Saturday, November 8, 2014

Understanding PeopleSoft Group IDs

How would you create Performance Document for the employees directly reporting to CEO ? How would you process a special bonus plan for those employees who have been rated as 2 during the annual performance evaluation process ?
Well, one way is to create an SQL query which will give list of such employees and then process each employee one by one. It's certainly gonna be  a long time taking process if such employees are higher in number. So what should we do then ?

If somehow, this SQL can be run dynamically on its own and pass in all the employee IDs which it returns, to the performance document creation process to create the performance document or to variable compensation application to process the special bonus for these employees then our problem will be solved and that's where Groups come in picture.

We create a group and define the population that belongs to this group. The population for a group is defined with the set of criteria with the respective records and their fields. We basically create a dynamic SQL but in functional way. So let's create a group which will contain the employees directly reporting to CEO.

Creating a Group in PeopleSoft involves following steps:
  1. Select Records, Fields and Values that will define the population for the group
  2. Define e Group
  3. Setup Group Security

There are various setup pages which we use to define Groups and we do the required setup and configuration through each of these pages in sequence:


Group Build Records and Fields

This page is available here: Main > Setup HRMS > Common Definitions > Group Build > Group Build Records and Fields Page.
As I mentioned earlier defining a group is nothing more than creating a dynamic SQL which requires records and fields to be used in WHERE clause of the SQL. Hence, we first need to identify the records and their fields that will be needed in the SQL to fetch the employees directly reporting to CEO and then we need to add them through this page.  Only the records and fields added here will be available to be used as criteria in Group Definition.
So in our case the only record we will be requiring is JOB and the fields will be - HR_STATUS, REG_REGION, REPORTS_TO, EFFDT, EFF_SEQ, PER_ORG


Group Definition - Group Profile

Main > Setup HRMS > Common Definition > Group Build > Group Build, Group Definition
This is the page where we actually define the group. We just add set of criteria in the group definition and these criteria fetch the population at run time.  One important thing to note here is that instead of adding criteria, a PS Query can also be added into the Group definition in which case the setup which we just did in the page 'Group Build Records and Fields' will not be required.
Following will be the criteria under WHERE clause that we need to add:

WHERE
EFFDT = (Max EFFDT Criteria)
REG_REGION = <Region>
HR_STATUS = 'A'
JOB_INDICATOR = 'P'
PER_ORG = 'EMPLID'
REPORTS_TO = <CEO Position Number>

I would show you how these criteria should be added with group definition through below screenshot:




Just match the criteria added through this page not all though, as shown in the above screenshot against the criteria written in the SQL earlier in the article. The items highlighted in Red are the logical operators we use in WHERE clause, the items highlighted in Green are the fields used in the WHERE clause, the items highlighted in blue are the field values for which employees are fetched from database.


Setting Up Group Security

Because you can group people together in any manner that suits your needs, including across companies or departments, groups have their own security structure that is separate from, and overrides, data permission security. For example, a user who does not normally have access to department 10100, but who has access to a group that includes people in department 10100, can see all group members, even those who belong to that department. This makes security factors an important consideration when you set up groups.

Following are the pages used for setting up Group Security:

Group Security Default:  Set Up HCM>Common Definitions>Group Build>Group Security Default
Specify which components in your system can use or refer to groups that are created in the Group Build component

Security By Group:  Set Up HCM>Common Definitions>Group Build>Security By Group
Specify the users who have security access to the selected group ID and the components that the user can access for the group

Security By Operator:  Set Up HCM>Common Definitions>Group Build>Security By Operator
Set up security by user. Specify the groups that the selected user can access and the components that the user can access for the group.  


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