Budget Notification -AVAC

[Former Member]

Hi All,

I'm after ideas on how to control the amount of notifications that a project manager receives which are generated by AVAC.

For example if we have a large project and we set a warning with email at say 90% for time writing this could mean the creation of many notifications and therefore, I was trying to think of ways that I could for example just send out an notification on a weekly basis.

I'm thinking that some sort of report is the only way which is sent to the various responsible persons but the selection of active projects might be difficult.

Appreciate any ideas.

Thanks

Jamie

[Paulo_Vitoriano · Accepted solution]

Hi Jamie,

The idea behind automatic notification message is a quick action by the budget holder, if action is not taken he/she will continue receiving maybe thousands of other messages and why not?

If within your business environment nobody cares about a quick action, then, as you said, you can schedule a weekly report in background based on the selection of Person Responsible and System/User status for WBS. 

Active projects can be easily filtered by the System and/or User Status selection profiles.

Regards,

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Paulo,

Thanks for the response and I share your views but I have to make sure the Project Manager gets the right level of information and not bombarded with it.

If there are a range of project sizes from lets say smaller projects of around 100K to larger projects of over 10 million then if we try to standardise and set the notifications to be sent out at 90% then we risk in bombarding the Project Managers with notifications every time a timesheet is transferred above this value which would somewhat dilute the importance of these messages.

I think the report route is the easiest way forward.

Thanks

Jamie

[Paulo_Vitoriano · Accepted solution]

Hi Jamie,

If you are thinking into that direction like what is material and what is not, you can have several budget profiles.  For example, one profile for "big and important" projects and another profile for "small and less important" projects.  Can be through different project profiles too.  Respectively the message conditions for different budget profiles can be different.

Regards,

Paulo

[Former Member]

So, after a lot of thought I've decide to solve this through the use of a substitution rule, a custom hierarchy report and a custom development. The substitution rule will be used to show that a project is active from the PRPS table by checking one of the user check box fields (usr10) and unchecking when the status is set to CLSD. This should make the development more efficient as I don't need to search JEST table to check if each project has been closed which would result in an ever growing selection as new projects were created. Any active projects will be grouped by person responsible and currency and passed automatically to the hierarchy report program (all running in background) which will generate the required data (budget, actuals, commitments, available spend, % of spend) and then email this information to the project manager using the standard email functionality. I've added an exception criteria to the hierarchy report to highlight any projects where the % of spend has exceed say 90% since I'm including all projects, even those where spend hasn't reached 90%, but I think on a weekly basis there is no harm in automatically sending this information to the Project Managers. Thanks all for your good ideas and just hoping now the developer can make this work.

[varshal_kachole3]

Hi,

Here are my 2 cents:

1. Maintain the Person Responsible as a Dummy Person with an Office User maintained in OPS6 which is not monitored regularly.
2. In case business requirement is to see the Report only on Mondays, filter out the Notifications in Dummy Person's mail box and forward the latest cases only e.g. appearing on Friday 6PM till Monday 8 AM to the correct Person.

Option 2 might need a brainstorming within the ABAP workflow Consultants, BASIS Consultants.

Hope It Helps!

Thanks and Regards,

Varshal Kachole

[Former Member]

Hi Varshal,

A possible solution but then we'd need to create additional SAP id's which I'm assuming would cost additional licenses.

Thanks

Jamie

[MTerence]

Hi Jamie,

Is the notification getting created when the Budget reaches 90% or it is sending notifications for posting done after 90% also.

Regards

Terence

[Former Member]

Hi Maria,

I did check this morning and a notification is created for every posting that goes above 90%. So depending on the time setting (create posting for each entry or posting for a single time sheet) this could mean many notifications which if are being forwarded to your external email account become overwhelming for a Project Manager.

Regards

Jamie

[MTerence]

Hi Jamie,

One of my client, we did set up custom logic to trigger notification if the project reaches 75%, 90%, 100% and 110%.

Once the event 90% is trigger, next event to be triggered is 100%, so based on the event, system will not trigger notification for all posting, Instead it will trigger only the first time it reaches 90%.

If the Budget / Commitment is reduced from 90% to 89%, system will uncheck the event checked for 90%, so when the budget again increases to 90%, it will trigger a notification.

I guess, this cannot be done using standard method, you need to develop to avoid notifications. Our system was very robust, since this triggers notification to GM / VP/CEO, so we have to maintain only less notification to be sent to their inbox.

Regards

Terence

[Former Member]

Hi Maria,

Thanks for the response, can you remember where this logic was entered for example a user exit?

Regards

Jamie

[MTerence]

Hi Jamie,

Sorry, i couldn't remember the user exit. You can discuss with a ABAP/workflow consultant, he/she will be able to find it out for you.

As per the logic Commitment % = Current Budget / Actuals + Commitments planned (PR/PO)

A internal to update different phases of commitment level.

When a project has reached commitment 90%, it need to check the internal table for check box activation and will trigger the event to create a workflow / notification to user.

In next if the commitment is again increased, system will go to internal table and finds the 90% is checked, it will just skips and save.

If the commitment is reduced below 90%, without triggering workflow / notification, system will update the internal table by removing the tick and the commitment values.

If i am able to find our the exit, i will let you know.

Regards

Terence