Summary
The interface between Databasics’ time and expense management products, and Lawson Activity Management is the result of a joint development project. The interface strategy is to define a “middle layer” of standard tables with fixed formats to which the “system of record” for a particular type of information writes its updates and from which the “consumer” of that information takes its updates. Generally, Activity Management is the system of record for codes and Time and Expense, the systems of record for employee time and expense reports.
The use of these intermediate tables has a number of benefits. Among them are:
· Insulation from changes to the applications. One product may be changed without directly impacting the other. So long as the system of record fulfills its obligation to “fill-out” the intermediate tables in the agreed-upon fashion, then the consuming application need not be concerned with “back-end” modifications.
· Asynchronicity. Updating does not require that the interfaced systems perform their tasks at the same time. This means, for example, that preventive maintenance on one system will not cause a data transmission involving the other system to fail. Similarly, coordination is not necessary to avoid attempting an update during load peaks.
· Ease of simulation and prototyping. Because the applications only access intermediate tables, neither system must be there for the other to test import and export processes—the intermediate tables may be filled manually or by test scripting.
· Simplification of multi-direction feeds. Provision of updates to multiple modules can be accomplished through a single, central facility—the intermediate tables.
The interface supports a standard integration model identified later in this document. If clients implement this standard integration model there is no need for additional development effort. The standard integration effort would require the same tasks needed in any project; installation, training, configuration, prototyping and testing and end-user rollout.
Any client that wishes to implement an integration other than the pre-defined standard model will need to add to their project team either their own development resources or consulting resources to define and custom-code their changes to the standard model at their own expense. Databasics and Lawson resources can be used at the respective parties consulting rates to support any changes to the standard model.
The Lawson Databasics interface was designed so that Lawson could provide a full solution. With that in mind, it was decided that a full solution included at minimum the Lawson HR and Financial Suites. Therefore,
DATABASICS Time- requires Lawson General Ledger, Payroll and Activity Management.
DATABASICS Expense - requires Lawson General Ledger, Payroll, Activity Management, and Accounts Payable.
The data extraction/flow from Lawson into Databasics includes Employee information, Pay codes, and optionally Leave Balances. If a client does not purchase the Lawson HR Suite they can enter this data directly into Databasics.
The data load from Databasics into Lawson in 8.x was designed so that the data from Databasics would be passed to the ACBBTRANS file and be processed in the AC542 program where the processing logic accesses Payroll to get wage information and standard costs. If the client does not purchase the HR Suite they would need to setup AC Resources and load them into Databasics; then the data passed from Databasics would need to go into the ACTRANSREL file to be processed in program AC540. AC540 validates resource information and uses standard costs maintained in AC.