In practical terms, if an employee uses the "Lookup" 
toolbar button to record an Org Abbrev. only the profit centers
linked to the recorded project string would be available in the Org Abbrev
dialog box. For example, if a user records Project String 05590.0004.S005.2055
and then uses the Org Abbrev Lookup, the following dialog box appears.
This box indicates that the Project String is linked to Profit Center
05590. Departments 05590 is linked to the Project String and is eligible
for charging.
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All Project Strings are linked to the "Suspense Code". For a discussion of the "Suspense Code" see Invalid or Unknown Charge Numbers. |
There are several benefits to this approach.
Establishing specific connections adds greater control to the timekeeping process. Employees are only able to charge limited groups of Profit Centers and PLCs for a given Project String. These connections have been defined by their managers;
These limited connections reduce the size of the information displayed in the lookup dialog boxes. This in turn reduces the time required to display the dialog boxes;
Initial experiments with global linking of Profit and Cost Centers to each Project String generated an unmanageable number of connections. The initial load generated over 1.5 million connections. During a three month period the number of connections increased by another million. As of the end of FY 2001 there were potentially 5 million connections. In addition, lookup dialog boxes were of limited use as any department or PLC was a valid charge for each Project String.
By looking at timecards loaded into Costpoint it was possible to initialize WebET with historical and currently valid charge information. In addition, existing timecards defined which employees were eligible to charge a given vehicle. Starting with July of 2000 all timecard links between Project Strings and Profit Centers were loaded into WebET. Links for Project Strings and PLC were also loaded for the same time period.