Clarity

  • 1.  Office Hours for CA PPM, October 16 @ 1 PM ET

     
    Posted Oct 01, 2014 03:50 PM

    Dear Community Member,


    Have a question about CA Project and Portfolio Management? Connect with CA Technologies technical experts to get answers via Office Hours for CA PPM. Our team is here to help you get more out of your technology. Join us for one hour Thursday, October 16th @ 1 PM ET. NOTE - No audio is provided and all Q&A happens via online chat, making it a truly ‘fun’ event.

     

    What type of questions should you ask?

    • General Product Questions
    • Best practices
    • Commonly seen issues
    • Technical content and/or scenarios you want our technical information team to focus on.
    • Technical content and/or scenarios you would like our technical information team to NOT focus on.

    What type of questions should you not ask?

    • Please DO NOT discuss support cases – You will need to open a ticket instead
    • Please DO NOT discuss support of customizations

     

    Click HERE: https://catechnologies.webex.com/catechnologies/j.php?ED=285135447&RG=1&UID=1957262922&RT=MiM0 to register, add to calendar and join the day of.

    *Please note that there is no audio. This is for you to submit your questions only and our experts will respond using WebEx.



  • 2.  Re: Office Hours for CA PPM, October 16 @ 1 PM ET

     
    Posted Oct 20, 2014 04:09 PM

    Miss this Office Hours session for CA PPM (Clarity)? Check out the chat text below and be sure to join us November 20th for the next Office Hours!

     

    Breno Chuba to Everyone:          Hi,It's possible to freeze a Conversion Rate to a budget plan baseline?

                    Breno Chuba to Everyone:          Hi, About conversion rates. Example:

    I save a budget plan with baseline at sometime, I'm to freeze the conversion rate to this budget. Where I do that?

                    Chris Hackett (CA) to Everyone:                @breno - our finacial guru will be on in a minute and ur question will be first up

                    Kathryn Ellis (CA) to Everyone:  @Beno ; I am not sure i fully understand your issue. Are you referring to currency exchange rates? and are you saying these existing rates are changing, affecting your plans?

                    Breno Chuba to Everyone:          @Kathryn: Yes, currency exchange rates. Yes, for example I do not want to change a rate that I save in a budget plan

                    Kathryn Ellis (CA) to Everyone:  @Breno Chuba : Once a Budget Plan is saved, the data is on the budget plan record, are you saying that if you look at the budget plan and switch the view to show data in a different currency you see it converted to the current rates? the rates are defined by date range

                    Breno Chuba to Everyone:          @Kathryn: Yes, but if i saved a budget plan (baseline) and I change the data range of currency to view Billing Currency, i don't want to change my budget plan values

                    Kathryn Ellis (CA) to Everyone:  @ Breno Chuba : ah , i understand what you want to do now. There is no way to 'freeze' the exchange rates for this view.  One thing you might do is export the plan from that view into Excel to create your 'snapshot' and maybe save the file on an 'attachment' attribute on the 'cost plan' object on a properties page

     

    Lowell Wetzel to Everyone:        Hi, What is the GEL header syntax for WSDL calls? What library do I include?

                    Nick Darlington (CA) to Everyone:            @Lowell: Do you mean calling web services from within a GEL Script?

                    Lowell Wetzel to Everyone:        @Nick – yes

                    Nick Darlington (CA) to Everyone:            @Lowell: You'd want to include a namespace for this library: jelly:com.niku.union.gel.SOAPTagLibrary

    1. e.g: xmlns:soap="jelly:com.niku.union.gel.SOAPTagLibrary"

    That gives you access to the soap:invoke tag which is used for making WSDL / web service calls

                    Nick Darlington (CA) to Everyone:            @Lowell: If the web service in question is not Clarity but another server, don't forget to set the action=".." attribute if the receiving service requires a SOAPAction header entry

                    Lowell Wetzel to Everyone:        What is the syntax for a direct database connection? For example, if you want to write to a "staging database" prior to building a XOG?

    Lowell Wetzel to Everyone:        Right now, I just have the syntax for :

    Lowell Wetzel to Everyone:        <gel:setDataSource dbId="niku"/>

                    Nick Darlington (CA) to Everyone:            @Lowell: I don't have an example of it to-hand, but you can use setdatasource to define a jdbc string instead of a 'built-in' (properties.xml) named connection; you may also need the JDBC driver files to make the connection (preferably placed in thr $NIKU_HOME/customlib folder, but if that doesn't work they'll have to go into $NIKU_HOME/lib)

                    Nick Darlington (CA) to Everyone:            @Lowell: Look specifically into the <sql:setdatasource> tag rather than the <gel:setdatasource> one

     

    Nei Villas Boas to Everyone:        Hi All. Why ACTUALS are not displayed in portfólio investmens list?

                    Lynn Harris to Everyone:              @Nei. Actuals do show if you have them selected in the attribute registry under portfolio investment object

                    Lynn Harris to Everyone:              @Nei. also if you added actuals to your view AFTER you already ran the sync, you will need to most likely run the sync again. I have found that to be the case with several attributes if I add them after I have already populated the investments

                    Nei Villas Boas to Everyone:        Hum... I mean, ACTUALS value are not populated in portfolio investments list.  The actuals attrib is registred and the column actuals is present in portfolio but its empty.

                    Connie Fu (CA) to Everyone:      @Nei besides syncing the portfolio investments, also run the Investment Allocation job

                    Nei Villas Boas to Everyone:        @Connie Hi ! Glad chat with you. I am running right now. I´ll check if works...

                    Kathryn Ellis (CA) to Everyone:  @Nei Villas Boas : I think there is a known issue with 'Actual' data values on Portfolios in v13.2, 13.3 ..... checking

                    Nei Villas Boas to Everyone:        doesn´t works.. looks like a know issue...

                    Kathryn Ellis (CA) to Everyone:  @Nei Villas Boas : yes, i see some known issues for this / please log a support ticket for full investigation and confirmation on what you experience for the portfolio actual attributes

                    Nei Villas Boas to Everyone:        @Kathryn Thanks!

     

    Robert to Everyone:      Has anyone figured out a way to track user sessions in Clarity (aka how long users actually spend logged in) or a way to track those pages or portlets that are most accessed in the tool?

                    Kelly Limberg - CA to Everyone: @ Robert. The application access logs have the information of what pages were accessed in Clarity with a user session ID (not user name) These can be parsed. FUnctionality is beeing added to 14.X that brings that info into the Clarity schema via an access log parsing job. Portlets can then be writen off that data.

                    Robert to Everyone:      @Kelly: Thanks!  What log can this information be found in?

                    Kelly Limberg - CA to Everyone: @ Robert. The application access logs have this naming format "app-access-2014-10-15.log" there will be one for each app service per day.

                    Kelly Limberg - CA to Everyone: @ Robert - in the Clarity logs directory.

                    Robert to Everyone:      @Kelly - I didnt realize this was from you   So in order to get this data I would need to download the log daily, parse the data and then query it?

                    Connie Fu (CA) to Everyone:      @Robert re: Rate Change: please vote on the ERQ/Idea for bulk WIP Adjustment on the community! https://communities.ca.com/ideas/103041729

     

    Keri Taylor to Everyone:                When adjusting a timesheet and using financials is a WIP adjustment necessary?

                    Connie Fu (CA) to Everyone:      @Keri the sort answer is 'no'. what are you adjusting on the timesheets?

                    Keri Taylor to Everyone:                @Connie - actuals charged to projects from task to task or project to project

                    Connie Fu (CA) to Everyone:      @Keri just ensure that rates are correct in the matrix for the original and the destination projects, even if the original assignment is 'unwanted'. This way after you have completed the financial processing of the adjustment timesheet entries the ogirinal cost will be properly backed out

                    Keri Taylor to Everyone:                @Connie -Thanks!

                    Connie Fu (CA) to Everyone:      @Keri No need to do wip adjustment. The only time you would do a WIP adjustment for timesheet transactions is when rate was not set up but financial posting has been done - you would do a 'calculate new rate' - type of WIP adjustment

     

    Lynn Harris to Everyone:              Is there a way to show Programs and their associated projects in a Portfolio? 13.3  I am able to get a list of all, but I would like to organize that list. If  I am viewing a portfolio of the programs, I naturally want to see which projects make up those program and not have them scattered throughout the list. Or, is this the typical limitation on portlets/views where we cannot "subgroup" so to speak?

                    Kathryn Ellis (CA) to Everyone:  @Lynn Harris : This feature is not available in the new Portfolios at this time

    Lowell Wetzel to Everyone:        Is there a way to call PowerShell scripts from within Clarity?  Can you access an executable from GEL?

                    Nick Darlington (CA) to Everyone:            @Lowell: I believe this was answered via an issue, GEL doesn't have a way to make 'system calls' (e.g. call the command line actions etc.), to do something like this you would need a web service developed that can do this and handle the input/output for the calling of the powershell script, and then have Clarity call that web service - alternatively, if the powershell script can be run using your DBMS resources, a stored procedure on the database could make those system level calls and Clarity via GEL can then call the SP.  Doing it via the database SP way is probably simplest, but doing it via the web services way allows your script to more easily supply output back in a response message.

     

    Robert to Everyone:      and @Everyone - has anyone discovered a way to automate post to wip without manually adjusting each individual transaction? we often get notified of rate changes a month or so after it happens and I would love a way to just toggle all transactions for that time to recalculate based on matrix rules

                    Kelly Limberg - CA to Everyone: @ Robert. thats correct for 13.X. We are adding functionality in 14.X that does the parsing for you and brings the parsed access log data into the Clarity schema.

                    Robert to Everyone:      @Kelly Exellent - thank you.  We are On Demand so I am awaiting word on when we might be able to upgrade from 13.3

                    Connie Fu (CA) to Everyone:      @Robert re:rate change: you would want to do wip adjustment using 'calculate new rate' when rates are changed; currently the ability to do wip adjustment in bulk is still an enhancement request and not available yet

                    Robert to Everyone:      @Connie - thanks, we have gotten better at changing rate rules on time, but a bulk wip adjustment function would be great!

                    Kelly Limberg - CA to Everyone: @ robert - open a case with OD to see what available for you now. that functionality that's being rolled into 14.X was developed for Clarity OD.

                    onnie Fu (CA) to Everyone:        @Robert re: Rate Change: please vote on the ERQ/Idea for bulk WIP Adjustment on the community! https://communities.ca.com/ideas/103041729

                    Kathryn Ellis (CA) to Everyone:  @Everyone : anyone can vote for it!

     

     

    Lowell Wetzel to Everyone:        What are the recommended courses or sites for information about Jaspersoft?

                    Kelly Limberg - CA to Everyone: @ Lowell - Start with the free courses from https://www.jaspersoft.com/bi-training-center - Download the eval version of Jasper server and the free full version of Jaspersoft studio. There are some samples to dig through.

                    Kelly Limberg - CA to Everyone: @ Lowell - We dont' use jaspersoft iReports. Reports will be JasperStudio reports. Jasper is phasing out iReports

     

    Chris Hackett (CA) to Everyone:                All - Just a note that the next Office Hours in November will likely be pushed out a week to 11/20 since CA World is the week we would normally hold it.

     

    Robert to Everyone:      I have one - on the task list on a project, why does the WBS sequence skip numbers?

                    Connie Fu (CA) to Everyone:      @Robert, the WBS sequence is not required to be always in sequence, actions such as deleting tasks can have the sequence skipping numbers, the application doesn't requence the tasks

     

    Lowell Wetzel to Everyone:        I need to issue a command to update records after a record is deleted.  Is there a GEL command to pull the "Parent-ID" of a deleted entry, so that it can be used for an update XOG?

                    Shawn Moore to Everyone:        @Lowell If I understand you correctly, I think what you'd want to do is store the parent id as part of your initial steps, prior to performing the delete.

                    Shawn Moore to Everyone:        @Lowell (it would just be part of your code to store any related values and keep track of dependencies)

                    Lowell Wetzel to Everyone:        @Shawn - the issue is the user hits "delete" button.  I can start a Process based on "delete", but I cannot pull the ID of the entry using <core:set value="${gel_objectInstanceId}" var="v_obj_id"/>

                    Shawn Moore to Everyone:        @Lowell  What object are you deleting?  The only thing that we can think of would maybe be to use the audit trail to track the delete and see if you can pull the id from that.

                    Nick Darlington (CA) to Everyone:            @Lowell: to follow on from Shawn, this would require the record being deleted also having a 'parent' attribute value that can be audited (or whichever other attributes on the record you wanted to see post-delete), so this may not be applicable in all scenarios

                    Lowell Wetzel to Everyone:        @Shawn - sorry  - I should have said "Delete Object Instance".  I have a subobject of Projects.  The users want records with counts on them.  They have the ability to "delete" entries. I need to be able to update counts after additions and deletions

                    Shawn Moore to Everyone:        @Lowell:  Beyond what we mentioned there isn't an easy way to do this.  It would require some custom engineering.  (maybe services type work?)

                    Lowell Wetzel to Everyone:        @Shawn - so, perhaps having a daily update for all entries....

                    Shawn Moore to Everyone:        @Lowell - a batch type operation....that would be one option.

     

    Tim Guzek to Everyone:                @Kathryn - Related to the Portfolio and Program question that Lynn asked, anything of the sort on the horizon?

                    Kathryn Ellis (CA) to Everyone:  @ Tim Guzek : I will pass this question on to Product Management team.

                    Kathryn Ellis (CA) to Everyone:  @ Tim Guzek : Portfolio question : the idea is in the backlog with the product team and in review for determining scope and timeline

     

    Nei Villas Boas to Everyone:        I have a cost plan with gouping attrib = Cost type on with I can edit cost planning ok. Now I need to create a New Manual Plan grouping by Charge Code but in this new plan I cannot able edit cost plannin columns.

                    Kathryn Ellis (CA) to Everyone:  @Nei Villas Boas : You should be able to edit data in a manual plan too. Check if the row automatically popped into the plan because of 'actual' data.  IF so, 'Add' that cost type to the plan details and then you should be able to 'edit' the row

                    Nei Villas Boas to Everyone:        YES!

                    Nei Villas Boas to Everyone:        @Kathryn thank you!