The Feature

OTL Timecard Needs a Makeover

October 16, 2006 on 7:46 am | by Marian Crkon | In Ideas and Opinions, Reviews | 18 Comments |  Print |  Email

Here is some unsolicited feedback for you, Oracle Time and Labor (OTL) developers. Implementing Financials and Projects (11.i.10) I spent a good deal of last month with a group of Oracle users whose primary interaction with Oracle Applications was entering time and expenses against the projects they worked on. Being new Oracle users, they reminded me how “different” Oracle was and how it took some time to “get used to Oracle’s nuances”. I documented some their comments and observations below:

Usability

• Users are having tough time remembering to hit the “Go” button when they change time periods or templates; as a result, many timecards get entered into wrong periods.

• It is not very obvious one has to hit TAB to navigate across fields to “commit” values in each field (this is a general Framework issue). If you, for instance, entered a project number without hitting TAB and hit Search for tasks (Flashlight), the form generates an unintuitive error message or starts an infinite search that freezes the page

• It would really help the time entry process if users could see additional fields including project name, task name, or customer on their timecard lines. This would be particularly useful when, due to business requirements, you cannot limit the list of available project values based on people’s assignments.

Error Messages

Many existing OTL messages are not user friendly and explanatory. Error messages should explain to users what they did wrong. The existing OTL messages quite often tell the users what they don’t need to know and don’t not tell what they do.

OTL and OIE Inconsistencies

There are several differences between the OTL and iExpenses (OIE) look and feel that let you know you are using two separate applications developed by separate teams. For instance:

• Time Entry responsibility (sub-menu) lists the OTL functions in the Navigator window; OIE has a consolidated Expenses Home link with functions as Tabs.

• OTL lets you restrict a list of project-related values (project, task, expenditure type), OIE does not.

• OIE lets you search for projects by Project Number, Project Name, Start Date, End Date and Organization, OTL does not. In OTL, you can only search by Project Number and Project Name.

No Save at Timeout

If you walked away from your desk before saving your timecard – too bad for you. Typically, there is a 10 minute “inactivity” timeout that terminates your Oracle session after 10 minutes of no activity. This is a general Framework feature, not just OTL. Make sure you save your work every time!

Offline Timecard

This feature may look good on the OTL data sheet, but in reality, it is a joke (it generates laughs and sarcastic remarks every time we show it to end users, so we no longer do so). I’d really like to know if anyone is actually using it.

Project Timecard Approval and Import

There are, essentially, no parameters to control which timecards get approved and imported into Projects when the background approval method is used. It would be very useful to restrict approval and import by time period, organization, project type, or range of projects.

OTL and iExpenses are often the only two Oracle applications that many users will see. When they do not provide user experience people expect, they give the applications a reputation they do not deserve.

What is your experience with using OTL timecards and expense reports? Share your thoughts and experiences as comments below!

Automatic Timecard Approval for Terminated Employees

July 18, 2006 on 8:18 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Feature of the Week | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

You may encounter this feature if using Oracle Time and Labor and Oracle Projects 11i.10.

The Feature

Employees enter their project-related timecards in OTL and you want to import them to Oracle Projects. If the timecards are automatically approved by the Workflow Background Process (OTL Workflows for Employees item), they will not get approved for terminated employees and contingent workers. It appears the date of the approval process must fall within the person’s period of employment or placement to complete successfully. If the approval process is outside of the period of employment/placement the approval process fails with the error message ‘ORA-20001: This person does not have preferences for the selected effective date’, which generates an email to the System Administrator.

The Metalink Note 338716.1 describes a similar issue. In the note, Oracle recommends disabling the deferred approval option and approving timecards instantly upon their submission. This would not work because it leaves users with no option to withdraw and correct their timecards once they were submitted.

The Workaround

You need to reverse the terminations for the people on the unapproved timecards list and use the $FND_TOP/sql/wfretry.sql script to approve their timecards. Then run the PRC: Transaction Import Process in Projects to interface the timecards to Projects. And last but not least re-enter the employee terminations.

Another way to avoid this situation is to implement timecard approval by supervisor or project manager. However for those who do require this kind of approval and want to approve timecards automatically, it would be very helpful if the Workflow Background Process had a date parameter, so that it would be possible to run the approval process for past dates.