W O R K F O R C E M A N A G E M E N T

WFM TimeCapture

SA

BI

LI

TY

|

C

RE

AT

IN

G

TH

E

LI

NK

T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

Introduction 3Reduce maintenance and support costs. Mobilize your WFM data. 3

Reproducing and Resolving Issues 3

Regression Testing: Trial by Fire 4

Sability WFM TimeCapture 5At a Glance 6Features 6

Supported Platforms 6

About Sability 7

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Reduce maintenance and support costs. Mobilize your WFM data.The WFM data in your production database has the potential to be very valuable to your WFM project team. It is the best kind of test data: real-world scenarios that you would never have thought to test for beforehand. It also contains all of the details needed to recreate production issues in a test environment, or to escalate particularly tough issues to your WFM vendor for resolution.

But there’s a problem: the data is stuck in your production database. You don’t want to experiment with potential solutions in production, and it is not practical to copy the entire database to a test environment every time you need to investigate an issue.

That ’s where Sability WFM TimeCapture comes in. TimeCapture allows you to selectively copy employee profiles, timesheets, schedules, and related data between WFM environments quickly and easily. It even lets you mask sensitive employee information so that fields like SSN and birth date can remain private - a must for SOX compliance.

All of this translates into fewer production issues and faster resolution times. This can help the savvy WFM IT manager to reduce maintenance and support costs and realize their WFM project ’s ROI more quickly.

A typical WFM release contains dozens of bug fixes and feature enhancements, each of which needs to be tested by a Quality Assurance team to ensure correct behavior. In addition, most WFM customers have implemented a regression test suite to reduce the likelihood of introducing new issues. Both forms of testing pose data-related challenges.

Reproducing and Resolving IssuesTo resolve an issue, a developer first needs to reproduce it in another environment, one where

1

Summary of Features

● Selectively copies timesheets, schedules,

employee profiles, and other related data

between databases.

● Comes pre-configured for all Infor WFM

/ Workbrain versions

● Minimal setup and deployment effort

● Scales to hundreds of thousands of

timesheets per run

● Masks sensitive fields for SOX

compliance

it is safe to experiment with potential fixes. Without TimeCapture, the only practical way to do this is to manually recreate the scenario as accurately as possible, c licking through the UI and entering edits exactly as the user did in the production environment. The major drawback of this approach is actually not the time it takes to enter all that data, but rather the difficulty of accurately recreating the production scenario. Remember that this is a brand new issue, not one the developer understands yet. They may not realize that certain data is relevant to the issue and as a result fail to migrate it. Other times, the data simply cannot be entered manually because there is no suitable screen for entering it.

This is the most common reason that fixes can work well in a test environment but fail to resolve the same issues in production. Every time this happens, it costs you and your team valuable time, money, and credibility with your users.

Regression Testing: Trial by FireThe best possible data to use for regression testing is production data. This data depicts exactly how your users use the system - there is no better way to anticipate the challenges your WFM system will be faced with after the next release.

A major problem with production data is the sheer size of it. Even well-managed production databases can easily reach over one terabyte (1TB) in size - too much to copy to your development and test environments. It may also contain sensitive employee information that will need to be removed before your testers see it..

Without TimeCapture, there are two common approaches to this problem:

› Option 1. Do whatever it takes to find enough space for the entire production database on development or testing hardware, or

› Option 2. Make a best effort to simulate production data without actually using any before deploying to the production environment.

Option 1 can be expensive, time-consuming and impractical, and usually results in a very slow test server that is overloaded with data. Eventually this approach will cease to be feasible. This forces customers to stick with a very old copy of production in the test environment, and over time the old data no longer fulfils its intended purpose: to provide an accurate reflection of the activity that takes place in production.

Option 2 enjoys none of the benefits of testing using production data, potentially resulting in unexpected behavior with each Production release. The effort required to create enough test data for a full regression test can be enormous, and provides a dangerously powerful incentive to not perform regression testing at all.2

3

S A B I L I T Y W F M T I M E C A P T U R ETimeCapture allows you to specify a range of employee ID’s and dates to copy from one Workbrain / Infor WFM database to another. This is doneusing a SQL “where” clause, giving you great flexibility to migrate as few or as many timesheets as necessary for your purposes. By taking advantage of the integrated report and data browsing features, you can doublecheck that you are

migrating the correct data before loading it into the target database.

You can include custom tables in the migration using XML configuration through a simple configurat ion tool . T imeCapture a l ready includes all delivered Workbrain T&A tables related to timesheets and schedules out of the box. Please contact sales@sability.com to arrange a demo or to obtain pricing and licensing information.

A T A G L A N C E

Features

› Reports summarize migrated record counts, can deliver reports to your email inbox in PDF or HTML format upon completion.

› Mask or modify the value of sensitive data fields such as SSN

› Allows risk-free data validation before modifying the target database

› Database constraints remain enabled, preventing data integrity issues

› Copy as many or as few timesheets and schedules as needed

› Can be configured to copy custom tables or other types of WFM data

› Integrates with Infor WFM job scheduler and other 3rd party scheduling utilities

Supported Platforms

› Databases Oracle 8i, 9i, 10g DB2 8.x, 9.x MSSQL 2003, 2005

› Operating Systems Unix/Linux, Windows, Mac OSX

› Infor WFM PL/SQL versions 3.1S-3.5.4S. Modern versions 3.5.4j-5.0.5+

› JDK’s IBM and Sun JDK’s 1.5+

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R

Jeremy Finney is Chief Technology Officer at Sability. His deep expertise in Workforce Management solutions was established over the past two decades through his work with a diverse group of clients and software firms tackling complex Workforce Management issues in vastly unique environments with different operating goals.  Jeremy’s career includes senior roles at several leading technology firms including Workbrain Inc. and EDS. He is a graduate of Queen’s University with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering.

A B O U T S A B I L I T YSability was founded by a group of Workforce Management industry professionals who apply their years of experience to helping customers maximize the value of an investment in enterprise WFM systems.

For over a decade, Sability has helped companies — from Fortune 50 to smaller workforces — analyze their business practices to optimize their workforce’s potential; while ensuring all processes and practices remain safely within the bounds of compliance.

We have unmatched experience with leading WFM solutions, across multiple industries, where customers require Time and Attendance, Labor Forecasting, Schedule Optimization, Staff Scheduling, Attendance Management, Leave Management and more.

Sability provides services through multiple consulting practices, which can be engaged individually or brought together for full life cycle customer engagements.

We use our expertise in Workforce Management to focus on our customer’s critical requirements and deliver solutions that align technology with tangible business results.

Phone 404.521.2001Toll Free 800.301.3587

Fax 404.420.2991

Analysis WFM Strategy, As-Is Process Analysis, Best Practice Process Improvement, RFP Preparation, Business Case and Product Selection

Implementation Project Management, System Configuration, Change Management, Testing, Training, Roll-out and Upgrades

Development Product Customizations, Report Development, Data Interfaces and Companion Tools

Technical Infrastructure Performance Tuning, Environment Monitoring and Hosting, Data Migration, Upgrades and Archiving

1 Glenlake ParkwaySuite 700Atlanta, GA 30328