Absence

To answer the title: “Yes”. There are several places to maintain absence in AX 2012.
Working with Absence managment in AX 2012 you’ve probably come across this. The moment where you understand that there are multiple feature sets on Absence managment that don’t work together. Human resouces (HCM) and Time and Attendance (JMG) both use Absence codes, but the features in them are a bit astranged.

The reports in Absence managment in Human resources based on the absence journals are very good. That is why you set up the collumns and “include in report” on the absence codes.

You can transfer the absence registered in Time and Attendance into Absence journals in Human Resources if you’ve activated the parameter to do so.

Absence codes is a common concept and is used both in Time and attendance and Human Resources, but there are some places where you might fall in to a hole and the only way out at the moment is creating program changes.

Issue number 1: Absence applications from employees
You have the register absence under HR > Periodic > T&A > “Create planned absence”, create this through the attendance form (HR > Inquiries > T&A > “Attendance”) or do this through the T&A pane on the worker (HR > Common > Worker).

So far it looks to be working together, but what happens when employees need to register absence for approval. The employees can use Employee services in Enterprise portal to let your employees pre-register absence that is to be approved, but this doesn’t have anything to do with Time and Attendance.

A way to resolve this would be to add a function to class when approving absence that also updates the planned absence in time and attendance.

Issue number 2: Resource calendar updates
If a person is absent and this person is also a resources (for projects and manufacturing) it would be nice to mark this resource as absent as well. This has to be maintained manually today by “Calendar deveations”.

A nice way to automate this process is to add a new field to the abcense code with lookup to calendar. Then on the “Planned Absence” create and update classes create some business logic that also creates and updates calendar deveations for the resource.

Summary:
The features are all there, but they just don’t work together as I would have expected. I hope this post helped clear up some questions you’ve had and nudged you in the right direction. If you’re in the same situation you’ve probably got a partner with a skilled developer who can help you sort his out quickly.

Absence registration can be done by the time registration users them selves. If the clock-in or clock-out does not match the expected user profile, the user is prompted with an absence dialogue and can register either the reason why they are late or the reason why they are early.

To configure this go to Human Resources > Setup > Time and attendance > Groups > Absence Groups.

Create the groups with payroll in mind. For instance paid, unpaid, vacation and so on. This can make the payroll setup easier later.

After creating groups you need to create the codes

Make it available for the time registration user:
The setup for absence codes are the reasons for why the employee is not present. Not all the codes are natural to have in the terminal Interface. To make them available. Tick the “Registration” checkbox under Time and attendance fasttab.

Add colors to the terminal dialogue buttons by selecting the text and background color. You can make it even prettier by adding an iconId to the Icon Box. You can find an overview of the standard icons for AX by going to the Developer Interface (CTRL + D) and go to Tools and Embedded Resources.

Find the iconID by browsing the list and add it to the field in the Absence code form.

Continued or not:
The parameter “Continue absence” determens if the absence code should be active untill next clock-in by the user (Checkbox:true) or only untill the next expected clock in stated in the profile (Checkbox:false).

Post paytypes:
If you want to make the absence post a paytype to payroll you can add a paytype to the record as well. You can do it here if it is the rule for all employees. If they differ for some employees you can do this in the pay agreement setup later.
You can toggle if the absence is a standard day or only hour by hour. This will also affect the pay transfer. If set to day this will only transfer 1 for each day.

Try clocking outside the expected times and see the nice interface pop up.

Time and Attendance (Part 06/31): Indirect activities

Two (three) different absence solutions in AX?

Time and Attendance (Part 5/31): Absence setup