Business Time introduction

Business Time 2.0 allows you to define periods of time as available or unavailable. To define business time, you can use time segments such as workdays, holidays, or any other activity that occurs in a business environment.

After you define the time segments, you can use the business time commands in your workflow.

The AR System serverBusiness Time functionality is applicable to global enterprises having multiple regional centers:

  • Businesses can use the availability function to block periods of time by region. For example, a customer might want to make certain functions unavailable for Japanese offices during the Golden Week in Japan.
  • Businesses can use the Business Time function according to their own rules for shift work during work days and during holidays. They can define the different shifts, for example, the evening shift and the morning shift, and the holidays to set their work environment.
  • Different offices can set up different holiday and break schedules. A central administrator can enter and manage business time and holidays for all international locations in different time zones.

Related topics

Defining-business-schedules-using-Business-Time

Business-Time-2-0-commands

Business time architecture

The Business Time Segment form is the main business time form and is used to define segments of time. These time segments can then be used to define any kind of activity.

Important

If you used the Business Time Holidays and Business Time Workdays forms in prior releases, you can still use them to define holidays and workdays with the old set of Business Time commands. However, in Business Time 2.0, all activities, including holidays and workdays are defined in the Business Time Segment form, and you must use a new set of commands to work with the time segments defined in that form. The "offset" that was previously available in the Business Time Workdays form is now available in the Business Time Segment form. The Business Time 2.0 commands provide the same functionality as the old Business Time commands (Add, Subtract, and Diff); however, all future enhancements will be made to Business Time 2.0 only.

You can use the following system forms to define Business Time 2.0:

  • Business Time Segment—Defines time segment as available or unavailable, optionally on a one-time or recurring basis.
  • Business Time Shared Entity—Stores detailed information about the entity used in the Business Segment-Entity Association form. An entity is a generic object such as an asset, categorization, or location.
    Create an entity only if you need to associate a time segment with it. After an entity is created, it can be reused. You do not need to create another one.
  • Business Segment-Entity Association—Stores associations between entities, such as assets, change requests, and groups, individuals, companies, and locations and activities that apply to those objects. It associates records in the Business Time Segment and Business Time Shared Entity forms in a many-to-many association.
  • Business Segment-Entity Association_Join—Acts as a join form between the following forms, and is used for query purposes:
    • Business Segment-Entity Association
    • Business Time Segment
  • Business Time Shared Entity-Entity Association_Join_Join—Acts as a join form between the following forms, and is used for query purposes:
    • Business Time Shared Entity
    • Business Segment-Entity Association_Join
      To use the Business Time 2.0 commands, you must create entries in the Business Time Segment form. For more information, see Business-Time-2-0-commands.
      The remaining forms are optional and you can use them to store entities and relate them to the Business Time Segment entries.
      Important: These forms contain fields with IDs that AR System recognizes. You can change the name of the forms, but do not make copies of them because the AR System server will not be able to find the correct form for finding business schedules.

      The following figure shows the relationships between these forms.

      Forms used to schedule time in AR System
      schedtime.gif


Important

If you upgrade your Business Time objects from AR System 5.0, delete the filter BusWk:ValidateTimes02. This filter is not intended for use on AR System versions 5.1 and later.

How Business Time 2.0 works

The Business Time Segment form represents a window of time that can be described as a one-time activity (which can span multiple days) or a recurring activity (which cannot span multiple days; it must be scheduled within a 24-hour period).

An object in the Business Segment-Entity Association form can be associated with:

  • One or more entries in the Business Time Segment form
  • Optionally, one or more entries in the Business Time Shared Entity form

In Business Time 2.0, time segments are defined using levels. Levels 1 and 2 are special levels. Level 1 time segments are treated as available time (workdays), and Level 2 time segments are treated as unavailable time (holidays). If no Level 1 time segments are defined, all days are considered available.

If holidays are defined at Level 2, they can be overridden by time segments at Level 3 and above. If you do not want to override holidays, define them at a high level. For more information, see Scheduling-a-time-segment.

To define business time and implement it in your AR System application, perform the following process:

  1. Define any combination of time segments, business hours, and business holidays.
    • For workdays, define available time segments at Level 1.
    • For holidays, define unavailable time segments at Level 2 or higher.
    • Define other time segments at Level 3 or higher.
  2. Add business time commands to the workflow in your application.
  3. Test the application.

Using the list of Time Segment IDs, Workday IDs, and Holiday IDs, the Business Time component in AR System builds a list of available and unavailable time windows for every day in the list of IDs.

For example, consider an entity that has a Workday schedule from 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., and two activities associated with it. The first time segment defines an available time window at Level 3 from 10:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M., and the second time segment defines an unavailable time window at Level 4 from 1:00 to 4:00 P.M. The Business Time component in AR Systemcomputes the final time window list for a day as shown in the following figure:

Workday and activities for one day
BusinessTime_WorkdayActivities.gif

The application commands described in Business-Time-2-0-commands work from the final list.

 

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