The "Kronos Guy" Blog

Kronos WFC Enviroment Management Tools Part 2 OR "Just what does SDM do anyway?"

  

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So what does SDM do? What doesn't it do? I think it's important to understand this at a high level before we build our best practice for  the Kronos WFC Change Control processes.

What SDM Does:

• Copies all elements related to pay configuration, accrual configuration, and access profiles, as well as other configuration elements.
• Copies a new individual element from a source environment to a target environment.
• Updates an existing individual element from a source environment to a target environment, overwriting the target environment's element, using the element name from the source environment to identify the target element in the target environment.

• Copies or updates multiple elements in order by the lowest common denominator elements first.  In other words, if you have a new pay code and a new combined pay code for SDM to copy to a new environment, it will automatically copy the pay code first, just in case the combined pay code needs that pay code to exist.  In other words, SDM knows the prerequisite order of the WFC configurations.

What SDM Does NOT Do:

• Delete any elements.  If you have deleted an element out of your development environment, SDM does give you a way to delete the same element in a target environment.
• Rename elements.  If you rename an element in your development environment and use SDM to copy it to a target environment, SDM will see that element as a new element that did not exist and copy it over accordingly.  You still have the old element existing in your target environment because SDM doesn't handle renaming. THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT as it's something that's done all the time and NOT TRACKED.       
• Copy elements that you did not select, even if they are prerequisites for what you did select to copy.  For example, if you created a new work rule that uses a new pay code distribution, but you only select the work rule to copy, it will fail because it will not find the pay code distribution it needed in the target environment - you have to specifically tell SDM to copy both the work rule and the PCD.
• Copy employee data.  This is a tool for configuration elements ONLY.
• Copy labor level elements or org map elements (as of v6.1).
• Copy labor level sets or org sets (as of v6.1).
• Copy anything related to Process Manager or hyperfinds or reports.  See your version's Record Manager User Guide for a listing of what specific elements that you think may be configuration that SDM does or does not support.

The most important thing to understand about what SDM does is that it copies new elements or updates existing elements only -- it does not ever delete anything.  And it works off of the element name to determine if the target environment has the item already (and just needs to be updated) or if it is a new item.

As you can see, it is still very important for the developer to record change manually thoughout the process. You cannot trust any tool to do it for you. The benefit of SDM is still great as you can use it as a tool to help migrate part of the development though the environments.

Next article we'll start to describe the Best Practices we can implement for Change Management with Kronos WFC products.

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Thanks again to Chris Flanders and others for contributing to this series