Wobble, Baby, Wobble

Posted on June 15, 2016 by Nana

We are coming up on the 6 month mark of our tornado. Was talking to my daughter about it yesterday and we both agreed it has been both the longest and shortest 6 months ever.

SpinIt has sort of felt like that game you would play as a kid, where you’d close your eyes and spin around as fast and as many times as you can and then open your eyes. The world is wobbly and your balance is off and you can’t focus and you just feel nauseous. And you finally flop to the ground to wait out the reestablishment of your equilibrium.

Yeah. It feels like that. Pretty much every day.

Unfortunately as an adult with ‘responsibilities’ we don’t get the luxury of flopping to the ground to wait it out. There are bills to pay and piles of insurance paperwork and endless contractor questions and kids to shuttle to and fro and more. Those are all good reasons but the main one for me has been those 6 little eyes that stare at me. Those kids who got spun by the tornado along with me.

How they deal with tough situations in the future will be a direct result of what they are learning now. As hard as it is to wobble about my day and try to get things done, it is important to me that they see that when $hit gets hard, you still have to put one foot in front of the other and get along.

That’s not to say I’m not off my game. I’m cranky and cry easily and have trouble making decisions. My memory is off too – I think my mind is just so out of whack that I am losing things and forget things like I never did before.

I’ve never before experienced the onslaught of emotions that I’ve had over the past 6 months. Disbelief and helplessness, frustration and guilt, anger and unworthiness, hopeful and sorrow-filled, the emotions are raw and quick. I’ve experienced overwhelming joy and shock at the immediate and continued support from friends I know mainly online. I’ve experienced disappointment and sadness at the complete opposite from much closer relations. I constantly beat myself up about all of these emotions. That inner voice that says, “it’s been 6 months already, get over it”, or “y’all weren’t hurt and you get a new house, what’s to be sad about”. Logically I know that voice is crap, but it’s hard not to let it get to you.

As we cross this 6 month mark, I vow to give myself a little more grace. To accept those emotions and feelings as part of the ‘new norm’ for now. To grab the positive feelings and good days by the horns and embrace them with joy. To quit judging myself against others. To be ok with being sad and mad and glad and bad. (Wait, isn’t that a Dr. Seuss line?)

61rykitaoblI just finished reading Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson. Her writing style is like an unfiltered stream of consciousness and delightful. While my baggage is not the same as hers, I identified with so much of what she said. I laughed and cried and did that snotty laughing/crying thing that is completely unattractive and slightly scary to those around you. I was sad to reach the book’s end. There are so many awesome lines in the book but a few stood out that I’ll quote here as a reminder to myself when I look back at this post.

“You are alive. You have fought and battled them. You are scarred and worn and sometimes exhausted and were perhaps even close to giving up, but you did not.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

You. Did. Not.

“In other words, stop judging yourself against shiny people. Avoid the shiny people. The shiny people are a lie. Or get to know them enough to realize they aren’t so shiny after all. Shiny people aren’t the enemy. Sometimes we’re the enemy when we listen to our malfunctioning brains that try to tell us that we’re alone in our self-doubt, or that it’s obvious to everyone that we don’t know what the shit we’re doing. Hell, there are probably people out there right now who consider us to be shiny people (bless their stupid, stupid hearts) and that’s pretty much proof that none of our brains can be trusted to accurately measure the value of anyone, much less ourselves. How can we be expected to properly judge ourselves? We know all of our worst secrets. We are biased, and overly critical, and occasionally filled with shame. So you’ll have to just trust me when I say that you are worthy, important, and necessary. And smart. You may ask how I know and I’ll tell you how. It’s because right now? YOU’RE READING. That’s what the sexy people do. Other, less awesome people might currently be in their front yards chasing down and punching squirrels, but not you. You’re quietly curled up with a book designed to make you a better, happier, more introspective person. You win. You are amazing.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

None of our brains can be trusted to accurately measure the value of anyone, much less ourselves.   <—- who else needed to hear this??

“I AM GOING TO BE FURIOUSLY HAPPY, OUT OF SHEER SPITE.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

I’m with Jenny! Who is with me??

And for those wanting an update, we turned in our 60 day notice to the apartment complex, and they started insulation today! Fingers crossed the next 2 months go without a hitch and we can move back in before the next school year starts! Oh and fingers crossed I don’t get paralyzed making decisions about furniture and paint colors and find myself in a fetal position under the desk sucking my thumb over the next few days.

#DecisionsAreHard

#LifeIsHard

#FuriouslyHappy

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Creating a PTO Tracking System

Posted on April 7, 2016 by Nana

Contrary to what it might look like from my last few blog posts, the past few months have not been completely wrapped up in Tornado Survivor Mode! It has been a busy few months at work as well. We acquired a new company and incorporated the new Employees and their entire CRM/PSA/Accounting data into our systems, we have furiously worked on all the normal corporate shifts and changes for a new Fiscal Year and we designed, built and launched a new PTO Tracking System for our Employees!PTO Image

 

This post will walk you through the need behind the PTO Tracking System and how we put it together. Hope it helps you think outside the box at how you can leverage the Salesforce Platform to meet the needs in your organization!

 

THE PROBLEM:

 

When I first started a few years ago we had less than 100 employees in 2 countries. Now we are closing in on 500 employees across multiple continents. What used to work for PTO tracking (using our payroll system) is no longer a good option. We log timecards using the FinancialForce PSA, but that wasn’t linked to any sort of PTO System. Our payroll department would pull reports on the 15th of each month for the previous month of time logged to PTO and load those numbers in the Payroll system so the balances would show up on paystubs. Now think about that timing. You log vacation on the 2nd of the month, and it doesn’t debit from your available balance for almost 45 days. The lag was just getting to be too much. Nowadays no-one gets paper pay stubs, so it was yet another system to log into to check your (hopelessly out of date) balance. And this tool was only for US employees – there were other systems for employees in other countries and some were even tracked via <gasp> spreadsheet.

 

Now, FinancialForce has a solution for PTO in their HCM product. And we have looked hard at it. Since we currently use the FinancialForce PSA and Accounting Applications as well as various add-ons, it would make sense to go with the HCM tool. But a full-on HCM implementation is not a small undertaking. Our org currently has 360+ custom objects and the HCM package is well over 200 more. I am part of a 2-admin team serving almost 500 users on an end-to-end Company tool and without significant time and extra bodies, an HCM implementation is not an option for right now. Not to say we won’t go that route eventually. In fact I’d say we’ll likely get there, but in the meantime, we had a problem and needed a solution.

 

We needed to be able to provide a real-time balance to each employee, we needed a central repository for what our PTO policies are, a way for managers to quickly see the rules for his/her employees along with current balance information and a link to the timecard process that everyone is required to use anyway.

 

Simple, right?

 

THE OBJECTS:

 

pto_system

Custom Objects are in Blue, FinancialForce PSA Objects are in Green

 

Employee: This object is Private to Owner but shared with Admins/HR Groups. Owner is Manager of Employee. This record houses HR data, information about system access, licensing & equipment assigned to the Employee.

 

PSA Resource: This is a record type of the standard Contact Object used by the FInancialForce PSA system extensively. The Resource record represents the User who is assigned to projects for time and expense logging and doing ‘work’. Every user who logs time has a Resource Record – the timecards are linked to those records.

 

PTO Standard Rules: This object is visible by HR/Admins. These records make up our Standard Rules sets. Typically each country we have employees in has different PTO criteria, and each country has a Full-Time/Part-Time rule as well. We capture how many hours are accrued per period and if they are designated as Vacation, Sick or simply PTO. We capture any ‘Cap’ information (the maximum amount of PTO someone can hold at any given time) and yearly Roll-Over information. Going through the process of capturing this info was slightly painful, but necessary – my company has grown quickly over the past few years and this information wasn’t centrally maintained. Once we determined all the Rules, our HR department went back through all contract agreements and ‘assigned’ each Employee to the PTO Standard Rule set they fall under (this is simply a lookup on the Employee Record to the PTO Standard Rule).

 

PTO Summary: This is a custom object created to keep track of total Accrual amounts. The object is Private to Owner but shared with Admins/HR Groups and shared hierarchically. The Owner is the actual User. We use Roll-up Summaries of the PTO Accrual Line Items to display the current PTO Balances. There are also fields to display the CAPs for the Employee (if any) and a checkbox that gets checked via a process when the Total PTO exceeds the CAP – this is used later to debit hours if the CAP is exceeded. The PTO Summary is created via a Process when the User Record is created. It is then linked to the PSA Resource record via a lookup on that object. This links the Resource and PTO Summary so when time is logged we can easily ‘get to’ the PTO Summary for that Resource to create a PTO Accrual Line Item.

 

PTO Rules: This is a custom child object to the PTO Summary Record. This holds the Employee Specific PTO Rules and date ranges. Our company has 4 main timeframes for PTO increases (0-4 yrs, 5-9 yrs, 10-14 yrs, 15+ yrs). When the PTO Summary is created, a process creates the 4 Employee Specific Rules with the appropriate date ranges. It looks at the related Employee Record to see which PTO Standard Rule should be followed, then creates lines for each time frame – there is a start/end date for each Rule that is calculated from the Employee Start Date. The PTO Rule contains the number of hours for Vacation/Sick that the Employee Accrues for each pay period within a specific time frame. HR has access to manually edit and add notes to specific rules in the event an employee has an exception written into their contract. There is also a formula field on each rule that checks to see if (based on the dates of the rule) the rule is active – if so, a checkbox shows as true – so we always know which rule is active at any given time.

 

PTO Accrual Line Items: This is a custom child object to the PTO Summary Record. These are the line items that make up each individual Accrual/Debit of PTO. There are fields to capture the type of accrual (beginning balance, accrual, debit, adjustment), the amount accrued (positive for an accrual, negative for a debit), the type of accrual (Vacation/Sick), notes and a link to the timecard if the line is related to a debit. I’ll go into more detail below about how these are created. HR provided a beginning balance for each employee through a specific date and those were loaded into the system. These line items are then summed via Roll-Up Summaries on the related PTO Summary Record to show Balance information.

 

Projects/Milestones: These are standard FinancialForce PSA objects. We created PTO Projects for each Country (since they have different holidays/time off periods allowed) and Milestones to represent those buckets. Examples of the milestones are ‘Vacation’, ‘Sick’, ‘Jury Duty’, ‘Force Majeure’, etc. On the Vacation and Sick Milestones I have a PTO Type picklist I have set – this tells the system (if time is logged against this milestone) which type of PTO Accrual Line Item to create.

 

Timecards: Every Employee logs timecards each week. When an employee logs time against the PTO Project and either the Vacation or Sick Milestone, the timecard is sent to the User’s Manager for Approval. Upon Approval of the timecard, a Process looks at the related Resource record to find the appropriate PTO Summary Record and creates a new PTO Accrual Line Item to debit the PTO balance of that Employee for the number of approved hours. The PTO Accrual Line Item includes a link to the timecard for review purposes as necessary.

 

THE PROCESS:

 

HR creates Employee Record for new hires, when complete and ready to onboard, sends notice to admin to onboard. (Emp Record has lookup to the PTO Standard Rule this Employee was hired under – this is filled out by HR.)

 

Admin kicks off Process to create Resource Record & User Record. Underlying Process creates PTO Summary, Employee Specific PTO Rules & links Summary back to Resource Record & User Record. Admin then assigns new User to Appropriate PTO Project for time logging.

 

For Regular Accruals: Our pay periods are the 15th and the end of the month. Our PTO Standard Rules are typically set to Accrue for each prior pay period. So on the 16th and the 1st of the month I would accrue hours for the prior period.

 

Currently, as we are kicking off the new system, I am manually processing the accrual records. I run a report on the 15th and last day of the month that shows each active employee and his/her currently active rule. I then use the data loader to create PTO Accrual Line Items to Accrue time. The manual process is allowing my HR Team and users to ‘get comfortable’ with the accuracy of the data. My next step will be to create an automated process to accrue PTO twice a month.

 

In addition, there is a workflow setup to check a box on the PTO Summary when the balance exceeds any CAP that might be specified on that Standard Rule (example, some rules have a max of 160 Vacation hours – so if an employee accrues time and the sum of vacation exceeds 160 a box is checked). When that box gets checked, a process kicks off that creates an ‘Adjustment’ PTO Accrual Line Item to debit the vacation hours back down to the CAP. It is all very visible to the Employee so they can see when they are losing hours accrued because they aren’t taking time off. (Time off is important!) When the Employee gets within 10% of his/her CAP, an email goes out to the employee to remind them they are getting close to their CAP and should consider taking some time off.

 

THE TAKEAWAYS:

 

The benefits of the new System are that the accruals/debits/adjustments are all clearly visible to the Employee and Manager. An Employee can see their specific Rules at any given time. Managers have reports setup so they can review the balances regularly and before approving timecards submitted. HR can make changes to the Rules as necessary when contracts/agreements change and (again) it is all visible to the employee and transparent. Payroll can simply run a report of all of the debits from timecards for hourly employees and load those straight into the payroll system. It has been well-received by all involved!

 

 This was such a fun project to work on. Maddening at times trying to get the right information from the right sources, but it was challenging and represented a very visible solution for all involved!

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The Day After Christmas 2015 – Part 3

Posted on March 28, 2016 by Nana

This post is the third in a series I’m writing about our tornado experience. You can read from the beginning with the first post here.

To begin, my apologies for taking so long with this third post. The second post was hard. Reliving the storm and moments afterward. Examining our reactions. Much of it is still a bit of a blur. We are now three months out from that day and I still experience the terror of those moments occasionally.

It has been triggered by spring storms, by loud noises, by small enclosed places. The terror isn’t debilitating, but it sometimes it just takes the breath away and leaves a queasy, uneasy, unsafe feeling.

But I digress! I’ve had so many people asking, “What happened next?” So we’ll start where we left off:

tornado122615

12/26/15 Tornado as captured from a neighboring city.

I’m standing in front of our rubble. Can’t sit down because there are nails and bits and pieces of stuff everywhere. My phone is dead. It has been drizzling off and on. The sounds are still very weird. Not normal neighborhood sounds at 10pm at night. No hum of air conditioners and electronics. It is mainly sounds of debris being moved, or crunched as cars slowly wind their way through the streets. The sounds of people talking and crying. Some yells and calls for assistance. A distant cacophony of sirens.

I’m nervous for my husband as he goes in and out of the house retrieving what he can – it is so hard to tell the extent of the damage and I don’t want him hurt. My car isn’t going anywhere. My beloved Mini Cooper has a large section of roof decking through the sunroof. My husband’s car (a Ford Flexx) has broken windows and dents, but looks like it will drive so he is loading whatever he can in the back.

I see a man walk up the sidewalk. It is my sister’s friend! He has worked emergencies before and has a calm head about him! He is parked about a mile away at a local elementary school – it was the closest he could get but he is ready to help us to my sister’s. He helps clear debris from around and under the car and goes in with my husband to check on/get Spike. Spike is our very large pit-mix puppy. I had put him in the laundry room just before the tornado hit but we were nervous about getting him out of there with all the debris everywhere.

Our wonderful savior picked Spike up and carried him to my husband’s car. He was shaken up and stressed, but otherwise unharmed – the laundry room was intact even through the room directly above was pretty much gone.

So Spike was safely ensconced in the back of the vehicle, and I go next door to get the kids. The plan is for my husband to try and get out of the neighborhood in the car with Spike, and the kids and I will walk over to the elementary school where my sister’s friend is parked.

I check on our other next door neighbor and she said they aren’t leaving their house that night – they are worried about looters. My husband and I decide we can’t worry about that – we need to get the kids out of this war-zone and we’ll come back in the morning.

We are ready to set off when my husband looks at me and says, “the steak!”

I’m sure I must’ve given him a look like what in the world are you talking about?!?

Remember that $120 uncut filet I mentioned my husband was so excited about? He had bought it earlier that day.

He says, “We can’t leave the steak! It’ll spoil – it was a hundred and twenty dollars!”

Me: “Well we can’t put it in the car with poor Spike – he is freaked out enough as it is!”

So my husband goes in and grabs this 2 foot long piece of meat. My daughter and I are carrying bags of stuff already and my sister’s friend has picked up my youngest so he doesn’t have to walk. My husband turns to my middle son, Tucker, who is 11 and says, “Tucker you are going to have to carry the steak!”

Let’s just say this didn’t go over well, but Tucker acquiesces, and my husband gets in the car with a frantic dog and pulls away.

My motley crew starts off down the street. We are walking in the middle of the street, climbing over wood and trees and fence posts and household items. All the while Tucker is complaining loudly about having to carry the steak:

“It’s SO gross!”, “It’s cold and heavy!”, “Will someone carry this?”, “Ew! It’s dripping!”

And my favorite: “I think it’s bleeding on me!”

We got quite a few weird glances as we picked our way through the neighborhood.

We made it to his vehicle, piled in and wound our way out through a logjam of traffic. My husband has made it out of the neighborhood as well. There are police cars from neighboring communities and traffic heading into the neighborhood is at a complete standstill.

We get to my sister’s across town pretty quickly. They are still without power but we are SO glad to be there. We are exhausted, mentally spent and long overdue a bathroom break.

We borrow clothes and I gulp a glass of wine.

The past few hours felt both tremendously short and incredibly long and we are all sort of like walking zombies.

We had no idea what daylight would bring, but for the moment we are safe.

Spike is safe.

And we saved the steak!

Stay tuned for the next part of the story…how the rainstorm finished off what the tornado left, how a city reacts and waking up without a stitch of clothing to your name…

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A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood!

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Nana

With today being Community Manager Appreciation Day (CMAD), I dug up this blog post. It is still SO relevant. Today marks one month since my life changed dramatically.

One month of loss.

But also, one month of realizing just how important the concept of Community is. I have never felt more like a beloved Community member than now. Loved by my family, by my friends, by my BRG colleagues, by my city & Rowlett neighbors, by my friend’s friends, by my Salesforce Community, by my Financialforce Community, and even by strangers.

I am not sure I will ever be able to pay back the kindness and generosity we have received this past month, but I will strive to pay it forward!

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The Day After Christmas 2015 – Part 2

Posted on January 19, 2016 by Nana

This post is the second in a series I’m writing about our tornado experience. You can read the first post here.

It sounds like a freight train. I’ve heard it described like that on TV, but really never thought too hard about it. But they are all right. It sounds EXACTLY like a freight train bearing down on you at over 200 mph.

The noise built quickly into a roar accompanying the sound of the tornado sirens outside.

Within a matter of seconds, multiple things happened:

  • The power went out
  • The window in our kitchen shattered sending pieces of broken glass under the door into the bathroom
  • The sound became something of an explosion – like a bomb going off
  • The house shuddered and seemed to sway
  • As quickly as the wind threw shattered glass under the door, the wind was gone, almost an absence of air, throwing off the air pressure and forcing me to pop my ears

And then there was silence.

This all literally happened in a matter of seconds from the time we first heard the freight train roar.

I cracked open the bathroom door and closed it again. I turned to my husband and said, “Do you think we are in the eye?” (I laugh at that now – not like this was a hurricane or anything!)

I called my sister (at this point we could still get through) and told her that we were ok, but that we definitely had a window broken but not sure what other damage. I said where we were just in case so they would know.

My kids are all crying and Don and I are working on pure adrenaline. We told them to stay put and I opened the bathroom door. It was pitch black in the house but I could see the window was blown in and the kitchen table had been moved, but couldn’t make much else out.

Don went toward the back of the house and I went to the front door.

The whole time I’m thinking, ok, things aren’t bad – a broken window and a bit of a scare. Maybe we’ll be without power for a while, but we are good.

Then I opened the front door.

This part is still a little surreal to me. In a glance I can see that all is not ok. There is debris piled up in our yard and I can see my mattress. My mattress from our upstairs bedroom. My mattress from our upstairs bedroom in the front yard.

According to my children I exclaimed, “Our house is gone!” I don’t really remember that part. I remember hearing my husband say the kids rooms are not there anymore. My daughter is crying hysterically and the boys are kind of in shock. I have to yell at them to stay in the bathroom.

I gaze out the front door and see my neighbors slowly emerging from their damaged homes as well. It is pitch black and eerily quiet and the landscape looks like a war zone. We are yelling to each other, “Are you guys ok? Is everyone ok?” But I can’t get past the debris in the front safely since there are walls hanging over the eaves to the porch.

I tried calling my sister back. After several failed calls, I finally got through. I told her we’d been hit and the second floor was gone. She told me that my brother-in-law was on his way toward us, and to gather up what we need. She even reminded me to grab our medication! So I run through the house, grab my work laptop, my purse, and dump everything important I can think of into it. I hand it in to my daughter and head back to peer out the front door.

The next door neighbor is in her front yard and says her house is ok (she lives in a one-story and appeared to only sustain some roof damage) and if I wanted to bring the kids over I could.

So we gathered the kids up and walked them out the back, where there is no longer a fenced in yard, and around the side of the house to the house next door where they could sit safely with the neighbors.

As we are leaving the house my daughter asks about Spike, our dog, who we had put up in the laundry room. Not knowing how the laundry room fared, I wasn’t about to open that door and check with the kids there. I told her he was safer in there since there was glass everywhere outside and that we’d come back for him.

We got the kids settled and went back outside. To do what, I wasn’t sure. At this point we are all kind of just milling around – there is so much debris it is difficult to navigate outside, but luckily everyone in our immediate block is accounted for and safe.House that night

Don and a neighbor shut off the gas to the house (it was hissing pretty loudly), he helps neighbors do the same and checks on others, then he goes in to try and save some things in the house. There is no way to secure the house right now, what with windows broken and one of the back doors blown in, breaking the door frame.

I’m sort of just standing there. Looking around. What exactly am I supposed to do? I didn’t take a class on this. There are no instructions. I’m good with instructions. I’m not sure I’m adult enough to handle this.

Are we supposed to check in with someone? Wait for emergency personnel? What are the proper procedures?

We could hear sirens, but none came to our street. People were moving debris and cars were starting to pull through. Most were people slowly driving through seeing if anyone needed help. A few were slowly driving through holding their cell phones out the window. Filming our moments of tragedy. Videoing our wrecked homes and recording us as we cried and stared at that wreckage.

Texts and calls are coming through sporadically. Apparently my brother-in-law got  a few miles away but the debris was too thick for him to come any farther. A friend of theirs was trying a different direction and was going to come and find us.

I go back and forth between checking on the kids at the neighbor’s house and standing in our front yard. I’m nervous for Don as he pokes around the house since it is hard to tell the extent of the damage in the pitch black, but he is intent on grabbing some of the electronics and gaming systems for the boys.

We continue on like this for a few hours. Still no flashing lights of emergency vehicles or anyone official looking. My phone is now dead, my daughter keeps coming outside just to be near me and my boys have been mute for as long as I can ever recall.

There are people everywhere it seems, asking, “Is this your house? Were you in there? Is everyone ok?” People start offering water and to help. Help? Help with what? I don’t even know where to begin.

At this point it is around 10pm, when that friend of my sister comes walking up to the house. He had to park almost a mile away. He was there to help get us out of the neighborhood and to my sister’s house. Here was a rock we could lean on for the moment.

Stay tuned for the next part of the story...getting the kids, dog and filet mignon out of the neighborhood…

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