Calendar management

Calendars enable you to define a set of scheduling criteria and then apply those criteria to job schedules by specifying the calendar name in the job definition, which saves having to define those sets of criteria individually in each job.

You define, view, edit, delete, or calendars based on specific scheduling criteria that are used to define scheduling in a job definition from the Tools domain. If you want to use a predefined calendar when defining a job, it must be checked into Control-M.

You can create one of more of the following calendar:

• Regular calendars: Enables you to create a predefined calendar based on certain dates (the days of the month and/or the days of the week) in a selected year. Other scheduling parameters can be used with a regular calendar to further control the dates on which the job is ordered. To create a regular calendar, see Creating a regular or relative calendar.
• Relative calendars (Control-M for z/OS only): Enables you to create alternative scheduling dates, even if they are not scheduled in a calendar, as described in Creating a regular or relative calendar. In a Relative calendar, the specified date has + or - to indicate how to handle when the marked date is scheduled or not, as one follows:
  • Scheduled: Schedule the date in the relative calendar.
  • Not scheduled: Schedule the closest next date (+) or the closest previous date (-).

  You can use Relative calendars to combine calendars through the Control-M IOABLCAL utility, as described in Control-M for z/OS User Guide.

• Periodic calendars: Enables you to create a predefined calendar based on different calendar periods that you define. Periodic calendars are used to divide the year into working periods (for example 13 periods, 20 periods and so on) instead of 12 months. Periods can be nonconsecutive, of varying length, and overlapping, but no single period can exceed 255 days. To create a periodic calendar, see Creating a periodic calendar.
• Rule-based Calendars: Enables you to create a predefined calendar based on specific rules, independent of specific years. These calendars can apply over several years, as they do not need to be redefined each year. Rule Based Calendars give you flexibility to address different scenarios. For example, if you want to run a job at the end of each month, you need to create a Rule Based Calendar, otherwise if you select 31 at the end of each month, it is not correct as there are months with less than 31 days. To create a Rule based calendar, see Creating a Control-M Rule-based Calendar.

When defining a calendar, you can create global calendars for all Control-M Servers by selecting ALL in the Control-M Server field. For example, if have a number of Control-M/Servers and you do not want a job to run on public holidays, create a global rule based calendar for all of your Control-M/Servers.

After you have checked in the calendar, the calendar is synchronized with Control-M Server. If you have selected a global calendar, you can check the synchronization status of each Control-M/Server. For more details about synchronization status, see Synchronization status parameters.

If Control‑M/Forecast is installed, you can display when and how often jobs are scheduled by clicking View Schedule. For more information on validating your job definition, see Forecast.

If Control-M/Forecast is not licensed at your site, you can use the CTMRPLN utility to produce a report that indicates when jobs in a selected calendar are scheduled to run. For more information, see ctmrpln and the Control‑M for z/OS User Manual.