Work Status Setup

The region of data to be locked is defined by several dimensions per model that are composed of one Owner dimension and a number of Other dimensions. The owner dimension has an OWNER property to define the work status owner who can change work statuses.

When you set up work status, you define the following:

• Work states - Physical statuses of data that can be customized according to your business needs, such as unlocked, submitted, and approved.

• Level of security - The users or teams who can change data in the system, which is All, None (locked for all), Manager, or Owner. See Controlling Who Can Change Data below.

  The users or teams who can change the work status, which is Owner, Manager, or Owner and Manager. See Controlling Who Can Set Work Status below.

• Permitted data entry method - The manner in which users enter and update data. See Method of Data Entry below.

• Push - Equivalent to the check box On All Descendants when setting work statuses, the option allows you to set one work state to all descendants of a member. This does not includet the selected parent member.

After you set up work statuses, other users can use them to apply a state to a current view and lock its data for review, approval, and so on. For example, your month-end close business process requires that a specific set of data is locked down so that accurate month-end reports can be created. After a data submission, the owner sets the work status to Submitted, which has a security level of None. This locks the data intersection from subsequent submissions.

Controlling Who Can Change Data

You define who can change the data in the system:

• All - All users with the appropriate member access rights can change data

• None - No one can change the data

• Manager - Only managers (members in the parent nodes of owners) can change data

• Owner - Only owners can change data

Controlling Who Can Set Work Status

You define who can set the work status to a particular state for a region of data:

• Owner and Manager - The owner of the specific member ID and the owner of the parent to the specific member ID

• Owner - The owner of the specific member ID

• Manager - The owner of the parent to the specific member ID

Owner/Manager Determination

• A manager is the owner of a parent-level member.

• Parent member owners act as an owner for that specific parent member ID

• Parent member owners act as a manager for their direct children - the parent owner can change any specific direct child work status; can be both parent and base members

• When using On All Descendants - the owner of a parent node member can update all children of all levels below

• Base members owners act as owner only

• Members (top of a hierarchy) that have no parent but only children act as their own manager in addition to owner

Controlled By Rule

• An owner is defined by only one dimension hierarchy, the OWNER dimension

• A work status can be set on a specific single member ID, where the manager does not use On All Descendants

• A work status can be set on a series of member IDs, where the manager uses On All Descendants

Setting the Work Status

• If the user is acting as an owner, they can select a work status controlled by Owner or Owner and Manager.

• If the user is acting as an owner and the selected member has no parent, the user also acts as a manager (top of the hierarchy) and they can select a work status controlled by Owner, Manager or Owner and Manager.

• If the user is the parent owner in the role of Manager, then they can use the On All Descendants option (to push the work status to children). This option is not valid for a base member, the Owner role.

Consecutive Work Status Rules

• You can set work status in a forward direction (progressive) or in a backward direction (regressive)

• For a user acting as an Owner, the order matters

  • The user can only select the next (forward) work status that is controlled by either Owner or Owner and Manager

  • The user can select the previous (backward) work status that is controlled by either Owner or Owner and Manager

  • The user cannot select a work status that skips a work status controlled by Manager, either forward or backward

• For a user acting as a Manager, the order does not matter.

  • The user can only select a work status that is controlled by either Manager or Owner and Manager, either forward or backward

  • The user can select a work status that skips a work status controlled by Owner, either forward or backward

• If you expand all records on the non-OWNER dimensions only, and find the current work status on each record, the model checks each and every expanded record for the rules. If one record fails, the whole request is ignored

Bottom-Up Rule

• A parent work status cannot be higher than its children. Order matters.

  • The order of work statuses is determined top to bottom in the work status code screen. The first code is 0, the next code is 1, and so on.

  • A child can have a work status that is greater than or equal to its parent.

• For a user acting as owner:

  • If a child is set to Submit, it parent cannot be set to Approve.

  • If one or more children have a work status that is lower than the work status being set for a parent (forward), then an error appears.

  • If the parent's work status has a higher work status, an error appears if you attempt to regress a child's work status (backward).

• The rules above also apply when the user is acting as a Manager, where On All Descendants is selected or the Manager sets a specific child work status.

• For all expanded records (non-OWNER dimensions), the immediate parent is checked to verify that it has a work status that is less than or equal to its children. If one child fails this rule, all fail.

Method of Data Entry

The areas of Planning and Consolidation for which you can control the level of security are as follows:

• Data Manager (DM) - Controls data input from running a Copy, Import, or Move package

• Journal (JRN) - Controls data input from posting journal entries

• Manual Entry (MAN) - Controls data input manually when creating worksheets

• Comments (COM) - Controls data input from posting comments (unstructured data)

• Documents (DOCS) - Controls posting documents with model context to the Document view (unstructured data)

Defining Work Statuses

Work statuses are defined for the entire environment, not per model.

There is no limit to the number of work states you can create, but there is a practical limit.

There is a default work state that must be first. It has an internal code of 0 and is controlled by the Manager and Owner (Controlled by is set to Owner and Manager). You can change the method of update for this state, but not the order or the Controlled by value.

The default state allows you to have a customized behavior for the environment. For example:

• LOCKED for all methods is equivalent to preventing any data update until the work status is advanced to the next status (1).

• ALL for all methods is equivalent to having all data open for update. This is the default behavior.

• SETUP applies to ALL of the models in the environment.

• WRITEBACK always checks for locks; if there are no locks in the lock table, the system behaves based on the setup of status (0).

You can change the order of work states. When you do that, the system deletes all locks for all models in the environment. Deleting states also deletes all locks. Adding states to the bottom of the list or changing a state definition does not impact existing locks, but may impact business users. We recommend that this be done only during the testing phase of a system implementation.

Work Status Rules

Note that in this section the term member denotes the members of the owner dimension.

The following rules describe work status behavior:

• The default method for managing work status is bottom-up. That is, the status of a parent cannot be higher than the status of its children.

• The maximum status a parent can be set to is the lowest status of its immediate children.

• If the status of a parent is set to Locked, you cannot unlock the children.

• The minimum status a child can be set to is the status of its immediate parent. For example, if the parent status is Submitted, the child status must be at least Submitted.

• The owner of an entity can set the work status to any status designated as an Owner status, where Owner status means that the status is controlled by the owner or the owner and the manager.

• The manager of an entity can set the work status to any status designated as a Manager status where Manager status means that the status is controlled by the manager or the owner and the manager.

• A manager is the owner of a parent-level member. The owner of a parent level member is the manager of all its descendants.

• When setting a lock on the parent members of multiple dimensions, locks are set for all members under all parents, specifically, the Cartesian product is stored as locked. For example, the following table shows the locks that are set when including all children for entity:p1, category:actual and time 2016.Q1.

  Entity	Category	Time	Work Status
  Child1	Actual	2016.Jan	Upload
  Child2	Actual	2016.Jan	Upload
  Child1	Actual	2016.Feb	Upload
  Child2	Actual	2016.Feb	Upload
  Child1	Actual	2016.Mar	Upload
  Child2	Actual	2016.Mar	Upload

• If you reorder work status codes in the Admin client, all locks are deleted. This also applies deleting a work status.

• A parent value for a non-OWNER dimension is not stored. When the user selects a parent for a non-OWNER dimension, it is expanded to all base members, and only stores the base members.

• A parent value for the OWNER dimension is stored. For example, the following table shows what is stored for entity:p1, category:actual and time 2016.Q1.

  Entity	Category	Time	Work Status
  P1	Actual	2016.Jan	Upload
  P1	Actual	2016.Feb	Upload
  P1	Actual	2016.Mar	Upload

• When applying rules, if the model encounters any error, it rejects the entire user request. In this case, no records are updated.

Sending E-mail Notifications to Owners and Managers

The system can send an e-mail notification to corresponding owners and managers to notify them when a work status changes.

The e-mail address to which the notification is sent is defined in Business Warehouse. To add or modify the default e-mail address for an owner or manager, an administrator can run transaction SU01, choose the name of the user, and then enter an e-mail address in the Address tab. You also need to make sure proper SMTP settings are configured via transaction SCOT for the e-mails to be automatically sent out. For detailed information, refer to the SMTP Configuration Guide.

Then you can compose an e-mail notification template and trigger the e-mail notification for work status changes in the Planning and Consolidation web client by choosing Notifications and checking Activate E-mail Notifications in the Work Status Settings page. You can either directly use the default message template or customize a new message.

You create work statuses to reflect statuses of different data entry levels with the progress of your business, such as unlocked, submitted, and approved. No predefined work statuses exist within Business Planning and Consolidation.

Go to the Administration screen and under the Features section, choose Work Status  New.

You can modify the order in which work statuses display in the system by using the up and down arrows.

You can delete a work status that is not currently in use by selecting the work status and choosing Delete.

You can enable as well as view data lock settings by model on the lower half of the Work Status screen. To enable or modify them for a model, select the model and choose Edit. You can enable data locking and select the dimensions to lock the process context, or disable data locking.