This one is a bit of a blast from the past. And I mean that — the timestamp on this file is over five years ago. You may have heard people refer to this method. If you’ve ever found yourself getting confused over what-job-runs-when-and-on-what, then this might be a technique that works for you. Obviously, this one was written when ESSCMD was all the rage, but you could no doubt adapt it to whatever you want.
In the attached spreadsheet, there are rows and rows of different jobs — just ESSCMD scripts — that all serve a particular purpose (and in this case, there are two sets of databases: a “Weekly” database and a “Daily” database. This is for historical performance reasons — everything is in one cube now). The days of the week are in columns, with an X to denote if the job runs on that day. Note that the jobs are numbered so you always run them smallest to largest. There is a simple Excel formula that populates the corresponding columns to the right if that script has an X for that day. The idea is that you can then copy that and paste it into your batch file and then call all those scripts in that day’s file. It’s remarkably simple, and it works well. It’s also self-documenting: any time you update the spreadsheet, and the subsequent batch file, you just print up the schedule again and you have up-to-date documentation.
This particular example shows its age a little (ESSCMD scripts, hard coded paths, and all that), but it shows the concept quite nicely.