Clarity

  • 1.  Storing Resource Rate in CA PPM

    Posted Jan 12, 2016 11:03 AM

    I have a requirement from higher up that we need to begin storing contractor and employee rates within CA PPM, but it needs to be locked down so that only those who create reports for our Finance and Accounting departments can view information related to it. We do not currently use financially enabled and I am not sure if that is the way to go because we don't necessary want to see dollar values applied directly to projects and have that much transparency.

     

    1. Can Resource-Labor Target Billing rate be included in the data warehouse?
    2. Can you have security on a specific attribute so that only a small group of people can see it?
    3. Is there any way to easily meet these requirements?

     

    This is a tricky situation for me because it involves information that they want to keep secure. Any and all help is greatly appreciated!



  • 2.  Re: Storing Resource Rate in CA PPM

    Posted Jan 25, 2016 03:15 PM

    Regarding Rates, etc:

     

    First - in response the actual functional requirement of rates for resources and contractors - you do not need to have projects financially enabled to use the rate matrix, and by using the rate matrix you gain many advantages - such as using out-of-the box functionality, and having effective dates for the rates, which is important for accurate reporting over time, since the rates will change.  And, rates are imported into the data warehouse, but the target billing rate is not.  You will need at least default values in the Financial page on the resources to be able to use the rate matrix, but you would need those anyway to use the Target Billing Rate attribute.  The other advantage of using the rate matrix is that it will position you to use Clarity financials later when you are ready to take that step.

     

    Responding to the numbered questions:

    1. Target Billing Rate does not get populated in the Data Warehouse, and is not configurable to make it accessible to the warehouse.

    2. If you do not want to use the rate matrix, which has full security defined on it as standard functionality, then you have at least two options.  You can create a custom attribute and put it on a secure sub-page, and apply security to that page so that is can be accessible only by a defined group.  That attribute can be made accessible to the Data Warehouse.  That is done relatively easily.  If you wish to have effective dates for the rates (highly recommended for data reporting accuracy) and not use the rate matrix, you can create a sub-object to the resource object for the rates.  The object and attributes can be secured.  This should also take less than an hour to create and secure.

    3. Any of the solutions above are pretty straightforward.

     

    As a general caution - best practices are that employee actual rates - their real salary information, expressed in any form (hourly, annually, etc.) - not be stored in Clarity.  There are far too many additional people who would be able to ultimately gain access to that information, and true security will be an issue.  The recommended approach is to use a blended rate for employees based on pay bands, roles, or other element to hide the actual rates of individual employees.