From the System Administration tool you can create, edit, and view all the Dependency Rules available in your JobServer. Dependency Rules are a feature that allow one Job to affect the scheduling rules of other Jobs. This tool allows you to create and edit Dependency Rules. Using the Job Scheduler tool you can then associate a Job to one or more Dependency Rules.
A Dependency Rule has two primary states: Allow Jobs to run that are associated to it or suspend Jobs that are associated to it. When it is in an allowed state, the Jobs that are associated to it can only run if their next run date lies between the start and end dates for the Dependency Rule. An empty start and/or end date means that their is no date restriction.
Dependency Rules typically work by having one Job that can alter the start and end dates of a Dependency Rule to either prevent or allow Jobs that are associated to the rule from running or not. It is a very powerful feature and can be used in a variety of scenarios. For example, if you have Job A that runs every morning and Jobs B and C that must not run until Job A completes even if their scheduled times arrives. This works by having Job A change the start and end dates on the Dependency Rule after it is finished its run. Job A is not associated to the Dependency Rule directly, it only edits the start and end dates when it runs. Jobs B and C are associated to the Dependency Rule. So the Scheduler will prevent them from running until the Dependency Rule allows them to run.