Finding Gaps in Employment in a List of Employment Objects

kklosson

Think of an employment application where the applicant completes a list of past employment with the employer and the beginning and end dates. I need to examine the list for periods of unemployment where each employment beginning data is examined to the PREVIOUS employment end date assuming the process examines the list in chronological order.

I’ve looked at the FOR EACH and LOOP_ITERATION functions, but I’ve never used either of them and the examples don’t corelate to this very well. In my process, I just want to identify the existence of the gap and use REPORT ERROR to advise the applicant to enter a period of unemployment into the timeframe.

Am I on the right track with FOR EACH and LOOP_ITERATION or has someone skinned this cat already?

customaware

If it were me, I would have a System Value that represents the Max Allowable Gap… SystemSetting.maxAllowedEmploymentHistoryGap…

Let’s Assume that is 120 days.

If the user enters any History records with Gap of more than 120 Days, then we need to force them to provide some explanation for the Gap. So we create addition EmploymentHistory with the DateStart and DateFinish representing the Gap and also a GapExplanation Attribute. Would be helpful to have a EmploymentHistoryType Attribute that we set to ‘GAP’ so we do not mess up our Gap Search… See Below

So, to implement…. do not check as the User enters each record of Employment History. Wait until the have enter all of their History and then check them….

Create a Non Persistent BO called NP_EmploymentHistoryGapCheck with two Attributes….
NP_EmploymentHistoryGapCheck.ps_Candidate
NP_EmploymentHistoryGapCheck.Counter
NP_EmploymentHistoryGapCheck.ps_EmploymentHistory

PROCESS:

EmploymentHistoryGapCheck1

  CREATE NP_EmploymentHistoryGapCheck
     CREATE NP_EmploymentHistoryGapCheck WITH NP_EmploymentHistoryGapCheck.Counter = 1
  FIND EmploymentHistory 
     FIND EmploymentHistory WHERE EmploymentHistory.ob_Candidate = ThisCandidate AND EmploymentHistory.EmploymentHistoryType <> 'GAP' ORDER BY
     EmploymentHistory.DateStart ASC IN BATCHES OF 1
  SEARCH COUNT EmploymentHistory <> 0
     If SEARCH_COUNT <> 0 Then
     EmploymentHistoryGapCheck2 /*To Sub Process*/

SUB PROCESS:

EmploymentHistoryGapCheck2   INPUT  NP_EmploymentHistoryGapCheck, EmploymentHistory 

/* We check > 1 first because if we check = 1 first... the > 1 test will also execute... which we do not want */

If NP_EmploymentHistoryGapCheck.Counter > 1 AND DAY_DIFFERENCE( NP_EmploymentHistoryGapCheck.ps_EmploymentHistory.DateStart, EmploymentHistory.DateStart) > SystemSetting.maxAllowedEmploymentHistoryGap Then
CREATE EmploymentHistory WITH 
    EmploymentHistory.ob_Candidate = NP_EmploymentHistoryGapCheck.ps_Candidate, 
    EmploymentHistory.DateStart = DATE_ADD(NP_EmploymentHistoryGapCheck.ps_EmploymentHistory.DateFinish, 1), 
    EmploymentHistory.DateFinish = DATE_ADD(ThisEmploymentHistory.DateStart, -1)
    EmploymentHistory.EmploymentHistoryType = 'GAP'

NP_EmploymentHistoryGapCheck.ps_EmploymentHistory = ThisEmploymentHistory
INCREASE NP_EmploymentHistoryGapCheck.Counter BY 1

If NP_EmploymentHistoryGapCheck.Counter = 1 AND NP_EmploymentHistoryGapCheck.ps_EmploymentHistory
IS UNDEFINED Then
NP_EmploymentHistoryGapCheck.ps_EmploymentHistory = EmploymentHistory
INCREASE NP_EmploymentHistoryGapCheck.Counter BY 1

Once this finishes then you have records in the Candidates Employment History which account for all Gaps > 120 days. You can then display that
and force then to enter an explanation for each.

Have not tried this but think it is ok…. But you get the idea.
Let me know if any issues….

kklosson

Thanks! I will look at this approach.

PointsWell

Other things you could consider:

Linking Employment objects together eg Employment2 prior Employment = Employment1 and calculating the gap between Employment.StartDate and Employment.psPriorEmployment.EndDate - this wouldn’t capture instances where there was a branching employment history
When users create an employment record do a search to find the latest employment end date and then calculate the gap. This would require some routine to check whether there is a chain, e.g.

Employment Record	Start	End
1	01 Jan 20	10 Oct 22
2	01 Dec 23	28 Mar 24

If you were to insert a new record (3) in between 1 and 2 you’d need to do a search for the lowest start date that is greater than the (3)'s end date.

kklosson

It’s odd that there is no facility (that I can find) in AIM to step through a set of records for taking selective actions (or branching). Obviously, there is for singular actions applied to all records in the set.

Jaymer

kklosson I guess I’m on the “Obviously” portion of your statement. And I reread the 1st post.
But with respect to your statement about looping thru records and selective actions.

But don’t we exactly have this? An initial FIND to get all submitted employment records, and then pass that set to a subtask to examine each one.
Easier now that we have temp variables, but you could easily make a pass thru all lines Using temp vars (session vars) you’d save values from prior recs and can calc & store # days since prior ‘end date’.
Save your Gap days in each rec and then present this list to the user to identify gaps color coding rows where a Gap value exceeds a threshold.

customaware

I use the While Semantic in a Non Persistent BO to loop through records Kingsley. It works great and you can do all sorts of of stuff. Getting late here and flying tomorrow but will dig out a demo from a past conference over the weekend and send it to you.

kklosson

I think I can picture it but the WHILE semantic in AIM is a bit different and I need to learn up on it.

customaware

Couple of examples in here Kingsley, especially the second one, that might help.

conference-2019-small-version.zip

411kB