Overview of calendars and periods

This topic presents an overview of the Calendars and Periods module.

In the Calendars and Periods module, you can define calendars and time patterns to use throughout the LN packages.

Concepts

In the Calendars and Periods module, you can define the following types of data, for use in other parts of LN:

The following table describes each of these concepts.

Concept	Description
Recurrence	A recurrence is a repetitive pattern of dates, such as “Biweekly on Mondays and Fridays”, “The 27th of each month”, or “January 1st of each year”. Recurrences are used to build patterns and calendars. In the People package, you can use recurrences in assignments.
Pattern	A pattern is a scheme defining the day of the month, the day of the week, and the time of the day you want an activity to be carried out. Patterns are defined by using a combination of recurrences, exceptions, and times of day. The Order Management and Enterprise Planning packages use patterns to define delivery moments, shipping moments, and fixed delivery patterns.
Calendar	Calendars define the working times or opening times over a large range of dates. Calendars can also store efficiency-related and capacity-related data. You use calendars to define the working times of employees, work centers, and warehouses and information on the working dates and times of business partners, required to plan deliveries.
Period	Periods divide a year into regular intervals, such as weeks, months, or quarters. You use periods for statistical, financial, hours accounting, planning, and cost controlling purposes, especially in the Sales, Procurement and Project packages.

Dependencies

To help you understand the structure of this module, some of the dependencies between the concepts are described below:

A pattern is based on one or more recurrences.
Calendars are based on availability types and calendar recurrences. A calendar recurrence is based on one or more recurrences.
For dates with no available information, the calendar falls back on the standard calendar.

In the following simplified diagram, the outward pointing arrows represent information that is made available outside Calendars and Periods.

Simplified diagram of relationships within Calendars and Periods

To use the data

For more information on the use of the data defined in this module, refer to Relationships between CCP and other modules.

For integrations with external scheduling packages, refer to Calendar integration with external scheduling packages.

To set up the data

For more information on the setup of data in this module, refer to the following topics: