This question is most often asked when a system has just been installed or when certain tables are growing in size a little too quickly.
Scheduling the SAP Standard jobs
The task of scheduling the standard jobs used to be a tedious one; you had to check the SAP Note 16083 – Standard jobs, reorganization jobs, and then you had to go through it step by step and create each job individually with the appropriate variant. Since 4.6C, this is no longer a requirement. There is now a much easier solution.
Start transaction SM36 and you should a screen similar to the one below:
As you can see there is a new button, which could be easily missed as it’s not highlighted very well – the button labelled: Standard jobs.
Click it, and you will be presented with the following screen:
You will notice the SAP system I have shown here already has the standard jobs scheduled, but on a brand new system installation there wouldn’t be any jobs showing up in the Job List.
Once you’re here, you’re almost done, and I’m not kidding. Simply press the Default Scheduling button located on the top toolbar. That’s it, you are all done!
A word of warning though, be sure to be logged as an Administrator, or a user who is to be used for job scheduling as all jobs will be scheduled with the User Name you are currently using.
By default, all SAP Basis standard jobs will be automatically scheduled when using this method, allowing the spools, the logs and many other things to be purged on a regular basis to prevent an unhealthy system growth.
You do still have the option of scheduling the jobs one by one with the ability to follow you’re own schedule template. This can be done by using the lower part of this screen. As you can see, there are some drill down options. Just select the SAP Component and you will be able to drill down into a list of standard basis related jobs to populate the Job name field. You can then schedule each job with your own time settings instead of the recommended ones.
One last thing, about that lower part of the screen, you could also schedule some “standard” jobs for other SAP components other than BC. This can be helpful to ensure you include product specific jobs such as CRM and HR for example.
Advice When Using SM36 To Define Background Jobs
I would like to add a small piece of advice when using that tool.
- First of all make sure to have your system as up to date as possible, as the list of standard jobs is changing constantly.
- Ensure your system is updated with each new support package when they are made available.
- Also, one SAP Note which should be looked at is the Note 1411877 – New standard jobs. This note contains some updates which may be included (or not) in the support packages.
For more information about this transaction, simply click on the Information button at the top of the screen, the info there can be very useful.
Conclusion
We just saw a simple and easy way of scheduling the SAP standard jobs. We can thank SAP for making this painful task a straightforward one, but as usual with SAP, you just have to know where to find it!
You won’t have any excuse now for not having the proper jobs scheduled in order to keep your systems clean.