How to send an email alert for errors with Workload Automation on z/OS

Workload Automation on z/OS (IBM Z Workload Scheduler or HCL Workload Automation for Z) allows users to centrally control all the automation processes providing capabilities to facilitate the operations for mainframe users.  
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You can have the Workload Automation sending an email to a recipient or list of recipients when an alert condition occurs.  ​

When WA decides to send an email? 
 
You can set that the emails are sent for the following alert conditions: 
 
For operations: 

• An operation in the current plan is active for an unexpectedly long time. 
• An operation in the current plan is set to ended-in-error status. 
• An operation in the current plan becomes late, which means that it reaches its latest start time and does not have the status started, complete, or deleted. 
• An operation in the current plan is promoted by WLM (z/OS Workload Manager)  
• The time that an operation is waiting to allocate a given resource exceeds the specified time.  

 
For product subtasks: 

• A Workload Automation subtask or subsystem ends unexpectedly. 

 
You can then decide whether send an email to an address group basing on a rule (FILTER) that checks whether an expression is satisfied or not. 
The email will be sent an email if all the expressions in the following rule are satisfied:  
 
FILTER(expression1, expression2, ..., expressionn)  ​

How you can define the email content and the email recipients addresses? 
 
Providing the following rule: 
 
FILTER(expression1, expression2, ..., expressionN) 
HEADER(FROM: recipient_address 
                TO: recipient_address1, ..., recipient_addressN 
                CC: recipient_address1, ..., recipient_addressN 
                BCC: recipient_address1, ..., recipient_addressN 
                SUBJECT: subject_text) 
TEXTMEMBER(member_name) 
 

If expression1 AND expression2 AND …. AND expressionN are satisfied then email with subject «subject_text» and text contained in «member_name» file will be sent to the recipents addresses provided in the parameters TO: CC: e BCC:. 
 
 
An Example: 
 
I can decide whether to send the email with content contained in the file «text» to a group of operators if a job ended in error, the application name must be xxx* (* is a wild card) and the job name must be yyy*. 
In this case the rule will be: 
 
FILTER(&ALERCOND=ERROROPER, &OADID=xxx*, &OJOBNAME=yyy*) 
HEADER(FROM: wa.scheduler@company.com 
                TO: john.smith@external.com, paul.red@internal.com 
                CC: federic.white@company.com 
                BCC: edgar.gree@company.com 
                SUBJECT: job &OJOBNAME terminate with error code: &OERRCODE) 
 TEXTMEMBER(text)   
 
Where &ALERCOND, &OADID, &OJOBNAME and &OERRCODE are variables containing the current values (&ALERCOND is the alert condition, &OADID is the application name, &OJOBNAME is the job name and &OERRCODE is the error code). 
 
Prerequisite to use this functionality 
To activate this function, you need to ensure that you have started the Communications Server Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (CSSMTP) on a z/OS system that runs on the same JESPLEX where Workload Automation runs. ​

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Author's BIO

Paolo Falsi, Technical Lead, HCL Technologies

Started working for IBM in 1990 at the IBM Software Laboratory in Rome. He started his career in the development teams of IBM OSI products. During these years, he has held various roles in the products development lifecycle but mainly as developer and designer of solutions in IBM Automation products. After 5 year working in the IBM BigFix family products with expert engineer role, he changed company in 2017 embracing the HCL company.  In HCL company he has a Technical leader role in the Workload Automation products suite. He holds a master's degree in Mathematics.   ​