Transaction SJOBREPO – The new SAP S/4HANA Technical Job Repository

While in the “old” SAP ECC 6.0 world the administration of so-called “standard jobs” via transaction SM36 was still possible, this has now changed with the arrival of SAP S/4HANA. Once again, another aspect in the large array of changes with SAP S/4HANA shows improvement. The new ABAP Job Repository in SAP S/4HANA On-Premise is now intended to better support basis administrators for the automation of background job scheduling for technical jobs. According to the SAP documentation on this topic, SAP now wants to offer SAP HANA the possibility to automatically schedule recurring (periodic) background jobs and thus replace the manual administration and monitoring. For more information, see SAP notes 2190119 and 2581518. Please note that the SAP note 2190119 also includes an attached PDF document.

Since job administration has a certain importance from an authorization perspective and can often be used selectively in everyday authorizations, this blog is intended to bring you closer to the new changes with the transaction code SJOBREPO. With SAP S/4HANA you can no longer administer the standard jobs via transaction code SM36 and the “Standard Jobs” button (bounce is still possible). The administrator is now forwarded to transaction SJOBREPO via the “Job Repository” button. Of course, this also has an impact on the authorizations for the SAP ABAP code, we need to understand the necessary authorization object requests required to create and maintain a new job that will allow the SAP Basis Administrator to complete their job properly without having to be mapped to excessive and sensitive authorization values such as SAP_ALL.

Introduction to transaction code SJOBREPO

As soon as you jump into this new transaction, you will see the first difference – a cleaner job monitoring layout. Notice the differences between Figure 1 and Figure 2 for a small comparison of the “old and new world”. In addition to the modified list configuration with all the necessary details at hand, you can now view the complete list of standard jobs, without tedious scrolling or filtering.

Furthermore, the new overview directly visualizes the status of the job definition and all associated details. It also offers many different intuitive navigation and documentation options (job definition documentation icon), as shown in Figure 2. For example, you can adjust job definitions locally or across clients (accessed via an IDoc from the overview, activate or deactivate jobs, monitor the current status of running jobs, or even evaluate their statistical data.

In the background, the system creates a separate TADIR object of type JOBD for each job, which is then added to the list at the same time in tcode SJOBREPO.

FAQ: Transaction SJOBREPO

Since it can be very tedious from my own experience to go through all SAP Notes and references as well as attachments in detail, you can find the following list of the most important changes and information about Job Repository via transaction SJOBREPO (jump from transaction SM36):

1)      Can I delete a job via transaction SM37? Deleting a job via transaction SM37 is no longer sufficient, otherwise it will be scheduled again by the job repository. You must deactivate the corresponding job definition using transaction SJOBREPO.

2)     What does the value “DEFAULT” in the User Name field mean? Almost every job definition (hence a JOBD object) has the value DEFAULT in the “User Name” field. This is a placeholder for the executing user, which the Run-Time component then uses when scheduling background jobs.

3)      What is planned as a Job-Step user? By default, the technical job repository uses the background job step user SAP_SYSTEM if it exists in the underlying client. If this is not the case, the user DDIC is scheduled as a job-step user (fallback scenario).

4)      How does the report “R_JR_UTIL_1” help me? You can make changes to this default behavior from point 3 using the “R_JR_UTIL_1” report. It currently includes three functions, as shown in Figure 3. Alternatively, you can also use transaction SJOBREPO_STEPUSER. Further information can be found in the SAP note 2339022.

5)      What does the standard background job do R_JR_BTCJOBS_GENERATOR? This runs once every hour in each relevant client and is responsible for the job creation of technical background jobs. If necessary, you can adjust the interval of 60 minutes using the parameterrdisp/job_repo_activate_time (default=60m).

Job Monitoring with the help of XAMS

If you already have the Xiting Authorizations Management Suite (XAMS) in use, you may have already stumbled across our integrated job monitoring (Figure 5). We have been offering you this intuitive job monitoring option for years and is constantly being adapted to relevant innovations. Here you can even jump off details with double-clicks or adjust jobs via the SAP standard tools.

Conclusion on transaction SJOBREPO in SAP S/4HANA

Once again, holistic changes have made themselves felt in the context of SAP S/4HANA. Along with this, you must now not only include the new tool on the authorization side, but also adapt the processes for internal background job monitoring or administration if necessary. All in all, the new transaction code SJOBREPO gives you a more intuitive job administration setup, with a variety of new possibilities that have long existed in the job monitoring of XAMS.

If you would like to know more about our tool (XAMS) and its innovative features for your everyday authorization, please have a look at one of our regular webinars. In addition, we also offer a variety of different services and products to support you in the maintenance of your authorization system. At this point, I would also like to thank our developer Otto Gold for the information provided on this topic. Kudos!

Stay tuned for my next blog. It is about the transactions STAUTHTRACE and ST01!

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