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:
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| Recurrences |
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. |
| Patterns |
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. |
| Calendars |
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. |
| Shifts | Define shifts for a calendar in order to specify the working times of a team of employees. |
| Periods |
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.
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Calendars are based on calendar codes and availability types. Together with calendar recurrences, and non working days they define the working hours for each specific day.
- These calendar definitions are used to generate calendar working hours, a list of working times for each week day. These hours are used by other packages for, among other things, planning purposes.
- Shifts are based on a calendar's working hours and define the working hours for a team of employees.
In the following simplified diagram, the outward pointing arrows represent information that is made available outside Calendars and Periods.
