Populating Work Day Automatically

In Advantage HRM, Work Schedules can be automatically populated on the Work Day table through the Populate Work Day Table batch job, thus increasing the ability to maintain many different patterns of schedules, including definition of work days, contract days, off days and holidays. This reduces the effort required to create and maintain work schedules at an individual date level (example, start and end times for a given date, default pay type, comments or which dates are holidays and off days). The ability to track time by allowing four different Start Time/End Time periods for each day on the Work Day table is also provided.

With the addition of the Work Schedule Wizard, work schedule information, including changes to the Work Day table, can be saved to temporary tables, and then all changes for the work schedules can be published when the user selects the Finish button for the wizard session. If the Populate Work Day table batch job is invoked from BATRUN, records are created in the operational Work Day table. If the job is invoked using the Populate Work Day button on the Work Schedule Wizard, records are created in the temporary Work Day table.

The Populate Work Day Table batch job requires reference data be defined on the Schedule Pattern, Holiday Schedule, Time Change, Home Department, Home Unit, Union Local and Work Location reference pages. The Schedule Pattern page is used by the Populate Work Day Table batch process to populate the Work Day table. The Schedule Pattern page is used to define the pattern of work days and the start and end times for those days. The Schedule Pattern page has the following fields available: Schedule Pattern, Schedule Day, Schedule Type, Hours Per Day, Shift 1 to 4, Start and Times 1 to 4.

The Holiday Schedule page allows the user to create a schedule of holidays to be used by the Populate Work Day Table batch job. This page has the following fields available: Holiday Schedule ID, Short Description, Long Description, and Holiday Date. Every record on the Holiday Schedule page for a given holiday schedule is set as a Holiday on the Work Day table when that Holiday Schedule ID is selected on Work Cycle.

The Time Change (TMCH) page allows the user to create a list of dates where the time changes and to note whether the time is Spring Forward or Fall Back. If a day that has a time change is being built in Work Day, the start and end times are edited and adjusted if necessary.

The Home Department page allows the user to create a home department and set it to be active and to use it for budgeting if needed. This page is used by the Populate Work Day Table batch job to populate the Work Day page.

The Home Unit (UNIT) page allows the user to create a home unit and set it to be active and to use it for budgeting if needed. The user can also define rollups. This page is used by the Populate Work Day Table batch job to populate the Work Day page.

The Union Location (ULOC) page allows the user to create a union location along with contract information. This page is used by the Populate Work Day Table batch job to populate the Work Day page.

The Work Location (LOCA) page allows the user to create a work location along with business address and contact information. This page is used by the Populate Work Day Table batch job to populate the Work Day page.

Once the Department, Unit, Union Local, Location, Time Change, Schedule Pattern and Holiday Schedule pages have been defined, work cycles can be set up to use the Home Department, Home Unit, Union Local, Work Location, Time Change, Schedule Pattern and Holiday Schedule pages. On the Work Cycle page, the Schedule Pattern section is used to associate the defined Schedule Patterns and Holiday Schedules. The Populate Work Day Through field determines the last date to be populated in the work cycle on the Work Day table using the Populate WDAY Table batch process. The Date of 1st Work Cycle Start field determines the date on which the work cycle starts.

The Populate Work Day Table process can be run to add records to the Work Day table for entries defined by the Work Cycle page. The Populate Work Day Table job automatically creates records on the Work Day table by populating records starting at the Date of 1st Work Cycle Start and utilizing any or all of the organizational controls, using Day 1 from the Schedule Pattern page and repeating the schedule pattern until the Populate Work Day Through date. If a Holiday Schedule was defined on the Work Cycle page, the batch process populates the Work Day table with those defined holidays and overlays the Schedule Pattern day. If a Time Change was defined on the Time Change page, the batch process adjusts the Work Day table times if necessary. The Populate Work Day Table batch process has the following parameters available: Commit Block Size (to determine the number of records processed before a commit is done to the database), End Date, Override Flag (to determine if the batch process should over-write any existing entries), Start Date, Work Cycles (to define which work cycle entries are to be processed and added to Work Day), Home Department, Home Unit, Union Local, Work Location and Job Share ID. All of the parameters are optional. A report titled Work Schedule Overwrite Reports generated to identify any records that were overwritten by the batch process.