Scheduled jobs creating EXCEL report never update end execution time

Products

• Vantage Storage Resource Manager

Issue/Introduction

 I have a job in the schedule when the dasd storage group report produces a PDF report attached to an email, and it works fine, and everything else in the schedule runs on time. 

However, when the report was switched to attach an EXCEL spreadsheet to email, it runs, but never updates the end time, and this can be seen in the access data base.  This also causes the other scheduled jobs to not run. 

Why is this happening?

 

Environment

Vantage

Resolution

The Microsoft Excel component that Windows Client uses, exporting data into .XLSX (Excel Workbook) files, cannot be made reliable when Windows Client Scheduler is running as a service. Unfortunately, Microsoft changed their restriction in Excel.

With respect to this fact we recommend the following circumvention:

Update your scheduled tasks to export data into CSV format, not xlsx format. The recipient will then import the CSV format as an excel file.

Update the windows setting (list separator) to character ";" . The list separator settings are under settings -> region $ language -> additional date, time, & regional settings -> change date, time, or number formats -> additional settings.

This solution is for the Scheduler running as a Service, otherwise, If you just need the Excel file, you still can use the scheduler as an application, but then there is a need of a logged in user on the machine.