ActiveBatch by Redwood Reviews

ActiveBatch helped us to streamline our IT workflows and improve overall efficiency. It is the most essential tool in our Infrastructure now. 

The best part of ActiceBatch is its user-friendly Interface, which feels easy to use even for a user with limited technical experience. 

We can configure and design complex workflows. 

It also offers pre-built templates and wizards which can be used to easily and quickly create automated workflows. 

ActiveBatch also includes the option to implement it in on-premises, cloud, and hybrid deployments.

Managing the workload and monitoring the tasks were very difficult with manual interventions. Now, by using ActiveBatch, the process is automated and it runs tasks on a scheduled basis. We can set tasks for daily, monthly, or weekly runs. 

This powerful and reliable tool can be implemented in small businesses and large enterprises that are looking to automate their IT workloads. 

It is used to trigger tasks at specified frequencies, We have also integrated ActiveBatch with different services and applications.

There any many outstanding features in ActiveBatch. For example, error-handling functionality has decreased the errors and issues triggered, which has improved the accuracy of the results. 

ActiveBatch is a valuable tool in our organization as it has increased efficiency and time consumption. It handles large workloads, and batch jobs and automates transfers effortlessly. 

The alerting feature helps notify and address the status of the jobs running and keeps the operations uninterrupted.

After upgrades we are facing a few issues and errors triggered, so focusing on this would be appreciated. Some of the advanced features in the user interface are a bit confusing even after referring to the documents. 

Improvement in support is much needed; there is a lack of training videos that would help us gain more understanding of the product. 

Sometimes, triggering fails and we have to face a lot of issues, Initially while setting up installation we will be confused. 

Integration with other applications should be improved

I've been using ActiveBatch Workload Automation for approximately two years.

As a QA engineer, monitoring logs in the production environment was one tedious task. This was time-consuming and required lots of manual effort. However, using ActiveBatch Workload minimized the downtime and maximized productivity.

Job scheduling is another major advantage of this tool. At the time, there were nightly batch jobs like Trigger Service, User Service, Notifications Service, and many more, which were easily handled by ActiveBatch Workload and made our job simple and effortless. We currently have 25 jobs running on this platform with different environments.

There were more than 20 bots developed for the closure of tickets, and every bot has to be run on different environments. Using ActiveBatch has improved our job scheduling and reduced the manual effort of closing similar kinds of tickets. This way, operation costs are significantly reduced. Anyone can now run the bots and complete the automation work with zero knowledge.

We work with different time zones. This tool helped to schedule the jobs irrespective of a timeframe as this tool supports all time zones, and the jobs are scheduled accordingly.

We used to monitor the dashboard every hour to report in which task the orders failed, and huge task failures were to be immediately reported. 

Using this tool, if there are any huge failures, we immediately get an email notification, and the proper team will be informed, at which time they can act accordingly. It helped us to stop having to monitor the dashboard each and every hour. This helped us to avoid huge impacts on our business.

We also have integrated three different applications and are able to fetch information without any issues.

Setting up the software was hard. This could still be made easier. At times, the email alerts won’t work properly. There should be proper documentation for the email workflow.

The new version looks good, however, it has lots of lag and often crashes - unlike the older versions. 

Exporting the documents in .jpg format was a bit difficult.

Customer Service could be better.

It's been one year since I’ve been using ActiveBatch Workload Automation. It made my job easy by providing automation for job scheduling and monitoring.

As of now, the product looks stable, and it works well in all environments. This is a go-to product for all organizations.

Organizations with more than 1000-1500 employees can scale easily.

Customer service could be better as I have faced some issues at times.

Positive

I have used Selenium previously. However, job scheduling, monitoring dashboard, and email alert features were not there. This is the major reason why I switched to ActiveBatch.

The initial setup was complex as we wanted to set it up on different environments like Windows and Linux.

This was implemented through an in-house deployment, and I would rate the process eight out of ten. The level of expertise was high.

I have not been in touch with the financial team who would monitor ROI. This is unknown to me.

The pricing was high for organizational purposes, and the set-up cost was okay. 

I have used Selenium, and there were many drawbacks, so I switched to this application as it made my work easy and simple. 

I have no concerns about the application, as it has worked very well for me and my team. I recommend the solution to others. They could take advantage of this application by reducing their manual work.

Mainly we have used ActiveBatch for automating the deployment of different environments like production staging and QA. Earlier, we used it to have different software for each environment. This used to consume a lot of time, however, after using ActiveBatch we can manage everything under a single piece of software. The monitoring and alerting features are a great help to get complete insights and hassle-free for work. 

With the help of ActiveBatch, we have come up with cool automation starting from file transfer and pipelining the scripts with more test cases, had helped our company to grow many folds with the same resources.

Earlier, we had around four to five different tools to manage our automation which was all replaced by ActiveBatch. It is great. Even the resources required to manage those tools were reduced to a great extent and now, with only two employees, we are managing end-to-end automation. 

Our team is mainly into the automation of the entire application which usually takes around 20 minutes to complete. When ActiveBatch was used, it was done in less than five minutes. We were able to complete it before the deadlines we had and even our clients are happy with the results we produced.

Almost all the features are great. That said, if we wanted to select the best, then the monitoring feature which gives complete insights in a single dashboard is the most helpful. It helps to detect immediately if something goes wrong instead of waiting for someone to report it. 

The ROI of the application is more than what we used to spend for the entire year and its reasonable pricing has helped us to use it to its maximum. 

We are able to integrate it into multiple third-party tools like email, backup, tracking systems, SharePoint, Slack alerts, etc.

The help center and documentation are not that helpful. If we had some more user-friendly explanations and more video tutorials about how to set up and debug items, that would be ideal. 

The preset job step types make designing easy, while the steps of the job that allow scripts and code to be run allow for a wide range of additional functionality. This can be made better with more example scripts and pre-coded samples. 

If a few AI tools can be integrated with the product, it would enhance the entire product setup time and debugging issues.

I have used the solution in a previous company for more than a year. In my current company, I've been working with it for the past six months.

The product is very mature. There are a few bugs however, none of them are roadblocks. It can be resolved by some workaround.

There are no scalability issues. It easily can be used in a company with more than 1,000 employees.

They have very good customer service. We had an issue while setting up and we connected with their support team. They were able to help us and fix it on the same day. Their response time has been great.

Positive

I previously used Selenium, however, it's all bits and pieces, so we had to switch to ActiveBatch automation.

It was straightforward to set up. Only in the end, when we were importing files, did we feel a little more documentation would have been required.

We had an in-house team for the implementation. I would rate them eight out of ten.

It has helped to achieve a 20% to 30% net revenue increase in the last quarter.

Setup is easy and can be done within one or two days. The pricing is reasonable when compared to competitors. There is no need to worry about licensing as it's taken care of when you choose the plan.

Since I have worked with ActiveBatch in my previous organization, it was my go-to option. I did not evaluate others. 

Overall, it's the best product that fits perfectly to most of our use cases. That said, it can be made a little more budget-friendly.

ActiveBatch has a fantastic interface allowing us to efficiently create, manage and monitor workflows. It also offers a drag-and-drop visual workflow designer, enabling users to create complex workflows without coding quickly.    

We can integrate this with various platforms and technologies, including Windows, Linux, Unix, and SQL Server, and this makes it a flexible tool that can be used to automate a variety of IT processes. 

ActiveBatch helped us automate and schedule routine tasks such as data backups, file transfers, database updates, and report generation, which frees IT staff to focus on other studies.

The most valuable feature of ActiveBatch Workload Automation software is its pre-built job steps. The software comes with an extensive library of pre-built job steps that can be used to automate processes in various systems and applications. Due to this, users won't need to create their scripts, which can save time and lower the possibility of errors.

ActiveBatch is a little complex. A steep learning curve can be associated with using ActiveBatch, and it may take some time for a few users to become proficient with the tool.    

Apart from that, I can easily say that ActiveBatch is the best in the business. 

I've used the solution for more than a year.

Overall it is a stable, great solution.

It is a very good, scalable solution.

Technical support is great.

Positive

Previously I was using a different solution.

I switched since that solution was slow and also the cost was more.

The setup is straightforward.

We deployed the solution with the help of an expert.

This solution is better compared to other software.

We mainly evaluated options based on the cost and flexibility of the software.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I've used the solution for three years. 

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

Positive

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

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

The primary use case of using ActiveBatch Workload Automation Software is that it enables IT teams to define, schedule, and execute a wide range of batch jobs and workflows, including file transfers, database changes, and application integrations (and much more), all from a single central platform. 

The software can automate mission-critical business processes with ease. My work environment has a large number of applications that must be handled simultaneously. In this scenario, the software really helps to monitor all the processes, which reduces manual intervention and human error while increasing productivity.

My organization's IT operations have been made more efficient by Active Batch, which automates time-consuming, repetitive procedures. The active batch may assist in making sure that crucial activities are carried out in the proper sequence and at the appropriate time with the use of features like job dependencies, event triggers, and notifications. 

Additionally, the software offers real-time monitoring and reporting features that let IT teams keep tabs on the progress of their batch operations and workflows. 

Overall, the software helps organizations improve the reliability and performance of their IT systems.

The Active Batch Workload Automation Software has a feature that I truly appreciate: it automatically distributes workloads over various servers and resources, improving performance and ensuring that the necessary resources are used for the right jobs. 

The software also supports a wide variety of platforms and applications, including Windows, Linux, Unix, and many more popular enterprise applications, making it a flexible and versatile solution for automating critical business workflows. I highly recommend the software.

While ActiveBatch is a robust and comprehensive workload automation software, I feel that it will be of great help if it is improved in the following areas:

As more organizations are moving towards a cloud-based infrastructure, ActiveBatch could incorporate more capabilities that support popular cloud platforms, such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. 

Active Batch could also offer deeper integration with DevOps tools to enable more streamlined and automated software development processes. 

Apart from these enhancements, everything about the software is highly appreciated.

I have been using this solution for the past six to 12 months.

The task scheduling was manual earlier, and it was a very difficult and time-consuming task to schedule jobs. Even after this process, it was difficult to find out what was wrong if the job/task has been failed. With the help of ActiveBatch Workload Automation, the entire workflow automation has been automated, and we can schedule our entire process from a single point of contact with features like real-time monitoring. We're streamlining IT operations, getting centralized security, and having quick and reliable integration features that are game changers in the industry.

Active Batch has helped us in a lot of ways. For example, earlier, the process was very time-consuming, and we needed to always have some resources to monitor everything. We needed a resource to schedule, and the entire workflow was not easy. With ActiveBatch, we schedule the tasks automatically and monitor them efficiently to track the tasks in real-time. Mainly, we have streamlined our entire IT operations. Now, we don't always need a resource to schedule or manage things. It does its tasks on its own, and even we can track and audit them efficiently and effectively.

There are many features I found very useful. It was the automatic scheduling of jobs and monitoring in real-time that were very useful. It has streamlined the entire IT operations. A lot of organizations are getting help from this. For developers, it is easy to orchestrate the workflows and the integration has been very easy. We can easily integrate ActiveBatch workload with any tool without any headache. We can optimize existing scripts also. Auditing is made simpler for administrators now.

Whenever there is an overload, we are seeing crashes happening. It is something that has to be taken care of. 

Triggers play a predominant role in doing an automated task after an event. It was eventually used to erase the boilerplate code, however, unfortunately, the triggers are not very reliable in ActiveBatch. It is not performing what it had to do at certain times. 

The application is a bit complicated and it is not very user-friendly for beginners. That might be a disadvantage until they get familiar with it.

I've used the solution for six to 12 months.

We did not previously use a different solution. 

ActiveBatch is the best in terms of reliability and helps with cost-cutting. The licensing was a complete green flag for the product from my side.

We did not evaluate other options.

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

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

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

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

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

It reduced the workload.

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

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

The best feature is the alerting mechanism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We did not use a different solution. 

The solution is easy to set up.

It offers very good value for money.

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

We used this solution for automating our batch processing which includes data load, refreshing data marts and refreshing the Power BI reports. We were using it for end-to-end automation, primarily for data delivery to reporting. We used every end-to-end process. The company is a customer of ActiveBatch. 

The solution is easy to configure and it's simple to develop new features, batch processing, or set up new process automation. It's also user-friendly for the operations team. I had experience on both sides working initially in operations, supporting the batch processing, and later on in development. Configuration is straightforward and it's easy to integrate with any system. All systems can be connected under one product rather than having to buy different tools to automate batch processing. The PowerShell feature or automatically using VBScript and the like offers good value. 

We haven't explored the cloud aspect of the solution because it's very costly. I think it should be provided as a free feature, which would be wonderful for organizations unable to take on the added expense of moving to the cloud. 

I used this solution for eight years up until a month ago when I moved to a different company. 

Yes, it is a stable solution but there are ongoing legacy issues that have carried through over the last few versions and which haven't yet been resolved. If there is too much batch processing happening some processes don't run properly. It doesn't happen all the time and we're able to manage it. 

The solution is scalable. We had around 50 people in the company using ActiveBatch as a tool. It was embedded more into the business side so it was used by the finance department, and the risk department, and it was used in customer marketing.

Customer support was helpful in providing the workarounds. Their knowledge base is very clear and they were very helpful for us in terms of creating more options. They provided a lot of the APIs and we were able to do our own DIY kinds of things. We created our own solutions using ActiveBatch and did our own monitoring so we could get enriched reporting. They were very helpful and provided us with good information.  

The product can be installed on any machine and it's very straightforward. If you know what you're doing it doesn't take long at all. Our implementation was all carried out in-house.

I'm unaware of the licensing costs but I know there is an additional fee for connecting to an SAP environment. 

This is a very good tool and I'm really missing it in my new company because I don't have a robust enterprise-wide scheduling tool and a really good tool for automating end-to-end.

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

ActiveBatch Workload Automation is a standard scheduling tool that you have on the market. The ultimate goal is to run everything powered through ActiveBatch Workload Automation, but we are always constantly trying to move from our legacy processes, which always takes a lot of time and effort. However, all of the new processes we are focused on implementing through ActiveBatch Workload Automation.

One of the most valuable features of this solution is the versatility of the prebuilt jobs.

Any product is going to have some room for improvement, no matter what. I see the company has already ventured into AWS and they're constantly trying to improve the managed file transfer which they have recently improvised. I think they bought a software called JSCAPE and they're trying to improve it, which is good. 

I am not sure if JSCAPE would be part of the base product but currently, you have to buy a separate license for it, which doesn't make sense. If it was Microsoft, ServiceNow, or integrating with other software vendors, I would understand but JSCAPE is now in-house and I'm not sure if they can justify having a separate license for JSCAPE. I would probably expect them to be packaging JSCAPE into the base product. They did switch over from a perpetual license model to a subscription model, which hurt the company a little bit. Nobody is offering the perpetual model anymore. As long as the transition is fair for both the companies, I think it should be fine and not burn us out.

I have been using ActiveBatch Workload Automation for a few years.

ActiveBatch Workload Automation is scalable.

The scalability of the solution is good.

The technical support was difficult if you wanted to escalate the issue, it takes a little bit longer to escalate. Their service model does not allow for everybody to be on the hotline all the time. I understand that, but unfortunately, with a production system, that's what it is. If there is a bug, you want that hotline as soon as possible, because we don't know the impact of it. If it can widespread, if there is an issue, or if it's contained within one or two jobs. Luckily this has not been the case. 

It's all same architecture and framework of which you built upon several things. If there's a problem with it, you want to know it way before it impacts the other jobs.

I like ActiveBatch Workload Automation's licensing model because they're not holding you down on an agentless model or agent model, where every server needs to have an agent. That's the main selling point of the solution and I hope they stay that way.

I have evaluated other solutions, such as Control-M.

I rate ActiveBatch Workload Automation an eight out of ten.

I rated ActiveBatch Workload Automation high because the licensing model is way better than other solutions, such as Control-M or other companies that charge a lot more. I like their agentless model because most of the scheduling companies put in the rules saying, that for each server you touch, you need an agent. Otherwise, they cannot communicate, and will not work. This is a large advantage for ActiveBatch Workload Automation their Agent model is great.