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dmarhue (IBM)Jul 21, 2022, 11:53
Hi Julio,
Dev has confirmed that this is a candidate for an Enhancement Request as the issue to be addressed, as described by you, is outside the scope for its delivery in an IFIX. Include in the request full description of the pain point, addressing specifically, handling what happens when a job plan is changed from dynamic to non-dynamic (or vice versa).
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Julio Hernandez (Customer)Feb 16, 2022, 17:06
Hi D,
Their point about how other revision-based objects work is not accurate. While other revision-based objects, such as Contracts and POs, do look at the latest Active revision when selecting a new Contract or PO, there are many scenarios where the specific revision attached to the record needs to be retrieved. There have been numerous APARS changing relationship to consider the RevisionNum for a PO due to erroneous behavior when another revision was retrieved.
In the case of the Job Plan, it makes no sense to look at the currently Active Job Plan when deciding how to handle a WO associated with an earlier revision. A Dynamic Job Plan requires additional information that was not present on the revision that was originally applied to a WO that won't be present if the original revision was not configured as Dynamic.
In the response, they mention that rather than revising a Job Plan to be Not Dynamic, a new Job Plan should be created. Well, I used that scenario in my test case but a more likely scenario is that a Job Plan that was not Dynamic because it was created prior to the Dynamic feature being available would be revised to make use of the feature. Forcing a client to create all new Job Plans with new JPNums when the old ones may be engrained in users minds and/or documentation is not really realistic.
Furthermore, if the system is not going to handle changes to the Dynamic flag properly on a revision, then the field should be READONLY on revisions. I'm not really advocating that. I think it is a very easy fix to support the revisions and handle them properly. They just need to add and use a separate relationship from WorkOrder to JobPlan to retrieve the same revision that is referenced on the WO.
The last point where you or they said: "Even in the case where a job plan revision removes Labor, Materials, Tasks etc., changing the job plan does not then update work orders that already have the materials etc. associated with that jp." actually supports my position. When a Job Plan is applied to a WO, the information on the Job Plan is copied to the WO. In the past, there was little reason to go back to look at the Job Plan or the revision that was applied other than for analysis or troubleshooting purposes. The Dynamic Job Plan feature introduced a need to do that because they chose to go back to the JobPlan record to determine if a Dynamic Job Plan was applied rather than adding a Dynamic attribute to the WorkOrder and copying it from the JobPlan record that was applied to the WO.
Thank you.
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dmarhue (IBM)Feb 15, 2022, 11:23
Hi Julio,
Dev has completed their investigation and it is their determination that this is not a bug. Because the current approved revision is not dynamic, the first job plan on the first WO is no longer dynamic, and therefore the dynamic job plan fields will not be visible. these fields are specific to dynamic job plans, and will only be displayed when the active job plan revision is dynamic. These fields are not a part of the work order, they are specific to the job plan.
Also, this behavior is consistent with other functional areas that utilize revision functionality where a field that references a record that can be revised will always point to the most recent revision that is 'active'. It is the recommendation that when it comes to job plans and their designation of Is dynamic? to not make a job plan that was once designated as Dynamic be NOT Dynamic via a revision, instead it is recommended that if a once Dynamic job plan no longer be dynamic to create a new job plan with a new designation. It removes the opportunity to introduce confusion as the Dynamic functionality is not the same as revising a job plan and adding/subtracting Labor, Materials, Tasks etc.
Even in the case where a job plan revision removes Labor, Materials, Tasks etc., changing the job plan does not then update work orders that already have the materials etc. associated with that jp.