SQL Server Agent Jobs

Check the job activity

The SQL Server Agent Jobs dashboard provides a compact view of job activity and execution history so you can monitor health, spot failures, and investigate scheduling or duration issues.

Jobs Overview

  • KPIs show totals for the selected interval and instances:
    • Total Job Executions: total runs observed.
    • Jobs Succeeded: completed successfully.
    • Jobs Failed: finished with an error.
    • Jobs Retried: runs that retried after transient failures.
    • Jobs Canceled: runs canceled manually or programmatically.
    • Jobs In Progress: currently running jobs.
  • Use these KPIs for a quick health check and to detect elevated failure or retry rates that need attention.

Job Summary

  • A summary table groups executions by job and highlights aggregate stats:
    • Job Name
    • Total Executions
    • Average Duration
    • Max Duration
    • Last Executed At
    • Last Outcome
    • Last Duration
  • Sort and filter the table to prioritize jobs with long or frequently varying durations, or with recent failures.

Job Execution Timeline

  • A Gantt-style timeline plots each job as a row with start/end bars for individual executions across the selected interval.
  • Bars are color-coded by status (succeeded, failed, in progress) so you can quickly see scheduling conflicts, overlapping runs, and periods with failures.
  • Zoom and pan to inspect specific windows and correlate with other metrics.

Job Execution Details

  • A detailed table lists individual executions with full context:
    • Job Name
    • Job ID
    • Job Duration
    • Start Time
    • End Time
    • Job Status
    • Execution Type (Scheduled, Manual, etc.)
    • Error Message (when available)
  • Click a row to view step-level output, error details, and the execution log.

Investigation tips

  • Filter by instance, owner, or outcome to isolate problematic jobs.
  • Correlate job failures and long durations with CPU, I/O, and blocking at the same timestamps to find root causes.
  • For recurring transient failures, consider retry logic or schedule changes to avoid resource contention windows.
  • Use the timeline to detect overlapping schedules; stagger long-running jobs to reduce contention.