Clarity

I'm not a super technical person so appreciate I may be butchering the technical terms.

We are rolling out CA PPM in my workplace and have a requirement to support enabling of time booking + manager approval for specific staff only dependant on their contract / vendor type.

e.g.

- vendor A + contract 1 (1000 people) - enable time booking in bulk for these users (upload employee IDs or bulk enable based on the vendor / external company they work for).

- vendor B + contract 2 (2000 people) - disable time booking approval by the manager (default is off) as we do not have contracts in place to enforce that time booking is mandatory and relevant to the underlying vendor invoice.

So the idea is provide a central team or via GUI the ability to provide a bulk list of employees / ids to enable the approval workflow. We've been informed by our implementation partner that there is no bulk upload / enable capability and no way to run a script and upload a file of the employee id's to enable.

Appreciate your thoughts on what is possible either via scripting or the GUI.

There are no "out-of-the-box" ways to do what you are describing I think.

Integrations/interfaces (using XOG) can be built to enable bulk-upload of timesheets - but such things are non-trvial.

Recent discussion ; Bulk upload of timesheets?

You can also import actuals directly to plans (no PPM timesheets) - there are some discussions on this community around that sort of thing.

Approval of timesheets (once submitted in the system) can be automated though ; using a PPM process - for example an automatic approval of any submitted timesheet can happen for nominated resources - again not quite "out-of-the-box" but this is just a functional set-up challenge rather than a technical integration/interface.

Thanks David - so we are just looking to do a bulk enable/disable (change of attribute) on bulk rather than handling time booking externally. So a single person doesn't have to go through a list of 1000 names and enable 1 by 1.

I wish we could enable this for all external staff, however the dependency is the limitation on the contracts stipulating that time booking is required and an input into the invoice payment.

OK think I'm a little confused by what you are asking then ; if you just want to set / unset the attributes that say whether a resource is / isn't enabled for Clarity timesheeting then you can do this through a XOG script - for 1000s of resources at once.

(or just a SQL update; but that is technically "unsupported")

Adding to Dave's comment, I think you have a few options:

1. Add it to your resource on-boarding procedure. When resource's are created in Clarity, check on uncheck the open for Time Entry based on the Vendor and Contract. If you have an interface creating these resources, the logic will have to be implemented there as well. This solves it for new resources, but not for the existing resources. For that, you could bulk update resources via XOG or through a database update statement (options suggested by Dave).

2. Create automation. This would need creating a custom object to store the vendor and contract information and whether the combination would be open/closed for Time Entry. I think there already is an attribute to store vendor for resources; you may have to create an additional attribute for resource to store contract.

Vendor + Contract -> Stored at resource level

Vendor + Contract + Open/Closed for Time Entry - > Stored as custom object instance

The automation would be that when you open or close for the time entry for custom object instance, the related resources would be updated accordingly. This would ensure that everytime you flip the Open for Time Entry for Vendor Contract combination, the aumated job/process will take care of the data update.

-Sankhadeep

What does your CA PPM implementation partner recommend to fulfill your requirement?   Just curious as I know you stated "We've been informed by our implementation partner that there is no bulk upload / enable capability and no way to run a script and upload a file of the employee id's to enable", surely they have proposed something.

Might there ever be the time where a contract that is disabled needs to be enabled for time entry? Especially if the contract is changed via CR at a later date?

Might there be an occasion where the same vendor has multiple contracts, and some resources can span contracts? For instance an architect is on Contract A - time entry for 50% of his/her time and on Contract B - no time entry for the other 50%. So, then you have to look at enabling and disabling the Open for Time Entry for the resource at the project level. Would you allow an override? Does there need to be process that enforces the settings, in the event that a PM or Admin changes the Open for Time Entry attribute?

Time tracking can get quite interesting once complex requirements come into play.

Which version of CA PPM or you deploying? Hosted, On Premise, SaaS?

Depending on your complete requirements I can see XOG, custom objects, possible custom processes, GEL, etc. However, it is always fun!

They have proposed to build a solution to do this which is not "out of the box" which equates to $$$, I've not seen the technical aspects of their recommendation just yet though so hard to judge.

Deployment wise we are on premise and looking to keep as out of the box as possible.

A contract can be changed via a CR = renegotiated and changed to managed capacity.

A vendor definitely has multiple contracts, over time this is being reduced and consolidated to be time booking eligible.

Assume single resources are on the same contract across multiple projects.

Think we'll need to govern this (on-boarding) manually for the time being until there is a more sensible solution, unless we drive the behaviour based on different permissions / entitlements, however having to change people's access based on their contract is an overhead based on data quality so not sure how reliable that will be.

Thanks Michael

I would recommend a really experienced BA document the process and procedures and figure out all the permutations, prior to any sort of scripting. Once you start coding you are sort of locking yourself in, and providing a lot of $$$ in CR's to you partner.

Since I am not knowledgeable in your organizations structure, if I were doing the same thing here I would have our strategic sourcing group, EPMO,  IT Organization, Finance department all involved in the process definition, and have them all sign-off prior to coding.

Just my 2 cents (Sorry 5 cents, we got rid of the penny in Canada).

Thanks Michael - makes perfect sense and absolutely inline with my approach as well.

I'm very shy when it comes to spending money on something CA PPM isn't looking to support itself out of the box, usually that tells me we have an external process problem to solve or CA PPM isn't the right tool to solve the problem (e.g. should be managed via a VMS type solution from sourcing, which would give us a mapping of individuals : vendor names : contract IDs and some type of attribute in the person data feed.

When organizations purchase tools like CA PPM, HP PPM, Planview, SAP, Oracle, etc, they often have to spend extra funds to build in the capabilities to support their own unique business processes. No tool on the market will OOTB automatically may to an organizations processes and have all the integration's necessary to internal systems. There is always some customization's necessary.

I found this when I was a Remedy ARS, BMC Patrol, IBM TIVOLI, CA PPM, and Unison Maestro consultant. No matter the tool, there was always something that had to be customized.

The key to success is fully understanding the requirements, and even though you have them documented, there may be some ad-hoc processes that some BU's operate by that are not known. This is where a really experienced BA comes in. They have to dig to pull the full requirements out. Over 30 years I have seen a lot of projects get into trouble because the requirements were not defined properly or fully.

Hi combech - Did mike2.2's response help answer your question? If so please mark as Correct Answer. Thanks!