UWL Substitution Maintenance

[Bratzler, Loren]

I have brought this topic up before to the WUG and didn't get much response but I thought I would try it again.

Our company does nearly all of our workflow processing from the Universal Work List.  As such, all UWL substitution rules are created by the end-users via the "Manage Substitution Rules" screen in the UWL.  This is great because the UWL tool creates all the necessary substitution entries (HRUS_D2) in all the connected back-end systems and it creates the necessary front-end entries in the Portal database table (KMC_WF_SUBSTITUTE).

One issue that we run into is that we get a lot of requests to create a substitution rule for someone who has gone out on unexpected leave, or they just go on vacation, but don't have a substitution rule already set up.  When this occurs, we use the RMPS_SET_SUBSTITUTE tool in each of the backend systems to create the HRUS_D2 entries.  However, this tool does not communicate with the front-end Portal system so the KMC_WF_SUBSTITUTE entry is not created.  So now the two systems (front-end and back-end) are out of synch.

Another issue we run into is that when people leave the company, either due to resignation or retirement, they usually don't bother to delete the substitution rules that they have created.  And then a short time later, we get calls from the people who are substitutes for those persons asking if we can remove the retired or resigned employee from their list of users they sub for.  So again, we can use the RMPS_SET_SUBSTITUTE tool to remove the entries in the back-end systems but this still leaves the offending entries in the front-end KMC_WF_SUBSTITUTE table.  Because that entry is still in the front-end table, the retired/resigned employee still shows up in the substitute's list.

To address this, once a year, we go through a very manual process of dumping all the entries in the front-end KMC table and all the entries in the backend HRUS_D2 tables.  We then compare the user-ids in those dumps to HR data to determine which users are no longer with the company.  Once we have a list of users who are no longer valid, we manually clean up the HRUS back-end tables (via the RMPS_SET_SUBSTITUTE tool) and have our Basis team delete the unneeded entries in the KMC front-end table.

I was curious if anyone else has run into this before and if you have come up with a more elegant / automated way of handling?

Ideally, there should be an Admin tool in the front-end system to allow Substitution Rule maintenance from the Portal similar to how RMPS_SET_SUBSTITUTE works from the back end.  If there was such a tool, when we get asked to create a substitution rule for someone who is out of the office, or to delete a rule for someone who has left the company, we would do it from the Portal Admin tool and it would communicate with the back-end systems to maintain all the corresponding HRUS_D2 entries and maintain the front-end KMC_WF_SUBSTITUTE table.

This is something that I wish I had brought to the table for the Workflow Customer Influence sessions.

Loren Bratzler
Norfolk Southern Corporation

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