Spotlighting the OpCon IBM i Integration

OpCon comes with almost 80 system integrations—powerfully distinguishing the platform from other workload automation and orchestration solutions. Offering this many integrations is critical. To ensure your automation is as efficient and valuable as possible, you want to make sure you can manage every system it needs to interact with from a single point of control.

If you can’t integrate all the systems you use with your automation solution, you could end up spending a lot of time setting up automation that’s more trouble to manage than it’s worth.

One of the integrations that comes with OpCon is for IBM i. This operating system has over 41,000 installations in the U.S alone as it’s used in a variety of industries, including financial services, insurance, retail, telecommunications, healthcare, higher education, and more.

If your organization uses this operating system, you can leverage OpCon’s mature, robust IBM i agent to enable a tight integration between the two systems. By having them work in sync, you’ll be able to boost efficiency and productivity across your organization.

Leveraging the OpCon IBM i integration

Here are some of the most powerful ways to employ the OpCon IBM i agent:

• View job output for jobs.
  You can eliminate the need to log into the i system or use shortcuts to see job failures. Instead, easily view job output in the OpCon interface with its right-click options. OpCon will send you a notification when there’s a failure, which includes error code information and an attachment giving you the full report of a job log. Notifications can be sent through preferred communication channels, such as SMS text or business messaging apps like Teams and Slack.
  
• Get notified about hidden errors.
  Less sophisticated automation solutions may not be able to tell you if there was a snag while a job was running. You might see that the job is complete, not knowing an error could be lurking within the seemingly successful process. The IBM i agent’s report scanning tool can detect errors within a job by reading job log reports. This will save you time and effort because it’ll find any errors that exist within a job that IBM views as completed normally.
  
• Manage the stops or breaks in your workflow.
  Enable greater efficiency by letting OpCon handle messages and interruptions. You can manage stops or breaks to balance something or acknowledge that an instance of data is correct. OpCon can examine messages, verify that values are correct, and then initiate the appropriate response in the right order. If one of your jobs fails, you can it restart where it left off as OpCon provides the tools needed for step-level restart.
  
• Integrate multiple platforms and applications.
  Unite your tools, applications, legacy systems, and the cloud within a single interface. For example, you can integrate IBM i, Windows, SQL, and VMWare tasks and easily view their shared workflow. OpCon can make virtually all applications and environments accessible with a connector, command, Web Service, or API.
  
• Allow end-users to initiate processes without IT intervention.
  OpCon enables you to quickly automate workflows to alleviate the burden on your IT staff. Most tasks can be automated in low code without scripting to save time and resources. Plus, through OpCon’s Self-Service feature, business users can trigger automated processes at the click of a button.
  
• Perform jobs for multiple databases at the same time.
  Instead of running nightly jobs separately for multiple databases in a single partition, employ parallel processing. You can have the same script running for multiple databases within a machine at the same time, so you can get a lot more work done in a lot less time.

Key OpCon IBM i integration features and capabilities

The OpCon IBM i agent includes all of these features and capabilities:

• Automated job scheduling
• Message management
• Operator replay with self-adapting scripts
• Automatically scan spool files for specific values and create response rules for actions
• Multi-step job scripting with step-level restart
• Automatically track jobs that OpCon didn't start
• Capture job definitions for reuse
• Event management
• File transfer automation
• Fully automated Restricted Mode automation
• Data capture with value testing/response
• File arrival monitoring
• Dynamic variables represented by token
• Export/import agent configuration data
• TLS-secured communication links and security
• Object authority management
• Fully automated Agent software maintenance
• Continuous monitoring of system services

With the OpCon IBM i integration, IBM i users can experience a world-class automation platform that automates and integrates Power Systems across the enterprise—all from a single point of control. With such sophisticated automation management, you can enable a fully functional, reliable, and scalable lights-out operation.