Clock transaction file transfer conventions

Files of clock transactions that are submitted to the Workforce Management application must be created in the XML format that is defined in these sections.

File naming convention

File names consist of an agreed-upon prefix and a sequence and have the .xml extension.

In this example, "CLOCK_" is the prefix and "20030515_0023" is the sequence:

CLOCK_20030515_0023.XML

The order in which the files are processed is determined by the sequence.

Note: The Workforce Management application is case-sensitive.

XFile transfer protocol

When each file is complete and is ready to be transferred, an empty semaphore file (of the same name as the corresponding XML data file) is created with the .smf extension.

For example:

CLOCK_20030515_0023.SMF

File transfer

The SMF files must be accessible by the Workforce Management application by:

  • Specifying the folder where the files are located.
  • Specifying a network share where the folder is located.
  • Providing an FTP server that can be accessed by the Workforce Management application.

After the data is processed, the semaphore file is renamed with a .don extension.

Either the clock server or the Workforce Management Archive task cleans up all processed files.