. They were able to help us and fix it on the same day. Their response time has been great.

Positive

I previously used Selenium, however, it's all bits and pieces, so we had to switch to ActiveBatch automation.

It was straightforward to set up. Only in the end, when we were importing files, did we feel a little more documentation would have been required.

We had an in-house team for the implementation. I would rate them eight out of ten.

It has helped to achieve a 20% to 30% net revenue increase in the last quarter.

Setup is easy and can be done within one or two days. The pricing is reasonable when compared to competitors. There is no need to worry about licensing as it's taken care of when you choose the plan.

Since I have worked with ActiveBatch in my previous organization, it was my go-to option. I did not evaluate others. 

Overall, it's the best product that fits perfectly to most of our use cases. That said, it can be made a little more budget-friendly.