Placeholders

Placeholders

Placeholders allow the user better estimate costs by planning for positions or pending awards that are not yet in iVantage or IFAS.  In FAB / UI, placeholders are created and edited from the Tools Tab.

-        When creating or editing a Placeholder, you should always see “Changes Saved” in a green box near the upper left-hand corner of the grid.

-        Create a generic TBD placeholder account key for your group to use for planning assignments where the funding or project is really unknown at this point and there is not a proposal placeholder key.  This allows you to fully plan employees with the portions that are currently unknown, which makes verification easier and also helps identify potential high risk, where an actual funding source may not yet be identified.  (Begin the Name/ Description with "PH" and your Div/Prog to easily identify this as a placeholder and for easy identification, you might include “TBD” or something similar. For example -  "PH-MMM Key TBD")

-        Any fields created in Placeholder can be edited only by the creator of the placeholder

-        Finding YOUR Placeholders

• In the Placeholder Windows - From either the Employee Placeholder  or the Account Key Placeholder Tabs,  toggle to the right of the grid at the bottom of the window listing all Placeholders and Filter on "Created By:" to see only the ones you created.  (We now have 139 Employee Placeholders and 123 Account Placeholders, so can be difficult to find your own without filtering.)
• In Drop Down Lists Adding Placeholders to Grids - Begin all Placeholder Names, both Employees and Accounts with your Div / or Program or some other identification to make finding YOUR placeholders easier  (You can edit a rename placeholders.)

-        Recycling Placeholders, both Account Keys and Employees

• Any fields you create in Placeholder can be edited
• For any placeholder associated with a specific proposal, include the Proposal Number in the name, this makes it's easier to determine that this position or award is now active and the placeholder can be reused.

-        Retiring unnecessary or unused placeholders for both Account Keys and Employees

• Assign them to SAMPLE HR Org and set Entity, Lab and Division to UNKNOWN to keep them off your Plan Employee Salaries Grid and out of reports;
• You can easily edit these and reuse them at a later time.

-        Placeholder keys may take a few minutes to become available to add to grids.

-        Placeholder salaries AND Placeholder Start and End Dates are changed by editing the Employee Placeholder, these are NOT changed in the Plan Employee Salaries Grid
(Both of these changes may appear to save in the Plan Employee Salaries Grid, but when your refresh or reopen the grid the salary and start and end dates revert to the Employee Placeholder Information.)

-        The start date on the account keys impact calculated hours and costs of the Placeholder Employee. .Hours and costs are based on the planned Salary AND the Start and End Dates on Account Key Assignments, so if someone else created the Placeholder and you cannot edit the  start date, you can edit the assignment dates on your keys.