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Activity Setup

Budget Activity

A Budget Activity defines the type of budget or forecast to be carried out, e.g. an Annual Budget or Sales Forecast. Each activity has a set of participants and is comprised of one or more cycles. The cycles, in turn, represent iterations of the activity, typically over the course of a year. A typical budget activity may consist of many participants and multiple cycles. Budget activities should be made as generic as possible, so they can be recycled each year.

Activities Tab

The Activities tab allows Budget Administrators and Supervisors to manage Budgeting Activities and their associated Cycles. The tab is accessed by selecting Activities from the Budgeting Menu or selecting the Activities tab from the Budget Setup dialog. From this screen Activities and Cycles can be created, copied, edited, or deleted.

Activity Setup

Only Budget Administrators can create a new Activity, while Budget Administrators or Activity Supervisors can edit an existing activity.

  1. A new Activity can be created from scratch, or by copying an existing Activity.
    1. To create an Activity from scratch, click New > New Activity.

    2. To create a new Activity from a copy of an existing Activity, highlight the existing Activity and select Copy.
      1. This feature will copy the Activity’s description, participants, and cycles. Note, any budgeting inputs made in the source Activity will not be copied to the new Activity.
  1. When creating or editing an Activity, a dialogue similar to the following is displayed:

    • Name: The activity must be given a unique name
    • Description: optionally, add a description
    • Participants: Add or Edit Participants to the Activity by clicking Participants. See the below section on Participants for the various roles and options for defining Participants.
  2. Press OK to save the Activity. Note, if you press OK prior without defining at least one participant, the following notification will appear. Press Yes to continue creating the activity without participants.

Tip: Activity descriptions should identify the original creator in order to make it easy to identify responsible parties and deadlines. Also, it is important to take caution when deleting a budget activity because when you do this, all associated data will be deleted as well.

Participants

Participants are the Hubble users taking part in an Activity. Participants can be assigned to multiple roles or groups within an activity. Participants are added to an Activity, which will determine the workflow order for every cycle within that activity. The four Participant roles are as follows:

  • Supervisors - The Participants who manage the Activity and its Participants and Cycles. Hubble users who have been granted the Administrator Permission Budgeting Capability are automatically granted the Supervisor Role for every Activity, regardless of whether they are named as a Participant.
  • Controllers - The Participants who manage a group of Contributors and Approvers. Within their Controller Group, Controllers can override the status of a submission and can upload submissions to JD Edwards.
  • Approvers - The Participants who approve/reject the finalized submissions of assigned Contributors.
  • Contributors - The Participants who input budgets and finalize their submissions.

Note: A higher role does not confer the rights of lower roles. For example, having the Supervisor role does not confer the Contributor or Approver roles. A user must be specifically listed as Contributor to access Enter Budget Mode.

Adding Participants

When setting up a new Activity or editing an existing Activity, click the Participants button to specify the Hubble Users involved in the Activity, define their roles and, optionally, set a budgeting scope for Contributors. A user must have a BUD license and be a Budgeting Administrator or Activity Supervisor to be able to change the workflow of an Activity. It is possible to edit the participants while a cycle is open. However, in order to remove a participant with submissions that have not been uploaded to JD Edwards, the submissions will need to be deleted first.

The Participants button launches the Activity Participants dialog where you can set up the workflow of the participants.

The Supervisor Group and Controller Group nodes of the tree are automatically included on a blank participant tree so that a user may add participants to the relevant group.

If participants have already been added and you do not see them when you first go into this dialog, expand a group or click Expand All to view them. There is also username filter on this window which allows you to filter through longer participant trees.

There are two methods of adding Participants to the participant tree

  1. “Add Participant” Method – used to add participants to a group
  2. “Add Group” Method – used to create a new approval group under a controller group or higher approval group.

“Add Participant” Method:

  1. To add participants to the supervisor group, a controller group, an approver group, or a contributor group, select the parent group and click the Add Participant to display the Add Participants window.

  1. You can select and deselect multiple users and choose their role, but there is also a filter which allows you to quickly find a particular user rather than sift through a long list of users. The filter checks to see if either the username, first name, or the surname contains the contents of the filter. Press OK when finished.

  1. Press OK when finished and view the additions to the Participant Tree.

Approver groups can be used to build more complex approval scenarios. To add an approver group, select a controller and then either choose to Add Participant or Add Group.

To add an approver group using the “Add Participant” Method, select the Add Participant button when a controller is selected. This will automatically create an approver group and give it the “and” rule by default. Any participants selected in the Add Participants window will be added to this group.

“Add Group” Method:
  1. Select a controller or an existing approver group and select Add Group. Like the Add Participant method, you must add at least one Controller before adding an Approval Group.

  1. This window is similar to the Add Participant window, but it is possible to add a group name and choose an approval rule to apply to the approver group if desired. Approval rules are explained further in the section below. The filter on this window works in the same way as the filter in the Add Participants window.

Set Approver Group Rules

When you right-click an approver group, you can rename the group or set various rules for the group.

Multiple Approvers - Set “And” Rule

This rule will enforce that all members of this group approve a budgeting submission before the Input Form’s status is approved. In the case that any approver rejects a submission, the overall status is reset so that a contributor can alter the numbers again.

In the example below, the contributors submissions will need to be approved by all approvers.

Alternate Approvers - Set “Or” Rule

This rule will enforce that only one member of this group need to have approved a budgeting submission before the Input Form’s status is approved. In the case that any approver rejects a submission, the overall status is reset so that a contributor can alter numbers once again.

In the example below, the contributors submissions will need to be approved by only one approver.

Hierarchy Approvals - Set “Hierarchy” Rule

This rule will enforce that a budgeting submission will be approved once the top-level approver has approved the submission. In the case that any approver rejects a submission, the overall status is reset so that a contributor can alter the numbers again. Note that when this approval rule is used, the Adjust Hierarchy arrows will become illuminated to adjust the approval hierarchy.

In the example below, the contributor’s submission will be approved once the top-level approver has approved the submission.

Multiple Approver Groups

Multiple levels of approver groups can be added for complex approval scenarios. The logic of the approval rules remains the same but applied to a group of approvers rather than an individual approver.

In the example below, the contributor’s submission will be approved once one finance approver and one operations approver has approved the submission.

Note: When a participant tree is made with no approvers inside a group, contributors are able to submit budgeting values. However, without any approvers, these submissions cannot be approved or subsequently uploaded.

Participant Scope

When you right-click on a contributor, you can add/edit Scope. The scope defined here will apply only to that Participant, and work in conjunction with Cycle Scope. See Budgeting Cycle Scope for further details.