Introduction to Payroll Flow Schedules

Schedule a flow to automatically submit the flow at a date, frequency, and time span that suits your business practices.

Here's what you can do with flow schedules:

Create a schedule
Submit the next occurrence of the flow
Connect active flows
Monitor the status of scheduled flows
Troubleshoot issues with flow schedules or individual tasks
Cancel scheduled flows

Use predefined frequencies or formulas to schedule a flow to run once or on a recurring basis.

For example, schedule a process to run on weekdays but not on weekends. Or, schedule a flow to submit an extract that reports extract update details on a daily basis.

Create Schedules for Flows

Here are some examples of scheduling options and parameters you can set while creating schedules for flows.

Scheduling Options	Parameters to Set	Examples
Submit the current flow only	Date Optionally, time	Schedule a process that transfers time card entries for a weekly payroll.
Submit the current flow and future occurrences	Frequency details or formula Start date and time	To optimize processing, schedule an archive process to start after normal working hours. However, the processing must end before the start of the nightly process to back up the enterprise's servers.
Restrict the period during which the flow recurs	End Date	Specify an end date for a scheduled statutory report that the government no longer requires you to submit.

Submit the Next Flow Occurrence

When the application submits the next occurrence of a flow at the scheduled time, it performs these tasks:

Uses the parameters specified in the original flow
Resets the dates appropriately, using the system date for the submission date
Increments parameters derived from the date parameter for predefined flows

For example, if you schedule a gross-to-net report to run monthly for a monthly payroll, the application uses these parameters and increments the process end date.

Payroll Name
Payroll Statutory Unit
Consolidation Group

The submitted report covers the payroll period that corresponds to the incremented end date.

For user-defined flows, to automatically increment the date, specify these parameters for the effective date parameter in the flow pattern.

Parameter	Value
Basis	Context Binding
Basis Value	System Date

The flow pattern can be for the process, extract, or report.

For example, define a flow pattern to extract weekly payroll data that requires you to enter a process date parameter. Use the Refine Extracts task and edit these task parameters on the task's Basic Information page:

Select the Process Date parameter.
Select Context Binding for the parameter basis.
Select System Date for the basis value.

These settings ensure that the dates increment appropriately.

Connect Active Flows

When you submit a scheduled flow, you can connect it to other active flows. The scheduled flow interacts with the active flow, but only for the first occurrence, not future occurrences.

Monitor the Status of Scheduled Flows

Use the View Flows and Checklist pages to monitor the status of scheduled flows. For example, if you schedule a report to verify payroll calculations, the scheduled flow displays in the Checklist and View Flows page with a status of Pending.

Troubleshoot Scheduled Flows

When there is an application server failure, the flow instance ends. You must resubmit the flow once the server resumes. You don't have to reschedule the recurring flows scheduled to run at a later date.

Cancel Scheduled Flows

You can cancel a scheduled flow depending on the frequency and status of the flow, as given here.

Frequency	Status	Available Actions
Once	Started	Skip
Once	Not Started	Cancel flow
Recurring	Not Started	Cancel the current flow, cancel the recurring flow, or cancel the current and recurring flows