This tutorial deals with Fusion Payroll, and how it functions. In this part, we will discuss about Flow Patterns.

Flow Patterns

The concept of Flow Patterns is a new one in Fusion Payroll. It is an orchestration of the Payroll Cycle with the Payroll Tasks. Payroll Tasks can be manual interventions, processes, reports, etc.

A Payroll Flow Pattern can run as a single automatic task or as a pattern with many tasks. Basically, a flow pattern stitches payroll tasks together with the payroll cycle.

There are seeded flow patterns, which typically include critical processes like Payroll Calculations, Prepayments, and other Payroll Processes. User-created flow patterns can be created either from scratch (without copy) or by copying an already existing flow pattern (with copy).

There are three components that are part of a flow pattern: Tasks (the Payroll Tasks), Flow Tasks (how the flow pattern utilises the tasks), and Flows (the flows to which the flow tasks are stitched).

Once a flow pattern is created (either seeded or user-created), it is run through Flow Submission. In this UI, the required flow pattern is selected, the inputs are given, and after submission, the flow pattern is then executed.

The task associated with it is Manage Payroll Flow Patterns .

Tasks

Tasks are the building blocks for the creation of flows. All tasks are seeded , be it Payroll Calculation, Rollback, or any other payroll task. Users cannot create their own tasks, as they are provided by the legislation or Global Payroll.

A task can be any one of the following types: Process , Manual Intervention, Services, PL/SQL , or Reports. These tasks are made use of in Flows and Batch Loaders.

There are two components to a task: Actions (that are to be executed in the task) and Action Parameters (the inputs and outputs to the task).

The primary Process Task Actions that are used in Payroll are: Submit, Mark for Retry , Retry, and Rollback. These are internal to the payroll processes.

The Report Task Actions consist of only the Submit action.

Flow Tasks

Flow Tasks are created when a Flow Pattern is created from Tasks.

As with Payroll Tasks, the components of a flow task are: Actions and Action Parameters .

There are two types of Flow Tasks that a flow pattern would have: Start Task and End Task . The Start Task instructs the flow about the actions to be performed at the start of the flow, while the End Task instructs the flow when to stop.

Flows

The flow patterns orchestrate the Payroll Cycle utilising tasks as Flow Tasks according to the requirements of the user.

Flow patterns have to be sequenced, so that the flows know on which order to execute the flow tasks. The sequencing is highly flexible - it can be changed as per the user’s requirements; it also has the ability to execute tasks in parallel - meaning that multiple tasks can be executed simultaneously. Once this parallel execution of tasks is done, the flow will move on to the next task in the sequence.

In case any errors are present in the tasks that are performed, the flow will stop its execution at that particular point.

The components of a flow pattern are:

• Flow Tasks - the tasks under the flow pattern.

• Flow Task Parameters - the parameters to the flow tasks.

• Flow Parameters - a subset of the flow task parameters; values are passed from the flow parameters to the flow task parameters.

• Flow Sequence - a critical component; specifies the order in which the tasks are executed in the flow.

Fig. 1 - A Flow Sequence. 1-7 are tasks to be executed

The above diagram depicts a flow sequence, where tasks 1 through 7 are to be carried out. Once Task 1 is completed, Task 2 is executed. After the execution of Task 2, Tasks 3, 4, and 5 are simultaneously carried out (parallel execution). Once Tasks 3, 4, and 5 are done, Task 6 is executed, followed by Task 7.

The Legislative Data Group is optional for flow patterns. This is because the flow patterns are utilised not only by Global Payroll, but by other Human Capitalisation Management (HCM) modules like HCM Extract.

Flow Parameters

The following flowchart depicts the decision of selecting the flow parameters:

Fig. 2 - The selection process of Flow Parameters

Flow Parameters have the following critical aspects to them:

• Display and display format - how it is to be displayed to the user (e.g. text, date, etc.).

• Lookups and value sets

• Usage - whether the parameter is an input, output, or both.

• Sequence - the order of execution.

• Parameter Basis and Basis Value - how the parameter is utilised and its value.

Flow Pattern Submission

Once a flow pattern is created, it has to be submitted. The following steps depict this process:

1. For a flow pattern consisting of a single task, the task associated with it is Submit a Payroll Process or Report.
   If the flow pattern consists of more than one task, the task associated with it is Submit a Payroll Flow.

2. After submission of the flow pattern, the user gets a screen where he has to enter the values for the flow parameters.

3. Interactions with other flow patterns (if any).

4. Schedule for the flow (when to be executed, repetitions if any, etc.).

Krishnaa Lakshmanan

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