Step 4: Building the Rule Map

The initial period of interest used to create batches of time reporters in Step 2 represents only the minimum amount of data (or time) that must be processed in Time Administration. This initial period does not necessarily include all the time needed to process the rules in a time reporter's rule program. To determine both how far back into the past and forward into the future Time Administration must go to retrieve, for each batch, 1) the data needed to run each individual rule in a time reporter's Rule Program, and 2) the maximum amount of data encompassing the entire group of rules in the Rule Program, Time Administration must define a second period of interest. In the following section, we refer to the maximum period of time containing the data needed to run all the rules in a rule program as the final period of interest. In addition to defining this period, the Build Rule Map process generates an output table (TL_RULE_MAP) identifying the rules to process for each batch, the priority of the rules, the AE Section containing each rule in the rule program, the effective dates of both the workgroup and the rule program, and other data.

After the rule map is complete, Time Administration sends the correct amount of time to the Intermediate Payable Time tables for processing and identify the AE section for each rule and period of interest.