Many processes performed in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, such as creating invoices, mailing them or printing them, processing reports, and scheduling maintenance, can considerably affect the performance of a machine, or a server, preventing the users from working in priority tasks. These processes can be run as batch jobs and can be executed as a single job or simultaneously with other jobs. Automate business processes while running them as background activities to avoid congesting the system.
The setup of the batch processing allows monitoring tasks by creating alerts and permits to schedule recurrent tasks depending on their frequency. Batch jobs also allow verifying the history of previously run jobs and checking when and why a process was not successfully finished.
In this blog, I will briefly explain the creation, setup, and automation of regular tedious tasks as batch jobs, depending on the server requirements, control, and security requests to access.
A batch job is a task group submitted for automatic processing through an Application Object Server (AOS) instance. They are performed by utilizing the security credentials of the person who created the job.
AOS configured as Batch servers might differ from each other or might be configured to execute specific batch tasks depending on its nature. Each batch group will classify the batch tasks to be run in the most appropriate server, thus, avoiding slowing down the machine. A batch job can be associated with more than one server to help to process.
Batch processing can also be configured to run during a specific period using the Active period for batch job configuration. For example, if a task must be executed each hour, and the active period for batch jobs is active from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., the hourly task will stop running at 5 p.m. and start again at 8 a.m. the next day.
Each batch job is prompted using a class name related to each task in the job.
A new functionality in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance is the “Has conditions” option. The conditions are applicable for batch jobs, including more than one task, and allow to identify dependencies between them; such conditions indicate the second task cannot start if the first one has not ended with a specific status.
Each batch job should establish its recurrence, status, and alerts if applicable, thus ensuring its ongoing performance and tracking its results.
Also, some tasks can be run as batch jobs and be configured directly from the form.
Control of the batch jobs can be done directly from the system administration workspace. The workspace displays the batch job information in a friendly way, segregated by status.
Each batch job executed will be stored into the batch job history, which should be cleaned out depending on its frequency to avoid interfering with the batch processing performance. The options Batch job history clean-up and Batch job history clean-up (custom) can determine the limit of days the batch jobs history will be held into the system, the batch jobs where this process will be executed, and even the status will be applicable for the cleaning process. These tasks can also be scheduled as batch jobs.
The standard security role enabled to execute, copy, modify and configure the batch jobs is the Batch manager, though it maintains security privilege permissions granted.
This role also enables the manager to determine who will execute the Batch by changing the “Run by” option.
To summarize, Batch Job processing in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance is a handy functionality that allows running several tasks in the background, allowing you to control its process thoroughly (from the server the task must be run to whoever is responsible for managing them). Thus, ensuring team efficiency and avoiding congesting the systems.
I hope you have gotten a sense of the Batch job processing into Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and how to improve the maintenance and execution of regular tasks without interfering with the standard user performance.
