This is quite a long and complicated question, I will do my best to explain exactly what I need to do.
This applies to a flight department. Let's start with what I have, we use spreadsheets to track flight time, landings, and engine cycles. Currently we're using two spreadsheets, one is our "trip" sheet, and the other is our flight "log".
The trip sheet can be one to three worksheets long, it is used to track each flight flown during the trip. The trip could range from one flight (leg), up to 25 flights (legs), and could range from 1 day, to 21 days. Each DAY of the trip is it's own Log #, ie. if there are 3 flights on one day, they all share the same Log #. The trip #'s are not in order, one trip could be #672, the next #264543, the next #689. The creation date is the only thing that could be used to track the trip workbooks in order.
The flight log is the FAA required logbook for the aircraft. The Log #'s run in order, ie. 459, 460, 461. A flight log is required for each day that the aircraft flies. Some, but not all of the information from the trip sheet is required on the flight log. The most important thing is that the times, landing, and cycles calculate in order.
Now here is what I'm looking for. I'd like a spreadsheet that contains the three trip sheet worksheets as we have now, but when a flight (leg) is entered, it creates a 4th worksheet which would be the flight log. Each leg flown that day would have it's information transferred to that flight log. Now, when we fly on a NEW day, a 5th worksheet would be created for the new day's flight log. Times, landings, and cycle totals need to transfer over from the previous day's flight log, and the other information needed from the trip sheet just like the previous log. And so on, and so on, till the end of the TRIP.
Now here's the REAL tricky part, when we start a new TRIP, and create a new workbook for that trip, I need the totals from the previous trip to transfer to the new workbook, so a legal, running total of aircraft times can be kept.
So basically, what I want to do, is take two separate workbooks for each trip we use now, and cram them into one, but each time a new trip workbook is created I need to go grab info from the LAST workbook created to keep a running total.
New to this forum, if there's a way to attach a copy of the two workbooks we use now please tell me. Looking at what we are using would probably make a lot of this clearer.
Thank you!!! PQ
It sounds like you have a working solution using Excel, which is very good. Oftentimes the biggest challenge is figuring out the process flow and all its branches. Further it seems like you just want to make your solution more routine and sustainable to work with.
Although making a souped-up macro-enabled Excel document sounds like the right way to go, the features you are asking for are really more suited for a relational database. Not to say it can't be done, but implementing an Excel based solution is going to be messy. The crucial difference I believe is maintaining the the logical link between the trip sheet and the log sheet.
For example, if I understand correctly, you will have to create several Excel files, and they are going to need a naming convention in order for the computer to know which ones to look for. This exposes the data to the most basic mishaps like mistakenly renaming or moving a file. If you will be the only one to maintain the system, then perhaps that won't be an issue, but experience tells me that a lot of effort can be instantly undermined by something as simple as opening a file and editing it.
This also means that you will have to maintain a "builder" file that must contain the code you develop. Not every machine is set up for macros, and a lot of end-users will get scare notices that, "this document contains macros which could be a danger...blah blah blah." Which means every output file should probably be macro free.
Instead I would recommend recreating your system using a relational database like MS-Access. You can create unlimited number of records/tables, and use any number of variables to maintain the logical link (by log #, by date, by flight #, etc.). You can also set the rules so data can be recorded and reported in a consistent manner. And if you have the need and the programming expertise, VBA macros can also be introduced to an MS-Access based solution.
Lastly, all the data could easily be kept in one central *.mdb file, which would be far easier to maintain and backup than several overlapping excel files.
Related
Context:
Due to the remote nature of working, the team I work in each have a laptop that they're using for their role (we have thinkpad displaylink units when in the office to connect the laptop to screens). I am working to improve the current allocation records file, which was just a big spreadsheet that you just added a new user to the bottom row. It was messy and hard to read at times, so i've decided to move the data into MS Access and created my data entry and user lookup form, which are working perfectly and make the job easier. I have also been able to make a number of reports that will come in handy too (who has what model ect).
Query:
Now the issue is, each of the laptops have a warranty and I am able to produce reports which lists the users and their warranty due date, but this will show all the warranty dates, whether they've been passed or in the future. I want to be able to produce 2 report/queries, the first that will just bring up the laptops who have a warranty that have expired, then another one to bring up those who will expire within the next 6 months so that we can make relevant decisions.
If anyone can assist with this, it will be welcome.
Apply filter criteria to report when opening. Either have parameters in report RecordSource or use code (VBA or macro) to build criteria for OpenReport method WHERE CONDITION argument. Expressions for criteria (ExpireDate is field, substitute with your field name):
[ExpireDate] <= Date();
[ExpireDate] BETWEEN Date() AND DateAdd("m", 6, Date())
I'm currently learning ABAP and trying to make an enhancement but have broken down in confusion on how to go about building on top of existing code. I have a program that runs periodically via a background job that disables user accounts X amount of days (in this case 90 days of inactive usage based on USR02~TRDAT).
I want to add an enhancement to notify the User via their email address (result of usr02~bname to match usr21~bname to pass the usr21~persnumber and usr21~addrnumber to adr6 which will point to the adr6~smtp_addr of the user, providing the usr02~bname -> adr6~smtp_addr relationship) based on their last logon date being 30, 15, 7, 5, 3, and 1 day away from the 90 day inactivity threshold with a link to the SAP system to help them reactivate the account with ease.
I'm beginning to think that an enhancement might not be a good idea but rather create a new program and schedule the background job daily. Any guidance or information would be greatly appreciated...
Extract
CLASS cl_inactive_users_reader DEFINITION.
PUBLIC SECTION.
TYPES:
BEGIN OF ts_inactive_user,
user_name TYPE syst_uname,
days_of_inactivity TYPE int1,
END OF ts_inactive_user.
TYPES tt_inactive_users TYPE STANDARD TABLE OF ts_inactive_user WITH EMPTY KEY.
CLASS-METHODS read_inactive_users
IMPORTING
min_days_of_inactivity TYPE int1
RETURNING
VALUE(result) TYPE tt_inactive_users.
ENDCLASS.
Then refactor
REPORT block_inactive_users.
DATA(inactive_users) = cl_inactive_users_readers=>read_inactive_users( 90 ).
LOOP AT inactive_users INTO DATA(inactive_user).
" block user
ENDLOOP.
And add
REPORT warn_inactive_users.
DATA(inactive_users) = cl_inactive_users_readers=>read_inactive_users( 60 ).
LOOP AT inactive_users INTO DATA(inactive_user).
CASE inactive_user-days_of_inactivity.
" choose urgency
ENDCASE.
" send e-mail
ENDLOOP.
and run both reports daily.
Don't create a big ball of mud by squeezing new features into existing code.
From SAP wiki:
The enhancement concept allows you to add your own functionality to SAP's standard business applications without having to modify the original applications. To modify the standard SAP behavior as per customer requirements, we can use enhancement framework.
As per your description, it doesn't sound like a use case for an enhancement. It isn't an intervention in an existing process. The original process and your new requirement are two different processes with some mutual logical part - selection of days of inactivity of users. The two shouldn't rely on each other.
Structurally I think it is best to have a separate program for computing which e-mails need to be sent and when, and a separate program for actually sending them.
I would copy your original program to a new one, and modify it a little bit so that instead of disabling a user, it records into some table for each user: 1) an e-mail 2) a date when to send 3) how many days left (30, 15, 7, etc) 4) status if the e-mail was sent or not. Initially you can even have multiple such jobs for each period (30, 15, 7 etc) and pass it as a parameter (which you use inside instead of 90).
This program you run daily as a job and it populates that table with e-mail "tasks" of what needs to be sent today. It just adds new lines, so lines from yesterday should stay in there.
The 2nd program should just read that table and send actual e-mails and update the statuses. You run that program daily as well.
This way you have:
overview: just check the table to see what's going on
control: if the e-mailer dies or hangs, you can restart it and it will continue where it left off; with statuses you avoid sending duplicate mails
you can make sure that you don't send outdated e-mails if in your mailer script you ignore all tasks older than say 2 days
I want to clarify your confusion about the use of enhancements:
You would want to use enhancements in terms of 'something' happens or is going to happen in the system and you would want to change this standard way.
That something, let's call it event or process could be for example an order is placed, a certain user is logging onto the system or a material has been or is going to be changed.
The change could be notifying another system of an order or checking the logged on user with additional checks for example his GUI version and warn him/her if not up-to-date.
Ask yourself, what process on the system does the execution of your program or code depend on. Does anything need to happen before the program is executed? No, only elapsing time.
Even if you had found an enhancement, you would want to use. If this process using the enhancement would not be run in 90 days, your mails would not be sent, because the enhancement would never been called.
edit: That being said, supposing you mean by enhancement 'building on your existing program' instead of 'creating a new one' would be absolutely not the right terminology for enhancement in the sap universe.
I would extend the functionality of your existing program, since you already compute how many days are left and you would have only one job to maintain.
I have a .RDL report which I designed in BIDS and have deployed to my report server. The report asks for three parameters before viewing report: Year, Month and Customer ID. The report works great and does exactly what it is supposed to.
While I used to run each report individually because there were 2-3 customers, now there are 30+ customers who receive the report, so I wanted to switch to a more automated fulfillment method to get the reports generated. After doing some research it appears that a using Report Manager to create a "Data Driven Subscription" (DDS) using the "Windows File Share" option gives me the capabilities I need.
As part of creating the DDS, I created a table called [Subscription] which is a table containing one row for each customer receiving the report and has the following columns:
Year
Month
CustomerID
FileName
FileLocation
Overwrite
Format
...so through using the DDS Wizard in Report Manager, I was able to successfully set up a Data Driven Subscription (which is linked to various columns in the [Subscription] table) which creates a new report for each customer in the [Subscription] table, saves [and overwrites, if necessary] it in a location of my choosing as a PDF (specified in [Subscription].[FileLocation], or the FileLocation column of my table for each row), and runs every minute (I plan on changing frequency to once a week, eventually).
This works flawlessly, giving me a new set of 30 reports in the directory of my choosing, with each report having a name I assigned in the FileName column of my table. Exactly what I was looking for.
HERE'S THE PROBLEM: When I update the FileLocation or FileName (or anything, really) in the [Subscription] table - it doesn't pick up the changes right away. Sometimes it doesn't even pick it up at all (for example I updated the [ReportName] column for one customer from Report_711622 to SpecialReport_711622, so that the output file for that customer should be named SpecialReport_711622 while all of the other reports should be called Report_XXXXX [no Special prefix]. But the file name of report for Customer 711622 remains the same!
It's almost like the job only see's what it needs to do once a day, and then does not go back and reference the [Subscription] table until I leave for the night, then when I come back in the morning it picks up the change.
Since I am about to scale this process out to a large customer-base using a different report, I need to be able to make edits to the [Subscription] table and have them get picked up by the Data Driven Subscription immediately (and if not immediately, at least a fixed interval of time that I can adjust, so that I can know 100% when the change will get picked up).
Does anyone know what's causing my lag? How do I change it so that updates to the Subscription table get picked up regularly? I'm also having issues with creating new DDS on other reports (following the exact process outlined above) - I've created the subscriptions, for every minute, and it says they are running and the number of outputs match the number of customers with 0 errors, but there are no files in the drive I specified (or anywhere else I've looked, for that matter).
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
I think the answer lies in the mechanism SSRS uses. There are a few places "lag" can occur.
The subscription is in fact an SQL Agent job which creates a record in the Event table. This table is a queue that SSRS checks to do scheduled tasks.
There is a small amount of time between the moment the subscription creates the Event record and the moment SQL reads it and starts creating the dataset for your DDS. The creation of the DDS dataset takes some time, too. In this time, the subscription will be in the Pending state. If you change anything in the data during this time, The subscription will still use the old data as report parameters. So obviously you will not notice your change until the next scheduled run.
Which brings me to the following: if a subscription is still being run and the next schedule kicks in (chances are, because yours runs every minute), the engine will not execute it, but wait for the next subscription schedule, and so on. So that's another possibility of lag - and cause of missing reports for a certain schedule minute. The subscription processes reports sequentially, one row from your DDS recordset at a time. Again, this takes some time. You can also see that in the subscription window when it says: # of # processed.
I suggest you look at the Event table in the database ReportServer during an execution. Also the ExecutionHistory views (there are 3) may be interesting. A scheduled run shows up as a RequestType = 1 and generates one record for each report. You can see the exact timing and parameters of each report that is run in the subscription. You may be able to extract the data you need to resolve your other issues.
EDIT: Here is a more elaborate guide to DDS data and events
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/deanka/archive/2009/01/13/diagnosing-and-troubleshooting-subscriptions.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/deanka/archive/2010/02/16/troubleshooting-subscriptions-part-ii-using-the-report-services-trace-log-file.aspx
Could this "Double-Hop" problem be the source of my issues? I'm so stuck on this one!
The Double-Hop Problem - MSDN Knowledgecast
I was wondering if it is possible to work on a per row basis in the kettle?
I am trying to implement a reporting scheme which consists of a table, where the requests get queued for processing and then the Pentaho job that picks up the records on that table.
my job currently has 3 transformations in it,
1st is to get records from the queued requests table
2nd is to analyze the values on each record and come up with multiple results based on that record. for example, a user would request to have records of movies of the horror genre. then it should spit out the horror movies
3rd is to further retrieve the information about the movies such as the year, director and etc, which is to be outputted to an excel file.
this is the idea, but it's a bit challenging doing it in Pentaho as it does stuff all at the same. is there a way that I can make my job work on records one by one?
EDIT.
Just to add, I have been trying to extend the implementation of the Pentaho cookbook sample but if I compare to my design, its like step 2 and step 3 only.
I can't seem to make the table input step work one at a time.
i just made it act like the implementation in the cookbook, i did adjustments on it. instead of using two transformations to gather all the necessary fields, i just retrieved all the information that i need in 1 transformation.
then after that i copied those information to the next steps, then some queries to complete the information and it is now working.
passing parameters between transformations is a bit confusing, there are parameters to be set on the transformation itself and also on the job where the transformations lay so i kinda went guessing for some time just to make it work.
I need to scheduled events, tasks, appointments, etc. in my DB. Some of them will be one time appointments, and some will be reoccurring "To-Dos" which must be checked off. After looking a google's calendar layout and others, plus doing a lot of reading here is what I have so far.
Calendar table (Could be called schedule table I guess): Basic_Event Title, start/end, reoccurs info.
Calendar occurrence table: ties to schedule table, occurrence specific text, next occurrence date / time????
Looked here at how SQL Server does its jobs: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178644.aspx
but this is slightly different.
Why two tables: I need to track status of each instance of the reoccurring task. Otherwise this would be much simpler...
so... on to the questions:
1) Does this seem like the proper way to go about it? Is there a better way to handle the multiple occurrence issue?
2) How often / how should I trigger creation of the occurrences? I really don't want to create a bunch of occurrences... BUT... What if the user wants to view next year's calendar...
Makes sense to have your schedule definition for a task in one table and then a separate table to record each instance of that separately - that's the approach I've taken in the past.
And with regards to creating the occurrences, there's probably no need to create them all up front. Especially when you consider tasks that repeat indefinitely! Again, the approach I've used in the past is to only create the next occurrence. When that instance is actioned, the next instance is then calculated and created.
This leaves the issue of viewing future occurrences. For this, you can start of with the initial/next scheduled occurrence and just calculate the future occurrences on-the-fly at display time.
While this isn't an exact answer to your question I've solved this problem before in SQL Server (though database here is irrelevant) by modeling a solution based on Unix's cron.
Instead of string parsing we used integer columns in a table to store the various time units.
We had events which could be scheduled; they could either point to a one-time schedule table that represented a distinct point in time (a date/time) or to the recurring schedule table which is modelled after cron.
Additionally remember to model your solution correctly. An event has a duration but the duration is unrelated to the schedule (but an event's duration may impact the schedule by causing conflicts). Do not try to model duration as part of your schedule.
In the past when we've done this, we had 2 tables:
1) Schedules -> Includes recurrence information
2) Exceptions -> Edit/changes to specific instances
Using SQL, it's possible to get the list of "Schedules" that have at least one instance in a given date range. Then you can expand in the GUI where each instance lies.