Infrastructure monitoring tools can confirm degradation, and application performance monitoring can show response times. But neither explains how orchestrated workflows behaved under pressure: how dependencies interacted, where contention formed or why service-level agreement (SLA) risk accumulated.

As orchestration expands across SAP landscapes, cloud-native services, data pipelines and external APIs, that blind spot becomes harder to ignore. Automation platforms generate telemetry continuously, so the challenge isn’t collecting data, but preserving its context.

Without that context, your teams may find themselves working backwards, which often means piecing together timelines, comparing dashboards and explaining outcomes after the fact. With it, they gain something closer to a panoramic view that makes risk visible earlier and turns automation data into a feedback loop they can actually use.

Redwood Software addresses this directly with Redwood Insights for RunMyJobs, embedding observability into the orchestration layer itself — not bolting it on.

Evolving from system signals to orchestration intelligence

Observability platforms were built around applications and infrastructure. They excel at collecting distributed telemetry and tracking system performance.

Enterprise orchestration introduces a different dimension of complexity:

• Cross-platform workflows with layered dependencies
• SLA-bound business processes such as financial close or order-to-cash
• High-volume batch and event-driven workloads
• Deep SAP integration across ERP and SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP)

When an issue emerges, teams often pivot between different monitoring tools, logs and dashboards to reconstruct the sequence of events. The signals are there, but the intent is missing. Correlation must be manual. Thus, mean time to resolution (MTTR) grows because the orchestration logic — how workflows were designed to behave — lives somewhere else (e.g., in RunMyJobs by Redwood).

Redwood Insights closes that gap by keeping execution data tied to workflow relationships, orchestration intent and historical context. Instead of reviewing isolated metrics, you can see how workflows behaved as connected systems.

What changes first is the quality of investigation. Rather than chasing symptoms across tools, engineers start with the workflow itself. Root causes can surface faster and patterns are easier to spot. Less energy has to be expended for reacting and preventing the same issues from repeating.

Native operational visibility in RunMyJobs

Redwood Insights is available to every RunMyJobs SaaS customer, offering:

• Pre-built dashboards that surface execution trends, runtime variance and failure clustering across environments
• Bottleneck visibility that prevents escalation into SLA breaches 
• Immutable audit visibility and summarized execution history for administrators — without exporting data to external tools
• A high-level dashboard for engineers to move directly into specific workflow executions, eliminating platform switching or manual correlation

The views above create a shared operational baseline. Your automation health becomes easier to understand, explain and improve upon, no matter if your goal is faster triage, cleaner audits or shorter processing windows.

The impact shows up in measurable ways:

• Root causes take less time to uncover
• Mean time to repair drops
• Recurring bottlenecks surface earlier
• System behavior becomes more predictable across distributed environments

Orchestration gets its own observable voice.

Redwood Insights Premium: Extending visibility to enterprise scale

With automation becoming increasingly central to business operations, observability needs to support more than incident response.

Redwood Insights Premium, introduced in RunMyJobs 2026.1, builds on the native foundation with:

• A no-code dashboard designer for customized views
• Easy sharing of custom dashboards across the business
• 15 months of historical data retention

For many organizations, this marks a shift from short-term visibility to longer-term performance management, moving from “what just happened” to “what keeps happening, and why.” 

Custom dashboards and KPI alignment

Different stakeholders require different perspectives. For example, auditors look for records of changes made to automation environments. And Finance leaders care about SLA adherence and process completion risk.

Redwood Insights Premium allows IT to define custom dashboards for tracking KPIs tied directly to orchestrated workflows. Automation performance can then be measured against declared business objectives rather than generic system metrics.

Secure sharing gives process owners and domain leaders self-service access to their own views, while governance remains centralized. This ultimately changes how insights flow through the organization, because IT is no longer the default intermediary. Business teams can have direct visibility into the processes they depend on, too.

Long-term telemetry for planning and governance

Short monitoring windows are useful for resolving today’s incidents, but they don’t help much with planning.

With 15 months of historical data retention, it’s possible to:

• Benchmark year-over-year workload performance
• Identify seasonal execution patterns
• Evaluate the impact of architectural changes
• Support audit and compliance preparation with a continuous execution history

For CIOs and transformation leaders, this longer view supports more grounded ROI conversations. Decisions about scaling orchestration, modernizing SAP landscapes or optimizing cloud consumption can be based on how systems actually behave over time. Observability, therefore, becomes a planning instrument instead of merely a diagnostic tool.

Correlating automation across the broader observability ecosystem

Many enterprises already rely on multiple observability platforms. Infrastructure and application telemetry continue to flow into tools such as Splunk, Dynatrace, New Relic and AppDynamics. RunMyJobs integrates automation telemetry with these platforms, enabling teams to correlate workflow behavior with application and infrastructure performance.

For SAP-centric organizations, the out-of-the-box SAP Cloud ALM connector synchronizes RunMyJobs execution data, including status, start delays and runtime, directly into SAP Job and Automation Monitoring. Automation health becomes visible in the operational interface that SAP teams already use.

Instead of losing orchestration context as data moves between systems, it’s easy to retain a clear picture of how workflow behavior contributes to business risk.

Observability as an architectural decision

Observability is often framed as a DevOps concern. But in distributed enterprises, it’s an architectural one.

As orchestration spans SAP, cloud-native services, hybrid infrastructure and external APIs, leaders need confidence that critical workflows will remain predictable and transparent. Modernization initiatives, from SAP Cloud ERP transformations to multi-cloud adoption, depend on reliable execution.

By embedding observability, RunMyJobs creates a continuous feedback loop:

• Telemetry highlights friction
• Teams optimize workflows
• Reliability improves
• Business outcomes follow

Automation already underpins your most critical processes. With Redwood Insights and Redwood Insights Premium, it becomes fully observable — not only at the system level, but at the orchestration level where business risk actually resides.

Already a Redwood Software customer? Review all the features released in 2026.1.

Ready to democratize your data? Request a demo of RunMyJobs, including Redwood Insights Premium, and see how tailored observability changes how your teams work.

Redwood Software began addressing this challenge last year with the introduction of Redwood Insights, bringing observability directly into RunMyJobs by Redwood through standardized dashboards and operational analytics. That foundation gave teams clearer visibility into automation health and compliance without relying on disconnected tools.

RunMyJobs 2026.1 builds on that momentum with a broad set of observability-focused updates across the platform. This update expands how automation data is surfaced, shared and trusted, combining default insights, deeper analytics, tighter ecosystem integration and strengthened security. Together, these enhancements give teams a clearer context across their automation environments and greater confidence as automation becomes more central to daily operations.

Democratizing automation intelligence

At the center of RunMyJobs 2026.1 is Redwood Insights Premium, an expansion of the analytics and observability capabilities already available to RunMyJobs customers.

Redwood Insights Premium is designed for organizations that need deeper analysis and longer historical context as automation becomes more central to their operations. It extends observability beyond platform administrators to the business and domain teams that rely on automation outcomes.

Key capabilities include:

• A no-code dashboard designer that allows IT to create role-specific dashboards for different teams
• Extensive visibility into workflow health, execution patterns and emerging trends
• 15 months of historical data retention, expanding the existing analytics window for trend analysis, capacity planning and ROI conversations

IT teams can curate views for different teams and control access, while stakeholders gain self-service access to insights in their own context. This reduces reporting overhead and removes the “IT-as-translator” bottleneck without sacrificing consistency.

Unified transparency across SAP and the broader ecosystem

RunMyJobs has long supported integration across enterprise environments. In 2026.1, that integration extends more deeply into observability workflows.

For SAP-centric organizations, the out-of-the-box SAP Cloud ALM connector brings RunMyJobs execution data directly into SAP’s native Job and Automation Monitoring. Automation health becomes part of the same operational view SAP teams already use, improving coordination and reducing mean time to resolution (MTTR).

At the same time, RunMyJobs continues to integrate with leading observability platforms such as Splunk, Dynatrace, New Relic and AppDynamics. These integrations strengthen full-stack correlation, allowing teams to connect automation behavior with application and infrastructure performance using tools already in place.

Enhanced security and trusted AI, built in

In 2026.1, RunMyJobs’ security and governance foundations are further strengthened.

New capabilities include automated malicious file detection for all UI uploads with full audit logging, along with enterprise-grade moderation applied to all Redwood RangerAI interactions. These controls allow teams to benefit from AI-assisted troubleshooting and scripting while maintaining strict governance boundaries.

Support for Java 25 ensures the platform continues to align with the latest long-term support runtime for performance and security.

Modern deployment: Cloud Gateway

As automation environments become more distributed, reliable connectivity becomes essential. Observability and execution depend on consistent communication across cloud, hybrid and on-premises infrastructure.

The updated Cloud Gateway in RunMyJobs 2026.1 improves how the platform connects to these environments. It supports multiple active gateways at the same time, enabling higher throughput and load distribution across gateways. Intelligent routing allows traffic to be segmented by network or domain, while automated failover ensures continuity if a gateway becomes unavailable.

Together, these enhancements strengthen availability and performance across complex network topologies. Observability and execution data remain reliable even as infrastructure becomes more segmented and automation spans multiple environments.

Velocity through usability

Alongside these enhancements, RunMyJobs 2026.1 includes hundreds of usability and performance refinements. These changes focus on reducing friction in daily operations rather than introducing new workflows that teams need to learn.

Improvements across navigation, responsiveness and issue detection help users move faster and identify potential problems earlier. Routine interactions require fewer steps. Signals that once required manual investigation are surfaced more clearly within existing views.

Together, these updates extend RunMyJobs’ observability capabilities into a broader, more actionable intelligence layer. Automation becomes easier to understand, easier to manage and easier to optimize over time.

Already a Redwood customer? Review all the features released in 2026.1.

Ready to democratize your data? Request a demo of RunMyJobs, including Redwood Insights Premium, and see how tailored observability changes how your teams work.

The data was there. The warning signs weren’t obvious. By the time the impact surfaced, the moment to intervene had already passed.

This is a familiar tension for many enterprise leaders. Visibility exists, but understanding doesn’t always follow. Monitoring tools confirm that systems are running, but they rarely explain how automation behaves under pressure and how delays ripple across dependencies or where risk is quietly accumulating.

The single pane of glass was an important step forward. It brought fragmented information into a shared view and reduced blind spots. What it doesn’t consistently provide is depth: the ability to move from status to meaning without manual interpretation.

That gap becomes clear the moment questions turn from “Is it running?” to “Can we rely on it?”

When insight depends on translation, risk increases

Most enterprises already collect enormous amounts of operational data. Automation platforms generate execution logs and performance metrics. And applications and infrastructure emit their own signals. So on paper, nothing is missing. But in practice, insight is scattered.

Understanding what’s happening across critical workflows often requires translation. IT teams pull data from multiple monitoring tools, correlate timelines and explain what technical behavior means for business outcomes. Leaders then depend on these explanations to assess risk, prioritize action and answer questions they know are coming.

This model is fragile. It slows decision-making and quietly extends mean time to resolution (MTTR), even when teams are working as fast as they can. By the time an issue is fully understood, the opportunity to intervene early has often passed, turning what could have been a minor disruption into a larger operational event.

Observability reduces that dependency. Correlating automation data and presenting it with context, it allows different audiences to access the insight they need without waiting for interpretation.

Why consolidation alone doesn’t create clarity

The promise of a single pane of glass is powerful when the goal is shared visibility into a specific domain — one platform, one set of processes, one operational context. It creates a common reference point and a shared understanding of what’s healthy and what’s not.

The challenge emerges when that same approach is stretched to cover the entire enterprise. A single view can only show so much. When automation spans applications, infrastructure, data pipelines and business services, compressing everything into one window often flattens the story instead of explaining it. 

Over time, this leads to dashboard fatigue, especially when green statuses can mask issues that matter deeply to specific teams. Different roles need different windows into the landscape:

• Process owners need to understand whether end-to-end workflows will complete on time 
• SAP teams need to see how automation execution affects business services and applications
• Platform teams need to connect workflow behavior to application performance and infrastructure health

Effective observability builds on the single-pane-of-glass approach with more of a panoramic view, where multiple, connected panes together reveal the full landscape. Each pane provides the right context for the person looking through it, while still drawing from the same underlying source of truth.

Context changes how problems are handled

Monitoring answers a narrow question: did something happen?

Observability answers a more useful one: why did it happen?

With cross-domain, correlated, up-to-date data, teams can see how workflows behave as part of the enterprise ecosystem, how dependencies influence response times and where delays originate — insight that directly shortens MTTR by narrowing focus to the point of failure instead of the symptom. 

The real impact shows up in consistency. Fewer surprises reach leadership. More importantly, service-level agreements (SLAs) stop feeling like commitments you hope to meet and start becoming outcomes you can actively manage. Ultimately, the organization spends less energy reacting and more time improving how critical processes perform.

So, the control room still exists, but it stops being a wall of indicators. It becomes a place where cause and effect are visible.

Resilience requires a longer memory

Operational resilience isn’t built in a single incident. It’s built over cycles.

Short-term monitoring captures what happened today, while observability preserves history and makes it actionable. With extended data retention, leadership teams can look across quarters instead of weeks. They can compare peak-period performance year over year, identify recurring bottlenecks and understand how changes in architecture or volume affect outcomes.

This longer view supports better planning and more credible conversations with the board. It also simplifies governance and audit preparation. Instead of assembling evidence manually, you can rely on a consistent execution history that reflects how systems actually operate.

A 15-month narrative, rather than the two- or three-month one many teams work with today, creates continuity. It allows leaders to explain not only what changed, but why it changed — and how those decisions improved reliability, protected SLAs during peak periods and strengthened the return on automation investments in the long run.

A more sustainable role for IT

When observability is done well, something subtle but important changes inside the organization.

IT teams stop being the place everyone goes for explanations. They’re no longer stuck translating technical signals into business impact after the fact. Instead, they set the conditions for shared understanding. The right information is available earlier, in context and in language that different teams can actually use.

That shift frees technical managers to focus on improving how systems perform rather than defending why something failed. It also changes how leaders engage. Conversations become less about status and more about trade-offs, priorities and what to improve next. Visibility no longer depends on deep technical detail or last-minute briefings.

This is why observability can’t be reduced to “better dashboards.” The real value is confidence: 

✅ Confidence that the systems carrying real business risk are understood

✅ Confidence that issues will surface early 

✅ Confidence that decisions are grounded in reality, not assumptions

Continue exploring observability

As automation continues to scale via Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms (SOAPs), the ability to understand, anticipate and explain performance becomes a strategic advantage. To learn more about how modern observability supports resilient, data-driven operations, explore Redwood’s approach to enterprise observability.

Starting with RunMyJobs by Redwood version 2025.4, that vision is on its way to full realization. Redwood RangerAI is live and integrated across the platform, bringing embedded AI assistance and AI-driven development to the automation solution enterprises already trust to run their mission-critical operations.

AI built for the enterprise

Redwood RangerAI is a product of Redwood Software’s 30-year legacy of enterprise-grade automation. From contextual guidance to AI-assisted workflow creation, its capabilities are built directly into RunMyJobs, not bolted on. It’s AI designed to work within your governed, secure automation environment.

All of Redwood’s solutions are shaped by direct, high-touch engagement with customers, including regular feature-focused user advisory boards and strategic customer advisory boards that directly impact near-term and longer-term roadmaps. 

Redwood RangerAI is no exception. Redwood’s teams have focused first on delivering practical upgrades to accelerate users’ tasks and cut down on their backlogs. These focused enhancements lay the groundwork for upcoming AI capabilities that will further expand your ability to build and scale automation within your enterprise.

What’s new in RunMyJobs 2025.4

Redwood RangerAI introduces a range of AI-powered features that help users learn, build and operate faster within a secure framework.

Redwood RangerAI Product Assistant for RunMyJobs

Get guidance right where you work

Embedded directly into the RunMyJobs interface, the Product Assistant provides on-hand guidance tailored to your tasks. It can:

• Suggest one-click error resolutions and best practices
• Reduce reliance on specialized knowledge and support tickets
• Accelerate onboarding for new users

With dynamic, situational guidance, the Product Assistant makes RunMyJobs more intuitive for every user, not just automation experts.

Redwood RangerAI Automation Co-pilot for RunMyJobs

Build better automations, faster

The Automation Co-pilot helps teams translate intent into execution. Using natural-language input, it can automatically generate scripts, complete with built-in guardrails to maintain compliance and prevent common errors.

Engineers can now focus on design and innovation, not repetitive maintenance. The Automation Co-pilot dramatically shortens the cycle from concept to deployment while producing consistent, high-quality outputs that align with enterprise governance standards.

A robust, intelligent ecosystem

Redwood RangerAI doesn’t stop at RunMyJobs. Its intelligence extends across Redwood’s entire product portfolio to give you a consistent experience from discovery to deployment.

Redwood RangerAI Learning Assistant

Learn continuously

Available through Redwood’s public documentation site, the Learning Assistant gives users 24/7 conversational access to product knowledge. It provides instant answers to technical questions, with precise contextual references. This reduces the learning curve for new features and capabilities, in addition to helping users find the exact information they need without manually searching.

Redwood RangerAI Support Assistant

Resolve issues instantly

Integrated within the Redwood Support portal, the Support Assistant instantly analyzes issues and suggests resolutions for common scenarios. It reduces first response time to seconds (every time) and allows technical experts to focus on higher-value challenges.

A foundation for agentic orchestration

Redwood RangerAI is the next step in your enterprise’s journey toward true autonomy. With its capabilities now embedded across RunMyJobs, your enterprise gains the secure footing you’ll need to evolve from deterministic workflows to goal-driven, adaptive automation.

Designed to support industry standards such as the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol for interoperability, Redwood’s open, future-proofed approach allows you to securely connect to your broader agentic ecosystem, including SAP Joule. Your AI systems can make informed decisions while IT retains complete visibility and control.

Redwood provides the trusted bridge to carry you from today’s automation to tomorrow’s autonomous enterprise, ensuring you can leverage existing investments and scale AI securely.

The business impact

Every organization adopting Redwood RangerAI has one thing in common: a drive to accomplish more with the same resources. These intelligent capabilities amplify human efforts, automating what can be automated and guiding what requires expertise. Most importantly, learning continuously from both. Here’s what Redwood RangerAI can enable for your teams.

Redwood RangerAI doesn’t replace people. It extends their reach, generating measurable improvements in efficiency, accuracy and time-to-value.

What it means for you

Already a RunMyJobs customer? Redwood RangerAI capabilities are available now as part of the 2025.4 release. SaaS customers will automatically benefit from the Redwood RangerAI Support Assistant, and upgrade options are available to activate additional features. Take a tour of Redwood RangerAI in RunMyJobs.

To experience what’s next in AI-powered automation, visit the AI hub or request a personalized demo of RunMyJobs and Redwood RangerAI.

Forecasting and replenishment (F&R) works the same way. To the customer, it’s simple: the product they want is available where and when they want it. But what got it there was a full production involving forecasting systems, ERP, POS, purchase orders, distribution centers — each with their own scripts. 

Take the case of Target Canada. They had ambitious plans, shiny stores and plenty of product in stock. But backstage, systems weren’t talking to each other. Some shelves stayed empty while others were overstocked, and many customers walked out or didn’t show up at all. The two-year production bombed big-time, resulting in a multi-billion-dollar loss. “Ticket sales” didn’t even cover the cost of performances in this scenario.

Opening night: The performance customers see

F&R is the entire performance from the moment you draw the curtain back. It’s what the audience (your customers) experiences when they shop. Your forecasting engine is the lead actor, but it can’t carry the whole show alone. It depends on a cast:

• ERP systems handling orders and procurement
• POS systems sending daily sales signals
• Warehousing and logistics making sure the right props (products) land on stage
• Replenishment planning and allocation tools managing cues

If these players don’t work together well, the audience will see the mistakes: empty shelves, markdown bins and lost orders, to name a few.

Missed cues: Why supply chains go off script

Even seasoned companies misstep when the backstage crew isn’t in sync. In supply chain terms, that means F&R falls apart when the systems behind them aren’t connected or coordinated.

Take siloed systems, for example. ERP, POS and warehouse management each follow their own script, and none of them talk to each other. That disconnect means planners may not see when a promotion is running, when seasonality is driving spikes in demand or when external events disrupt supply. Without those inputs flowing cleanly into the forecast, replenishment planning quickly goes off track. It’s like three actors reciting different versions of the same play — it’s confusing, messy and painful to watch.

Manual workarounds are another sign of a shaky production. When planners resort to spreadsheets to patch gaps or re-sequence orders, it’s like stagehands rushing onto the set with duct tape mid-performance. The show goes on, but the cracks are obvious.

Rigid, batch-driven processes add another layer of risk. Imagine trying to run a live play using only rehearsed recordings. The story would fall flat the moment something unexpected happened. And the same goes for replenishment runs that can’t adapt when demand shifts suddenly, such as when there’s an unforeseen weather event.

Then there’s the lack of visibility. Without clear lines of sight into whether a job has started, finished or failed, supply chain leaders are left waiting to see if the actor will make their entrance. By the time they realize the cue was missed, the audience already knows.

The outcome of all these broken scenes? Outdated forecasts, replenishment delays, high carrying costs and frustrated customers who don’t come back after intermission.

The director’s chair: Keeping every scene in sync

An orchestration solution like RunMyJobs by Redwood acts as the director behind the curtain, ensuring every system, transaction and dependency plays its part. Think about the challenge of planning a holiday promotion: Forecasting modules may generate a strong demand forecast, but if order proposals don’t trigger on time or distribution centers can’t see accurate inventory levels, the campaign won’t be successful.

With RunMyJobs, order forecasts, replenishment planning, purchase orders and automatic replenishment proposals are kept in sync with demand planning and forecasting algorithms. That means safety stock calculations adjust automatically when seasonality spikes, promotions launch or future demand signals arrive from POS sales data. It also means master data issues are flagged and corrected before they cascade downstream.

This is true whether you’re running SAP F&R, IBP, Retail and Distribution Industry Solutions, MM, APO or connecting to non-SAP systems — RunMyJobs keeps the performance on track no matter the complexity of your tech stack. You’ll be able to respond faster to factors influencing demand, like promotions, pricing changes or unexpected stockouts, while reducing manual interventions. 

Orchestration transforms F&R from a fragile balancing act into a resilient, repeatable process that adapts to real-world conditions.

Standing ovation: Course-correcting with orchestration 

The value of orchestration in F&R shows up in the KPIs that matter most: gross margins, order fill rates and customer satisfaction.

Treat F&R like the production it is

In retail and distribution, forecasting and replenishment is mission-critical. It’s not a solo performance but an ensemble production that needs perfect timing, cues and orchestration. 

RunMyJobs provides the automation fabric that keeps your show running. Global retailers and distributors trust it to bring order to complexity and deliver consistent, applause-worthy results. 

Book a demo to see how RunMyJobs can optimize your F&R process end to end.

But what happens after the fire is out? This is where you make real, lasting improvements. This is the world of problem management: the forensic investigation into the root cause of an incident to ensure it never happens again.

Redwood Insights is the essential tool for this investigation in RunMyJobs, enabling you to identify trends that are critical for long-term problem resolution. With persona-based dashboards that visualize near-time historical execution data, Redwood Insights allows you to move beyond guesswork and find the root cause of your most complex operational problems.

This post explores how you can use Redwood Insights to transition from a reactive operational posture to a proactive one, using data to solve complex issues and optimize your automation landscape.

Core challenges of effective problem management

Without the right analytical tools, it’s difficult for you to move from a “hunch” to a data-driven conclusion about the root cause of an issue. Teams often lack the aggregated historical data needed for a proper investigation. This leads to two common, frustrating scenarios:

• The major incident post-mortem: A critical production process failed last night, causing significant disruption. The incident team resolved it, but the question remains: Was it a one-time anomaly, or is it a symptom of a deeper flaw that will cause another major outage soon?
• The “death by a thousand cuts:” A seemingly minor job fails intermittently, causing small disruptions. You log it as a low-priority incident every time and manually fix it. No single incident is big enough to warrant a major investigation, but the cumulative impact on team resources and user confidence is significant.

Real-world problem management scenarios with Redwood Insights

Let’s look at how Redwood Insights helps teams move from putting out fires to preventing them through data-driven investigations into both major incidents and recurring annoyances.

1. The major incident post-mortem – anomaly or systemic flaw?

The process: Following a major outage of a critical data warehousing job that was resolved by the on-call team, you’re tasked with conducting a root-cause analysis to prevent recurrence.

The investigation with Redwood Insights:

1. You open the Job Insights report for the failed job to get a complete historical view.
2. You use heat maps to see if failures have ever correlated with this specific date or time of month before, trying to identify patterns.
3. To determine if this was an infrastructure issue, you switch to the Job Server Analysis dashboard. This allows you to quickly rule out a systemic problem by comparing performance across your environment. 
4. Confident that the infrastructure is sound, you return to the job’s execution data. As you analyze the widgets, you clarify the situation using a smart narrative, powered by AI: a simple, natural-language summary of the data.

The business outcome and ROI:

• Action taken: Based on this clear, data-driven context, you can confidently classify the issue. You document the anomaly and close the problem record, avoiding an unnecessary and costly investigation into a one-off event.
• Business outcome: This data-driven approach avoids wasting resources chasing ghost issues while ensuring that genuine systemic risks get the attention they deserve.
• ROI: This leads to improved long-term service stability, more efficient use of skilled engineering resources (who now solve real problems) and increased business confidence in the automation platform.

2. Solving the recurring problem with data

The process: An end-of-day reporting workflow has been failing intermittently for weeks, creating a backlog of low-priority incidents.

The investigation with Redwood Insights:

1. You begin your investigation on the Operator Overview dashboard. Your eyes are immediately drawn to a widget highlighting the “top ten jobs with most frequent failures,” which confirms this reporting job is a chronic offender that needs attention.
2. You analyze the job’s history and use heat maps to discover a clear pattern: The failures almost always occur on weekday afternoons. 
3. To understand why, you pivot to the Queue Analysis dashboard to drill down into the systems involved. Here, the data clearly shows that when the reporting job fails, queue wait times are consistently high, indicating resource contention is the likely culprit.

The business outcome and ROI:

• Action taken: With definitive proof of the root cause, you submit a change request to create a dedicated queue for the reporting workflow, a targeted improvement based on historical data.
• Business outcome: The recurring incidents stop completely. The business service becomes reliable, and the stream of low-priority tickets ceases.
• ROI: This eliminates the hidden operational cost of repeatedly fixing the same small issue, frees up your Operations team from repetitive tasks and improves the reliability and timeliness of service delivery.

Your toolkit for proactive problem management

These tools give you the operational visibility and historical context to take IT operations from reactive troubleshooting to a data-driven, intelligent function.

• Identify recurring issues: Use the Operator dashboards to prioritize the most impactful, systemic problems by highlighting key metrics, such as the top ten failing jobs.
• Correlate failures to find patterns: Use interactive widgets like heat maps to uncover underlying triggers for recurring problems by correlating failures to specific dates or other factors.
• Isolate system-specific problems: Use the Job Server Analysis and Queue Analysis dashboards to understand if failures are application-specific or tied to a particular component, which is crucial for problem management.
• Drive data-driven improvements: Use the detailed Job Insights and Workflow Insights dashboards to perform targeted analysis, enhancing processes through redesign or resource reallocation based on historical performance data.

From reactive firefighting to strategic reliability

Redwood Insights provides the essential tools for a mature problem management practice. It allows you to move beyond the immediate incident and analyze historical trends to find and permanently eliminate the underlying causes.

The result is a more stable, reliable and optimized automation environment. This leads to fewer outages, more efficient use of IT resources and consistently more timely and reliable service management.

Watch this video preview of Redwood Insights to learn more.

Ready to move beyond firefighting and start solving problems for good? Discover how Redwood Insights can power your problem management process. Book a demo of RunMyJobs today.

This is why observability is key. A concept originating from IT monitoring and AIOps, observability goes beyond simply monitoring what you think is important. It’s about being able to ask any question about your systems and understand their internal states based on the data they produce: logs, metrics and traces.

Applying observability principles to workload automation and Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms (SOAPs) can help you handle complexity and orchestrate peak performance in your mission-critical automation fabrics.

Automation is leveling up

Several key trends are driving the need for sophisticated automation. Industry 4.0 adoption, the relentless pursuit of supply chain resilience and the demand for real-time business intelligence all require a new level of powerful and transparent automation. 

This requires a new kind of automation. SOAP solutions play a critical role, enabling real-time coordination of smart devices and systems. They provide centralized control, from production schedules and quality checks to predictive maintenance. Automation platforms are empowering organizations to guarantee the reliability of intricate IT and business services at scale.

What observability really means

Observability is built on three core principles:

1. Telemetry: Gathering rich data from your systems. This means collecting logs, metrics and traces to capture every facet of their behavior.
2. Context: Adding meaningful information to this data. Understanding the relationships and dependencies between different components is crucial.
3. Exploration: Empowering you to ask any question and investigate system behavior, even questions you didn’t anticipate.

Unlike traditional monitoring, which focuses on predefined metrics and alerts, observability allows you to proactively investigate issues, identify root causes faster, improve system performance and enhance agility. It’s about moving from reactive firefighting to proactive optimization.

As the automation industry changes to adapt to new business models and an increase in technical and data complexity that shows no signs of slowing down, focusing on observability as a key concept in the automation space is critical.

Applying observability to workload automation and SOAP

Observability brings significant value to workload automation and SOAPs, turning abstract job chains into fully transparent systems. It gives operators and administrators the tools they need to answer key questions like: Which jobs are running late? Where is the bottleneck? What impact will a failed step have downstream?

Here’s how that looks in practice:

• Integration monitoring: Tracking the health and performance of integrations with other systems and applications, such as ERPs, CRMs and cloud services
• Job-level insights: Monitoring individual jobs or tasks within workflows, analyzing resource utilization, tracking error messages and measuring performance metrics
• Predictive analysis: Leveraging observability data to predict potential issues and optimize automation performance before disruptions occur
• Workflow visibility: Gaining deep insights into the execution of your automated workflows and understanding dependencies, tracking execution times and pinpointing success/failure rates

To effectively leverage observability, your workload automation or SOAP solution needs specific capabilities:

• Alerting and automation: Enable proactive alerting based on observability data and trigger automated actions to address issues.
• Contextualization: Enrich data with context using tags, metadata and workflow IDs for meaningful analysis.
• Data collection: Robustly collect detailed telemetry data (logs, metrics, traces) from all components of the automation platform and its integrations.
• Visualization and analysis: Provide powerful tools for visualizing observability data, creating dashboards and performing root cause analysis.

Consider these real-world examples.

Supply chain optimization 

By applying observability principles, organizations can gain end-to-end visibility into their complex supply chain workflows, tracking the execution of various automated procurement, manufacturing and logistics tasks. This deep insight allows them to pinpoint exactly where bottlenecks are occurring, such as delays in raw material processing or inefficiencies in distribution, ultimately unlocking hidden efficiency and ensuring greater supply chain resilience against disruptions.

Business process assurance

Observability provides the granular detail necessary for troubleshooting failures in critical business processes like order processing or financial transactions, going beyond simple error notifications to reveal the precise step and underlying cause of the issue within the automated workflow. By monitoring individual jobs and integrations involved in these processes, organizations can quickly identify whether a problem stems from a failing application connection, a data validation error or a resource constraint. Thus, it enables faster resolution and minimizes costly disruptions to essential business operations.

Resource efficiency

Through observability, organizations can monitor the resource utilization of individual automated tasks and workflows, gaining a clear understanding of CPU usage, memory consumption and I/O operations. This detail allows them to identify underutilized resources that can be reallocated or optimize the scheduling of resource-intensive jobs to avoid contention. The outcomes of wisely navigating complexity instead of letting it overtake operations? Improved overall efficiency and reduced operational costs.

Properly implemented, observability allows you to predict disruptions instead of reacting to them.

Knowing what’s about to happen: AI in observability and automation

With observability in place, automation becomes more than a set-it-and-forget-it system. AI is allowing businesses to use automation to highlight weak points, adapt to changes and continuously improve. Its integration with observability and automation platforms unlocks new levels of efficiency and intelligence.  

AI enhances observability with smart narratives for data views that enable deeper data exploration and deliver real-time operational insights. This empowers teams to orchestrate workflows in perfect harmony and predict bottlenecks before they happen.

AI-driven automation is also moving beyond simple task execution to more complex, autonomous operations. The near future will include AI that operates autonomously to optimize performance and resolve issues, collaborates with users to automate complex tasks and provides instant information and guidance.

By integrating AI, automation platforms are evolving to provide a seamless experience, taking users from data to insights to action in a single step.

Redwood Insights: Observability built for orchestration

The need for enhanced visibility and control is transforming how enterprises approach automation. It’s no longer enough to simply automate; applying observability principles to orchestrate critical business processes is essential for achieving operational excellence.

To address this, Redwood Software is introducing a new solution that empowers users to visualize every process in motion, predict bottlenecks and turn uncertainty into opportunity. Today, Redwood announced Redwood Insights, first being integrated into RunMyJobs by Redwood, a market-leading automation solution.

Redwood Insights will deliver:

• Role-based dashboards for operators and administrators
• Orchestration analytics that provide actionable intelligence
• AI features with smart narratives for data views and deeper data exploration
• Analytics and visualizations to identify problems and bottlenecks before they impact operations

Redwood Insights, integrated with RunMyJobs, enables users to visualize every process in motion, predict bottlenecks and turn uncertainty into opportunity. 

Applying observability to workload automation and SOAP offers a path from chaos to clarity. It empowers organizations to achieve autonomous transformation, optimize operations and thrive in a complex digital world.

With the launch of Redwood Insights, Redwood aims to transform automation from an opaque process into a transparent, self-healing ecosystem. By embracing observability and AI-driven insights, you can move from simply managing automation to truly orchestrating business harmony. 

Learn more about how Redwood’s automation solutions and Redwood Insights can help you harness the power of observability and AI to achieve precision, synchronization and harmony in your business operations.

In large enterprises, SLAs are more than just contractual obligations; they’re fundamental to maintaining trust both internally and externally. Failing to meet them doesn’t just affect a single project or department; it can have a cascading effect and cause bottlenecks or delays on a wide scale.

Unfortunately, many automation tools fall short in preventing SLA breaches because they lack the sophisticated observability capabilities necessary for proactive SLA management.

The cost of missed SLAs in enterprise IT

For large enterprises, the repercussions of missed SLAs extend beyond operational hiccups to tangible financial penalties, customer relationship strains and more.

The financial implications alone can be staggering, with breached SLAs costing companies millions of dollars. Siemens reports that unplanned downtime costs $2 million an hour in some sectors. Those governed by strict contractual obligations, such as telecommunications, financial services and healthcare, can experience financial hits that cut into profits, hinder growth and negatively impact future financial planning. The compounding effect makes it even harder to invest in the advanced technologies necessary to prevent future failures.

Reputational damage can be just as severe, if not worse. In competitive markets, your reputation for reliability and performance can be ruined by repeated SLA failures. Customers and partners expect consistent service delivery, and delays can cause frustration, dissatisfaction and, ultimately, loss of business. Once trust is broken, it becomes difficult to regain, especially if your industry thrives on word-of-mouth marketing. Not to mention, SLA breaches could endanger your compliance with industry regulations.

A pattern of missed SLAs often indicates stagnation in automation maturity. If your organization consistently fails to meet these commitments, it could be that you lack the insights and advanced monitoring necessary to optimize your automation strategy. Your IT and operations teams may be in reactive mode, constantly fighting fires instead of strategically improving systems and workflows. It’s likely you’ll miss opportunities to move toward more efficient processes and remain in a manually driven state. A lack of growth in automation maturity prevents your enterprise from enjoying the cost savings and efficiency gains that come with a well-optimized automation strategy.

Reactive vs. proactive IT management

One of the most pressing challenges in IT today is how to approach moving from traditional monitoring tools to the gold standard: complete visibility. With simple alerts, your team may not become aware of an issue until it’s already caused a ripple effect across your operations, including missed SLAs. You need to be able to anticipate and prevent problems in plenty of time.

While monitoring tools typically track metrics like CPU usage, memory consumption or job completion rates, they offer limited context. Being alerted when something goes wrong doesn’t help you understand why it went wrong or, more importantly, how to prevent it in the future. The lack of contextual information leads to inefficient troubleshooting and longer downtime.

A comprehensive observability platform goes beyond tracking to aggregate logs, metrics and traces from across your entire environment to give you a full view of system health and workflow performance. Modern observability, built into Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms (SOAPs), incorporates AI and machine learning to deliver insights that traditional monitoring tools can’t. Predictive tools help you learn from past scheduling, resource availability and on-time completion data to predict current and future SLA breaches.

By 2029, 75% of SOAP workflows will leverage generative AI (GenAI) to increase troubleshooting efficiency by 50% — up from less than 10% in 2025.

– 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for SOAP report

Systemic anomalies and predictive alerts: A safety net

SOAP platforms equipped with advanced observability tools scan your entire environment to detect anomalies and provide predictive alerts — a far cry from the binary thresholds that trigger alerts in a traditional monitoring system. 

By analyzing trends over time, they can forecast potential failures or inefficient workflows. Whether an automation is currently running or scheduled for the future, the best observability solutions will be able to predict when failure is likely.

Beyond anomaly detection, advanced observability platforms leverage AI to rank irregularities by severity and impact so your team can prioritize responses based on the potential risk to critical SLAs.

Predictive alerts can also forecast demand spikes, system overloads or even security vulnerabilities based on historical data.

This level of visibility means you can stop SLA breaches before they happen, a dramatic shift from having to disrupt operations to react every time a system performance issue is detected.

Achieve ultimate visibility with a SOAP

In high-stakes IT environments, relying on limited automation tools with basic monitoring capabilities is a risky strategy. You’re effectively flying blind, with minimal visibility into what’s really happening in your systems and workflows. 

A SOAP platform gives you ultimate visibility by aggregating data, leveraging AI and offering predictive insights. It doesn’t just tell you when something is wrong — it tells you why it’s wrong and how to fix it. Investing in a platform with first-rate observability and an intuitive user experience will help you avoid the financial penalties, reputational bruising and customer dissatisfaction that accompany SLA breaches, no matter your use cases.

Consider a recognized SOAP solution to meet your observability needs. Redwood Software is a 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for SOAP Leader. Find out why in the full analyst report.

Traditionally, turning a concept into a functioning automated workflow required deep technical expertise and significant time. Often, it also depended on custom development skills. The process was resource-intensive and difficult to scale. Now, the pressure on IT teams to deliver reliable, end-to-end automations quickly is growing. And the dependency on highly skilled developers is not desirable, creating bottlenecks and introducing substantial delays.

Low-code platforms knock out inefficiencies and allow your organization to increase its automation maturity without the need for extensive re-engineering. They enable modular automation development and can break complex business processes down into manageable components.

A growing need for agile process automation

Enterprise systems are no longer confined to a singular, monolithic architecture. They’re complex, consisting of a mix of cloud services, legacy systems, microservices architectures and third-party SaaS applications, all of which need to communicate seamlessly with one another.

Automating successfully across the modern hodgepodge environment isn’t sustainable using siloed automation tools. Custom-built scripts and department-specific tools might solve short-term problems, but they simply can’t keep up with enterprise demands. The sheer volume of apps and platforms used by the average enterprise also means there’s a clear need for integration at scale. Custom integration work further slows down the automation lifecycle.

Design and composition: Low-code’s value props

Because they leverage object-based design and composable automation principles, low-code solutions make automation creation and maintenance a much lighter lift than they once were. That’s thanks to two key features.

Object-based design

Pre-built objects and connectors that encapsulate common processes such as data extraction, API calls or file transfers can be reused or modified to accelerate development time. This also reduces the chance of introducing errors because components are pre-tested and validated.

Object-based design doesn’t just lessen the coding burden; its drag-and-drop nature drastically improves efficiency by making it faster to build and deploy workflows. Customizing components makes it possible to deploy automations in less time.

Composability

Another defining feature of low-code platforms is the ability to create workflows from interchangeable modules or components. The flexibility of objects and the ability to switch out modules or add new ones without having to redesign an entire process gives you the power to build new processes or modify existing ones without overhauling your entire system.

Outcomes of using a low-code automation platform

In some cases, low-code solutions can open up the automation design process to non-technical business users. However, IT teams remain the primary users. The key benefit is that these IT users don’t need to be seasoned programmers. A lower need for complex coding lowers the technical barrier to automation, giving a broader range of professionals the ability to design and deploy automation processes. A flatter learning curve shortens your time-to-value.

Achieving automation goals more quickly within IT allows multiple teams to see the benefits of low-code in real time, rather than waiting for lengthy development cycles. Therefore, you can develop an automation-first culture where everyone sees the value in rolling out new automated workflows and your automations continue to grow in depth and impact.

Real-world applications of low-code automation

Low-code applications aren’t just valuable because of their intuitive user interfaces — they’re actively used to make implementing automations easier for all stakeholders. Here are the two key use cases that demonstrate how low-code platforms can transform automation efforts in enterprise environments.

Fostering collaboration across teams

A low-code platform removes the barriers that typically exist between IT departments and other teams, making the automation design and review phases more of a collaborative experience.

Consider a scenario where a finance department needs an automation workflow to streamline the monthly reconciliation process across multiple systems. Traditionally, the finance team would submit their requirements to IT, who would build a custom-coded solution. The problem with this approach is that IT might not fully understand the nuances of the finance process, and business users lack the visibility to see what’s being developed until it’s too late to provide meaningful input.

With a low-code platform, this process changes fundamentally. IT and finance team members can collaborate directly within the same platform to plan, build and review the automation workflow. The drag-and-drop interface allows non-technical users to visually map out the process and review pre-built automation components that IT has assembled. During the planning phase, the finance team can provide feedback on how the automation should function. IT can quickly implement adjustments without extensive coding. Because the platform is accessible to both teams, there’s a continuous feedback loop throughout the entire development cycle.

Adapting to major system changes

When your organization moves from one critical system to another, such as migrating from a legacy ERP to a cloud-based solution, the associated automations often need to be completely rewritten, leading to costly delays and potential disruptions to business operations.

Low-code platforms streamline this process by allowing IT to easily replace pre-built connectors or components without rebuilding workflows from scratch. Take the example of a company that has been using a legacy CRM system for years. Over time, IT has built several automations that integrate with the CRM — customer data imports, email campaign triggers and sales report generation, for example. When the company decides to transition to a new CRM, these automations would typically need to be recoded to accommodate the new system’s API and data structure.

However, with a low-code platform, this transition becomes far more manageable. Instead of manually rewriting each automation, IT can simply swap out the connectors or components tied to the old CRM with new ones built for the new system. The modular nature of the low-code platform ensures that these pre-built components are readily available, tested and validated for immediate use. By leveraging drag-and-drop functionality, IT can rewire the existing workflows to work with the new system in a fraction of the time it would take with traditional coding.

Not only does this significantly reduce downtime during the transition, but it also minimizes the risk of introducing errors. The result is a seamless migration process that allows business operations to continue uninterrupted while IT adjusts automations behind the scenes.

Limited automation tools vs. SOAPs

Not all low-code automation tools are created equal. Limited workflow or workload automation solutions often focus on specific tasks or departmental needs. A comprehensive Service Orchestration and Automation Platform (SOAP), on the other hand, empowers your IT team to design complex, enterprise-scale workflows with low-code tools. They combine easy-to-use features like forms, graphical interfaces, Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) and more so you can build, edit and test automations in a single space.

Gain a strategic advantage with a SOAP Leader behind you. Redwood Software is a 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for SOAP Leader — for the second year in a row. Find out why: Get your copy of the analyst report here.

It’s worth remembering that “things”-as-code approaches originated from infrastructure-as-code (IaC) and the DevOps movement, which fundamentally changed infrastructure management and formed a foundation for business services and operations. 

During my time managing traditional and cloud infrastructures, I saw how instrumental this shift was in empowering IT teams to build, manage and scale cloud workloads. Although it’s not the panacea some hoped it would be, it is of huge value to teams today.

IaC took us from using disconnected scripts and manual activities to creating infrastructure configurations for networking and servers to being able to easily deploy and set up systems in just a few clicks or API calls.

However, where infrastructure automation is inherently technology-based — with the requirements, planning and execution handled by people with technical skill sets — job scheduling via workload automation (WLA), bridges the gap between IT and business use cases.

Making workload automation accessible

While you can achieve WLA with JaC, it’s also possible to develop organization-wide automations with far less time and resources on the IT side. 

Where traditional job scheduling is time-based and used for automating IT processes, advanced WLA offers a significantly wider set of capabilities to automate business processes across multiple work streams and applications.

Because WLA solutions automate both business and IT processes, they bridge the gap from infrastructure architecture to enterprise and business architecture. Therefore, business rules and logic are inherently a part of implementation.

In that context, the goal is to democratize automation to empower people cross-functionally, accelerating the impact of decision-making to build a more efficient enterprise.

It’s vital for business or hybrid business/technical users to be able to leverage the benefits of a JaC approach.

The power of the object-based model without jobs-as-code

When working in code, developers can build solutions to easily reuse parts of their code, standardizing common and repetitive tasks or configurations. The code must be structured enough for multiple use cases, portable and fit to handle problems well. 

One common way to achieve this is through object-oriented programming. (For my own safety, I should point out that this is not the only programming language that delivers reusability, but it is certainly the most popular.)

In the end, the effort to execute JaC is not always worth it, but there are parts of this method that present an opportunity. The best solutions borrow from multiple concepts, incorporating them to deliver efficient and accessible outcomes.

Let’s talk about how to achieve the same benefits as JaC without the heavy IT burden.

Standardization and reusability

Programming, or coding, is one of the most powerful tools in the computing arsenal. What you can achieve is only limited by the bounds of the computer system you are coding for. With that power comes complexity.

The components that make up the structure of a workflow are limited — we can list them. For example, complex scheduling rules based on business processes, time zones, prioritization and escalation rules.

Enterprise workload automation platforms can deliver these benefits in a user-friendly way, as long as they have strong templating features and globally reusable components that all users can leverage to build jobs, integrate third-party systems and perform common tasks.

With a JaC origin but aligned with business concepts, WLA platforms can ensure that components and workflows represent the ways enterprises deliver services and manage daily business operations.

Connectivity and extensibility

Reusability in code also enables us to connect systems and extend actions into other systems, such as extracting data from databases, controlling operating systems, talking to SaaS platforms — the list is endless.

In a WLA environment, this happens via native integrations and an extensible connector model, enhanced with custom scripting and direct control over third-party systems through agents and APIs.

This enhances accessibility and stability. When a platform natively manages these components, it inherently controls them.

Admittedly, in this model, you’ll likely need to employ code of some kind. For example, scripting could enable you to interact with a remote system using your programming language of choice.

Version control and collaboration

Release management is a critical part of taking anything from the design stage into production. Usually, there’s a three-tier environment: changes progress from development into testing and, finally, production. 

It’s important to meet dependencies across the three stages to achieve maximum confidence that the workload will operate successfully in production.

With a system made up of a specific set of components and configurations, in-product release management delivers the safest and most reliable method for WLA release management.

The result is essential visibility into a workflow’s design, configuration and dependencies.

Scalability and agility

Generally speaking, when writing code, there’s a lot to be said for agility. When you can fundamentally change how a component or configuration works very quickly, you can see the result of that quickly, too.

WLA requires that you perform many discrete— and often different — tasks, or jobs. By reusing job definitions and other objects and injecting custom data (or parameters) into individual jobs and the larger workflow, you can unlock scalability without sacrificing accessibility.

A more user-friendly and accessible approach to WLA also mitigates the scalability challenges that can result from placing control over resource usage and process design into a code-based approach.

Empower developers to do what they do best

Although code-based approaches deliver all of the benefits outlined above, consider whether they’re the best use of limited development resources. 

You may be able to attain the benefits of JaC without needing costly deep development skills. Developers are an invaluable resource, and JaC can place unnecessary demands on them.

A solution that allows you to use components at scale without understanding a programming language frees developers to work on more strategic projects and makes the most effective use of all available resources for the benefit of your business.

Build a less resource-heavy automation fabric

As automation continues to expand in importance to touch every corner of enterprise organizations, it’s unclear if JaC will be the answer to more effective workload and workflow automation. It will always be wise to find new, more efficient ways to achieve your desired results. 

An accessible WLA solution brings your entire organization together in the drive for seamless job orchestration. The right one connects your applications and systems, allows all types of users to build new automations quickly and gives you the control and confidence to stick to SLAs.

Discover how to achieve more with less using Redwood Software’s automation solutions. Book a quick demo today.

Integration is a core capability of a Service Orchestration and Automation Platform (SOAP), according to Gartner®. SOAPs are today’s evolved workload automation solutions.

To ensure your infrastructure can evolve is to empower your people and operations. A solution that’s capable of such evolution is one that easily integrates with other essential tools and supports the creation of an automation fabric. 

Together, we’ll explore the features of an extensible automation solution, its benefits over disjointed integrations and how to apply its power to gain a competitive edge.  

What makes an automation solution extensible?

In an automation platform, extensibility refers to the ability to expand its capabilities without the need for excess coding or fundamental changes to existing architecture. Extensible technology maintains relevance longer than restricted software.

Three main elements indicate a platform is extensible.

No-code or low-code environment 

A cornerstone of extensibility is a no-code or low-code setup. Users with varying skill levels should be able to easily design, implement and modify workflows. If anyone can create extensible components, they can get actively involved in the creation of automated processes. This approach also doesn’t rely heavily on specialized IT skills for everyday tasks, so deployment and modification are much easier. 

Code-heavy workflows should be the exception to the rule in design to empower superusers of a platform or language.

Built-in connectors

An extensible automation platform offers pre-designed connectors that make for simple and reliable integration with a wide array of applications, databases and IT systems. Whether you need to pull data from a CRM, integrate with an ERP or connect to a cloud service, connectors eliminate the need for custom code and integration maintenance. Vital to the success of these integrations are strong support and quality assurance, regular updates and minimal to no dependencies; setup should be as simple as a click.

⇨ Learn more about how to elevate your automation experience with connectors.

Open API

Finally, an open API is instrumental in extending an automation platform’s functionality. It enables developers to tailor automations to their industry’s and organization’s requirements. Fine-tuning is often essential for supporting unique business processes. Whether you’re automating business processes and their associated applications or building your automation platform into your existing CI/CD builds, API flexibility is key to ensuring interoperability in the future.

Benefits of an extensible automation platform 

While your organization could gain many advantages from adopting an automation platform with robust extensibility, a few stand out. 

Visibility: Centralizing automation management

One of the primary benefits of having an extensible automation solution is the enhanced visibility it offers across all automated processes. By centralizing the control and monitoring of different automation tasks, you can see them all through a “single pane of glass.” Consolidating helps to identify bottlenecks, streamline operations and improve decision-making efficacy.

Agility: Evolving with new demands

An extensible platform is inherently agile. It can adapt to changing business needs over time without any significant overhauls or replacements. In today’s dynamic markets and technology stacks, agility is crucial. Armed with nimble automation capabilities, you can pivot quickly and integrate new technologies without extensive downtime or resource expenditure.

Scalability: Supporting growth with minimal overhead

Being able to increase the amount of work or number of jobs your automation platform handles is key, as new growth opportunities are not always predictable. Innate extensibility makes a platform less of a burden for your IT department and decreases your reliance on third-party vendors — and, in turn, the time it takes to scale.

Inherent extensibility vs. disjointed integrations

Still tempted to use point solutions that rely on various third parties? Let’s compare true extensibility to a piecemeal approach. 

Gain a competitive advantage with extensible automation

Leveraging the right automation tool that aligns with your larger automation strategy can mean the difference between achieving successful business outcomes and falling behind. As we’ve discussed, extensible automation can equip your organization with plenty of benefits — a collective threat to your competitors.

	Benefit: Extensible automation platforms streamline operations and reduce mundane work, which significantly reduces the need for manual intervention, increasing efficiency and lowering costs. Outcome: The immediate impact is a leaner operation. You’ll be able to reallocate resources from routine tasks to more strategic initiatives, making it faster and easier to go to market with new products and services.
	Benefit: Automated customer support processes, such as ticket sorting and basic query responses, enhance the quality and consistency of your customer service.  Outcome: Consistently excellent service improves customer satisfaction and loyalty, which are key differentiators in a competitive market. It’s also likely to contribute to better customer retention rates and a solid reputation.
	Benefit: Precise data handling and integration improve data accuracy and compliance with regulatory standards. Outcome: Reliably managing data reduces the incidence of costly errors and non-compliance penalties. It also builds a foundation of trust with stakeholders, who value data security and ethical management.
	Benefit: With robust data integration and analytics, you can consolidate real-time data from multiple sources to generate actionable insights into your operations. Outcome: Armed with deep insights, your team can react to market conditions and anticipate future trends to position your business ahead of the competition.
	Benefit: Rapid implementation of new automations gives you the flexibility to explore and innovate within new segments without significant upfront investment. Outcome: Moving quickly without the drag of large-scale IT infrastructure changes offers a major edge. It’s possible to create niches that competitors without end-to-end automation find difficult to challenge.

When the above elements combine, the result is seamless end-to-end automation that runs across multiple business processes and improves various facets of operations, from customer relationships to decision-making to market innovation. Automation, wisely applied, can be a key factor in sustained success and leadership in any industry.

What extensibility looks like in Redwood Software products

• Connector catalog simplifies integration selection • Native API integrations support a clean core for SAP users • Connector Wizard facilitates integration building Most common integrations: SAP, ServiceNow, Databricks and Snowflake	• Job steps library enables workflow orchestration • Super REST adapter allows for rapid API creation • Self-service portal frees up time for your IT team Most common integrations: Informatica, ServiceNow, Azure and SharePoint
• Catalog of pre-built, ready-to-run integrations for both legacy and modern solutions Most common integration: Oracle JD Edwards	• REST API prevents the need for complex workarounds • Cloud connectors and architecture support scalability • Easy integration to partner workload automation solutions drives efficiency Most common integrations: RunMyJobs, ActiveBatch and Tidal

Reap maximum value from an end-to-end automation solution

As has been more evident than ever in the past several years, it’s vital to be poised for market changes and ready to engage in rapid innovation. Automation can serve both purposes, but not all automation solutions are created equal. 

Redwood Software was named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for SOAP report — for the second consecutive year. Download the full analyst report to learn why.

We’ve covered just some of the grounds for using an extensible, end-to-end automation solution. There’s even more latent potential for shifting your organization into the ultimate efficiency and growth mode. Demo Redwood’s solutions to find out how.

But let’s face it, RISE can’t do it all on its own. As SAP itself acknowledges, RISE and the connected S/4HANA (in its cloud, private and public cloud editions) benefit from integrations that meet enterprise demands in seamless ways. No wonder that in the same month, Redwood Software announced that its RunMyJobs SaaS solution achieved SAP certification as integrated with RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud. 

Here’s why that’s critical: Businesses already have their hands full trying to meet the 2027 deadline when SAP will no longer support SAP Business Suite or SAP ECC. The RISE transition takes years, not days, so it remains paramount to find and implement solutions that work from the word “go.” It’s one thing to throw the proverbial switch and hope it works but quite another to enter in knowing that you’ll have your job scheduling under control, with zero-effort maintenance and stellar customer support at the ready.

Otherwise, you’ll hit a pain point that could jeopardize your mission-critical business processes. Among the most common: Not all job schedulers will work with S/4HANA, though many businesses assume that’s the case. The good news is that RunMyJobs by Redwood not only eliminates such a possibility but also produces efficiencies that will keep up with everything RISE and S/4HANA have to offer, now and in the future. 

RISE and security risks

Aside from one of the most perilous risks — that enterprises will drag their feet for as long as possible and make do with legacy on-premises solutions — RISE with SAP poses inevitable security concerns that come with any large-scale migration. How do organizations know third-party solutions are trustworthy and robust enough to avoid security vulnerabilities or data breaches?

To date, hundreds of the world’s leading companies have successfully migrated to RunMyJobs, experiencing a process that minimizes risk on multiple levels. First, it’s built with security top of mind. Customers have a singular, dedicated instance of RunMyJobs allocated to them within the cloud — providing isolation, protection and control.

What’s more, connections between RunMyJobs and your existing infrastructure are TLS 1.3 encrypted, with all communication with your infrastructure initiated by the software agents in your environment. 

This means there’s no need to open firewall ports that expose your network to risk. And thanks to RunMyJobs’ SaaS model, output information and data from your processes stays within your network.

No more lost time 

Your ERP software is the backbone of your business, and the automation you choose will impact critical finance, accounting and business activities. Yet, stories abound of migrations that turn into nightmares. Delays of any kind can jeopardize profitability and efficiency.

RunMyJobs follows an opposite narrative that not only makes turns the process into a harmonious flow but also positions enterprises for smooth sailing ahead. At the start of migration, RunMyJobs ensures a smooth transition of workload automation from ECC to S/4HANA; moving forward, it stays ahead of business process issues with proactive monitoring and alerting.

Consider the case of Osaka-based Daikin, the world’s largest air conditioner manufacturer. With RunMyJobs in place, the company has not only improved its partner-facing processes, but also reduced background processing time by 45%.

Putting the ultimate risk to rest

Technology moves at breakneck speed these days, with new service providers popping up all the time. But no matter the solutions they may tout, there’s no getting around this question: How much experience do you have within the SAP ecosystem, and how deep does it go? Here, RunMyJobs is the runaway winner. 

The program has roots no other SAP partner can match, as RunMyJobs was SAP’s first solution extension partner for automation in 2005 — dating to two years before the first iPhone hit the market. And its history of successful migrations dates back even further: 30 years, in fact. 

The changes brought on by RISE with SAP S/4HANA, with its stress on cloud-based technology, understandably have many companies concerned. Migration not only comes with risks, but often a fair degree on anxiety. Change isn’t easy.  

Or is it? RunMyJobs has proven time and again that it takes unnecessary friction out of the migration process, and has grown and changed with SAP over three decades. Its tools are time-tested with disruptions kept to a minimum: RunMyJobs runs parallel with your legacy product during multiphase RISE migrations.

And once in place, you can look forward to incredible reliability: guaranteed 99.95% uptime, one-click updates and a continuing investment in the SAP ecosystem. All told, RunMyJobs removes one more risk further down the road: It’s future-proof. All things cloud lie at the heart of the SAP universe — and yet the cloud is bound to change, as RISE with SAP will change with it. RunMyJobs, building on its sterling past, will keep pace, and then some, well into the future.   

Understanding RunMyJobs connectors

Connectors in the RunMyJobs universe act as bridges, seamlessly linking different systems, applications and platforms together. They are the vital cogs in the automation machine, ensuring that data flows effortlessly from one place to another, fostering a harmonious digital ecosystem. Pre-built connectors, our area of focus here, come ready-made and tailor-fitted to specific integration scenarios. This means they’re crafted with precision and designed to provide direct and uncomplicated connections between varied platforms and automation types.

They streamline the integration process, making it more accessible, efficient and reliable. There is no need to fumble through the complexities of API programming — these connectors have done the heavy lifting for you. They’re your secret weapon in achieving a cohesive and agile digital environment, ensuring that your systems speak the same language and work in unison.

The convenience of pre-built connectors

Ease of use sits at the heart of pre-built connectors. They are the unsung heroes turning complex integration tasks into user-friendly scenarios. Their design removes the intricacies of direct API interactions, providing a straightforward and intuitive way to link systems. It’s like having a bilingual friend at a foreign gathering — they translate, they connect and they make sure everything flows smoothly.

Time is of the essence and here, pre-built connectors shine. They significantly cut down the hours, days or even weeks it might take to establish an integration from scratch. It’s not just about speed — it’s about reliability. These connectors have been tested, optimized and perfected to ensure compatibility between systems, ensuring that your data isn’t just moving but it’s moving with precision and safety.

RunMyJobs connectors: Elevating your automation experience

Getting started with RunMyJobs connectors is as easy as 1-2-3. Simply dive into our catalog, select the connector that fits your needs and follow the prompts. It’s a user-friendly experience designed with you in mind. And the best part? You don’t need to be a coding wizard or a scripting guru. It’s automation for all, no IT degree required.

Say goodbye to cumbersome setups and additional hardware hassles. RunMyJobs connectors are agentless, meaning they operate seamlessly without extra installations or devices. They’re lightweight, they’re efficient and they’re ready when you are. And since they require no additional compute resources, your total cost of ownership stays low, ensuring that your automation journey is as cost-effective as it is powerful.

New connectors? They’re instantly at your fingertips. Our RunMyJobs catalog updates the moment a new connector is ready, ensuring that you’re always at the forefront of automation innovation. No waiting, no downtime — just instant access to the tools you need to transform your operations. Welcome to the future of workload automation, brought to you by RunMyJobs.

Spotlight on RunMyJobs connectors

Data management platforms: Informatica, Databricks and Boomi

With our latest connectors, including Informatica Cloud Connector, Databricks and Boomi, you can take your data processing capabilities to new heights. These connectors are not just tools — they’re your partners in ensuring that data flows smoothly through your workflows, that every process is fine-tuned for maximum efficiency and that errors are minimized and obliterated.

Imagine a world where your data isn’t just managed — it’s orchestrated like a symphony, with each note hitting perfectly in time. That’s the world these connectors help create. Informatica Cloud Connector ensures that your cloud-based data integration and management are seamless. Databricks supercharges your ability to process big data and Boomi connects your various applications and data sources with ease and agility. Together, they form a triad of power, precision and performance, ensuring your data is moving with purpose.

ServiceNow

Our ServiceNow Connector will elevate your IT services. It’s not just a bridge but a transformational tool. It turns time-consuming tasks into automated workflows, ensuring your IT department is soaring. With this connector, you can enhance every aspect of your IT services, delivering visible and impactful quality.

Imagine reallocating your resources from the mundane to the meaningful, focusing your energy on tasks that truly matter. That’s the power of the ServiceNow Connector. It brings agility, responsiveness and a heightened sense of innovation to your IT department, ensuring that you’re always one step ahead, always ready and always excelling.

ChatGPT connector

Step into the future with our ChatGPT connector — a gateway to innovation. By linking your workflows with the power of ChatGPT, you’re unlocking new levels of efficiency, creativity and excellence. This connector ensures that AI is a driving force of your workflows, propelling you toward new possibilities, solutions and horizons.

Imagine automating not just tasks but ideas, not just processes but creativity. That’s what the ChatGPT connector brings to the table. It’s your connection to the next level of operational excellence, ensuring that every aspect of your business is elevated. Welcome to a world where efficiency meets innovation, brought to you by RunMyJobs and ChatGPT.

SAP ERP S/4HANA Application Jobs

SAP ERP S/4HANA Application Jobs by RunMyJobs is your solution to seamlessly execute and oversee complex processes across finance, accounting, procurement and supply chain. As you upgrade your ERP functionalities, this connector ensures a smooth transition, minimizing manual effort and custom configuration. Experience effortless integration and keep your business operations streamlined and efficient.

Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne

Integrating JD Edwards EnterpriseOne with RunMyJobs transforms your enterprise processes. Keep operations running smoothly and maintain end-to-end oversight with this powerful connector. It ensures seamless operations and efficiency across your entire tech stack, even during ERP system transitions.

Amazon S3

Our AWS S3 connector is the key to centralized, secure, and efficient file management. It automates and streamlines file transfers, storage and retrieval, ensuring data safety and accessibility. Say goodbye to human errors and manual handline. Embrace a smarter, more reliable way to manage your critical data with AWS S3 and RunMyJobs.

Azure Synapse

Azure Synapse and RunMyJobs come together to bring you a seamless integration experience for your data workload activities. This connector ensures your Azure Synapse data pipelines are flawlessly integrated with your other business processes, enhancing your data management and transforming your inventory planning with efficiency and precision.

Kubernetes

Embrace the full potential of container technology with our Kubernetes connector. This integration increases your asset container utilization and process throughput while identifying and resolving handover issues without manual intervention. It’s a transformative solution that ensures your Kubernetes deployments work harmoniously within your full tech stack for optimized performance and efficiency.

Transform your operations with seamless integration

The digital era demands agility, precision and seamless connectivity, and RunMyJobs is your trusted partner in achieving just that. Our suite of connectors, especially the latest additions, are more than too s— they are catalysts for transformation. Whether you’re optimizing data workflows with our data management platform connectors, enhancing IT services with ServiceNow or unlocking new levels of innovation with ChatGPT, you have the power to elevate your automation experience right at your fingertips.

With RunMyJobs, integration is not just about connecting A to B. It’s about creating a streamlined, efficient and innovative pathway to operational excellence. Say goodbye to the complexities of integration and embrace a world of simplicity, security and endless possibilities.

Elevate your automation journey with RunMyJobs and unlock the true potential of your tech stack.

RISE with SAP is more than a program. It’s a comprehensive service for transformation, enabling businesses to continually renew and modernize. Leveraging digital technologies like the cloud provides enhanced flexibility, scalability and innovation.

However, embarking on this transformation journey has challenges and requires thoughtful consideration, particularly in selecting an apt automation solution. Job scheduling, while often understated, is pivotal for continuous business innovation. The foundation makes your processes smooth, your operations efficient and your innovations ongoing. This is where RunMyJobs by Redwood shines as SAP customers’ go-to job scheduling solution. In fact, SAP recommends it.

Choosing RunMyJobs isn’t about adding another vendor — it’s a strategic move for your business’s future. RunMyJobs provides the agility and adaptability you need, ensuring your automations are future-proof and scalable. It bridges your modern SaaS solutions and legacy systems, maintaining seamless connections irrespective of how your tech stack evolves. Plus, by jointly developing APIs with SAP, RunMyJobs enables immediate deployment of automations, avoiding the hassle of time-consuming custom solutions.

In this piece, we’ll explore why RunMyJobs is the top choice for businesses looking to maximize the advantages of RISE with SAP. We’ll discuss how it solves the challenges of transitioning to the cloud, managing multiple vendors and establishing lasting trust and premium customer support.

Why RunMyJobs is unique

In a market saturated with automation solutions, RunMyJobs stands out. It’s an SAP partner characterized by advanced integration, adaptability and a steadfast dedication to maintaining a clean core. 

Here’s how RunMyJobs distinguishes itself.

Seamless integration with S/4HANA

RunMyJobs and S/4HANA are more than compatible; they’re perfectly aligned for immediate, seamless integration. The spotlight is on native API connections in the workload automation, essential for uninterrupted, efficient workflows. This approach simplifies and refines the process, enabling businesses to leverage the advanced capabilities of S/4HANA fully.

Unrivaled flexibility and future-readiness

RunMyJobs’ flexibility is unmatched, connecting to any current or emerging tech stack. It’s about addressing today’s needs and preemptively adapting to future demands. The scalability of RunMyJobs’ modern SaaS platform ensures it continually adapts to technological shifts. It provides a consistent and reliable companion in your tech journey, allowing you to navigate and prosper through changes.

Adherence to clean core strategy

A clean core is vital in our technology-driven business world. It’s about direct integrations and avoiding unnecessary alterations and customizations. RunMyJobs champions this, offering direct integrations and numerous ready-to-use wizards and templates to maintain a pristine core. This optimizes performance and minimizes discrepancies and conflicts.

A proven relationship with SAP

RunMyJobs’ reliability is well-documented through its enduring partnership and mutual trust with SAP. The accolades, certifications and endorsements it has received attest to its proficiency and commitment. Having been a trusted ally of SAP for over two decades, RunMyJobs has collaboratively developed APIs and formulated solutions that resonate with SAP’s objectives and values, creating a mutually beneficial relationship that significantly advantages the end-users.

A definite competitive advantage

RunMyJobs outperforms on-premises workload automation solutions, especially considering the latter’s incompatibility with S/4HANA Cloud. As a genuine SaaS solution and a longstanding partner of SAP, RunMyJobs overcomes these constraints, providing a critical competitive advantage. It aligns strategies and solutions with S/4HANA Cloud, ensuring businesses adapt and excel in their respective domains.

The importance of job scheduling in RISE with SAP

RISE with SAP is reshaping business landscapes, enabling companies to evolve into intelligent, sustainable enterprises in the cloud. It’s a revolutionary approach, bringing forward innovative solutions that modify various business processes to align with the fast-paced demands of the contemporary world.

The mission of RISE with SAP

RISE with SAP is a guiding light, leading the way to enterprise intelligence. It offers a comprehensive solution for business innovation, affecting many business processes and enabling companies to reach new levels of sustainability and intelligence in the cloud environment.

S/4HANA’s job scheduling restrictions

Although S/4HANA is powerful, it has its limitations in job scheduling. These constraints highlight the need for a resilient workload automation solution like RunMyJobs, ensuring no stone is left unturned in executing every facet of job scheduling with meticulousness and efficacy.

The advantages of integrating RunMyJobs in RISE

RunMyJobs is a steadfast partner within RISE with SAP, supporting all crucial end-to-end job orchestrations. It goes beyond merely automating processes to guarantee security and stability throughout the cloud transformation journey. RunMyJobs serves as a protective layer, defending business operations against potential risks and challenges, thus ensuring a smooth and secure evolution.

The journey with RunMyJobs

Starting a journey with RunMyJobs is entering a world of boundless potential and smooth integrations. It implies automation across any tech stack, incorporating SAP S/4 HANA and pre-existing systems, offering infinite connectivity to SAP and non-SAP infrastructures, middleware and applications.

RunMyJobs’ supportive role during RISE

RunMyJobs plays a diverse role in RISE, delivering automation solutions beyond traditional limitations. Whether SAP S/4 HANA or any pre-existing system, RunMyJobs guarantees unlimited connectivity, covering SAP and non-SAP infrastructures and applications. This ensures a balanced synchronization among various technology components.

Streamlined migration process

With RunMyJobs, migration becomes a structured, phased approach marked by low risk and constant support from a devoted team. RunMyJobs provides extensive training from the outset, ensuring you comprehend each step, capture every subtlety and proactively foresee and resolve every potential obstacle.

Training and sustained support

RunMyJobs is more than a solution—it’s a partner in your journey. The extensive training and support ensure every user is knowledgeable, ready and capable of exploiting the full potential of RunMyJobs. It’s about enabling users to traverse complexities and succeed in their automation and innovation pursuits.

RunMyJobs: A distinctive choice for businesses on the RISE

RunMyJobs is renowned for its flawless integration and compatibility with S/4HANA, unparalleled adaptability and capability to evolve with changing tech environments. It maintains a clean core strategy, facilitating direct integrations and offering pre-made wizards and templates, avoiding needing customized solutions and extensive coding. Redwood’s enduring, strategic partnership with SAP, rooted in mutual trust and collaborative growth, reinforces its reliability and stature in the automation domain.

Taking a step with RISE with SAP is strategically evolving. Choosing a partner like RunMyJobs that aligns with your aspirations and seamlessly integrates with your objectives is essential. For those on the brink of this transformative shift, wishing to immerse in seamless workflow automation and open-mindedly adopt innovation, opting for RunMyJobs is a rational move forward.

If you are exploring the endless possibilities with RunMyJobs and are keen to experience the superior automation solutions provided by Redwood, we invite you to sign up for a demo. Discover the automation of tomorrow with us and escalate your journey with RISE with SAP to uncharted territories.

But every automation tool doesn’t deliver the same functionality, so figuring out your goals to improve your organization’s workflow is crucial. And then, decide on the automation tools or automated systems that can truly transform your business.

The first goal? Keep up!

Enterprises have never been more dependent on technology. And that tide is not turning back anytime soon. From connecting remote workers worldwide to improving customer service by leveraging chatbots, technology is the solution and the challenge. Many of these elements of business can be and have been automated to improve efficiency, accuracy and scalability. If your company is behind the curve here, don’t worry. You might even save yourself some of the hassles that some early adopters of automation are enduring now. But you need to figure out what you need to do. And how you’re going to do it. Redwood Software can help.

What’s the right automation for the goals I have?

Redwood has been leading the automation space for 30 years. Whether you’re looking for ways to streamline your production processes or business process management, Redwood has an automation solution. Plus, as you read through this list and these articles, remember that Redwood is the leader in full stack automation, which means, if you need more than one kind of automation, we can connect all of your automation, end to end, across your entire organization.

• Business process automation (BPA): Streamlining manual processes to reduce time-consuming tasks and errors. See how RunMyJobs by Redwood performs BPA.
• Workload automation: Managing tasks in real-time, ensuring that your operations run smoothly. RunMyJobs is an advanced workload automation solution.
• IT automation: IT departments often require specific functions to operate seamlessly. Discover how easy your IT automation could be.
• Finance automation: Streamlining finance-related tasks such as journal entry and reconciliation using a tool like Finance Automation by Redwood.

For a deeper understanding of how DevOps is incorporated into this equation, exploring the benefits of DevOps workflow automation can be enlightening.

Automation tools and real-time workflows

A well-defined automation project is only as good as the tools supporting it. Whether it’s robotic process automation (RPA) or more advanced testing tools, the real-time advantages cannot be overstated.

One of the significant advantages of automation is the ability to test before implementation. Automation testing aims not just to find bugs but to streamline the software development process. Automation testing ensures software functionality in less time than manual testing. From regression to exploratory testing, the right tools can significantly improve test coverage, making your software more reliable and efficient before unleashing it into your organization.

Organizations must constantly adapt to evolving technology, making evolving automation strategies crucial for sustainability. Furthermore, it’s essential to understand the business risks with outdated automation technology. Suppose you’re interested in exploring Redwood’s solutions firsthand or want to understand more about the differences between RPA vs WLA.

We invite you to check out the above articles or sign up for a demo of our products. It’s time to dive into the world of automation. But it’s important to understand why you’re diving in before hopping in the water.

Handling billing and compliance operations as efficiently and accurately as possible has led many utility companies around the world to implement RunMyJobs by Redwood. The workload automation (WLA) platform enables connection and coordination across every process and enterprise application, resulting in faster response time and mitigating risks in invoicing, billing, payment and debt management. Offering an end-to-end solution, RunMyJobs handles industry-specific processes like meter-to-cash, automating from meter reading to invoice delivery, making it the go-to automation solution for utilities. 

Read how three utility companies improved efficiencies and saw results using RunMyJobs.

Anglian Water

Background

Anglian Water is a U.K.-based utility with 5,000 employees and more than 6 million customers. With a daily billing workload of 16,000 invoices, Anglian Water faced billing operational issues resulting in customer complaints and an overloaded support hotline. The company needed to normalize its billing to address these issues, as well as improve cash flow.

Why Redwood? 

Anglian Water initially attempted to solve its billing process problems with additional manual intervention and employee hours. They realized they needed help and found cloud-based RunMyJobs workload automation to automate and streamline billing operations. RunMyJobs offered Anglian Water the ability to monitor, visualize and orchestrate processes across hybrid environments.

Results

With RunMyJobs, Anglian Water improved customer service by automating billing processes, eliminated billing errors and significantly reduced customer support calls. The company earned a number one ranking in Ofwat’s water regulator service incentive mechanism (SIM) program, with an overall score of 90 out of 100, beating the industry average of 84.4. SIM recognizes companies for efficiently managing their accounts, making bill payments easy and resolving operational problems quickly. RunMyJobs also enabled Anglian Water to streamline cash flow. Read more.

FortisBC

Background

FortisBC is Canada’s largest public utility company, with more than 2,400 employees and 1.2 million customers. FortisBC wanted to improve billing accuracy and the customer experience. With more than 50,000 bills sent out each day, Fortis needed to provide accurate, consistent billing, coordinated data collection and integrated data sources. The company also wanted to bring customer service and billing back in-house, which would require a robust automation solution.

Why Redwood?

FortisBC selected RunMyJobs by Redwood because of its powerful SaaS-based solution that could connect across systems and applications to secure all the data integrations involved in the billing process. The company implemented RunMyJobs in a successful, on-time migration involving innumerable applications and interfaces.

Results

Since launching RunMyJobs, FortisBC has not missed a single billing deadline and has produced 100% accuracy in its 50,000 bills. The company’s phenomenal record has furthered its goal of exponentially improving customer experience through faster, better and more cost-effective billing operations. Read more.

SWM

Background

Stadtwerke München (SWM), one of Germany’s largest municipal utilities with more than 10,000 employees, provides electricity, natural gas, district heating and cooling and drinking water to Munich residents, as well as supplying urban mobility solutions, telecommunications services and swimming pool oversight. SWM faced massive amounts of customer data and activities that had become a resource drain, as well as a growing range of services and a desire to increase sustainability. Because their existing platform did not support SAP IS-U, the service team has to manually start 60–70 billing processes daily, leading to delays, as well as erroneous invoices being sent to customers. The company recognized the need for a better automation solution to streamline its business processes, especially meter-to-cash, which involves everything from reading meters and maintaining data to preparing and sending out invoices — each process requiring more than an hour of manual work. SWM sought an improved customer service experience through automation.

Why Redwood?

With its sophisticated SAP environment, SWM wanted an automation platform that had deep SAP expertise. The company needed a solution with a proven ability to handle its diverse enterprise applications and data sources and process huge amounts of data from energy plants, wind parks, consumer meters and other systems for meter-to-cash reporting and billing. SWM chose RunMyJobs because of its SAP experience and track record.

RunMyJobs would interface between ERP systems and financial data sources to make all required data readily and reliably available on a daily basis. RunMyJobs could provide the control and access SWM required and a view into the detail of which meter-to-cash processes are executed, when and how. SWM could more easily adhere to the proper meter-to-cash sequence, decreasing process errors and instituting automated recovery routines should any error occur — enabling immediate intervention by SWM IT teams. And Redwood made it easy to migrate with not only an efficient, three-step migration process but also specialized tooling for migrating from Control-M, SWM’s existing platform.

Results

After a smooth and successful migration to RunMyJobs, SWM now has all of its customer data available at once, speeding up its customer response time and ability to provide customers with expert advice. The platform enables end-to-end automation of SWM’s meter-to-cash process across SAP IS-U and Business Warehouse to ensure 100% accurate invoicing on a daily basis. RunMyJobs’ self-recovery functionality and flexible scheduling of run times reduced meter-to-cash processing time from 14 hours to 8 hours.

With the messy, multi-step activities simplified into a predictable, manageable automated process, SWM focused on its “Next Best Activity” project, a continued effort to optimize customer service even further. Orchestrating end-to-end daily data flows from more than 25 different sources into a central database to then run recommendation algorithms prepares the next best activity for all call center team members. SWM has now implemented RunMyJobs across its organization, including mobility solutions, mobile ticketing and parking. Read more.

Why utility companies should se RunMyJobs

With RunMyJobs, your IT team can automate utility business processes like meter-to-cash, streamlining business operations and orchestrating processes across business applications and environments. Redwood can elevate your efficiency, accuracy and productivity, resulting in cost-savings, time-savings and a better customer experience. Book a demo today.

With no-code platforms, you won’t have to bounce from app to app — you can have everything you need all in one app!

Let’s explore the top five no-code workflow automation tools to help launch your business into the digital transformation age.

1. RunMyJobs by Redwood: Best overall no-code solution for enterprise-grade workflow automation and orchestration

RunMyJobs by Redwood stands out as an exceptional no-code tool for workflow automation. With its user-friendly interface and drag-and-drop interface functionality, organizations can easily design, automate and orchestrate complex business processes without extensive software development knowledge.

It can integrate with a wide range of applications and systems, including SAP and Oracle, making it ideal for enterprises with diverse IT landscapes.

RunMyJobs by Redwood offers an extensive library of connectors, allowing businesses to connect to unlimited servers, applications and environments, ensuring flexibility and future-proofing. It supports over 25 scripting languages and interfaces, enabling organizations to develop advanced automation solutions tailored to their specific needs.

Redwood provides reliable and secure hosting as a fully modern SaaS platform, with best-in-class customer support available 24/7.

Pricing

Redwood offers a no-obligation quote based on your custom configuration. Request pricing for your business today!

Who it’s best for

Redwood’s integration capabilities make it an attractive choice for organizations with complex IT landscapes and a need for deep connectivity.

2. Tidal by Redwood

Similar to RunMyJobs, Tidal by Redwood provides a centralized platform for organizations to schedule, monitor and control their diverse workload environments, including on-premises, cloud and hybrid environments. The software offers a wide range of features, including job scheduling, dependency management, event-based triggering, workload visualization and reporting.

Tidal also provides comprehensive monitoring and reporting capabilities, allowing users to gain real-time visibility into their workflows and track performance metrics. It offers advanced alerting and notification features, enabling proactive management and timely resolution of issues to ensure smooth operations.

Pricing

Tidal offers flexible pricing designed for your organization’s needs. Request pricing from Tidal today.

Who it’s best for

Tidal caters to industries and businesses with complex IT environments and a high volume of diverse workloads that need to be orchestrated and optimized.

3. ActiveBatch by Redwood

ActiveBatch by Redwood provides a central automation hub for workflow scheduling and monitoring, so your important use cases like CRM, HR onboarding, ERP, DI, process management and consulting systems all work together with little manual intervention.

ActiveBatch offers a wide range of features and capabilities, including job scheduling, workload orchestration, workflow management, event-based triggers, dependency management and workload analytics. It supports event-driven automation, allowing tasks to be triggered based on predefined events or conditions.

Also, ActiveBatch provides robust security features, including role-based access controls, encryption and audit trails, ensuring that sensitive data and workflows are protected.

Pricing

ActiveBatch offers scale-as-you-grow pricing. For a quote, contact ActiveBatch today.

Who it’s best ror

ActiveBatch is suitable for organizations of various sizes and industries that require efficient workload automation, job scheduling and process orchestration.

4. Monday.com

Monday.com is a cloud-based work operating system (Work OS) that is a centralized platform for collaboration, project management and workflow automation.

With its visually appealing and user-friendly interface, Monday.com offers teams a flexible and customizable solution for organizing, tracking and managing their work.

Monday.com provides customizable boards where users can set deadlines, assign tasks to team members and visually track progress. With a variety of view options available, such as Kanban boards, Gantt charts and timelines, teams can choose the most suitable representation for their project management needs.

Pricing

Monday.com also offers scale-as-you-grow pricing. Contact them for a quote for your business today.

Who it’s best for

Collaboration and communication are at the core of Monday.com. The platform enables seamless collaboration among team members, allowing them to share updates, files and feedback in real-time.

5. Fortra’s JAMS

Another great low-code solution, Fortra’s JAMS no-code software offers a centralized platform for managing and orchestrating jobs, tasks and dependencies across various systems and applications.

It provides a graphical workflow designer to create workflows with conditional logic, branching, error handling and parallel processing.

Users can set up customizable alerts and notifications to receive immediate notifications on job status changes or exceptions.

Pricing

JAMS offers enterprise-level workload automation. To get your quote today, contact a member of their team.

Who it’s best for

JAMS is especially ideal for those with complex IT infrastructures, diverse application landscapes and critical business processes.

No-code process automation

In the past, automating repetitive workflows and achieving seamless collaboration among various work apps would have required extensive coding expertise. The proliferation of specialized and powerful apps has undoubtedly enhanced the speed, accuracy and efficiency of our work.

This is where the magic of no-code workflow automation software platforms comes into play. By using these platforms, you can spend less time grappling with multiple apps and tools and focus more on performing your job better than ever before.

Automating workflows in SharePoint eliminates the need for manual intervention at every step, allowing employees to focus on more strategic and value-add activities.

This article will walk through seven workflows your team can start now with Microsoft SharePoint through RunMyJobs by Redwood’s integration.

What is Microsoft SharePoint workflow automation?

Microsoft SharePoint workflow automation refers to the process of automating and streamlining business processes within SharePoint using various tools and features provided by Microsoft or through third-party software like RunMyJobs.

SharePoint offers several built-in workflow options, such as:

• SharePoint Designer
• Power Automate (formerly known as Microsoft Flow)
• Power Apps

And it includes the ability to develop custom workflows using Visual Studio or third-party tools.

These automation capabilities enable organizations to automate document approval, document management, content publishing, task management, notifications, data integration and other work processes.

For example, when a document is uploaded to SharePoint, an approval workflow can be triggered to send the document to the appropriate stakeholders for review and approval. The workflow can automatically track the status, send notifications to the concerned parties and update the document’s metadata or location based on the approval process outcome.

SharePoint Online is a cloud-based version of SharePoint offering the same features and capabilities as the on-premises version but is hosted and managed in the cloud.

How does RunMyJobs integrate with SharePoint?

RunMyJobs is a business process automation (BPA) platform that can integrate with SharePoint to handle complex workflows and process automation capabilities. It offers seamless integration with SharePoint through its connectors and APIs.

By integrating RunMyJobs with SharePoint, organizations can automate and streamline various processes, such as document approvals, workflow management, task assignments, notifications and data synchronization.

Redwood can access SharePoint lists, libraries and workflows, automating complex business processes across multiple systems and applications.

With this integration, SharePoint users can benefit from advanced workflow orchestration, conditional logic, data manipulation and real-time monitoring and reporting.

In other words, Redwood offers far more options than is included with the standard SharePoint app.

7 SharePoint workflows to automate today

With the power of Redwood’s automation platform, businesses can leverage a range of pre-built workflows to automate critical tasks, such as document approvals, task assignments, issue tracking, content publishing, contract management, expense approvals and HR onboarding.

In this section, we will explore these seven SharePoint workflows and how they can be seamlessly integrated with Redwood to drive greater success in your organization.

1. Document approval workflow

Automate the approval process for documents uploaded to SharePoint, allowing for sequential or parallel reviews, notifications and version control.

Redwood provides a user-friendly workflow designer that integrates seamlessly with SharePoint. Teams can use Redwood to design and configure custom document approval workflows tailored to their specific requirements.

How your team can use it

A marketing team uploads a draft of a marketing campaign brochure to a SharePoint document library. With the RunMyJobs integration, they can configure a document approval workflow that automatically triggers when a new document is uploaded.

The workflow sends notifications to team members, assigns tasks for review and approval and tracks the document’s progress until it receives final approval, optimizing the approval process and eliminating the need for manual follow-ups.

2. Task assignment workflow

Automatically assign tasks to individuals or teams based on predefined rules or criteria, ensuring timely task distribution and tracking.

SharePoint’s task management features allow team members to track their assigned tasks, update task status and provide comments or attachments.

RunMyJobs’ workflow management capabilities provide an overview of the entire task assignment workflow, allowing team leads or managers to monitor progress.

How your team can use it

When a new support ticket is received, Redwood automatically assigns it to the appropriate team member based on their expertise and workload. SharePoint is a knowledge base where team members can access relevant documentation, troubleshoot guides and collaborate on solutions.

3. Issue tracking workflow

Streamline the tracking and resolution of issues by automating the creation, assignment, escalation and resolution of issues within SharePoint.

SharePoint provides a centralized platform for creating lists, managing tasks and organizing documents, while RunMyJobs enhances this functionality by offering advanced workflow management features.

With Redwood, teams can automate the entire issue-tracking process, from ticket creation to resolution, by designing customized workflows that assign tasks, send notifications, track progress, and ensure timely resolution.

How your team can use it

An IT team can use RunMyJobs and SharePoint to streamline their issue-tracking process by creating a workflow that automatically assigns incoming support tickets to the appropriate team member, sends notifications to stakeholders at each stage of the resolution process, tracks the ticket’s status and generates reports for performance analysis.

4. HR onboarding workflow

Improve the employee onboarding process by automating document collection, orientation schedules, access provisioning and HR form submissions.

SharePoint provides a robust platform for storing and managing HR documents, while RunMyJobs offers advanced workflow automation capabilities.

With RunMyJobs, HR teams can automate the entire onboarding process, from collecting and approving necessary documents to notifying stakeholders and initiating tasks.

How your team can use it

For example, when a new employee joins the company, Redwood can automatically generate a personalized onboarding checklist in SharePoint, assign tasks to various stakeholders (such as IT, HR and managers), send automated notifications to ensure timely completion and track the progress of each task.

5. Excel data processing workflow

Automate data extraction, transformation and analysis from Excel files stored in SharePoint, enabling you to optimize reporting, data validation and integration with other systems like Power BI.

With RunMyJobs’ automation capabilities integrated into SharePoint, teams can automate the extraction, transformation and analysis of Excel data stored in SharePoint document libraries.

How your team can use it

An office administrative team can use RunMyJobs and SharePoint to automate the processing of expense reports. Upon uploading an expense report in Excel format to a SharePoint document library, RunMyJobs can automatically extract relevant data, perform calculations, generate summary reports and notify the appropriate stakeholders for approval.

6. Expense approval workflow

Automate the expense approval process, allowing employees to submit expense claims, managers to review and approve them and finance teams to process payments efficiently.

Streamline complex approval processes using RunMyJobs’ workflow designer, allowing you to build customized three-state workflows to manage document reviews, approvals and rejections efficiently.

Using Redwood’s workflow automation capabilities, teams can design and automate the entire expense approval process, integrating seamlessly with SharePoint’s document management and collaboration features.

Redwood can enable the creation of a customized workflow that automates the submission of expense reports, routing them to the appropriate approvers based on predefined rules and tracking the approval status.

SharePoint provides a central repository for storing expense reports, facilitating collaboration and document versioning.

How your team can use it

An office administrative team can utilize RunMyJobs and SharePoint to automate their expense approval workflows. Employees can submit their expense reports through a SharePoint form, which triggers a RunMyJobs workflow.

The workflow automatically routes the expense report to the relevant managers for review and approval based on predefined rules such as expense amount or department. Approvers receive notifications and can access the expense report directly within SharePoint, review the details and either approve or reject it.

7. List item workflow optimization

Optimize workflows for SharePoint list items by leveraging Redwood’s workflow designer, enabling you to create complex and conditional workflows that automate processes such as task assignments, notifications and data updates.

RunMyJobs provides advanced workflow management capabilities, allowing teams to design and automate complex workflows with ease, while SharePoint serves as the central platform for collaboration and data storage.

How your team can use it

An office administrative team can use RunMyJobs and SharePoint to optimize their vacation request approval process. Using RunMyJobs’ workflow designer, they can create a customized workflow in SharePoint where employees submit vacation requests as list items.

Redwood’s automation capabilities enable automatic request routing to the respective managers for approval. Managers can review and approve the requests directly in SharePoint and, once approved, Redwood can automatically update the status and notify the employee.

Bonus: Project management workflow automation

Automate project management processes within SharePoint, including task assignment, progress tracking, status updates and resource allocation, streamlining project collaboration and improving productivity.

RunMyJobs provides advanced workflow capabilities, allowing teams to design and automate complex business processes with ease.

How your team can use it

For example, a project management team can use RunMyJobs and SharePoint to automate the approval process for project deliverables stored in a SharePoint document library. They can create a workflow that triggers content approval, assigns tasks to team members, sends notifications for review and feedback and tracks the progress of each deliverable.

SharePoint and RunMyJobs: A power combination

With RunMyJobs’ advanced workflow capabilities and SharePoint’s robust features such as document management, task assignment and collaboration, teams can automate document approvals, task assignments, issue tracking, HR onboarding, expense approvals, Excel data processing and project management workflows.

Both apps work together to create a cohesive workflow system that helps teams work smarter, not harder.

Whether you’re executing tasks at regular intervals, using cron syntax for specific schedules or using powerful extensions, Flask gives you options to suit your job scheduling needs. By combining the simplicity and power of Flask with the versatility of Python, you can create robust and efficient web apps with automated job scheduling capabilities. In practice, most teams start small, maybe automating one report or cleaning up a recurring task, and expand as their app grows.

What is Flask? 

Flask is a micro web framework written in Python that allows developers to build web applications quickly and easily. It’s designed to be lightweight, flexible and easy to understand, so it’s great for developing web applications of varying complexities.

Flask provides tools and libraries to create web APIs, handle routing, manage databases and more. It can also be used to create RESTful APIs and microservices for deployment on a variety of platforms, including cloud-based tools like AWS. 

What is a Flask app? 

A Flask app is a Python module that contains the web application’s logic and routes. It serves as the entry point for the web application and provides the necessary configuration and functionality. 

With Flask, developers can define routes, handle requests and render HTML templates. Additionally, Flask supports extensions and plugins, so devs can enhance their web app with additional features like authentication, database integration and job scheduling.

Flask API 

Flask provides a simple and intuitive API for building web applications. Developers can define routes using decorators and specify the functions that handle those routes.

For example, the following Python code snippet demonstrates a basic Flask application that displays “Hello, World!” when accessing the root URL:

from flask import Flask

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/')

def hello_world():

    return 'Hello, World!'

if __name__ == '__main__':

    app.run()

The @app.route(‘/’) decorator specifies that the following function should handle requests to the root URL (“/”). The hello_world() function is executed when a user accesses the root URL and returns the string “Hello, World!” as the response. Flask takes care of handling the HTTP request and response so devs can focus on the web app’s logic.

This is a tiny example, but it highlights why Flask is so approachable: you write a function, add a decorator and you’re off to the proverbial races. 

Flask and Python: Understanding the connection   

Flask is built on top of Python and can, thus, take advantage of its powerful features and libraries. It leverages the simplicity and readability of Python code for easy development of web applications. Python provides a vast ecosystem of libraries and modules that can be integrated into Flask web apps to extend functionality and enable job scheduling. Flask supports database integrations through libraries like SQLAlchemy, which can be used for managing data related to scheduled jobs, such as logging execution times or storing job configurations.

In regard to job scheduling specifically, Python’s datetime module can be used to handle date and time calculations, which is essential for scheduled jobs. And libraries like APScheduler and Celery can be integrated with Flask to facilitate scheduled tasks. For more complex scheduling needs Python’s threading module can be used alongside Flask to execute multiple tasks concurrently or manage background processes.

In real projects, the challenge usually isn’t writing the job itself, but deciding where it should run and how it fits into the rest of your app.

Scheduled jobs with Flask: APScheduler 

APScheduler is a popular Python library that provides a job scheduling mechanism for applications. It can be seamlessly integrated with Flask to automate tasks and execute them at predefined intervals. To use APScheduler with Flask, follow this tutorial using Python code:

1. Install APScheduler or the Flask-APScheduler extension from the Python Package Index (PyPi) using pip:

# Option A: Install the core APScheduler library

pip install apscheduler

# Option B: Install the Flask integration layer

pip install Flask-APScheduler

2. Import the necessary modules to create a Flask app:

from flask import Flask

from flask_apscheduler import APScheduler

from apscheduler.schedulers.background import BackgroundScheduler

from apscheduler.triggers.interval import IntervalTrigger

from apscheduler.triggers.cron import CronTrigger

app = Flask(__name__)

scheduler = APScheduler()

3. Configure the Flask app and scheduler:

if __name__ == '__main__':

    scheduler.init_app(app)

    scheduler.start()

    app.run()

4. Define and schedule a job function:

@scheduler.task('interval', id='my_job', seconds=10)

# The @scheduler.task decorator is provided by Flask-APScheduler. Standard APScheduler uses scheduler.add_job()

def my_job():

    print('This job is executed every 10 seconds.')

If you’ve ever set up a cron job by hand, APScheduler feels familiar but gives you a lot more control without much extra work. 

The id parameter ensures that only one instance of the job is running at a time, and the seconds parameter defines the interval between executions. The func parameter specifies the function to be executed. The args parameter can be used to pass arguments to the function being scheduled.

The Flask-APScheduler includes a REST API for managing scheduled jobs. Users can access docs for Flask APScheduler on GitHub.  

Scheduled jobs with Flask: Cron jobs 

Cron jobs are another popular method for scheduling recurring tasks in web applications. Flask allows users to leverage cron jobs through various libraries and tools, including the crontab module.

To use cron jobs with Flask, take the following steps outlined in the below tutorial using Python code.Install necessary dependencies, including the crontab module:

pip install python-crontab

Import required modules and define the Flask app:

from flask import Flask
from crontab import CronTab

app = Flask(__name__)
cron = CronTab(user='your_username')

Replace “your_username” in the above example with the actual username and configure the Flask app and cron job:

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run()

Define a cron job and schedule it with cron syntax:

job = cron.new(command='python /path/to/your_script.py')

The command parameter above specifies the command to be executed. Replace /path/to/your_script.py with the actual path to the Python script.

Next, set the schedule using cron syntax using the following command:

job.setall('*/5 * * * *')  

Ensure the system user has write permission to its crontab.

job.enable()

This example runs the job every 5 minutes.

cron.write()

Save the cron job.

Many developers still prefer cron for simple tasks because it’s predictable and easy to inspect when something goes wrong.

Scheduled jobs with Flask: Celery

Celery is a distributed task queue system that can be integrated with Flask to handle asynchronous task processing. Flask-Celery is a Flask extension that simplifies the integration process.

This extension provides a convenient way to define and execute tasks asynchronously within a Flask application. By combining Flask and Celery, users offload time-consuming tasks to the backend, improving overall performance and responsiveness of the application.

Here is a Python code tutorial for using Flask with Celery:

from flask import Flask
from celery import Celery

Create a Flask app.

app = Flask(__name__)

Configure Celery.

celery = Celery(app.name, broker='redis://localhost:6379/0', 
backend='redis://localhost:6379/0')

Sync Celery’s configuration with the Flask app.

celery.conf.update(app.config)

Define a Celery task.

@celery.task

def add_numbers(x, y):

    return x + y

Define a Flask route.

@app.route('/')

def home():

    result = add_numbers.delay(5, 10)

    return f'Task ID: {result.task_id}'

if __name__ == '__main__':

    app.run()

Celery takes a little more setup, but once it’s running, it handles the heavy lifting so your Flask app doesn’t have to.

Choosing the right method

There isn’t a single “best” option here. Each approach solves a different problem, and the right choice depends on how your application will look six months from now, not just today. 

If your priority is to keep everything inside your Flask process with minimal moving parts, Python APScheduler is usually the simplest fit. For example, “send a usage report every morning.” Use BackgroundScheduler for web applications, add jobs with scheduler.add_job(…) and start the engine with scheduler.start() inside your app factory or an init module, so it starts with the app.

Pick a trigger that matches your use case: IntervalTrigger for regular intervals, CronTrigger for specific times or a one-off run_date. 

For a concrete cron example: scheduler.add_job(send_report, ‘cron’, day_of_week=’mon-fri’, hour=8). 

Persist jobs with a job store, for example SQLAlchemy with SQLite/PostgreSQL or Redis/MongoDB, and remember to call scheduler.shutdown() gracefully on app stop so you don’t drop in-flight jobs or leave threads running. (APScheduler job stores may require additional pip packages depending on the backend.) This keeps small, predictable, scheduled jobs close to your API/backend code and app context, but be aware that jobs stop if the web process stops, unless you run the scheduler out-of-process or restart it with persistence. When developing locally, keep in mind that the debug reloader starts multiple processes, which can double-run APScheduler jobs.

APScheduler in app

Use APScheduler when you want simple in-process scheduling tied to your Flask app for things like API pings, cache warmers or report emails. For many teams, it’s the fastest way to get something working without adding new infrastructure.

Celery for scale

Choose Celery when you need distributed workers, robust retry semantics, rate limiting or workloads that shouldn’t run in-process — for example, image/video processing or long DB exports. In Flask, Celery uses a broker such as Redis or RabbitMQ and typically pairs with Celery Beat for schedules. 

APScheduler can also enqueue Celery tasks if you prefer its cron/interval ergonomics, but still want distributed execution so you schedule in app and execute on workers.

Once you’re running workers, scaling usually becomes a matter of adding more processes, which is one reason Celery has stayed popular for so long.

Cron at the OS level

Use cron for OS-level tasks that should stay independent of your web app lifecycle. For example, nightly maintenance scripts on a host. And, remember, cron won’t share Flask app context, so read config via env vars or a separate script.

If you need centralized orchestration across many apps and teams, SLAs and notifications, RunMyJobs provides enterprise workload automation across cloud and on-prem environments, languages and runtimes, complementing both APScheduler and Celery and helping reduce manual handoffs with SLA-based notifications.

Cron is old-school, but that’s part of the appeal: it rarely surprises you.

Most teams end up mixing approaches over time. That’s normal; your scheduling needs evolve as your application does.

RunMyJobs: More than a Flask job scheduler 

RunMyJobs offers event-driven job scheduling software supporting more than 25 scripting languages, including Python, with built-in syntax highlighting and parameter replacement for seamless job scheduling with Flask.

With the ability to automate job scheduling on any platform, RunMyJobs controls servers and runs scripts with lightweight agents for Windows, Linux, AIX, macOS and more. And creating new jobs in minutes is easy. Use the platform’s intuitive, low-code UI with a drag-and-drop editor and an extensive library of templates and wizards.

Enterprise teams can endlessly automate IT operations and any business process securely and reliably across applications, services and servers in the cloud, on premises or in hybrid environments from a single platform. RunMyJobs guarantees high performance of business applications with predictive SLA monitoring and notifications through email and SMS.

Preview what your Flask job scheduling could look like in a powerful workload automation solution: Demo RunMyJobs.

Abhijit Kakhandiki, Chief Product Officer for Redwood Software, shared the company’s vision and how it applies to today’s IT trends in a recent webinar. Customers rely on RunMyJobs to handle all their mission-critical business processes, and Redwood created its full stack automation solutions to support organizations today and into the future. 

Full stack automation

Redwood believes in a world where any company is able to automate all its IT and business processes, end to end, regardless of complexity or underlying tech stack. With this ability, organizations can free up their most valuable resource — people. They can be redeployed to work on critical growth issues that will help the business meet its goals and be successful. 

RunMyJobs wants to empower companies to automate and reimagine work by creating, distributing and helping consume composable automation solutions using its platform. It delivers automation of mission-critical processes in a secure, compliant and reliable manner. 

In order to help customers achieve this vision, RunMyJobs has to accomplish two things:

1. Offer a lower barrier to automation: With RunMyJobs, automation is intuitive and easy to use for more junior IT resources and business users. Automation is no longer solely in the hands of an organization’s software developers. Now automation can be spread rapidly across the company.
   
2. Scale with organizational goals and drive business outcomes: To be successful, IT teams need to keep up with requirements from business stakeholders and automate enough processes to reach critical mass. As users work with RunMyJobs’ purpose-built automation solutions every day, they’ll be able to see and track their progress toward their goals, creating long-term engagement.

RunMyJobs is designed to evolve with the changing tech infrastructure. As organizations move from a suite approach to best-in-breed solutions, the use of applications has increased 20x in the past 15 years. Couple this with the move from on-premises to the cloud as well as the move from servers to virtual machines to containers to serverless architecture, and IT leaders need an agile solution to provide powerful end-to-end business process automation. 

To be successful, an automation platform needs to automate at three layers — applications, middleware and infrastructure. In addition, the platform needs to be easy to adopt, so more users across IT and the business can automate more processes faster. The platform also requires an application development approach to automation where users can create modular, reusable components which allow them to compose automation solutions on top of the platform. 

Redwood has embraced this approach and created additional automation solutions, like its Finance Automation by Redwood product, which allows users to close their financial books in as little as four days. RunMyJobs’ full stack automation works across all layers, applications, middleware and infrastructure for maximum coverage. 

Automation trends

To understand what’s driving the need for automation, organizations need to understand five key trends:

Cloud modernization: 

Companies are increasingly embracing the cloud to more easily manage their infrastructure and are moving from on-premises to SaaS applications. As they move to hybrid cloud models, they’re combining compute, networking and storage across public cloud, private cloud and in some cases, multiple public clouds in a multi-cloud environment. This allows organizations to choose the environments that work best for their apps and data while reducing cost and risks. 

As a cloud-native platform, RunMyJobs is architected with lightweight agents, central cloud and streamlined product updates. It is highly available and has advanced features like cross-region disaster recovery. This year’s roadmap includes automation dashboards that will provide visibility into automation volume, savings and service levels. 

RunMyJobs also offers connectors for a variety of cloud providers, including AWS, Azure and GCP, to help users in their cloud journey. For organizations with managed file transfer needs, Redwood will be releasing its JSCAPE MFT SaaS product in Q2, 2023. Oracle Cloud and Microsoft Business Central will also be addressed.

As more companies move from legacy applications to modern SaaS applications, RunMyJobs is supporting ServiceNow, Oracle Fusion and SAP S/4HANA, with plans to support Workday in the near future. For organizations looking to automate the app inside containers, RunMyJobs has a connector that will work with Amazon ES, Google GKS and Azure ACS with a connector for Docker containers on the roadmap. 

Automation at scale:

Companies are automating at scale, since they’ve recognized that automation is key to thriving and competing in today’s business world. With the increasing number of mergers, acquirers are looking to improve their business outcomes quickly. This starts with standardizing business processes, which requires IT teams to have their process blueprints ready. RunMyJobs allows users to create process blueprints that can be standardized quickly across an entire organization.

RunMyJobs facilitates this process by providing an extensive connector catalog. This catalog is updated frequently as new connectors are released every few weeks. Users can access these connectors in the product itself immediately, with no need to wait until the next product update. 

The roadmap includes many new connectors, including JD Edwards, CyberArk, PagerDuty, ServiceNow, BMC Remedy and more. For business users that work in apps like Microsoft Teams and Slack, RunMyJobs allows them to initiate and interact with all their automations within those apps. New integrations are also being created for Dell Boomi iPaaS and SAP’s repackaged iFlows to integrate with SAP Cloud. Also on the roadmap are inbound web hooks that invoke RunMyJobs’ platform from other systems to trigger and move automations along. Users can also create connections via a forms-like interface. 

Currently, many organizations have integrations spread across EAI systems, BPMS, iPaaS, point solutions and more. RunMyJobs gives you a single point of visibility and control where you can orchestrate all your processes at the application, middleware and infrastructure layers. It supports a variety of triggers, is multi-threaded and has advanced features like asynchronous processing and even manages external systems. 

And the final area RunMyJobs is investing in is its support of high-volume, high-throughput automation through the use of advanced features. Processes are easy to create using the low-code, visual drag-and-drop workflow builder and common scripting languages. To take this to the next level, RunMyJobs will be releasing its Process Studio in beta mode. This integrates with our connector catalog, so users can use drag-and-drop templates and connectors in the studio. In the Automation Portal, business users can interact with automations. Finally, the RunMyJobs team is looking to take its current upgrade time of five minutes and reduce that to achieve zero-downtime upgrades. 

Data management automation:

Every company is becoming a big data company and wants to unlock the value of its data to get insights so it can continuously learn and improve. As data is being created at an exponential rate, it is siloed in databases, data lakes and data warehouses across the organization. 

RunMyJobs integrates with Hadoop, Spark and other cloud data services to ensure you can transform and leverage your data. To continue the product’s data automation services, RunMyJobs is releasing a Data Transformer, which will function as a Swiss Army knife to transform data, but with an Excel-like simplicity. 

Organizations can automate and get more value from their existing data by establishing context across various processes and applications. By extracting and transforming data from various sources and loading it into your targets, you can turn this data into insights about your customers, businesses and operation. RunMyJobs can extract data from virtually any source, from generic databases to a data streaming platform like Kafka or technologies like SAP Business Warehouse. Future integrations include Informatica Cloud and Matillion ETL.

For companies that have moved to data fabrics, RunMyJobs has a Snowflake connector and supports data management automation and workflows. The product roadmap has support for Azure Databricks and SAP Data Intelligence Cloud. 

RunMyJobs already has several customers using its platform for data management automation. Honeywell is using RunMyJobs to move data from multiple data sources to Snowflake. Stadtwerke Munchen is orchestrating daily data flows to a single target to recommend next best actions. For the call center team, they don’t have to ask customers the same contextual questions repeatedly. AS Watson Group is using RunMyJobs to enable real-time inventory visibility to 20 million SKUs by utilizing Kafka data streaming. These organizations are already seeing the ROI from their automation investments.

Deep ERP automation:

ERP systems are the operational lifeblood of any company, serving as the sole source of truth. They need to be queried, updated and validated against in the course of running multiple processes and by many stakeholders, which requires deep ERP automation. 

To best serve multiple processes and teams, automation needs to be built in modular components that can be leveraged by everyone. By setting it up this way, ongoing maintenance and governance is simplified as automation scales. RunMyJobs makes it easy to build components and even create templates and definitions to enable others. It supports native integration technology for SAP R3 and ECC by using remote function call (RFC). RunMyJobs is a trusted partner of SAP and has the broadest and deepest connectors for SAP products. It also supports Oracle, Netsuite and other ERPs. 

The product roadmap includes the SAP RISE certification, SAP IBP enhancements, SAP Business Objects, S/4HANA Mass Activities, BTP API Hub Publishing and others. RunMyJobs will also introduce the ability to compose independent business logic on the platform. For organizations moving to S/4HANA, RunMyJobs can help. After prioritizing processes and corresponding data and moving it to S/4HANA, RunMyJobs provides support every step of the way by supporting older technologies so organizations can keep their R3, EC and Netweaver automations running for as long as they want. It makes data migration seamless to ensure an organization’s move to S/4HANA is successful, while extensively supporting SAP technologies to rapidly build and run automations on S/4HANA.

Intelligent automation: 

Every system transaction is an opportunity for an organization to learn. Automation, coupled with AI, can help businesses automate more complex tasks, enabling humans to use their expertise to address gray areas.

For RunMyJobs customers, document processing is the most well-known automation use case. Using AI to extract data from scanned documents, it can then be entered into ERPs or other enterprise systems. 

To facilitate this process, RunMyJobs offers the AWS TEXTRACT connector, which extracts data from scanned documents and managed file transfers (MFTs) to build a pipeline to process large volumes of documents. Users can also create downstream workflows to enter extracted data into any system. As part of the product roadmap, RunMyJobs will be introducing support for Microsoft Forms and GCP Document AI.

On a broader level, automation can be coupled with AI models that can learn from every transaction. AI models can be used in prediction mode once they are sufficiently trained. This enables businesses to automate more complex processes where human decision making is involved. While AI handles routine cases, it can escalate any outliers to humans to review and make a final decision. For organizations adopting AI, RunMyJobs offers inbound and outbound APIs that can be used to attach and train AI models with plans on the roadmap to support key cloud machine learning services and further streamline the AI prediction workflow. 

Powering The Future Of Automation

RunMyJobs already has the integrations, features and services organizations need to automate their execution of the areas covered by these five trends, while the product roadmap demonstrates Redwood’s continued focus on helping businesses achieve their goals. 

Organizations looking to maintain their competitive advantage with automation should identify which key areas they want to prioritize and then work with internal stakeholders to determine needs. The RunMyJobs team is always available to answer questions and provide guidance. Contact your account representative to set up a call. 

If you need to exchange data or files, you should explore JSCAPE by Redwood, a highly secure and reliable managed file transfer (MFT) solution in the Redwood Software family that lets your securely transfer outside your organization and seamlessly integrates with RunMyJobs.

What is JSCAPE by Redwood?

At its core, JSCAPE is an MFT solution. It’s mainly used by organizations that need to conduct secure, reliable, automated and compliant data exchanges with other organizations. While you can also use JSCAPE for intra-organizational file transfers, most organizations use it to transfer files to/from external entities.

Why exactly would you use JSCAPE instead of other file transfer solutions? In a nutshell, JSCAPE delivers the following key benefits for your managed file transfers: 

1. Highly flexible 
2. Comprehensive visibility and data control
3. Streamlined workflows
4. Reliable performance and uptime

Let’s walk you through those benefits in more detail.

1. Highly flexible

Managed file transfer environments can be very complex, and that’s because many file transfer solutions are just too rigid, you’re often constrained by several deployment and operational limitations. As a result, you’re forced to implement workarounds that make the entire solution so difficult and costly to deploy, manage, maintain and use. 

JSCAPE eliminates these challenges by enabling flexibility in several areas. 

Multi-protocol support

Different trading partners may require different file transfer protocols. So, for example, one partner may require an FTPS service, another SFTP service, yet another AS2 and so on. If you want to satisfy each trading partner, you have to deploy, manage and maintain a separate file transfer server for each required protocol. You can avoid all that with JSCAPE. You can simply activate any popular file transfer protocol from within JSCAPE without having to manage and maintain separate file transfer servers for each protocol.

Platform-independent

Some file transfer solutions only run on certain operating systems. So, if all your current servers run on Windows and your desired file transfer solution only runs on Linux, you’ll have to deploy a Linux server just to support that solution. With JSCAPE, you’re not limited to a single platform. You can install it on any major OS, be it Windows, Linux, Solaris or Mac OS X, to mention a few. You can even install it in a Docker container. 

Deployment flexibility

Some organizations prefer to deploy their file transfer solution on premises. Others want it on a private cloud or a hybrid of these two. Some may even want their solution to be hosted and managed in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) environment.

The great news is JSCAPE supports all four of these environment types: on-premises, private cloud, a hybrid of these or SaaS (JSCAPE MFTaaS). You can even deploy it on premises and store user files in a public cloud like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure. Alternatively, you can also deploy JSCAPE on AWS and store user files on GCP and Azure. These are just some of the many deployment configurations you can use with JSCAPE.

Prefer to have a SaaS solution? JSCAPE MFTaaS is fully hosted and managed by Redwood, saving you from the upfront infrastructure costs typically associated with setting up an MFT solution. These are just some of the many deployment configurations you can use with JSCAPE.

Installation-free file transfer client

When you use a traditional file transfer solution, your IT department has to install an accompanying client application at each end-user device. Not only that, but you also have to ensure those client applications are managed and patched to minimize the risk of a security breach. These tasks get even more complicated in bring-your-own-device (BYOD) or remote work environments, where you may have to deal with a smorgasbord of operating systems and devices with different technical requirements. You can do away with all these hassles by using JSCAPE’s installation-free, web-based client, which you can easily load from any modern web browser on any device. 

2. Comprehensive visibility and data control

As you facilitate data transfers between members of your organization and trading partners, you want to be sure you’re able to preserve the confidentiality and integrity of those exchanges at all times. JSCAPE equips you with all the capabilities needed to establish highly secure data transfers in one solution. 

Visibility

A big part of ensuring file transfer security is having complete visibility of your entire data transfer environment. You want to know whether everything is going smoothly. More importantly, you want to know if something is wrong and why. JSCAPE provides a wide range of functions that can keep you on top of things — from a graphical dashboard that shows you health and performance information at a glance, through customizable reports containing actionable information to detailed logs that enable fast troubleshooting and problem resolution.

Data integrity and accuracy

When you exchange business data with trading partners, you’ll want to know with a high degree of certainty whether they received it. You’ll also want to know if everything was intact and no data was corrupted or tampered along the way. JSCAPE gives you the option to use certain file transfer protocols, like AS2 and OFTP, that are capable of preserving and checking the integrity and accuracy of transmitted data — a critical requirement of every B2B transaction. If the data arrives intact and in order, the recipient will automatically confirm by sending back an electronic receipt. 

Multi-layered security

We all know the internet is teeming with network-based threats. JSCAPE is equipped with multiple layers of security that protect data-in-transit, internal networks, authentication mechanisms and stored data. Secure file transfer protocols equipped with encryption and data integrity checks protect your file transfers from man-in-the-middle attacks. Reverse proxy functionality prevents external threats from probing your internal networks. Multi-factor authentication and password policies thwart brute force and social engineering attacks, plus data-at-rest encryption and streaming encryption renders stored data unreadable to intruders.

Regulatory compliance

By virtue of the industry, state or region you operate in, you and your trading partners may be subject to legislative and regulatory mandates requiring stronger data protection controls, such as GDPR, SOX, HIPAA, PCI DSS and more. That can be a serious problem if your file transfer infrastructure isn’t inherently secure, as you’ll be forced to slap on multiple disparate security solutions to achieve compliance. By contrast, JSCAPE’s comprehensive collection of built-in security features make compliance smooth and easy. In most cases, you just have to activate certain controls to comply with regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).

3. Streamlined workflows

In this day and age, every business process that can be automated should be automated. Automation ensures every business process is always accurate, efficient and fast. JSCAPE offers several options that allow you not only to automate data transfers but also to integrate those automated data transfers with other aspects of your business processes. 

Low-code and no-code options

Some organizations prefer low-code or no-code options to implement automation. Maybe you lack in-house IT staff who know how to write automation scripts, or perhaps you just want something quick and easy. JSCAPE offers low-code and no-code automation-building features that enable you to set up automated data transfer workflows with just a few clicks. 

Extend built-in libraries

While those low-code/no-code options can help you meet the majority of your data transfer automation needs, there will be some instances when you’ll want to leverage the power and flexibility of written code. With JSCAPE, you have that option as well. You can extend built-in JSCAPE libraries with your own reusable, custom workflow actions with code written in Java.

REST APIs

File transfer processes rarely operate in isolation. In most cases, you’ll be using them as part of some overarching business process. That means you’ll want to integrate them with other applications. JSCAPE enables you to implement those integrations through REST APIs. By leveraging the REST APIs within JSCAPE, your IT professionals can add code to a separate application that forwards data and prompts JSCAPE to execute a file transfer as soon as that application completes a certain process. Conversely, JSCAPE can also use the REST API of a workload automation solution to kick off a process as soon as a certain JSCAPE task (e.g., a file upload) completes.  

4. Reliable performance and uptime

A file transfer system that supports mission-critical business processes is highly sensitive to downtime and delays. If that system fails or experiences performance issues, all those processes will suffer. JSCAPE is equipped with high-availability (HA) capabilities that minimize the risk of downtime and performance loss. 

Active-Active HA configuration

In a managed file transfer environment, a single file transfer session can kick off multiple automated tasks that could take up a considerable amount of computing resources. The moment you have a large number of sessions occurring simultaneously, your file transfer solution will naturally suffer performance loss. To address this issue, multiple JSCAPE instances can be configured into what is known as an active-active high-availability (HA) cluster. Incoming traffic can then be received by JSCAPE’s load balancer and then distributed to members of the cluster. By distributing the load, you can minimize performance loss.

Active-Passive HA configuration

JSCAPE can also be arranged in an active-passive HA configuration wherein one JSCAPE instance actively processes file transfer tasks while another instance serves as a backup. In case the active instance fails (e.g., due to a physical server crash, power outage, network disconnection, etc.), the passive instance can immediately take its place, thereby minimizing downtime.

Watch this JSCAPE video to learn more.

Where do we go from here?

When you need to perform B2B file transfers on a regular basis, you have to put more emphasis on qualities like security, compliance and reliability. The built-in security, compliance and reliability capabilities of JSCAPE are among the biggest reasons why customers use it for their B2B file transfers. 

To learn more about JSCAPE, visit jscape.com.