Open Ended Absence/Dispatch Day Advance Process
The Open Ended Absence/Dispatch Day Advance Process creates detail entries for those absences and dispatches that do not have end dates. An absence or dispatch without an end date is assumed to be on going until an end date is entered. When an open-ended absence or dispatch is entered into the system, only the detail record(s) from the start date to the present date are created by the system. When you eventually enter an end date, the system can do a recalculation to fill in all of the detail dates between the start and end dates. Prior to entering an end date, however, the system is only aware of the absence/dispatch until the present date). The detail dates should be kept up to date for the reports to reflect the correct information.
Detail records for open-ended absences or dispatches can be maintained properly in one of two ways. The first way is to go into absence/dispatch changes daily and manually enter the missing details. The second, and much simpler way of maintaining open-ended absences and dispatches is to run this process.
This process will locate all open-ended absences and dispatches and create detail entries for the dates between the start and end date range inclusive. The same logic checking which is done in the absence screen is done in this process. Assignments and schedules will be referenced so that only the correct dates and times will be entered into the system.
This day advance process is divided into three phases, all of which can be activated or de-activated by prompts when you run this process.
The first phase locates all open-ended absences meeting the selection criteria and creates detail absence entries for the date range specified. The second phase creates detail dispatch entries for all dispatches that have an absent employee attached. Entries of the same dates and times that would be created for the absent employee will be created for the dispatched employee. The third phase locates all dispatches that do not have an absent employee attached and creates detail dispatch entries for the specified dates.
This process has a checking procedure built in it that will prevent the creation of detail entries if there already exist detail entries for the specified day. If you run this process more than once for the same dates, this check will prevent the duplication of entries. This check also allows you to manually go and create the detail entries for specific employees and still run this process for everyone else.
Until you get a feel for how this process works, it would be advisable to run this process in preliminary mode first before running it in final. A preliminary run will only create a report showing the detail entries that this process will create when you run it in final mode. If some of the proposed entries are not what you would like them to be, you can go and create them manually first, and then run this process in final mode for everyone else.
This process produces 5 different reports, which all get merged into one report called DISK:######.LST (###### = job number). This report contains a listing of all the absence and dispatch entries which will be created as well as any errors that the system may have run in to. The report uses the terms attached and unattached dispatches. An attached dispatch is one that has an absent employee attached. An unattached dispatch is one that does not have an absent employee attached.
We recommend that you set this process up to run each night as a self-submitting batch file. This will eliminate the necessity of manually running this program every date.
Important: The system will create absence or dispatch details in three different ways.
- Duplicate the first day's details into all other days
This is the most common and default method used by the system to create absence or dispatch detail records. The system simply duplicates all details from the first day of the absence or dispatch and copies them to all other days until the absence/dispatch is closed (end date entered). This method is used unless the absent employee has a schedule attached to a current assignment, or one of two profiles over-rides this default. The first profile option is field Check Asgns In Open Ended Advance in the Substitute/Casual Dispatch Parameter Profile. The second profile option is field Use Assignments In Abs/Dis Advance in the ADS Absence Parameter Profile.
If either of these profiles are set to 'Y' or the absence employee has a schedule on one or more of their current assignments, then method 2 for creating absence/dispatch details is used. - Recalculate the details based on original absence/dispatch information
This method will create absence/dispatch details by re-calculating the location(s), position(s), hour(s)/day(s) and times the same way as the absence/dispatch screen does when you enter a new absence or dispatch. This calculation is done by referring to the absent employee's assignment(s) and schedules (if they exist). - Recalculate based on the schedules stored on the absence/dispatch records
If the absence or dispatch has a schedule attached to it, then these schedules are used. Schedules are entered onto the absence/dispatch by entering 'SA' or 'SR' from the field to change prompt in the absence/dispatch screen.
From Date
Enter the first date of the date range ((YY)YYMMDD) you want to create detailed absence and dispatch entries for.
To Date
Enter the last date of the date range ((YY)YYMMDD) for which you want to create detailed absence and dispatch entries. To create detail records for one day, enter the same date in both the from and to date prompts.
Employee Categories
Demographic Bargaining Units
Demographic Departments
Demographic Positions
Advance Absences
Enter 'Y' to advance open-ended absences.
Advance Dispatches
Enter 'Y' to advance open-ended dispatches.
Preliminary/Final
Enter 'P' to run this process in preliminary mode or 'F' to run it in final mode.
A preliminary run will create a report listing the proposed detail entries. A final run will create the proposed detail entries.