Defining business weeks

To get meaningful statistical results from Threshold Advisor, you must define at least one business week that corresponds to your business activity. A business week is a collection of calendar periods that, when combined, represent a typical week at your site.

Overview of business weeks

When processing collected data, Threshold Advisor combines each data sample (that is, a performance metric for a particular object in a particular recording interval) with all data samples for that object during the same calendar period.

The following rules apply to business weeks:

• A week contains 168 hours (7 x 24 = 168).
• Each hour of each day can belong to one and only one calendar period.
• Calendar periods do not need to be equal in size or contiguous. However, all periods together must cover the entire 168-hour week.

These examples show how business weeks might work for different types of activity:

• For a company that works worldwide on a 24x7 schedule, a business week might consist of just one calendar period. Samples for all days of the week and all hours of the day can be processed together because the business activity has no significant variations.
  
  
• For a retail store, business activity on weekends is probably different from weekday activity, and daytime activity is different from nighttime activity. In this case, a business week might contain four calendar periods:
  • Hours 1000-2000 on weekdays
  • Hours 0000-1000 and 2000-2400 on weekdays
  • Hours 1100-2200 on weekends
  • Hours 0000-1100 and 2200-2400 on weekends

Business week templates

Threshold Advisor provides predefined templates to help you create business weeks.

Each business week has two parameters:

• Days determines how days of the week are assigned to calendar periods.
• Times determines how hours of the day are assigned to calendar periods.

The following table shows the predefined options for the Days parameter:

For the Times parameter, All Hours Same means that all hours of a day belong to the same calendar period. Alternatively, you can divide the hours of a day into any of the following time periods:

• 2 12-Hour Periods
• 3 8-Hour Periods
• 4 6-Hour Periods
• 6 4-Hour Periods
• 8 3-Hour Periods
• 12 2-Hour Periods
• 24 1-Hour Periods

By default, a period starts at midnight, but you can specify any hour of the day as the starting time for a period.

To define a business week

1. In the application toolbar, click Manage Business Weeks.
   
   
2. In the Manage Business Weeks dialog box, select Create a new Business Week.
   
   
3. Specify a name and, optionally, a description for the business week.
   
   
4. From the Days list, select an option to represent how days of the week should be assigned to calendar periods (such as Weekends/Weekdays).
   
   
5. In the Times field, select All Hours Same or a set of periods (such as 3 8-Hour Periods) to represent how the hours of a day should be assigned to calendar periods.
   
   
6. (Optional) If you selected a set of periods and you want to change the starting time, select a new value from the Starting Time list.As you choose parameters, the Manage Calendar Periods list and Business Week Preview table at the bottom of the page are automatically updated. You can use these tools to further customize your calendar period, as described in Customizing a business week.
   
   

7. When your business week is complete, click Save Changes to complete the update.

   Note

   To build a customized set of calendar periods that represent your business activity for a week, select Custom from the Days list. The Manage Calendar Periods list and Business Week Preview table remain empty. You must manually define calendar periods that cover the entire 168-hour week.

Customizing a business week

After you specify the basic day and time parameters, you can use the Manage Calendar Periods list to customize the business week. With this tool you can:

• Change an existing calendar period by selecting the period and clicking Modify

  In the Modify Calendar Period dialog box, you can change the name of the period, the color that represents the period, and the day or times that the period covers.

  In the preview table, you can:

  • Click a multi-hour block of cells in the table by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking each cell
  • Highlight a group of adjacent cells by clicking and dragging
  • Click a day row to select all hours of a day, or an hour column to select that hour in all days of the week
    
    

• Remove an existing calendar period by selecting the period and clicking Remove

  When calendar periods are removed, the corresponding cells in the Business Week Preview table become white, which means they are unassigned. All unassigned cells, which represent hours in the week, must be assigned to a calendar period before you can save the business week.
  
  

• Add a new calendar period by clicking Add

  You can add a new calendar period to:

  • Cover unassigned cells that result from modifying or removing other periods
  • Divide an existing calendar period into two or more separate periods
    
    

• Change the order of calendar periods in the Manage Calendar Periods list by clicking the up or down arrow above the list

  The order in which calendar periods appear in this list determines the order in which they are displayed on some charts.

  Note

  • As you create and customize business weeks, remember that the number of hours in different periods affects the accuracy of statistical analysis and the length of data collection that is required. The greater the number of hours in a period, the shorter the preliminary data collection process will be, and the more reliable the statistical analysis will be.
    
    
  • Each business week is validated before it is saved. If you try to save a business week that contains unassigned cells, Threshold Advisor prompts you to assign those cells to a calendar period called Other_n.