Whenever it comes to OTL discussions, the following two questions are always on the top:

1. Why do we need to configure the Timecard Layout?

Well, talking of configuration requirement, every business has different requirements which a seeded layout can't fulfill. The standard attributes provided on the seeded layouts are more of as a way for quick testing of the setup and a template for further modification. As an example, on the Payroll Timecard, your business rule might require you to provide Accounting Group or Supervisor or a day by day comments information apart from the Hours Type, Cost Center attributes and the hours value.

Along with business requirements, there might be scenarios to capture extra information to satisfy the legislative rule. One such rule which comes to my mind is Consultant taxation wherein if a person works in a state away from his home state for a specific number of days, he should be taxed as per the worked state rules also. Hence we will have to capture the Location information also while entering the Time and transfer that location information as the Geocode value in one of the input values of the Hours Element. Rest payroll will take care of :)

There are also business requirements where you would like to show/hide some components on the timecard based on the responsibilty or role. This also calls for layout modifications.

2. Are you crazy, do we need to modify the LDT files manually to add/remove/modify any components like LOV, Choicelist, DFF, Text Field etc? Can't I use OAF personalization and extension?

It really sounds crazy enough but this is the real strength of OTL Timecard Configuration functionality. What OTL offers is a way of adding new components on the Timecard, be able to validate those values, save them in the Time Store and transfer to the Receiving Application and all this without writing any code.

All the changes without writing any code? Now this must be sounding good :)
How do we do that? I will be covering it in a separate article.

You can't use OAF personalization and extensions on OTL Timecard matrix.

And I know the OTL enthusiastics will be asking what about the OTLR questions? Another article sometime later.