Working with Data Areas

Longview Workflow Designer is used by a System administrator to create an approval process, which consists of approval steps. Each approval step represents a non-overlapping area of data in the database, known as a Data Area.

Changing data visibility

If you want, you can set data in an approval process to be invisible in certain situations.

In an approval process

You can set your system to allow or disallow data invisibility within an approval process by setting the SYSTEM attribute SWFUseVisibility in Longview Application Administrator. For more information, see the Longview Application Administrator Guide.

• When SWFUseVisibility is set to TRUE, you can set visibility and invisibility rights on each step in an approval process from Longview Workflow Designer.
• When SWFUseVisibility is set to TRUE, the Owner or Approver updating status via Web Workflow has buttons available to turn visibility on and off.
• When SWFUseVisibility is set to FALSE, you cannot set visibility and invisibility rights on each step in an approval process from Longview Workflow Designer. The end user does not see the Visibility drop-down list on Web Workflow.

When you create an approval process, as an administrator, you can choose to allow or prevent Owners and Approvers to set the visibility or invisibility of their data. When data is invisible, the server still calculates the data, but it is not returned by a query to non-Owners. Data may be required to be invisible, for example, when creating the plan for a company that was obtained via a hostile takeover.

Note: If users have full access to all entities, they become Owners of all steps.

Owners and Approvers of a given Data Area can change the visibility attribute as long as the area’s status is In Progress, Rejected, or Not Started. Once the status of the Data Area is changed to Submitted for Approval or Approved, data is automatically visible, allowing the Approver and other users to see the submitted data and make an approval decision.

Caution: If a descendant of a hierarchical step is marked invisible, its parent, and all ancestral parents are invisible too, regardless of parent visibility status.

Outside an approval process

In certain situations, you may want to set some data to be invisible at a global level.

For example, if your approval process does not cover all data in your database, you may want to hide data that is not covered by an approval process.

You can set your system to allow or disallow data invisibility outside any approval process by setting the SYSTEM attribute SWFUseGlobalVisibility in Longview Application Administrator. For more information, see the Longview Application Administrator Guide.

• When SWFUseGlobalVisibility is set to TRUE, all Data Areas outside of a process are visible to users.
• When SWFUseGlobalVisibility is set to FALSE, all Data Areas outside of a process are not visible to users.

For the time period dimension

In the time period dimension only, you can make parent data invisible under the following conditions:

• when parent data invisibility is allowed; that is, when the System attribute SWFUseTimePeriodVisibility is set to TRUE
• when workflow visibility is enabled; that is, when the System attribute SWFUseVisibility is set to TRUE
• when leaves are invisible

For more information on setting values for System attributes, see the Longview Application Administrator Guide.

Consider the following time period hierarchy structure, where data is invisible for QAPLAN12 - Plan Period 12 - PD:

QAPYR - QA Plan Values

+QAPQTR1 - Quarter 1

+QAPLAN01 - Plan Period 1 - PD

+QAPLAN02 - Plan Period 2 - PD

+QAPLAN03 - Plan Period 3 - PD

+QAPQTR2 - Quarter 2

+QAPLAN04 - Plan Period 4 - PD

+QAPLAN05 - Plan Period 5 - PD

+QAPLAN06 - Plan Period 6 - PD

+QAPQTR3 - Quarter 3

+QAPLAN07 - Plan Period 7 - PD

+QAPLAN08 - Plan Period 8 - PD

+QAPLAN09 - Plan Period 9 - PD

+QAPQTR4 - Quarter 4

+QAPLAN10 - Plan Period 10 - PD

+QAPLAN11 - Plan Period 11 - PD

+QAPLAN12 - Plan Period 12 – PD

With parent data invisibility allowed, workflow visibility enabled, and leaves invisible, the following behavior is expected when viewing the report in Longview Workflow:

• the data for QAPLAN12 - Plan Period 12 - PD is invisible
• the data for the year root symbol (QAPYR - QA Plan Values) is invisible since data for the leaf symbol QAPLAN12 is invisible
• the data for the fourth quarter parent symbol (QAPQTR4 - Quarter 4) is invisible since data for the leaf symbol QAPLAN12 is invisible
• the data for QAPQTR1#99, QAPQTR2#99, QAPQTR3#99, QAPLAN10, and QAPLAN11 is visible

Resetting Data Areas

In some cases, you may need to reset Data Areas in an approval process. For example, if you are reusing a forecast process after having updated some actuals throughout the year, you may want to reset the Data Areas. You can reset Data Areas to Not Started, Rejected, In progress, or Approved.

To reset Data Areas, follow these steps.

1. Choose File > Open Process. The Open Existing Approval Process dialog appears.
   
2. Select the approval process and click OK.
3. Choose Tools > Reset All Data Areas. The Reset All Data Areas dialog appears.
   
4. Complete these fields:

   Field	Description
   Status	Choose the status that you want all Data Areas to reset to. You can select Not started, Rejected, In progress, or Approved.
   Visible	If you want users to be able to change the visibility of data, select this field. If you do not want users to be able to change the visibility of data, leave this field blank.

5. Click OK. The status of all Data Areas changes to the status selected in step 4.