Absence Management Troubleshooting Guide

Absence Management Troubleshooting Guide...............................................................................1

Troubleshooting Batch Errors......................................................................................................2
Identify Phase..........................................................................................................................2
Calculate Phase........................................................................................................................4
Tracing Errors in Batch...........................................................................................................5
Troubleshooting Online Errors..................................................................................................12
Debugging Online Problems..................................................................................................13
Troubleshooting Batch Errors

Every time you run Absence calculation you need to check the COBOL log file. In the middle of
the log you should see messages for each batch phase, e.g. Identify, Calculate.

The Identify and Calculate phases contain information about batch errors.

Identify Phase

The Identify Phase may contain ‘Payees Suspended’ errors.

Usually it means an employee is opened in more than one calendar group at the same time. To
find out more details, you need to check Payee Messages.

Navigate to Global Payroll & Absence Mgmt >Absence and Payroll Processing > Review
Absence/Payroll Info > Payee Messages. Enter the Calendar Group, and then click on Select
Matching Messages.
You may click on the Details to get more information about the error.

The employee is still open in GS ES 2016-M02. Probably February has not been finalized yet.
This type of error is corrected by canceling the later calendar group and finalizing the earlier one.
In this example, March 2016 must be canceled, February finalized and then March can be
identified again.
Calculate Phase

Most of the errors in Calculate phases can be divided into Data errors and Configuration Errors.
The former is uncommon and may result from incorrect conversion. The latter is usually a
formula that was not validated or a date field with null values.

In either case, the log file will look like this:

To see the error message, again navigate to Global Payroll & Absence Mgmt >Absence and
Payroll Processing > Review Absence/Payroll Info > Payee Messages. Enter the Calendar
Group, and then click on Select Matching Messages

The formula FM ES VAC ENT has been recently changed but not validated.

Note that this type of messages are shown only once for the first employee where it was
encountered.

Sometimes an error is more difficult to understand. For example, an error below:

It’s not readily apparent what caused the error. The only thing you can say is that during the
processing of Absence Entitlement for Vacation the system tried to resolve the formula FM ALL
HIR/REH CLY and one of the variables contained an invalid value.

You might have to trace the rules to get to the bottom of it.

Tracing Errors in Batch

Absence Management delivers a debugging mechanism that can help you see a step-by-step
resolution of the rules. However, due to the large volume of information generated, it’s
recommended to trace just a few employees. You can use Group Lists for that purpose.

Creating Group List

To limit the run to just a few employees, you should create a group list. Navigate Global Payroll
& Absence Mgmt >Absence and Payroll Processing > Prepare Payroll > Manage Group
List. Create or select your Group List:
And insert the employees you want to debug:

Running Calculation with Trace

Now we can run a batch calculation with the trace option.

Click on Debug and Tuning Options hyperlink and click on Trace All Elements:
Click Ok to get back to the run control page and run the process.

Element Resolution Chain

When the process is done, navigate to Global Payroll & Absence Mgmt >Absence and Payroll
Processing > Review Absence/Payroll Info > Element Resolution Chain. Enter the employee
id and click Search.
What you see are all elements on the process list that were calculated during the run. Click on the
one you are interested in to see the step-by-step calculation.

Note: always check the calendar id you are working with. An employee might have retroactive
calculations and the system will show multiple calendars in the Element Resolution Chain
starting with the earliest. Make sure you are looking at the calendar you want to debug.
Now click on the element name AE ES VAC to get the details (if you click on element
description you will see the definition for the rule which might be useful to refresh your memory
of the configuration)
The elements appear in the order they were encountered during the calculation and the Order
shows the order they were actually resolved. For example to resolve FM ES VAC ENT the
system first resolved FM ALL HIR/REH CLY.
Troubleshooting Online Errors

The system catches most of the online errors during Absence Request entering and forecasting.
The messages are usually very clear.

During the forecasting process, the errors encountered in batch will be shown in place of custom
messages:

The attached document below explains each error and suggests the ways to ameliorate it.

Reviewing System
Generated Forecasting Error Status Messages.doc

The most common errors are 480 and 489. The former can be caused by a variety of reasons and
to see what exactly has caused it, you need to re-enter the same absence on the Absence Event
page and forecast it there. The latter simply means the forecasting calendar group needs to be
updated with the missing calendars.
For example, you get the following error:

Enter the same absence in Absence Event page and forecast. On the Forecasting Messages page
you will see the cause of the error:

Debugging Online Problems

What if the forecasting returns results without error but the results are wrong? How can you
debug an online transaction?

The tracing mechanism is delivered only for batch and there is nothing similar for online.

But no fear! With a little temporary change in PeopleCode you can get trace for an Absence
Request as well.

Obviously, it’s not for Production but the Development or Test databases are fair game!

Absence Request Page

Sign on to Application Designer and open Field Formula PeopleCode program for
FUNCLIB_GP_ABS.FCST_PB. Look for the value of ‘N’ right before &RunPhaseOptn in the
SQLExec insert into PS_GP_RUNCTL:
Change it to “A” and save it. Now every time anyone forecasts, Element Trace is written into
PS_GP_AUDIT_TBL. You can use the SQL below to query the data:

SELECT CAL_RUN_ID,
CAL_ID,
EMPLID,
RSLT_SEG_NUM AS "SEG",
AUDIT_SORT_KEY AS "KEY",
PIN_CHAIN_SEQ_NUM AS "SEQ",
INSTANCE_NUM AS "INSTANCE",
SLICE_BGN_DT,
SLICE_END_DT,
PIN_CHAIN_LVL_NUM AS "LEVEL",
PIN_CHAIN_RSLT_NUM AS "ORDER",
PIN_NM,
CALC_RSLT_VAL AS "NUMBER",
DATE_PIN_VAL AS "DATE",
CHR_PIN_VAL AS "CHAR",
PIN_VAL_NUM AS "POINTER"
FROM PS_GP_AUDIT_TBL A,
PS_GP_PIN B
WHERE EMPLID = '072692' AND
A.PIN_NUM = B.PIN_NUM
ORDER BY AUDIT_SORT_KEY, PIN_CHAIN_SEQ_NUM

You get a bit more raw data but it’s not too hard to make sense of it:
 Absence Event page

Similarly, you can get Element Trace from Absence Event page.

Sign on to Application Designer and open Field Formula PeopleCode program for
DERIVED_GP.FCST_PB. At the bottom of the page you will see ‘N’ right before
&RUN_PHASE_OPTN:

Change it to ‘A’ and save. Now every time anyone forecasts on the Absence Event page, the Audit
table will be populated with trace data.

Might be a good idea to delete your employees from PS_GP_AUDIT_TBL after you’re done.

In addition, once and a while you might want to truncate the table to remove the highwater mark.