Oracle's position, budget, and workflow functionality supports business processes that many organizations refer to as position control, especially in the public sector. For example, using these business processes, private and public sector organizations alike can:
Organizations require different levels of control when managing positions. For example, a standard level of control might typically involve position definition, management planning, reporting against budgets, and cost tracking. Organizations fitting this description generally base their budgets on positions, jobs, or organizations. Enterprises using this approach do not generally require rules to control positions and budgets, or to ensure that costs correspond to available funds in a fiscal period.
More advanced control typically might involve complex approval processes, encumbrance accounting and commitment of funds, budget reallocation, and reporting requirements based on external funding authorities. Organizations fitting this description base their budgets on positions, and use these budgets to keep positions and related costs in line with available funds in a fiscal period.
If your organization requires a standard level of control, you:
define positions and enter budget data using the position description window
prepare budgets using the budget detail window, if you do not require workflow or if you base your budgets on other criteria than positions, jobs, or organizations
If your organization requires a more advanced level of control, you:
define positions and enter budget data using routed position transactions
prepare and approve budgets using the budget worksheet, to manage costs associated with positions
validate data using configurable business rules to perform necessary validations
control access to position transactions using templates
Regardless of the degree of position control you choose to implement, you can plan based on control budget reports, control access to data using Oracle's standard security, post commitments to General Ledger for budgeted entities (positions, jobs, grades, organizations), and capture historical data using datetracking.
If you designate an organization as a position control organization, you define and maintain positions for that organization using position transactions. Otherwise, use the existing position definition window. If you are converting positions from a legacy system, use HR_POSITION_API first, then enable position control.
See: Creating Organization Hierarchies.
Using Oracle Workflow, you can route and approve the data in the transaction prior to updating that information to the database. Upon update to the database, you can update position data.
In addition to standard security, you can control access to position definition and budgeting in several ways. You can:
Specify which workflow roles, users, or positions can approve routed position transactions or budget worksheets
Define rules that route transactions to the appropriate parties automatically
Use templates for position transactions that specify the position or budget data that users can access, edit, and approve
You can grant or deny position user access to budget data. You can use the supplied task and workflow role templates, or create new ones to suit your requirements.
The process of establishing and maintaining positions and budgets involves appropriate approvals and reviews. Using Oracle Workflow, you can route transactions and obtain necessary approvals.
You can base routing on user-defined routing lists, position hierarchies, or supervisory hierarchies. The approval mechanism gives you control over who approves transactions and under what circumstances. You restrict which users process transactions by defining routing and approval rules.
When routing a transaction, you can specify who receives a notification when a given event occurs, such as successful posting to the database. You can also expedite routing by skipping people in the routing sequence, or by sending the transaction directly to an override approver.
After approving a transaction, the approver can apply the transaction to the database or have another user apply it (that user doesn't have to have approver status).
To ensure that transactions are processed in a timely manner, you can set a response time (in days) that returns a notification to the sender if there is no response when the interval elapses.
Configurable business rules provide the greatest degree of control in managing positions and budgets. They perform necessary validations to assure that money is available to compensate incumbents.
The business rules automatically run checks against actions on budgeted positions, such as hiring applicants, changing assignments, changing position definitions, and modifying budgets.
For example, the business rules prevent the incumbents' annual salaries from exceeding the position's budgeted amounts. Business rules enable you to advertise a position and process applicants without hiring anyone until the funding is approved.
You can configure business rules to ignore validation failures, halt processing, or issue a warning (the typical default).
Use business rules in combination with position FTE or budgeted FTE to ensure that position control issues a warning or halts processing when hiring or promoting a person would put you over allotted FTE.
Create positions with a Position Type of Shared or Single Incumbent, and enter FTE for each position. If you are using an HRMS control budget, enter an FTE value against the position in your budget. (Position control checks budgeted FTE first, giving it precedence over position FTE.)
When you assign a person to a controlled position using position FTE, the application checks the sum of Assignment Budgeted FTE for all assignments to that position. If that sum exceeds position FTE, the application displays a warning or halts processing.
When you assign a person to a controlled position using a control budget, the application checks the sum of Assignment Budgeted FTE as before. If that sum exceeds the position's budgeted FTE for the budget period in force on the assignment's effective date, the application displays a warning or halts processing.
You can also configure the application to recalculate and update Assignment Budget Values for FTE automatically when determining factors change, such as working hours or frequency.
See: Recalculating Assignment Budget Values
You can define an overlap period for a position, specifying a duration of time during which you suspend FTE checking. This enables an incumbent to train a successor. You can reserve a position for any person you specify, effectively reserving the FTE for that person as well.
Changing the Action Date in the Position Transaction window generates historical data. The Action Date also enables you to process future-dated transactions and perform retroactive changes. A transaction status window captures a complete routing history of pending and applied transactions. A history window captures position records that have a status of applied or submitted.
Control budget reports provide data and analysis to help you stay within budget. You can make adjustments in response to temporary or permanent changes to organizations, personnel, and funding sources.
Management reports and process logs inform you of potential problems, and provide the data you need to analyze and solve them.
The process log is a key problem-solving tool. If there are any errors encountered in processing an action, such as failure to update the database, the application enters information about the error in the Process Log and changes the status of the transaction to show the error.