ActiveBatch by Redwood Reviews

Our project has nearly 150 jobs that run every day, and they manage anything from SaaS. We run a lot of reports and triggers, Some of these are fairly complex, and others are very simple.

We pull information from SFTP shared Paths and run various file-based jobs. The data is staged and moved to target tables, and then there are a number of materialized views that get populated, and that populating is done with ActiveBatch.

We are on-premises. We manage the servers and schedulers on a combination of Windows and Linux.

We have very strict SLAs that require us to generate reports out of the production data on a daily and weekly basis. We, as a support team, are being monitored for any SLA breaches. ActiveBatch has been very stable and has been only affected by database performance or network issues.

As the interactions between ActiveBatch and other tools are automated in the best way possible, it gives us more time to focus on other things. For any job failures or other issues, the logs generated are very easy to figure out the issue and the Root cause for the same.

ActiveBatch has been providing us with the central automation hub for scheduling, alerting, and monitoring, bringing everything together under a single pane of glass.

The REST API adapters and native integrations for integrating and orchestrating the software stack are very flexible. 

The best features in Activebatch include the API calls. These calls can be used to integrate with almost all the required components to log or action on anything.

The job scheduling feature and the templates available make a developer's life easier. We can configure any job without thinking about the skeletal system. Therefore, ActiveBatch is widely utilized and is well embedded in our company.

There are few features in alerts and monitoring where few enhancements are required in email notification declarations. Other than that, all other features are very good and have no issues.

We have faced a couple of issues where we were supposed to log a defect with ActiveBatch. That said, the Active batch Vendor Support is very responsive and reliable. We had the issues fixed within eight hours, even though they were working in a different time zone.

As this platform is very experienced and supportive, there are no issues to report.

I've used the solution for three years. 

The customer support is very reliable and responsive even though there is a difference in time zones.

Positive

We have been using ActiveBatch since I joined the company. We have had a lot of enhancements here, and everything is progressing very well.

We have implemented the solution with an in-house team.

We have connected this automation tool to our SAP ECC system. All the ECC batch jobs are scheduled via this tool.

We had configured the alerting mechanism so that whenever we have any job fails/long-running jobs, we get an immediate email notification which helps in monitoring the jobs.

The best part of the tool is the submit frame and time window where we can schedule jobs as per the customer's requirements.

As this has a quality environment, we connected this tool to ECC QA, and before making any changes to production, we are able to test the new requirements in quality then we can move to production. 

It helped to schedule and monitor the SAP ECC batch jobs.

It reduced the workload.

It can connect to a number of third-party/legacy systems. Once the job is scheduled, no manual interruption is required. Therefore, once the job is scheduled, there won't be any interruption to the job.

As we support the different countries in the project, we need to schedule jobs in different time zone; this tool helped to schedule the jobs as per the respective time zone because this tool contains almost all the time zones. We can schedule jobs as per the regional/country time.

The best feature is the alerting mechanism.

We had configured email alerts for many scenarios so that whenever a job fails/is long-running, we get an immediate email notification. There is no need to log in to the system every time and do the monitoring based on the email alert. We can inform the respective team and take action immediately. It helps to avoid business impact.

We get the best customer support; whenever we are doing any testing/facing any issues/during any new requirement, we can raise a ticket to the support team, or we can schedule a call with them so that we get an immediate response and solutions.

The monitoring dashboard could have been more user-friendly so that in the monitoring dashboard itself, we can see the total number of jobs created in the system and how many were currently active/scheduled/chained.

The reports could have more pre-defined options, such as killed/failed jobs from the current month. That way, we can get the reports quickly and help the audit process.  

Whenever any job fails in the system, it should be listed based on the priority of the job incident and should generate and assign it to the respective job owners.

I've used the solution for one to two years.

We did not use a different solution. 

The solution is easy to set up.

It offers very good value for money.

The license renewal activity is easy; the support team will provide the query we need to run it.

The primary use case would be for monitoring the servers along with alerts and logs. Earlier, I had to do a lot of work on this manually and it was very time-consuming. Since the ActiveBatch Workload Automation has been implemented,  everything is smooth.

Also, we use it for job scheduling and server maintenance. This has been good. More than anything, when managing workload balance and multiple platforms, this solution helps me to avoid switching across platforms and keeps an eye on them as the tool automatically takes care of it.

Apart from this, the integrations for APIs have been very helpful as well.

Implementing this solution has been a real improvement in the work we do. This tool helps reduce the manual workload, and operational skills have been reduced as well. Now, the focus is more on developmental and deployment work.

Also, since this work has a multiplatform tool for scheduling, the jobs across platforms have been easy to handle. This has reduced a lot of micro-managing on these apps, and the amount of manual work is also reduced.

Plus, since the scalability is also automated, the team has benefitted when growing.

I use this product for multi-purpose functions. Some of the best features are:

• Workload processing
• scalability
• intelligent automation
• administration console
• workflow management
• service management
• proactive workflows
• error alerts
• service management
• job scheduling
• API integrations
• integrations
• multi-platform scheduling

Since I started using this product, I have been able to easily track everything as it mainly monitors, alerts, and looks after all the services - even across platform scheduling - which has helped me immensely.

The only issue I have is the price. It is a bit high compared to the other similar tools, yet the use case has been brilliant compared to others.

An additional feature would be the easy download of the data. I'd like to see that in this as a tool. 

Except for the GUI, everything looks good.

I have been using this product for around nine months.

The solution is very stable and dependable.

This is a good product. Since the scalability is automated, we do not have to wait on the alerts and manually increase the size.

Technical support offers great service.

Positive

I did use AWS and ServiceNow, and the switch is due to the fact that this has improved my time management very efficiently.

The initial setup was not much of an issue.

We did the implementation via an in-house team.

This solution is really worth the money.

It is worth the money; go for it.

We ask the company to please try to reduce the cost and provide it as a tool rather than a web interface. 

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.

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.

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.