By suitably setting the different attributes of a variable, you can centrally administer the worklist of all employees, who execute planning in your company, by using variables. In this way, you reduce the number of planning objects to be set up and maintained (in particular the planning packages and profiles), and you centrally control which scope for action your employees should have when executing planning with regard to the variable values.

Using variables to define worklists assumes that a clear assignment of planning tasks to employees exists. When defining variables, you map this assignment to the assignment of characteristic values for a variable for a specific user.

The process when using variables as worklists is divided into two areas:

• The Definition of a worklist is a task for administrators and is executed in the central variable definition in the context of a planning area.
• Working with a worklist concerns the way in which employees who execute planning are led to the planning objects which are relevant for them.

As an administrator, you first define relevant planning tasks (for example product group, sales region) for a specific planning task (for example profit planning), and assign these to a variable with the replacement type User-specific values.

Subsequently, you add all users to the variable, who are involved in the execution of planning tasks in your company. Then you implement the assignment of planning tasks to employees, which you have determined previously, as follows:

You form a worklist for every employee, by restricting the values of the characteristics contained in the variable. For example, you assign the product groups A, B and C in the sales region north to employee Smith, while you assign the same product groups in the sales region south to employee Moore.

After you have set up the worklist of all employees in this way, you consider under which circumstances planning will be executed in your company and adjust the remaining settings of the variable correspondingly:

• Exact observance of centrally defined responsibilities:
  If it is important for you that all employees work in task areas that have been exactly differentiated from each other, then make sure that the indicator Input allowed by user is not selected. In this way, you make sure that every employee, can only edit those planning objects which come into his/her area of responsibility through the central specification of characteristic values.
• Flexible adjustment of responsibilities to changing conditions:
  If on the contrary, you want to support a flexible assignment of task areas and want to reduce the administrative effort as much as possible, then select the indicator Input allowed by user. This means that all users listed in the variable definition can extend (or reduce) the value range of different characteristics which were assigned to them centrally. In practice this can have a very positive effect on the company’s processes, for example when a replacement must be found for an employee, who has suddenly become ill in a situation where keeping deadlines is critical.
• Using the variables in planning functions and layouts of manual planning:
  Depending on which functions will be executed within a certain planning task and how the planning layouts used are to be designed, it can be desired from a company’s view or also required from a technical view that the users specify one value (or a value combination) from the centrally predefined value quantity with which they want to work:

• When several single values were defined for a variable, but planning is to be executed in the planning steps for one individual value, then select the indicator Restriction of values required by user. This means that the system requests you define exactly one value from the available values with which planning will take place (provided that this has not yet happened). Planning cannot be executed without such a restriction.
• When a variable was defined for a characteristic, which is used in the header area of a planning layout, it can be necessary for technical reasons to restrict the variable to a single value. For example, this is necessary when the layout is used in a planning folder or as a data source of the Capital Market Interpreter.

• If in the value list of the variables, every row contains a single value, then the restriction leads to a unique determination of the characteristic on this value.
• If the value list of the variables contains intervals, the restriction means that all values contained in the interval are available at runtime.
• If several characteristics are assigned to a variable, then the restriction leads to a unique determination of all characteristics contained in the variable to the values, which are contained in the selected row of the value list.

Subsequently, you use the variable you have defined as selection condition for the corresponding characteristics in all planning levels, which should be edited using the worklist defined by the variables.

As a planner, you start the planning session and expand the hierarchy of the planning objects up to the planning package that you want to edit. The planning package contains the selection of characteristic values created for you as a worklist. Execute the desired planning function. Two situations can be differentiated here:

You are able to set up and manage the individual worklist for all employees through the definition of one single variable. Your employees can execute their planning tasks, without having to occupy themselves with the details of the package definition.