We still plan to release a Web client update to support version 4, but don't yet have a target date for that. The initial release will be--like the version 3 client--a simple monitoring interface that will allow you to monitor and execute jobs, but not create/edit them.

We welcome feedback from you and other customers about what you would like to see in the Web interface. Are you looking for a full replacement for the Console, or just monitoring capability?

Note that we did add a self-updating capability to the desktop Console for version 4, to make it a little easier to maintain, if that helps you out any.

Thanks for the reply.

In our case, it may help to describe the support model we use to schedule the jobs. My team manages the server and the adTempus software. But the actual programs scheduled in adTempus are written and supported by distributed development teams. I do not have any idea what these jobs do - I simply make sure the server OS is running, the adTempus scheduler is working, and that jobs are being executed on schedule. The job owners submit request to us when new jobs are needed, when jobs should be removed, or when changes to the schedule are desired.

In a large, distributed organization like ours, many of our development teams are distributed globally. We began to encounter conflict because we were getting frequent requests for minor changes to jobs after normal business hours. Without some type of self-service interface into the scheduler, our customers had no choice but to call us - since we were the server admins.

In an effort to improve work/life balance, we developed a custom web interface in v3 that gave our job owners the ability to perform a few simple actions:

• disable
• run
• hold
• refresh the status
• Update notification recipients
• Change the "command line"
• Change the "command line parameters"

These were the most frequently-requested actions. In reality, I think we could get by with a minimum of Disable, Run, Hold, and Refresh. I consider the remaining options are more nice-to-have features. But obviously any additional self-service features would give our customers more capability to manage their own jobs, without our intervention.

Distributing copies of the v4 console isn't realistic in our desktop environment like ours either for a number of reasons, but mostly because our desktop software management process is very complex, and would require significant resource commitment to distribute and train users. But there's simply not enough usage to justify that type of investment.

The lack of a web interface is one the core challenge preventing us from moving to v4. We don't have many people, if any, within my sphere of administration who can write .NET (our core technology is java), and the developer who wrote our old interface is no longer available. Having a web interface written and supported by Arcana makes a lot more sense. I would be happy to provide you with any feedback you wish, or beta test whatever you've got.