Clarity

I have been asked if there is any way of getting Clarity to accept an external update of which days in a resource's calendar are going to be either working or non-working. The aim would be to get an external leave-approval application to provide this data every so often and hence save our administrator from having to enter it manually for a number of users.  To me it looks as if the relevant data may be stored in table PRCALENDAR - but it looks as if the most likely source (column PRVALUE) is stored as a BLOB. To me eyes the chances of success look slim at this point but I would be interested to hear if I am wrong in my assumption about where the info is stored or if anybody has succeeded in getting something like this to work.  Can I be the only person who would very much like to be able to do this?  thanks

Certainly the calendar tables control the definition of whether a resource has a working day or a non-working day and this direct affects the resource's "availability" to Clarity on that day...  BUT beware - the answer to your underlying question really depends upon HOW you are managing this information in Clarity (and its YOUR particular Clarity instance that matters);     i.e. You need to be clear on the business model you are trying to build in Clarity before you decide what the technical solution is!    For example MANY Clarity installations I have seen (including my own) will manage "holiday" (or any other such "non-availibilty" sickness, training etc) as a Clarity PROJECT of some sort - e.g. if I am taking today off as HOLIDAY then 22/June remains in my CALENDAR as a working day but I forecast against (and book actuals to) my "holiday project" for today.  (NB This is NOT using the "below the line timebookings").    So in my model I would just interface my "external leave system" with Clarity by creating Clarity allocations/ETCs (against my "holiday project").  The calendar information I regard as the "contractual availability" of my resource - ie. non-working day only means weekends/statutory holidays and NOT personal holidays) and therefore my calendar for 22/June remains as a working day.  Of course your business model may differ!  David Morton
Capgemini  

Thanks for your reply, Dave.  In our particular instance we operate a separate system which allows people to request holidays and have them approved. Separately we have a project in Clarity that people can book holiday time to on their timesheets. However this booking is retrospecitve so does not help for forward planning.  We have a base calendar which includes global working and non-working days. An individual resource's calendar uses this base to determine a starting point. What I would like to know is if there is a way of accessing the flag that determines whether an individual day on this individual's resource calendar is working or non working?  At present we are able to accurately predict resource availability for busy holiday times only by manually transcribing approved holidays from our external database to individual resource calendars. We wish there was a less time-consuming method.  Phil

OK - I think that you are going down the "Holiday project in Clarity" route then....  The problem you would have if you affected the resource calendar is that by changing a resource's daily availabilty (by making it a non-working day) then, when the resource eventually books actuals against the "Holiday Project" to that day, then the system will be showing an over-booking for the day (expected = 0h, actuals = 8h etc).  What I would suggest is that you look at automatically forecasting ALLOCATIONS to the "holiday project" based upon your external holiday system - this is entirelly achievable using XOG and allocation 'segments'....   you can see how this would work by allocation a resource to the the holiday project for the future, then XOG than project out and look at the allocation information in the XML file.   All you would have to do is get your interface to produce XML of the same format.  You will then be making Clarity aware of the fact that the resource is allocated to a "holiday project" on certain days and therefore Clarity can use this information elsewhere (capacity planning, scheduling etc).   A warning though that scheduling in OpenWorkbench (etc) will only respect that allocation if the Holiday Project is also opened in the same OWB session, otherwise it will regard the resource as available on that day (which is different to the calendar solution).  There are pros and cons of both ways of working ("holiday projects" and "calendar non-availability") - you need to determine which is right for your organisation!  Dave.    PS - I still haven't answered your original question about whether you CAN affect the resource calendar through XOG - I don't know that answer to that immediately as I had not tried to do this.   I would guess that some aspect of the resource XOG or a calendar XOG (if such exists?) would be where to start to look though!

Thanks Dave: whilst I would still like to know how to get at this information in the tables your answer sounds like it would be both the simplest solution: also more accurate in terms of time recording. I wish I had thought of it!

OK then just to answer your original question (I had a spare 5 minutes)....  If you look in the rsm_resources_write.xml file that comes with the XOG installation from Clarity (I'm looking at an 8.1 install), you should spot the required XOG.  Essentially this will be defining the RESOURCE in Clarity and you can see the "Calendar" section therein, I guess you have to be creative with the etc tags.  This sort of XML is what you would use to import shift-patterns etc if you were using some external shift-modelling system (SAP?).    Dave. Message Edited by Dave on 06-23-2009 05:49 PM [left]