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Process documentationLegacy: Performing Automated Testing and Monitoring Locate this document in the navigation structure

 

You can automate the testing of control effectiveness and monitoring of controls in the ERP system.

All automated tests of effectiveness and monitoring of controls use automated test rules to determine the exception data to extract from the ERP system. The following graphic illustrates that an automated test rule is assigned to a control within Process Control to run a specific program within the target ERP system to test or monitor data in the ERP system:

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text.

You can use automated test rules to do the following:

  • Transaction data — Identify transactions based on specified thresholds or identify transactions that are outside of the tolerance settings

  • Configuration data — Monitor all or specific changes to configuration settings, identify specific values within configuration settings, or perform blank checks.

  • Master data — Monitor all or specific changes to master data, identify specific values of critical fields, or perform blank checks.

Process Control records historical information in a change log to monitor changes to configuration settings and master data over the entire timeframe of the control.

You can use automated test rules to fully or partially automate the testing of a control, as follows:

  • Fully automated testing — The system determines the control rating and creates issues for remediation processing, based on test results.

  • Semi-automated testing — You manually review the test results and determine the control rating and the issues for remediation.

Process

  1. Create a rule

    You must create a rule and select the rule script and criteria to define your testing or monitoring parameters. You create and maintain the rules at the global compliance level:   Rule Setup   Legacy Automated Monitoring   Rule  .

  2. Assign rules to controls

    You assign one or more automated test rules to the control that you want to test or monitor. You can also specify one or more testing or monitoring frequencies for each control-rule assignment. You assign the rules to the controls at the compliance initiative level:   Rule Setup   Legacy Automated Monitoring   Control Rule Assignment  .

  3. Schedule the monitor

    • You use the Monitoring Scheduler to schedule a control monitoring job. This executes the rules based upon the control-rule assignments. The monitoring schedule can be set to recur regularly or to execute on a one-time basis.

The system executes the testing and monitoring activities as follows:

  1. At the start date, the process control system automatically executes the test or monitoring activities and passes the rule information to the program (RTA) in the ERP system.

  2. The program executes based upon the control-rule assignment.

    1. The rules identify exceptions in configuration data and transaction data based on the rule criteria for a given period.

    2. When the rule execution is complete, the program on the ERP system sends an exception report to the process control application.