Introduction¶

About this guide¶

This guide details the archiving capabilities of PSO. It covers how the Schedule Archiving Service is used to provide a full audit trail of the scheduling system, and how the audit trail can be analysed for insights.

Introduction¶

The Schedule Archiving Service is designed to provide a complete record of the data present in, and the changes made to, key IFS Scheduling databases over time. Additionally, the scheduling data can be processed and stored in tables to be used to generate reports of KPIs and key statistics of the business. Optionally, this 'processed' archive data can be used for 'adaptive scheduling'.

Snapshots are complete, static copies of the Scheduling, Resource Planning and Scheduling System databases and can be created at various intervals. For Scheduling and Resource Planning databases, individual Snapshots are taken for each dataset in the database if required. Through the Scheduling Workbench, at a later date these snapshots can then be:

• viewed within the Scheduling workspace, allowing the user to, for example, review and identify issues in a previous day's schedule.
• exported to a file, making it easier for a user to get support for any issues they are experiencing.
• restored to the database, as a last resort in the event of major problems.

Audits are records of the changes made to the Scheduling, Resource Planning and Scheduling System databases over time. The application and user from which the change originated are also recorded if appropriate, allowing a system administrator to trace any issues with changes being made to the databases. Through the Scheduling Workbench, these audits can then be:

• viewed as XML data.
• exported to a file, making it easier for a user to get support for any issues they are experiencing.
• used to retrospectively create a snapshot at that point, by taking the previous snapshot and applying all the audit records created since.

Reporting Tables are database tables that present the data from the Scheduling database in a way that is easy to query on in order to analyse the Scheduling system to look for insights into the performance and effectiveness of the business.

• tables updated by the Schedule Archiving Service if requested to do so during a scheduled snapshot
• tables structured in a 'star schema', i.e. a number of 'Fact' tables that contain numerical (or other additive) columns, and a number of foreign keys to Dimension tables. The Dimension tables contain all the data that might be used for filtering or grouping, such as activity type or customer.
• tables also allow for 'adaptive scheduling', e.g. automatically adjust activity durations based on their historical durations.