3453313 - WT&A Exceptions Overview | SAP Knowledge Base Article

Symptom

In WT&A, exceptions are a way to display messages to users to help provide or highlight information. The primary use is to provide details at the time sheet itself. Exceptions can have different severity levels, and can be used to prevent saving time sheets in situations until the issue is resolved. Pins on the time sheet help to highlight where the issue is as well, with the red "error-level" pin showing that there is a problem with a specific slice of time, while the other two "warning-level" and "info-level" exceptions are at the level of the full day.

Acknowledgeable exceptions add another level of functionality to exceptions. Exceptions set up with an "override" option on the Exception Policy will have an addition column at the time sheet for "Acknowledge". When checked at the time sheet and saved, the exception will change to a new one, as defined on the Exception Policy. To learn more, see Configuring Acknowledgeable Exceptions.

Prior to checking and saving:

After checking and saving:

The utility of exceptions extends far beyond the messages at the time sheet. Exceptions appear on many other screens such as Time Off Requests, Group Time Entry, Classic Job Scheduling's Modify Schedule screen, and beyond. These can serve to provide more information on the impact of the change, or can have more direct controls such as preventing a Time Off Request from submitting when specified exceptions are present.

Exceptions can also trigger email notifications, and include an attached report if appropriate, making sure that key situations are brought to the right person's attention as quickly as possible. Combined with the Scheduled Recalculation Policies, exceptions can quickly catch and highlight issues like an employee that hasn't punched in or out yet.

Finally, exceptions are also used by the system behind the scenes in some cases. An exception policy can be used to catch specific conditions, and create an exception which is not visible to anyone. But other policies can then use logic to watch for that exception to be present on the day, and have functionality based on that, simplifying some complicated calculations into a single place.

With all of this, exceptions are one of the most important and flexible tools in the WT&A system. Exceptions should be used liberally to give users easy access to the information that they need, and to help improve visibility across the system.