Sustainability & Risk / Compliance / Compliance Program Manager
Sustainability & Risk / Compliance / Contract Manager

Generating Events (Concept)

Note: You can generate events for both contract terms and compliance program requirements. The information in this topic applies to events for both contract terms and requirements.

Regulations typically have requirements which consist of actions that must be completed on a recurring schedule. Likewise, contracts have contract terms that require a recurring schedules.

These scheduled actions are referred to as events. You use the application to generate events that follow a predictable schedule by defining a recurring schedule for the requirement or contract term. Using this recurring schedule and information you enter for the requirement, the application generates the events that are needed for completion of this requirement.

You can generate events from these tasks:

• Compliance / Contract Manager / Manage Contract Drill-Down
• Compliance / Contract Manager / Manage Contract Terms
• Compliance / Contract Manager / Manage Compliance Drill-Down
• Compliance / Contract Manager / Manage Compliance Requirements

When you generate events, the following occurs:

• The application creates scheduled events for the requirement or contract term based on the schedule you enter. See How Dates Are Determined for Generated Events, later in this topic.
• All future existing events that were previously generated are removed if their Do Not Reschedule? flag is set to No. You can choose to override the Do Not Reschedule setting, so that all events are removed, regardless of their Do Not Reschedule? setting. See Determining if an Event Is Removed When Regenerating Events, later in this topic.

• If you set the "Create Scheduled Event for Each Location” field to Yes, a separate event is created for each location associated with the requirement or contract term. If set to No, then a single event is generated for just the requirement or contract term, no matter how many locations are associated with it. See Locations: Overview.

• If the Activate Notifications? field for the event is set to Yes, then any notifications associated with the compliance program and requirement or contract and contract term are also added for the event. See Adding New Notification Templates for Programs and Requirements, Contracts, and Contract Terms.

For step-by-step details for generating events, see Generating Scheduled Events.

How Your Entries Determine Dates for Generated Events

Each generated event has a Date Completion Required, Date Scheduled Start, and a Date Scheduled End. These dates are determined using information you enter when generating events. The following table describes the entries you make:

Field	Where Completed	Determines...
Date Initial Scheduling	Save and Generate Events pane	The date to begin scheduling generated events.   Events are generated for the future starting from the Date Initial Scheduling you enter when generating events. By default. when you first generate events, this is set to the current date. You are able to change this date, as long as it is not before the Date Requirement (Contract Term) Start, if one is entered. This entry is required.
Once, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, and Yearly option buttons	Define Recurrence Pattern pane	The Date Completion Required is determined by the recurring schedule you enter. You select once, daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly for the recurring schedule. When you make these selections, additional selections become available to help you define the schedule. For example, if the recurrence pattern you enter specifies that the event should occur monthly on the first Monday of the month, events are created with a Date Completion Required for the first Monday of each month starting from the Date Initial Scheduling you enter when generating the event.
Event Schedule Buffer	Save and Generate Events pane	Used to calculate the Date Scheduled End. Date Scheduled End = the Date Completion Required minus the Event Schedule Buffer The Event Schedule Buffer is the number of days before the Date Completion Required that you want the event to end. You enter this number of days when generating the event. By default, this is set to 0, but you can change it as needed.
Event Duration	Save and Generate Events pane	Used to calculate the Date Scheduled Start. The Date Scheduled Start = the Date Scheduled End minus the Event Duration. The number of days over which this event occurs. You enter this date when generating events. By default, this is set to 1, but you can change it as needed.

Controlling the Number of Events

Generating events into the future is critical to tracking and managing events, but you often need to limit the number of events you generate at one time, so that the number is manageable. The application offers several ways of doing this.

• Application Limits by recurring schedule type: The application sets a limit on the number of years for event generation depending on the recurring schedule you select when generating events: five years for daily, weekly, or monthly schedules; or ten years for yearly schedules. No matter what selections you make for the other fields that control event generation, you are never able to generate events beyond these time frames. If you make no entries for any of the other fields, this is the limit that the application uses.

If you want to limit event generation to a smaller time frame than the application limit, use the following fields:

• Date Requirement (Contract Term) Start and End: These dates put an absolute limit on event generation; no events are generated before the start date or after the end date. You can use these dates when there is a distinct start and finish to the activity, or when you want to generate fewer events than the application limit would produce.

• Generate event occurrences until: When you generate events, you can enter this date as an end point for event generation. For example, use this date to set a more restrictive time frame than the Date End or the application limit. You can change this date each time you generate events to control the time frame for which events are generated.
• End After XX Occurrences: For any of these schedules, except Once, you can specify the maximum number of occurrences for the event by entering the number in the End After XX Occurrences field. The End After XX Occurrences field is used as long as the number of occurrences does not take scheduling beyond the Date Requirement (Contract Term) End, the "Generate event occurrences until" date, or past the maximum number of years for the schedule type (five years for daily, weekly and monthly schedules, and ten years for yearly schedules). If you have entered the "Generate events until" date and the End After XX Occurrences number, the application uses the field that would produce the smaller number of events.

Regenerating Events

Occasionally, you will need to regenerate events. For example:

• If you have added notification templates for a contract term or requirement after you generated events, then you must regenerate the events to associate the notifications with them. When you add a notification, it is associated with new events you generate, but not with any existing events.
• Many requirements or contract terms are ongoing. For ongoing items, you need to generate events into the future so that you can track the progress of events as they become due. The application puts a limit on how far into the future you can generate events: five years for daily, weekly, or monthly events, and ten years for yearly events. You can also set a more restrictive limit on the number of events. For ongoing requirements, at some point you will need to regenerate events so that you have events generated sufficiently into the future to facilitate planning.
• If you need to make a global change to the event schedule, you can regenerate events. For example, if you need to change an inspection to be the second Monday of the month, rather than the first, you would regenerate the events using the new recurring schedule.

Note: If you need to adjust the schedule for a single event, and this adjustment does not apply to all occurrences of the event, you can manually adjust the schedule. See Rescheduling Events.

Generating Past Events

Typically, you generate events for the future. However, depending on the information entered for the event's schedule (such as, the event duration and the event schedule buffer) you might generate some events that have a Date Scheduled Start that is in the past. For example, suppose you generate events on May 1, to occur monthly on the 30^th of each month, using a buffer of 30 days (that is, you want the task to end one month prior to when it is absolutely required), and the event has a duration of 2 days. Using this scheduling information, the first event will have a Date Scheduled Start of April 29^th. This might be a valid event as there is still time to complete it, but in some cases events that are scheduled for the past might not be useful.

Also, since only future events are removed when regenerating events, regenerating events might result in duplicate events having a Date Scheduled Start that is in the past.

If any of these situations occur, you receive the following message:

(x) Events were generated. Some events have a [Date Scheduled Start] value in the past, and duplicate events may now exist.

In this case, you can examine the past events by selecting the Events tab, and manually deleting any unwanted events.

Determining if an Event Is Removed When Regenerating Events

Each event has a Do Not Reschedule? flag associated with it. This flag determines whether the event should be removed when you regenerate events (occurs when this flag is set to No), or whether the event should remain when events are regenerated (occurs when set to Yes). By default, events that are generated automatically based on a recurring schedule are set to No; events that are entered manually are set to Yes. However, you are able to change this setting if needed.

Keep this setting to Yes when there is a specific event in a recurring set that should not be removed if events are regenerated. For example, if you change schedule information for an event that was generated from a recurring schedule, such as changing the Date Start, and want to ensure that this change is preserved, change the Do Not Reschedule flag to Yes for the event.

This also enables you to find events which are not part of the recurring set for a given requirement or contract term. For example, for a requirement with a recurring Monday 9 AM meeting, you could find all the future instances when the meeting was changed to another time by searching for events for the requirement with the Do Not Reschedule flag set to Yes.

You are able to override the setting for events that have the Do Not Reschedule value set to Yes. When you regenerate events, you can select the check box 'Replace Future Non-Recurring Events (Includes Do Not Reschedule Event)'. If you select this check box, all future events with the Status of Scheduled are removed and replaced with the newly generated events using the schedule information you enter. This occurs regardless of the event's setting for the Do Not Reschedule? flag.