Understanding Mass Triggers

This feature enables you to generate employee triggers based on changes to setup tables. Mass triggers can be established for specific records on specific components. A set of SQL objects defines the population affected by the setup table change. Once the affected employees are determined, you can review the trigger details before accepting the changes.

To set up mass triggers you must:

  • Define the component/record and fields that activate the trigger on the Mass Trigger Definition page.

    See Mass Trigger Definition Page.

  • Set up the SQL objects that will check the records to determine the population affected by the setup table change. You must define the SQL objects using PeopleTools and select them on the Mass Trigger SQL page.

    See Mass Trigger SQL Page.

  • Set up your system so that the records used in the mass trigger definitions declare and call the function Generate_Triggers in one of their field's SavePostChange PeopleCode.

    See Declaring and Calling the Generate_Triggers Function.

The mass trigger event process occurs in three steps:

  1. After saving the page containing the component/record and fields that activate the mass trigger, the event and the field values are stored in the mass trigger result table (GP_MT_TRIGGER). The event status is set to Unexpanded.

  2. The system evaluates the SQL objects and writes the results to the mass trigger results table (GP_MT_RESULT), which records the impacted population. The event status is set to Expanded, if all objects expand successfully.

  3. The system generates a list of retro and iterative triggers for the impacted population. Once completed, the event status is set to Triggers Generated.

You can view the events and their results on the Mass Trigger Events component. The system enables you to do the following:

  • Delete a trigger event using the Mass Trigger Events page. This includes the mass trigger, the impacted population, and the generated payee triggers. Deletion cannot occur if any of the generated triggers have been processed.

    See Mass Trigger Events Page.

  • Manually expand an event using the Affected Employees page. You may want to generate triggers after correcting an erroneous SQL object. Manually expanded triggers can do the following:

    • Generate the impacted population and the retroactive and iterative triggers for events that have a status of Unexpanded.

    • Generate retroactive and iterative triggers for events that have a status of Expanded.

    See Affected Employees Page.