CONFIGURING ASCENTIS HR 3 ASCENTIS HR SECURITY 27 CREATING & MAINTAINING BENEFIT PLANS 41 SETTING UP LEAVE & ATTENDANCE POLICIES 71

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1 Table of Contents CONFIGURING ASCENTIS HR 3 DATA DEPENDENCIES 4 COMPANY INFORMATION 5 KEY TABLES IN SETUP MANAGER 9 REVIEW QUESTIONS: 25 ASCENTIS HR SECURITY 27 DEFINING ROLES 28 CREATING USERS 33 MAINTAINING SECURITY 37 REVIEW QUESTIONS: 39 CREATING & MAINTAINING BENEFIT PLANS 41 CREATING BENEFIT CARRIERS 43 CREATING BENEFIT PLANS 45 CREATING BENEFIT PLAN RATES 53 ESTABLISHING ELIGIBILITY RULES 57 CHANGING (CREATING NEW) RATES 61 IMPORT/EXPORT OF BENEFIT PLANS 64 REVIEW QUESTIONS: 70 SETTING UP LEAVE & ATTENDANCE POLICIES 71 CONVERTING LEAVE UNITS 72 CREATING LEAVE TYPES 74 CREATING THE COMPANY LEAVE CALENDAR 78 LEAVE REQUEST WORKFLOWS 80 APPROVING LEAVE REQUESTS 83 IMPORTANT NOTES 84 SETTING UP FMLA 85 CUSTOMIZING ASCENTIS HR 87 UNDERSTANDING FIELD TYPES 87 CREATING A SIMPLE CUSTOM TAB 89 CREATING A LIST STYLE CUSTOM TAB 95 HOW TO MODIFY A CUSTOM TAB 103 CUSTOMIZATION TEMPLATES 108 DELETING CUSTOM TABS 113 REVIEW QUESTIONS P a g e

2 CONFIGURING EMPLOYEE SELF-SERVICE 117 SETTING UP YOUR ESS SECURITY POLICIES 118 CONFIGURING THE SELF-SERVICE APPLICATIONS 123 DEFINING APPROVAL POLICIES 126 CONFIGURING WIDGETS 127 REVIEW QUESTIONS: 132 EMPLOYEE SELF-SERVICE ENROLLMENT WIZARD 133 SETTING UP THE OPEN ENROLLMENT PERIOD 133 CONFIGURING THE ENROLLMENT WIZARD 136 APPROVAL POLICIES FOR OPEN ENROLLMENT 146 WALKING THROUGH THE ENROLLMENT WIZARD 147 CONFIGURING MANAGER SELF-SERVICE 155 CONFIGURING MANAGER SELF-SERVICE 155 ADMINISTERING SECURITY 156 MY TEAM SETTINGS 161 WORKFLOW ADMINISTRATION 164 CREATING APPROVER ROLES 165 CREATING APPROVAL CHAINS 167 ASSOCIATING THE CHAIN TO THE BUSINESS PROCESS 170 USERS 171 REVIEW QUESTIONS: 172 SELF-SERVICE ADMINISTRATION 173 MANAGING ACCOUNTS 173 MONITORING PROGRESS 176 MANAGING EMPLOYEE CHANGES 177 ADMINISTRATION GUIDELINES DURING OPEN ENROLLMENT 178 REVIEW QUESTIONS: P a g e

3 Configuring Ascentis HR By the end of this chapter you will understand: Purpose of Setup Manager Data Dependencies Configuring Company Information Key tables within Setup Manager Purpose of Setup Manager Before you can begin using Ascentis HR for maintaining Employee Data the system needs to be setup for administering all of your HR policies, benefit plans and rules. This information is established in the Setup Manager. Setup Manager includes both specific wizards and key tables to utilize when configuring Ascentis HR. When first accessing Setup Manager you will see a set of icons on the far left hand side of the window. Depending on your licensing and needs you may or may not need to create HR policies and rules for each of these areas. Security & Licensing Used to specify who has access to the system, limiting, if necessary, what parts of the system they can access, and creating user IDs and passwords. Company Information The Company Information area of Setup Manager is where you will supply the details and defaults relating to your company. 3 P a g e

4 Carrier Setup Wizard Used to create carriers associated to the benefit plans. Benefits Setup Wizard Used to create benefit plans and eligibility rules. Self-Service Setup Wizard Used to create your company Employee Self-Service configuration and policies. Attendance Setup Wizard Used to create your company leave policies and calendars. Customization Wizard Used to customize Ascentis HR to meet your needs. You can create an unlimited number of custom fields of a variety of types. Data Dependencies All of the data used in the tables found in Setup Manager provide the rules and structure for maintaining employee data in Ascentis HR. For example, you must ensure that your Company Table is created early on so that the information supplied can be used when creating Benefit Plans. Additional tables such as those listed below will also provide values needed to accurately reflect changes in your employee data. Review & Bonus Compensation Plans Note Types File Attachment Types Change Reasons Statuses Payroll Codes (if using Ascentis Payroll) 4 P a g e

5 Company Information It is important to tell Ascentis HR about your company before you set up your benefits or begin entering information about your employees. These details will allow Ascentis HR to retrieve and use the information as you set up your benefits, enter your employee information, and administer benefits. This information will also allow you to track HR and benefits information for the various companies, locations, divisions, departments, and job titles you set up. To access the Company Table go to Setup Manager>Setup>Company Information 5 P a g e

6 The General tab is where basic information about your Company resides. You can have multiple companies within the same database. Always be sure you ve selected the appropriate company when setting up your company data. Default values help to alleviate some of the data entry needed at the employee level. Prepopulating this field at the Company level ensures that the value is automatically input on the employee record. A good rule of thumb when determining whether a default value should be added is the 80/20 rule. If you have a value that pertains to over 80% of the employee population, it is probably worth it to add it as a default at the Company level. Any of the default values associated at the Company table level, can be overridden with different values at the employee level. Default Hours Per Week Default Pay Period Default Deduction Frequency Usually will be 40 based on full-time employment What is the frequency to which you pay your employees? What is the frequency to which your benefit deductions are taken? 6 P a g e

7 The Locations tab is where you input the physical addresses of your various company locations. Locations, Divisions, Departments and Job Codes should never been deleted from the Company Table. This will remove any historical data associated. If you are no longer utilizing one of these codes highlight the code and un-check the Active checkbox. This will remove the code(s) from your pull-down menu in Employee Manager. If your Company has Divisions they can be added on the Divisions tab. The Division can be defined as whatever makes sense for your Company. Typically a division will be the level above a department. For example, Corporate may be the Division and within that Division you have HR, Accounting, Marketing, etc. 7 P a g e

8 Departments are added on the Departments tab. You have the option of both a Department Name and Department Number. Locations, Divisions and Departments define your labor levels and will be used in organizing your reporting structure. The Job Titles tab defines the job codes used in your organization. Every employee within Ascentis HR should be associated to a Job Title. One job title can be associated to many employees. 8 P a g e

9 Key Tables in Setup Manager Setup Manager>Setup The top portion of the Setup Menu offers alternative navigation to the Setup Wizards displayed on the left hand side of the Setup Manager Window. Other tables that you will want to review prior to using Employee Manager are: Review & Bonus Compensation Plans Termination Types/Reasons Note Types File Attachment Types Change Reasons Statuses Payroll Codes (Ascentis Payroll) Additionally, the two tables below can be used if you are implementing Employee Self-Service and wish your employees to be able to make tax elections and enroll in direct deposit. Taxes Direct Deposit Once you ve created the codes on any of these setup tables you wish to utilize, it is advised that they not be deleted. Doing so could affect the historical records for any employee associated to the code. 9 P a g e

10 Review & Bonus Types If your company conducts performance reviews and gives bonuses, you can configure your review policies and define your bonus types using the Review and Bonus Setup Wizard. Setup Manager>Setup>Review & Bonus The Wizard will take you through a series of questions to assist in creating your company Performance Review policies. The Review 1 window indicates whether newly hired employees are reviewed after a probationary period. If so, what is the length of time before the review? 10 P a g e

11 The Review 2 window asks whether all employees are reviewed at once and if so how long. When is the first review due? Ascentis HR provides you with two separate rating areas. These ratings can be numerical or descriptive. It s up to you to determine the ratings that work best with your performance review policies. Click Add Rating 11 P a g e

12 Select a secondary Rating if you wish to further narrow down your performance review ratings. Click Add Rating You have now completed your Performance Review Rating setup. When you access employees in Employee Manager you will be able to utilize these ratings when entering in their performance view data. Click Finish 12 P a g e

13 Define Bonus Types This process follows the same Wizard used for Performance Review Ratings. Setup Manager>Setup>Review & Bonus Select Define Bonus Types Ascentis HR does not limit the number of Bonus Types that you can have in the system. Create as many bonus types necessary to accurately capture your needs. Click Add Bonus Type Click Finish 13 P a g e

14 Establishing Compensation Plans If your company utilizes pay grades, rate structures and/or compa-ratio calculations for employees you will need to establish Compensation Plans within Setup Manager. Additionally, Manager Self-Service provides a compensation modeling tool managers can utilize when requesting pay increases for their employees. To create a compensation plan go to Setup Manager>Setup>Compensation Plans Click New Name your Compensation Plan. It is recommended that you provide the year either in the title or description so that you can easily identify historical compensation plan information. Determine the Salary Unit Type for the Compensation Plan. Click New 14 P a g e

15 For each level within the Compensation Plan define your minimum and maximum amounts. Click OK Continue selecting New until you have created all of your Pay Grade Levels. 15 P a g e

16 Termination Types/Reasons Indicate the various termination types and reasons for the termination in the Termination Types/Reasons table. Setup Manager>Setup>Termination Types/Reasons Select New Type or New Reason to create a new record. 16 P a g e

17 File and Note Attachment Types Ascentis HR enables you to electronically attach files to your employee s records. In turn, these attachments can be viewed by Managers in Manager Self-Service. By defining note and attachment types, you can select what type of attachment or note the Manager can view. Setup Manager>Setup>Note Types Select New Type to create a new record. Select which window you want the Type to be associated with. Click OK Setup Manager>Setup>File Attachment Types Select New Type to create a new record. Select which window you want the Type to be associated with. Click OK 17 P a g e

18 Defining Change Reasons Change Reasons are used to explain why a particular action has taken place within the Employee record. Ascentis HR comes populated with a variety of reasons already established. If you wish to alter and/or add a Reason you do so within the Change Reasons table. Setup Manager>Setup>Change Reasons When you first open the Change Reasons menu you will see three separate areas for creating codes. Benefit Change Reasons Salary Change Reasons Provider Change Reasons To add a new code select the area you wish to modify and click the appropriate action button. Additionally, you can move the codes up or down the list which will be reflected in the pull-down menu used in Employee Manager. 18 P a g e

19 Statuses To define the various Employment types and/or Marital Status for your employees you use the Statuses table. Setup Manager>Setup>Statuses>Employment To add a New Status use the push button located at the bottom of the window. You can organize your Statuses to suit the needs of your organization. For example, move all of the most common Statuses to the top of the pull-down menu. Taxes Ascentis HR supports the tracking of federal, state, and local taxes. Generally, users only create tax codes in Ascentis HR that require input from employees, and leave other types of payroll taxes (such as employer only taxes like SDI and SUI) to the payroll system. Each tax code has its own list of associated filing statuses. If the Payroll Connect for your payroll system supports taxes and filing statuses, it is recommended that you use Payroll Connect to create taxes and filing statuses in Ascentis HR. Taxes and filing statuses should be setup to mirror what you have in your payroll system. 19 P a g e

20 Setup Manager>Setup>Taxes To create a new tax code: Click New Tax Enter a Tax Code and a Description. Select a Type, either Local, State, or Federal. 20 P a g e

21 Select Available Primary Exemptions if this tax code has primary exemptions. This will allow entry of primary exemptions for this tax code. Select Available Additional Exemptions if this tax code has additional exemptions. This will allow entry of additional exemptions for this tax code. A tax code cannot have additional exemptions unless it first has primary exemptions. Select Additional Tax Available if this tax code allows specification of additional tax to be withheld. Select Enabled for Self-Service if you want employees to see this tax code in the My Taxes section of Self-Service. In the Self-Service Setup Wizard you can specify whether you want your employees to be able to View or Change their tax information. For integrity of the payroll data, employees are never allowed to delete or create new taxes in Self-Service. 21 P a g e

22 To create a new filing statuses select the tax code you want to create a filing status for and click the New Status button. Enter the Filing Status. It will be reflected as the next entry in the Tax category. The Filing Statuses can be reordered by using the Up or Down buttons. 22 P a g e

23 Direct Deposits Ascentis HR does not handle Direct Deposits - that is handled by your payroll system. The purpose of having Direct Deposit information in Ascentis HR is to provide a central data entry point for all employee information. If you are using Self-Service, your employees can manage their Direct Deposits themselves in the My Paycheck application. Setup Manager>Setup>Direct Deposit>Account Types Ascentis HR comes populated with the account types of Checking, Savings and Brokerage. However; if you need to create a new Account Type you can do this using Direct Deposit, Account Types in Setup Manager. Setup Manager>Setup>Direct Deposit>Deposit Types Ascentis HR can have an unlimited number of Deposit Types, each with a choice of three formatting types. These formatting types include: Amount Calculated Percentage 23 P a g e

24 Pay Directory If you are using Ascentis Payroll, every employee that you wish to pay must have a defined payroll code tied to their compensation record in Ascentis HR. Your Payroll Codes will be defined during implementation and as a rule, should not need to be adjusted. 24 P a g e

25 Review Questions: 1. What do you need to remember about the Default Deduction Frequency setting? 2. What is the best way to reassign and delete a duplicate Job Title which was created in error? 3. What do I do if I want to phase out a location but keep the history? 4. Can you create one Compensation Plan to include both hourly and salary employees? 25 P a g e

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27 Ascentis HR Security By the end of this chapter you will understand: The Terms Used in Security How to Create Roles and Users How to Associate Users to Roles Maintaining Security Data Terms of Reference Before you start using Ascentis HR, you need to determine how many individuals will be working with the product and what parts of the product they will be able to use. The person who logged in to Ascentis HR and created a new database during installation is automatically assigned to the Global Administrator security level. Ascentis HR requires that you always have at least one person assigned to the Global Administrator security level. You never change or delete the Administrator security level. This is a pre-defined level in Ascentis HR, assigned to at least one person in your company. This Administrator security level grants the user administrative privileges to Ascentis HR and Manager Self-Service (MSS). To understand how the Security feature works, you need to understand the terms used when defining security. Global Administrator Retains access to all features of all companies in both Ascentis HR and Manager Self-Service (MSS). Administrator Role Supervisor User Access to selected companies in both Ascentis HR and MSS. A set of privileges created by an Administrator, granting access to a group of people, such as Data Entry. This is usually based on limited access to confidential information contained in the database. Special type of role used to define what a user designated as Supervisor can access. This includes access rights to the entire down line, or just their own direct reports. A person granted role(s) for use within the defined areas of the software. Users can have more than one role. 27 P a g e

28 Organizations Categories The location, division, or department that a role is limited by. The various areas of the program, such as windows and tabs, and other applications, such as QuickStart, or Payroll Connect. The process for setting up security within Ascentis HR involves three steps: 1. Create Roles that you will use for giving various levels of permission for changing/viewing your employee and company information. 2. Create Users 3. Associate the User to the Role(s) Defining Roles To create a new Role with Ascentis HR Security, select the Security icon from Setup Manager. 28 P a g e

29 The Security & Licensing window appears displaying the License, Users and Roles tabs. You need to first setup the Roles for your company security, then set up the Users to associate to the various roles. Click on the Roles tab You will notice several different colored keys. Each key designates a different Role or level of security within Ascentis HR. Blue Key Red Key Administrator Level Supervisor Level Yellow Key Role Level Green Key Applicant Level Click New Role 29 P a g e

30 If you have more than one company in your database, choose the correct company for this role from the dropdown list. Enter a name for this role and a description. 30 P a g e

31 What type of role do you wish to create? General: Use this choice if you want to have access to all of your company or to specify which location, division, and/or departments within the company. Supervisor (All Levels): Use this choice to grant your supervisors access to all of their down level reports. Supervisor (One Level): Use this choice to grant supervisors access to only their immediate direct reports. You are now defining the what for the role. Select which organizations by Location, Division and Departments that you want to include in the role. Select Categories 31 P a g e

32 The Categories breaks-down all the components of Ascentis HR and allows you to specify which specific Windows and Tabs you want the role to access. You can specify Change, View or No Access for each of these areas Click Finish You have now created your first role in Ascentis HR. You can create as many Roles as necessary to meet the security needs of your organization. 32 P a g e

33 Creating Users There are two types of users in Ascentis HR: linked users, and non-linked users. A linked user is a user who is also an employee within Ascentis HR. A non-linked user can be anyone and does not need to be an employee. Creating linked users has several advantages: Changes made to the employee's Name, Address, etc., are automatically synchronized between the employee record and the user record. If the user is a supervisor, they can be given Supervisor access to view their down level reports easily. Non-linked users cannot be given a Supervisor role and must therefore be given access to specific departments, divisions etc. Creating linked users with a Supervisor role is the only way to give supervisors and managers access to the My Team application within Ascentis HR Self-Service. To add a new user to Ascentis HR, go to the Users tab within the Security & Licensing window. You can view all the current Users for either a specific company or all companies. Blue Designates an Employee Red Designates a Supervisor Select New User 33 P a g e

34 Select whether this new user is already an employee in Ascentis HR or if the employee is not in Ascentis HR. If you are setting up a Supervisor role to use with MSS they user MUST be linked, therefore; an employee within Ascentis HR. By selecting a linked user, Ascentis HR automatically will display the User Selection window. This window includes all of the employees that are entered into your company. If you want to see only supervisors within your company select the Show only Supervisors checkbox in the top left corner of the window. 34 P a g e

35 Highlight the employee you wish to assign as a User. If you choose to use an employee already in Ascentis HR, the employee s name and address will be entered for you. If this is an employee that is not yet entered, you will see a window with required fields for the Name, User ID, Password and Verify Password. As discussed earlier in this chapter there are varied types of access. Administrator access provides the user with open access to the HR system. This can be limited to specific companies. The user will also be given administrator access to MSS for either the entire HR system or specific companies (depending on your selection). 35 P a g e

36 All of the roles that you have set up for your company will be displayed in this window. Put a checkmark in the box next to the Role or Roles you want to assign to the user. If you do not wish to have the user see their own information in the system select the Prevent user from viewing on information checkbox at the bottom of the window. You have now assigned a User to a Role within Ascentis HR! If Ascentis is hosting and the user requires access to Employee Manager and/or Setup Manager your Administrator will also need to submit a security form to add or disable the user s access to our servers. 36 P a g e

37 The new user with their assigned role(s) will be displayed in the window. Maintaining Security Once you ve defined Users and assigned Role(s) you need to make sure that if the employee leaves the company or their access rights need to change you reflect these changes in Ascentis HR Security. Go to Security & Licensing and select the Users tab. 37 P a g e

38 From this window you can assign New Users, Change Users, Delete Users, Disable Users as well as Add Roles to an existing User. Change Users Essentially an edit function, used to change User ID or Password, as well as add or remove aspects of a Role. Add Roles Delete User Disable User Allows you to assign additional established roles to an active User. Allows you to remove users entered in error or in test. When an employee terminates, you need to disable them as a User to remove access. You can adjust the security settings of a role at any time by highlighting the role and selecting Change Role. To create a new role with similar features use the Copy Role option. 38 P a g e

39 Review questions: 1. What makes the users shirts appear red within the Users tab? 2. When would you Delete a user? 3. Which type of role is used if you want to grant access to a specific location? 4. What is a Non-Linked user? 39 P a g e

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41 Creating & Maintaining Benefit Plans By the end of this chapter you will understand: Creating Benefit Carriers How to create Benefit Plans using the Benefits Setup Wizard Creating Benefit Plan Rates Establishing Eligibility Rules Changing (Creating New) Benefit Plan Rates Importing/Exporting Benefit Plans Overview of Benefits in Ascentis HR Ascentis HR provides an automated process for administering employee benefits. Once you ve set up your company benefit plans the system can assist you in the following: Calculating employee eligibility Calculating benefit premiums and volumes for employee s and their dependents Calculating both employee and employer contributions Tracking current and past rates 41 P a g e

42 In order to establish your benefit plans there are a number of data dependences that take effect. Meaning, if you don t complete step 1 before step 2, you will not have the required data to complete the plans. Establish Benefit Carriers Create Benefit Plan Establish Eligibility Rules* Enter Calculation Rates and Tables *Eligibility rules can be associated to more than one benefit plan. 42 P a g e

43 Creating Benefit Carriers Before you can create Benefit Plans for your company you must establish your Benefit Carriers. You only need to create your Benefit Carriers once and then can associate them to a variety of plans. For example, if you use AETNA for your medical as well as dental plan, creating the carrier AETNA only needs to be completed once. To create a benefit carrier you use Setup Manager>Setup> Carrier Setup Wizard. Alternately you can select the Benefit Carrier Wizard icon on the left hand side of the page. Click Next 43 P a g e

44 Enter the applicable Carrier information. If you wish to enter a specific contact for the carrier you can select the Setup Contacts button. Click Finish 44 P a g e

45 Creating Benefit Plans To create a benefit plan in Ascentis HR go to Setup>Benefits Setup Wizard or select the Benefits Setup Wizard Icon on the right hand side of the page. The Benefits Setup Wizard is your one stop shop for all things related to the setup and maintenance of your company benefit plans. You can Create, Modify/View, Import and Export as well as End Benefit Plans using this wizard. It is highly recommended that you never delete a benefit plan from Ascentis HR. Since all benefit plans maintain a history, if the plan is deleted all the historical data associated to the plan will also be deleted. To create a new benefit plan you select the first option Create a new benefit plan. The first person to yell Mickey Mouse right NOW - Gets a prize! 45 P a g e

46 Ascentis HR comes pre-defined with all of your benefit plan types. Each type has specific logic built into the wizard to help you complete all of the steps required. In this example, we re creating a Medical Plan type. You will notice as you go through all the steps a percentage of completion bar will display at the bottom of each window. This window asks you to enter your Plan Name and Description along with Group# and Plan #. The Plan Name can be altered for Open Enrollment and Employee Self-Service. 46 P a g e

47 If you wish to add information about the company s internal plan administrator you can do it here. The Starting Date for your benefit plan will be the date that you wish the Plan to become effective. Your benefit plans will remain effective ongoing from year to year. The only exception to this rule is if one of the following occurs: Rate structure changes Provider changes FSA Accounts It is strongly recommended that an end date never gets added within the plan setup. When the plan is no longer offered, utilize the End a benefit plan utility. 47 P a g e

48 To associate your Benefit Carrier to the benefit plan select it from the pull-down menu. All of the carriers that you ve created under the Benefit Carrier wizard will show up in this drop down list. If you utilize a Third Party Administrator (TPA) for the benefit plan you can add it here. Once these TPA s or Brokers have been added to the plan, they can be utilized across your various benefit plans. 48 P a g e

49 Any costs associated with your TPA are recorded here. Ascentis HR offers a Remittance Report that you can run monthly to cross reference your total costs to those on your Carrier bill. Now that the basic plan information has been created the Wizard will guide you through a series of questions specific to your benefit plan type. How is your benefit plan charged back to the employee? 49 P a g e

50 Is this plan eligible for portability or is it convertible? If you answer YES to either of these questions the plan will not be eligible for COBRA. However you will be prompted as follows when the enrollment is ended. What is the eligibility rule(s) associated with this plan? In other words, which employees are eligible for this benefit? To associate a rule to the plan select No, let me choose groups of employees who are eligible. 50 P a g e

51 Here are the rules that have been previously created for other plans. If the rule you need to qualify employees to this plan is on this list, select the appropriate check box. If not, refer to the next section on Creating Eligibility Rules. If you want this benefit plan to be included in any future Open Enrollment sessions you can specify this here. If you are going to be creating an Open Enrollment for more than one specific Benefit Plan, use the Open Enrollment Periods option in Setup Manager. 51 P a g e

52 Does your benefit plan include dependents? How does your plan handle coverage for specific types of dependents? You can utilize eligibility rules to associate specific types of dependents to a separate plan depending on your needs. Ascentis HR allows you to associate your Providers with the benefit plans. If you are utilizing Employee Self-Service it is recommended that this information not be maintained here but that direct links and documents are associated to the plans for the employee to view directly through self-service. 52 P a g e

53 Creating Benefit Plan Rates To associate calculations and rates to your benefit plan continue with this window. Ascentis HR provides various rate structures. Select the one that matches your plan. Once a plan has been finalized, rate structures can t be changed. 53 P a g e

54 Does the Company pay the entire premium for this benefit? If not, what is the employee contribution? Based on the selection in the previous window, a rate table will be created for you to input your rates. Enter the monthly rate and Company contribution. The Employee contribution will automatically populate. 54 P a g e

55 Is the plan eligible for COBRA processing? If the Plan is COBRA eligible, enter your rates. 55 P a g e

56 Ascentis HR will automatically calculate the added cost to the employee for COBRA benefits. You are now ready to Finalize your benefit plan. Once you have completed this final step you are no longer able to make changes to your rate structure. Click Finalize and Finish. 56 P a g e

57 Establishing Eligibility Rules As discussed earlier, eligibility rules can be utilized across various plan types and benefits. When you run through the Benefits Setup Wizard, you will be asked whether all employees are eligible for the benefit you re creating. Your response should be No. If you DON T already have the eligibility rule created, the wizard will take you through the necessary steps to create a new eligibility rule. By selecting No to this question, the system will start to take you through the process of creating an eligibility rule. This window provides you with the criteria you can use to determine who you want included in your eligibility rule. By selecting Employment Status, the wizard knows that it needs to ask you which employment statuses to include in the eligibility. 57 P a g e

58 Define the employment status you want to include in the eligibility rule. To include all active employees you will select at a minimum: Full-time LOA all options Does the employee have to complete a specified length of service before they become eligible? Is there a specific window of time they are eligible? 58 P a g e

59 Once the employee becomes eligible what is the actual date the benefit will take effect? You are now ready to save your new eligibility rule. This rule can be utilized across all benefit plans. It is a good idea to rename the eligibility rule with something descriptive. 59 P a g e

60 Once you have created your eligibility rules they will appear in the Eligibility Rule window. Select all of the eligibility rules that apply to the plan. You can create multiple eligibility rules at one time during your benefit plan setup. Once you ve finished creating the eligibility rule(s) the Benefits Setup Wizard will go back to the completing of the benefit plan as explained earlier in this Chapter. 60 P a g e

61 Changing (Creating New) Rates Most likely you will need to add new rates to your benefit plans once per year. To do this you don t create a brand new plan. Access the Benefits Setup Wizard and select the Modify or view an existing benefit plan radio button. Listed are all of your currently active benefit plans. Highlight the appropriate plan. 61 P a g e

62 The system will provide you with a warning indicating that you can t change the structure of the benefit plan. Click OK Continue to click on Next until you reach the Health 9 window. Type in an end date for the current rates and select the Create new rates button. This will then bring up a sub-window verifying that you wish to end the previous rates and start new rates with the effective date. Click OK 62 P a g e

63 You can then enter your new set of rates into the rate table. Notice that the Rates to work with pull-down menu keeps a historical records of all the previous rates associated with this benefit plan. Exit the wizard to save your work. 63 P a g e

64 Import/Export of Benefit Plans As you complete the wizard to create your benefit plans you will find that some of the characteristics of one medical plan may be similar to another. To save you time and key strokes, Ascentis HR has created an import/export tool used to copy similar plan information that can be modified to suit the criteria of the new plan. To copy a benefit plan use the Benefits Setup Wizard and select the Export benefit plans radio button. Select the plan that you wish to export. 64 P a g e

65 The Benefits Setup Wizard will ask you to verify the export. If you wish to rename it you can do so here. Select Finish No need to change the default location of the export file. Ascentis HR has pre-configured the system to import and export from this specific location. Go back to the Benefits Setup Wizard and this time select Import benefit plans 65 P a g e

66 Select Browse and you should find your exported benefit plan. Select the appropriate plan and Open 66 P a g e

67 Your benefit plan should now be showing in the window. The wizard will now ask for a New plan name and whether you want to import this plan? Name your new plan and select the Yes radio button. 67 P a g e

68 Confirm that you have all of the Carriers for the benefit plan. The Benefits Setup Wizard will provide you with a summary of what was imported. Click Finish 68 P a g e

69 Go back to the Benefits Setup Wizard and select Modify or view an existing benefit plan. Select the benefit plan that you imported and begin the process of setting up the new plan. You can see which plans are available for modification because they are not finalized. 69 P a g e

70 Review Questions: 1. What is the first step in creating a benefit plan? 2. When is it necessary to create an entirely new benefit plan? 3. When should you answer No to the question on the Elig1 screen Are all employees eligible for the plan? 4. When would you want to export and import a benefit plan? 5. Where do you go to create new rates for a benefit plan? What is the name of the button you would select to create new rates? 6. Where do you go to end a benefit for everyone currently enrolled? Why would you do this? 70 P a g e

71 Setting Up Leave & Attendance Policies By the end of this chapter you will understand: How to covert leave units How to create leave types and policies for your Company How to create your Company Leave Calendar How to configure Workflows for approval of leave requests How to setup FMLA Attendance Setup Wizard If you wish to maintain records of your employee s leave transactions and/or monitor Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) you need to complete the Attendance Setup Wizard. The Wizard will take you step-by-step through the process of creating various leave types, including configuring your FMLA. For each of your leave types you are asked to supply details such as defining the eligibility, how that leave is awarded or accumulated, whether or not it can be carried forward to the next year, and if there is a maximum limit allowed. Using the details you provide, Ascentis HR assists you with the administration of attendance by: Calculating employee s eligibility Tracking leave usage Calculating how much leave is available on any given date Calculating carryover from year to year Limiting accrued leave as set up in your policies Tracking your employee s FMLA leave (US Version only) Setup Manager>Attendance Setup Wizard The sequence of windows depends on the information you enter. Do not expect to see every window for every leave type. If a window contains questions that are not applicable to your specific leave type, determined by the information you enter, the Wizard will skip to the next relevant window. For example, non-accruing types would not show a carryover window. 71 P a g e

72 The Wizard will ask you what you want to do, you have the option of: Add/Modify/Delete a Leave Type Setup FMLA Change Leave Unit to Days Create a Leave Calendar Converting Leave Units Before you begin creating your Leave Policies, it s important to ascertain whether you are going to track your leave policies by hours or days. Ascentis HR defaults to hours so if this is the case for your company you do not need to make any adjustments. If you do need to change the Leave Unit to Days, select the appropriate radio button. 72 P a g e

73 It is important to note that the conversion will be effective for ALL leave types, including FMLA. Ascentis HR provides you with a warning prior to completing the conversion. The conversion window will ask you to enter what the conversion calculation should be. For example, 8 hours equates to 1 day. Click Convert All Employee records will now be changed from hours to days. This is why it s best practice to do this prior to creating any leave plans and/or starting the plans at the employee level. 73 P a g e

74 Creating Leave Types You can create multiple Leave Types with Policies to suit the needs of your company. Employees can be tied to multiple Leave Types based on their eligibility. Setup>Attendance Setup Wizard To create a new leave plan select Add a new leave type radio button. Enter the name of this specific leave policy. Ascentis HR maintains a history of these policies so that it can calculate available leave. Give it a name that will distinguish it from later policies. 74 P a g e

75 Enter the date this policy started into effect. If you are not sure of the start date for this leave type, enter an early start date, (such as , for example). Which employees are eligible for this type of leave? These questions do not relate to when an employee can use the leave, but rather when an employee starts accumulating the leave. Indicate whether salaried or hourly employees are eligible for this type of leave by choosing the Yes or No button for each question. Select the employment statuses that are eligible for the type of leave by highlighting the status. You can select one or all of the selections. (Example: both Full-Time Active and Part-Time Active employees are eligible for this leave type.) Is there a minimum number of hours the employee must work to be eligible for this type of leave? If you answer Yes, then you also need to enter the number of hours. (Example: the employee must work a minimum of 30 hours per week to be eligible for this leave type.) 75 P a g e

76 Choose the method used to calculate the beginning of the year for this leave type. This date is used to calculate any carryover at year end and to award lump sums at the beginning of the year. How are employees awarded this type of leave? Click on the correct choice for this plan s policies. Lump Sum: Leave is awarded as a single lump sum at the beginning of the year. Which day it is awarded depends on the type of year chosen. Accrual: Leave is awarded continuously throughout the year. Non-Accruing: Leave is only tracked, not awarded. For example, Jury Duty would not be awarded, but would be tracked when taken. 76 P a g e

77 We selected an accrued leave type. Do all your employees accumulate this type of leave at the same rate, or is it based on the employee s length of service? If all employees accumulate this leave at the same rate, enter in the amount of hours or days the employee receives for the year they work. (Example: employees receive 80 hours or 20 days of leave per year.) If employees accumulate this type of leave based on their length of service, fill in the length of service tiers and the number of hours or days earned per year. (Example: Employees starts with 80 hours per year. After 24 months of service they receive an extra day.) Choose whether this leave type can carry over unused leave from year to year and if there is a maximum amount of leave allowed. If this leave type does not carry over, select No. If you allow unused leave to be carried over to the next year, select Yes and then choose the method that best describes the way you allow the carry over. (Example: your company allows a maximum of 40 hours or 5 days to be carried over to the next year.) Is there a maximum number of hours or days that an employee can have available during the year? If the answer is Yes, enter the maximum hours or days in the box provided. Click Finish 77 P a g e

78 Creating the Company Leave Calendar If you would like Ascentis HR to calculate holiday dates as part of the leave calculation at the employee level you will setup the Leave Calendar. Setup Manager>Attendance Setup Wizard Select the Calendar radio button. The default will be set to on. This will allow Ascentis HR to automatically calculate leave amounts based on the holiday schedule. 78 P a g e

79 To begin creating your Holiday calendar select New Holiday. Select the date for the holiday and provide the holiday name. Continue adding new holiday s until your annual calendar is complete. Selecting the pull-down menu beside the date will give you an interactive calendar to select your holiday dates from. 79 P a g e

80 The last step in the Wizard asks you to specify which days are normal weekend days. This will assist Ascentis HR in completing the proper calculations based on the Leave Calendar. Select Finish New in Ascentis HR 8.6 Approval for Leave Request utilizes a customizable Workflow. For each Leave Type a chain is created with a single or multiple approvers for each request. Leave Request Workflows Previously the settings for Leave Request were in the Setup Manager under Setup Approval Policy. The settings are now under the Settings in ESS/MSS. Only Administrators of Ascentis HR have the ability to configure the settings for Manager Self-Service. If you have an Administrator role associated to your user in Security and Licensing, you will see a Settings menu option when you click on the pull down associated to your name in the upper right corner of MSS. 80 P a g e

81 First confirm that the HR Designate is set accurately under My Team in the Designate HR Section. Next, choose the Workflow option on the left. Under Workflow home there is a workflow for all Leave Types that you have created along with a Workflow chain of the same name. Note: Any new Leave type created after the upgrade will automatically create a workflow but not a chain. The chain is only created on upgrade to mirror the previous workflow. All new Leave types will need to have a new chain created for them, or assigned a current chain. The Workflow Chains decide who will approve these requests. 81 P a g e

82 The Chain for each leave type will be setup in the upgrade to mirror the previous setting. If the leave request was set to go to the Supervisor then the chain will go to the Supervisor with the same number of days for Stale as previously set. If the chain was set to go to HR then the chain will go to HR with the same number of days for Stale as previously set. Note: If a leave goes stale all requests will be routed through HR after the upgrade. 82 P a g e

83 Chains can now be added upon to create multiple approvers for a single Leave Request. Approving Leave Requests The employee will continue to request leave in the same manner they always have. 83 P a g e

84 The next approver will receive an that they must approve the request, and it will appear in their Task List. Once they click on the task they will have the ability to see the request and the number of hours available. As an approver there is one of the following options: If they approve the task and they are the last approver, it will the employee letting them know the task is approved. If they approve the task and there is another approver on the chain, the next approver will be notified they must approve the leave and it will appear in their task list. If they reject the request then an will go to the employee notifying them that their request was denied. If they have Administrator rights, they have the ability to Override a request at any point. This will bypass all other approvers in the chain. Important Notes Leave requests will no longer show in the Pending tab of the Self Service Administration in Employee Manager. HR Administrators can approve these requests by logging into MSS. The Self Service Changes report will no longer show leave requests. 84 P a g e

85 Setting up FMLA To setup FMLA for your Company you use the Attendance Setup Wizard. Setup Manager>Attendance Setup Wizard Select the Setup FMLA radio button. Complete the Eligibility Window based on your Company FMLA policy. Click Finish 85 P a g e

86 Review Questions: 1. How do I know how many leave types to create for my company? 2. What three methods are used to award an employee leave? 3. What is the importance of selecting the correct Period the leave is based on when creating a Leave Type? 4. What are the benefits of configuring the Company Leave Calendar? 5. Who has the ability to bypass all other approvers in the approval chain for a leave request? 86 P a g e

87 Customizing Ascentis HR By the end of this chapter you will understand: The customization features in Ascentis HR Types of custom fields Different Tab Styles Modifying custom tabs Using templates Deleting custom tabs Using Ascentis HR Customization Features It s a challenge to have an HR system meet all the requirements of every organization. Programming changes to your HR system can be timely and expensive, therefore; Ascentis HR offers you the ability to create your own Customizations using a wizard. There are several types of custom tabs that you can set up to appear in employee records. These custom tabs can be used to store information that is unique to your company and cannot be stored elsewhere in Ascentis HR. Once you ve created your custom tabs you can: Report on the data Associate security levels to the custom tab Quick Start in data to the fields within the custom tab Roll it out for employee input through Employee Self-Service Understanding Field Types So how do you know what type of field to create for entering you data? Ascentis HR offers the following fields types for you to use: 87 P a g e

88 None Used when you want a title only showing on the custom window. This type will not create an entry field. Text Used to enter words, sentences, or numbers for items such as credit cards or asset tags; any number in which you do not want commas or decimal points inserted. Numeric Used for numbers that represent a quantity in which a decimal point may be needed. This field type only allows numeric characters to be entered. Be sure to set your decimal points by clicking the Set Decimal button and selecting the number of decimal places you want your numeric field to contain. This can be from no decimal places to four decimal places. Dollar Used for dollar amounts. Date Formatted as mm-dd-yyyy. Phone Formatted for area code and phone number with up to 5 digits for an extension. Decision Used to choose between two items of information that are exclusive of each other, for example, YES/NO or ON/OFF. List Used to choose one item from a pull-down menu which you create. 88 P a g e

89 Creating a Simple Custom Tab Customization work within Ascentis HR is done in the Setup Manager using the Customization Wizard. Setup Manager>Customization Wizard If you have Employee Manager open you will see this warning message. It is always a good idea to have Employee Manager closed when doing customization work. Click OK The customization wizard will ask you which action you would like to take. We will discuss the other options, but first we are going to Set up a new custom tab. 89 P a g e

90 We are going to create a custom tab to store employee t-shirt size. When naming your custom tab and determining where it will appear in Ascentis HR keep in mind the following: Is the name of the tab easily identifiable for anyone using Ascentis HR? Does the window I display it on make the most sense from a data entry standpoint? What is the security access I want to be associated with this tab? Enter T-Shirt Size in the Name field and select the Employee Info window. Ascentis HR offers two styles of tabs: Simple Used when you only want to store a single record. No historical data will be created. List Creates multiple records allowing for history to be maintained. Select the Simple radio button. Regardless of the style of tab created, you have the ability to add twelve (12) fields to the page. You can have an unlimited number of custom tabs to Ascentis HR. 90 P a g e

91 Any other tabs that have been created within the Employee Info window will be displayed in the window. You can re-order how these tabs display by using the Move Up or Move Down buttons. The twelve (12) fields now available for you to create display on the Tab Definition window. Click Add It does not matter where you position the field on this window. You will have the ability to re-arrange the information. 91 P a g e

92 Enter Shirt Size as the label name for your custom field. To select a type of field to create you want to think about how the tab is going to be used. This particular field could be created a couple of different ways. Text: This will provide a free form data entry field. Downside to this type of tab is that every person doing the data entry can enter the information differently. List: Using a list field type allows us to control what information is entered in the field. This will maintain consistency within the system and make for uniform reports. The wizard will base the next step on the field type chosen. Select List as the field type. Using a list provides us with the ability to create a pull-down menu of sizes. 92 P a g e

93 To enter new values for your pull-down menu. Enter the name on the left-hand side of the window and then use the > button to move it to the right hand side of the window. Once you have all of your data entered, you can use the Move Up and Move Down buttons to organize the information. Click OK The Tab Definition window will now show you what the field looks like. 93 P a g e

94 If you had multiple fields for the tab, you would be able to re-organize how they look on the page here. Click Finish One of the biggest advantages of using Ascentis HR customization features is your ability to immediately View, Use, Report and/or Modify your work. Employee Manager>Employee Information>Employee You can see that the T-Shirt Size tab is now available for data entry within the Employee Information window. 94 P a g e

95 Creating a List Style Custom Tab In addition to our T-Shirt tab, the organization wants to be able to capture Company Assets that employees are given. Since Company Assets can be given over a period of time we want to capture this information historically. To capture data historically within a custom tab you use the List style of tab. Setup Manager>Customization Wizard>Set up a new custom tab This tab will be called Company Assets and appear in the Employee Info window. Select List as the tab style 95 P a g e

96 By selecting the tab type of List you are now asked to specify the Date Type that you want to utilize. No Report Aware Dates: Similar to a Simple tab style, this option will not specify dates in the record. Single Date: To record a single date such as Issue Date. Date Range: To record a range of dates such as Issue and Return Date. Select the Date Range radio button. When using Date Range for custom tabs, the Custom History Report option needs to be selected to create reports. Use the Move Up or Move Down buttons to position where you want the tab to appear on the Employee Info window. 96 P a g e

97 Notice that the Tab Definition window now displays a date range at the top of the window. Click Add The first field we want to create will store the asset serial number. Enter Serial Number as the label name. The type will be Numeric with No decimal places. Click OK 97 P a g e

98 We want to keep track of the Asset Category. This will be a pull-down menu of options. Computer Communication Clothing Vehicle Using Add create another data field. Enter Asset Category as the Label. Type will be List (ensure the Show in List checkbox is on) Enter the four different categories moving them from the left side of the window to the right using the >button. Click OK. 98 P a g e

99 The last item we want to track is the actual name of the asset. Click Add Enter Asset as the Label name. The Type will be Text. Click OK 99 P a g e

100 All of the data should now be displayed on the Tab Definition window. Using the >> button and Move Up button position your fields. 100 P a g e

101 The Define List window determines what data will be displayed in the history window. Using the Include >> and Move Up button indicate what you want included in the history window. Additionally, you can adjust the column width by dragging the bar between each column heading. Your window should resemble below once completed. 101 P a g e

102 Use the Sort List window to determine the order of how each data row will be sorted in the history window. Select Issue Date and check Descending Click Finish Go to Employee Manager to review tab. Employee Manager>Employee Information>Any Employee All of the data can now be captured and reported on at the Employee Level. Click OK 102 P a g e

103 How to Modify a Custom Tab When creating custom tabs, it s important to continually review your work in Employee Manager. You want to be completely satisfied with how your tab and fields look prior to entering data. Making adjustments to a populated field could result in loss of data. While building your tab and fields you can make as many alterations as you need. For example, with our T-Shirt tab, we may want to add additional shirt sizes to the pull-down menu and add a date field for recording when the employee received their shirt. This is done using the Customization Wizard. Setup Manager>Customization Wizard>Change an existing custom tab Select T-Shirt Size as the custom tab you wish to modify. 103 P a g e

104 If you want to change the name of the custom tab or where it s located you can make adjustments on the Name Tab window. To change the order of the tabs use the Move Up or Move Down push buttons. 104 P a g e

105 We want to add X-Small and X-Large to our list of pull-down menu values on the tab. To add additional sizes to the pull-down menu select Edit. Type X-Small on the left side of the window and use the > Button to move it over to the right side. Use the Move Up button to move it to the top of the list. Type X-Large and use the > Button to move it over to the right side. Click OK 105 P a g e

106 We want to add an additional field where we can record the date the t- shirt was given to the employee. Select Add to create another field. Enter Date Received for the Label name. Select Date For the field type. Click OK 106 P a g e

107 Select Date Received and move it to the second column using the >> button. Move it to the top of the second column using the Move Up button. Click Finish Let s review the changes in Employee Manager Employee Manager>Employee Information>Any Employee The additional shirt sizes were added along with a date field. Click OK 107 P a g e

108 Customization Templates Ascentis HR provides a variety of custom templates that you can upload, modify and then use. Additionally, you have the ability to save custom tab that you ve created to templates for future use on other projects. To review the current listing of custom tabs go to Setup Manager>Customization Wizard>Load a custom tab template from the internet All of the latest custom tabs are displayed in the window. Currently we offer: Assets Credit Cards Education EEO Information Employment Equity (Canada) Licenses Multi-Job OHS Canada (variety) Previous Employers Skills Stock Options Training 108 P a g e

109 Let s take a look at the Training template. To load a custom template, select the desired template and click Load Template. Once the custom tab has been loaded you have the option of immediately making modifications to the tab or reviewing it in Employee Manager. We re going to review it in Employee Manager. Employee Manager>Employee Information>Employee This is what the template looks like out of the box. If you are happy with the look you can immediately begin to use it. Otherwise, go back to the Customization Wizard and make any modifications necessary. 109 P a g e

110 If you have a custom tab that you ve created that you think you may need in the future you can save it as a template and then re-load it in the future. Setup Manager>Customization Wizard>Save a custom tab template to a file Any tab that has been previously saved as a template will display in this window. Select Company Assets. Click Save 110 P a g e

111 Ascentis HR will ask you where you want to save your template file. Do not alter the location, as Ascentis has configured where to save these templates for easy retrieval. Name your template and Save. To retrieve the template in the future go to Setup Manager>Customization Wizard>Load a custom tab template from a file Your saved template will be retrieved from the same location it was saved. 111 P a g e

112 Highlight Company Assets and click Open Ascentis HR asks you to confirm that this is the custom tab template that you wish to open. 112 P a g e

113 You are asked to rename the tab. You can then continue on with your modifications. It is not recommended that you modify the tab style. Click Exit Deleting Custom Tabs It is not recommended you delete a custom tab unless you have never used it for data entry. OR the data that you have entered is no longer relevant and you do not ever wish to report on it in the future. Deleting a custom tabs removes all traces of the fields, therefore, it is like the information never existed. To delete a custom tab go to Setup Manager>Customization Wizard>Delete a custom tab 113 P a g e

114 The customization wizard asks you to choose the custom tab you wish to delete. Note that it reminds you that not only will the tab be deleted but ALL the records for the tab as well. Select the Company Assets1 tab that we loaded and click Delete Confirm the deletion by selecting Yes New in Ascentis HR 8.5 Custom tabs are now available for Managers in MSS. See My Team settings in the Configuring Manager Self-Service section of this guide. 114 P a g e

115 Review Questions: 1. What is the difference between a Simple and a List style tab? 2. How many custom tabs can be added in Ascentis HR? 3. What happens if an existing custom field is changed from a date type field to a text type field? 115 P a g e

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117 Configuring Employee Self-Service By the end of this chapter you will understand: How to establish Employee Self Service security policies How to use the Self Service Wizard to configure Employee Self Service How to setup Self Service Approval Policies How to create and enable Widgets Ascentis Self Service Ascentis HR offers two self-service modules; Employee Self Service (ESS) which allows employees to view and/or change their information and Manager Self Service (MSS) which enables supervisors to View, Change and Analyze data on their employees. In this Chapter we will focus on the Employee Self Service (ESS) module and explain how using this application can alleviate much of the paper work currently handled by Human Resources. Setting up ESS in Ascentis HR consists of three separate components: Creating Employee Self-Service Security Setting up the Employee Self-Service Modules Configuring the Employee Self-Service Approval Policies 117 P a g e

118 Setting Up Your ESS Security Policies Employee Self Service (ESS) is a web application that delivers a collaborative desktop-like experience. ESS makes it easy for employees to view information about themselves, their Family Members, Benefits, Time Off, Paycheck, and Company Directory. ESS allows employees to manage and confirm their own data. Newly hired employees will be able to Enroll in benefits and your Open Enrollment periods can be completed online by the employees themselves. To begin the process of setting up Employee Self-Service we go to Setup Manager, Self Service Setup Wizard on the left toolbar. Self-Service Security is used to establish the user ID, password, disabling the account, forgotten passwords policies as well as how the software verifies identification. 118 P a g e

119 Ascentis HR gives you two options when determining how an employee will access the website. Identity Based: This allows employees to identify themselves and set up their own password. Invitation Based: This option allows the administrator to create User ID's and passwords and sends out the invitations to the employees to use the Self-Service. The invitations can be or printed letters. How do you want employees to identify themselves to Ascentis? Typically you will select First and Last name along with one or two selections such as Date of Birth and/or Social Security Number. Ensure that the criteria selected will be private yet easily available for the employee to selfauthenticate. 119 P a g e

120 How would you like your employees User ID to be formatted? Select from one of the options. Do you want your employee password to have a minimum amount of characters? Can they be any combination or do you want to specify letters and numbers required? 120 P a g e

121 If an employee makes an error in their authentication do you want to disable their access? If so, you can specify the numbers of attempts before disabling and whether you want to allow them to try again after a set amount of time. If an employee loses their User ID do you want them to be able to reauthenticate or do you want them to contact Human Resources. 121 P a g e

122 If the employee forgets their Password do you want them to reauthenticate or contact Human Resources? Indicate who the main contact within HR will be for Employee Self-Service. Click Finish 122 P a g e

123 Configuring the Self-Service Applications To enable and configure your Self Service Applications for use on the internet, Ascentis HR provides a user friendly wizard to guide you through each step. To begin we access the Self Service Setup Wizard and select Setup Self-Service Applications. Turn on the checkboxes for the applications that you wish to enable for self-service. If the checkbox is off, the application will not be available. 123 P a g e

124 You have the ability to set up the entire application at once in one large wizard, however; it is recommended that you select each application separately to avoid any confusion. We are going to walk through the Setup Personal Information wizard first. Select whether you want employees to have the ability to Change (update) the Personal information which you are not hiding (next screen). If not, you can select View (read only) or not display it at all (No Access). It is best practice to select Change for both of these sections. Now you have the ability to hide specific fields on the Personal Information section. We are hiding Smoker and Marital Status. We are also providing an alternative name (Gender). 124 P a g e

125 Now we see the same functionality for the Emergency Contacts section. We won t be hiding any fields, however we have an alternative name for Other Phone. Personal Links is where we can add a link to a web page or document for the employee. We are adding an exercise video. During her break, Tanisha can log into ESS, click on My Self> Personal Information>My Self Links and view her exercise video. 125 P a g e

126 The Personal Messages screen is where you can display a message each time the employee clicks on Personal Information in ESS. We used our HTML skills to enter big, blue text. When Tanisha clicks on Personal information she get this pop-up. Click Finish to complete the Personal section. Once she feels she no longer needs the reminder, she clicks Do not show this again. Defining Approval Policies The next task will be to define the approval policy for our Personal changes. To begin we access the Self Service Setup Wizard and select Setup Approval Policy. 126 P a g e

127 We want our employees to have the ability to update their personal information without approval from HR. We will select Automatic. to save this configuration. Configuring Widgets Ascentis HR Employee Self Service (ESS) v8.4 provides functionality to allow Ascentis HR Administrators the ability to create and manage widgets. They can provide employees easy access to content from RSS feeds, social networks, or any other user defined content. The Administrator must have a security role with access to Settings. Ascentis provides three templates to select from when creating your widgets: Content External Sources (RSS) Twitter Feed 127 P a g e

128 All templates allow the use of HTML commands to highlight narrative. You are also provided functionality to limit employee access to the widget to selected portions of the company. Expand the Widgets section to view all of your company s existing widgets, listed in alphabetical order. We will walk through creating a new widget for Snap Distributing s Shipping/Receiving department. Click Add New Click Create Content The Content Template: The following page shows an example of a widget created from the Content template. In the Name section, we gave our widget a unique name - Warehouse Safety Training Video. We also entered a description. 128 P a g e

129 As you hold your mouse over the formatting icons, you will view descriptions of functionality associated to each icon. We added a link to a YouTube video by highlighting the word Video and clicking on the Link icon, which looks like this If you prefer entering the content utilizing HTML code, click on the Source icon (the first one in the top row). You can toggle back and forth between the editor and HTML by clicking repeatedly on the Source icon Since we intent to provide the Warehouse Safety Training widget to the Shipping/Receiving Department only, we did not select Show on all dashboards. Instead we will move to the Limit Access section and select Shipping/Receiving as our defining Department. You can select one or more options, such as limiting access to only employees in location "New York" or "Chicago". You can also combine more than one category. For example, by selecting locations "New York" and "Chicago" and departments "Sales" and "Marketing", this widget would be limited to employees in either of those two departments AND in either of those two locations. 129 P a g e

130 Click on the Enable widget check box Click Save your Changes The Add/Remove Widgets button is available to all users of Employee Self Service v8.4. When Greg logs into ESS and goes to his Home tab. He clicks Add/Remove Widgets. When selected, the button allows the user to enable or disable any widgets that are not marked Show on all dashboards. If the widget is marked Show on all dashboards by the Administrator, it will appear as cannot be disabled. He sees the new widget, finds the Enabled checkbox and adds it to his dashboard. Once enabled, he has the ability to drag them around to re-arrange on his dashboard. He can also choose to collapse or expand each view. The Define External Source Template The RSS feed (or External Source) widget template is similar to the Content template with the difference being in the Body section. The rich Text Editor box has been replaced with an edit box where the URL (blog or RSS feed) is entered. 130 P a g e

131 The Twitter feed Template Twitter has become very popular and has turned into a tool for Companies to connect with customers and promote themselves. A great way to show your employees who tweets about your company and keep them involved is to provide a feed in ESS. 131 P a g e

132 Review Questions: 1. What are the two options to provide an employee first time access to Employee Self-Service? 2. Name five of the seven Self-Service Applications. 3. What configuration option would you select if you do not want to allow employees to disable a specific widget. 132 P a g e

133 Employee Self-Service Enrollment Wizard By the end of this chapter you will understand: How to create an Open Enrollment Period How to fully utilize the Self-Service Setup Wizard Benefit Application Best Practice for Setting Approval Policies Ascentis HR Benefits Open Enrollment process works in conjunction with Ascentis Employee Self- Service. Using the Benefits Open Enrollment process alleviates the administration involved with enrolling employees in their benefit plans. To utilize the Open Enrollment Process the following steps must be completed: 1. Create the Open Enrollment Period 2. Create/Update the included Benefit Plans 3. Configure the Self-Service Setup Wizard> Benefit Application 4. Set the Approval Policies Defining the Open Enrollment Window An open enrollment period consists of the Start and End dates when enrollment changes are allowed, an Effective Date when the change(s) becomes effective, and a name to identify the purpose of the enrollment to the employee. For example, a quarterly enrollment for a retirement plan might start on , no changes would be accepted after , and the changes would become effective on You can have a separate corresponding Open Enrollment period for different plan types. For example, you establish an annual open enrollment for health, life, and disability plans, and a quarterly open enrollment period for retirement plans. 133 P a g e

134 You can define the open enrollment period in Setup Manager>Setup> Open Enrollment Periods As well as within the Benefit Setup Wizard. You need to define your Open Enrollment window. You do this by creating a New Open Enrollment. Select New Open Enrollment Enter a Name for the Open Enrollment and then select the Start and End Date for the window of time employees can make their elections. The Effective Date is the date that the benefits become active. Select Choose Plans 134 P a g e

135 By default all the benefit plans are Excluded from Open Enrollment. Select the plans you wish to include in your Open Enrollment Session and move them to the Included window. You have the option of selecting the entire benefit plan type or specifying which benefit plan(s) within the type to include. Click OK 135 P a g e

136 You have now created your Open Enrollment Period (or Session). The number of plans included is listed as well as the dates. Click OK Configuring the Enrollment Wizard If you haven t already set up your Employee Self-Service for use with Benefits Administration you need to go into Setup Manager>Self Service Setup Wizard>Setup Self-Service Applications. 136 P a g e

137 Select the Benefits checkbox to enable employee self-service. Highlight the Setup Benefits option. 137 P a g e

138 Enable Sections screen - Select each of the Benefit options you wish the employees to access. Selections should be based on the specific benefit plans that you ve setup and want the employee s to selfadminister. Enable Plans screen - All of your active benefit plans will be displayed in this window. Select which benefit plans you want to enable for self-service. This step needs to be done in conjunction with the establishment of your benefit enrollment session. If the plan is part of the open enrollment session but is not enabled in self-service the employee will not be able to see it. 138 P a g e

139 Require Provider screen - This screen relates to the selection of Providers (i.e., Primary Care Physician). In most cases companies now provide links to the provider websites for employees to review the information. This is done on the next screen. Provider Links screen - Each plan can be linked to a specific provider directly on the internet. Simply type in the website address as displayed on the web page. 139 P a g e

140 Carrier Links screen - If you wish to provide employees with general links to the carrier s website, this is setup here. Plan Document Links screen - To provide links to specific Benefit Plan information such as Plan Summaries create a new link and enter the directory path. The path to the document entered as the Link, must match exactly to the actual path, including the extension. The easiest way to do this is to copy/paste the links and document name. 140 P a g e

141 Plan Associations screen - You have the option to re-order how you want to have the employees run through the wizard. Each Plan Type must only provide options that an employee needs to choose from with a radio button. If an Employee can enroll in more than one plan type, they need to be separated here. Allow Changes screen - If you want employees to be able to make changes outside of Open Enrollment, such as for qualifying events, select the plans here. You will choose the reasons on the next window. 141 P a g e

142 Change Reasons screen - Select the qualifying event reasons you will allow for each plan type. If you want the same rules to flow through to each benefit plan you can select the Show in All Plan Types button. Comparison Categories screen - Ascentis HR allows employees to compare multiple benefit plans at once. To setup this information you add the categories under each plan type here. 142 P a g e

143 Comparison Text screen - In this example the Medical 1 plan has comparison sections for Deductible, Emergency and Out Patient. Select the category you wish to create and type in the specific information below. Providers screen - In most cases companies are not maintaining benefit providers in house. You can skip past this screen. 143 P a g e

144 Beneficiaries screen - What information do you want to collect about your employees beneficiaries? Turn on/off the checkboxes. Customized Instructions screen - You can personalize the instructions to your employees for each of the sections of the benefits wizard. In this example we re looking at what will be displayed for the Benefit Summary page. To edit the wording, highlight the selection and enter the new information in the Instructions section below. This is HTML enabled, so your ability to customize this information is endless. 144 P a g e

145 Benefit Links screen - Each component within Employee Self- Service offers general links and reminders/messages. Benefit Messages screen - You can set up specific messages and reminders for employees that pertain to their benefits here. Select Finish. 145 P a g e

146 Approval Policies for Open Enrollment Once you ve set up the process for the Open Enrollment you need to tell Ascentis HR how you want to handle the approvals. Select Self-Service Setup Wizard>Setup Approval Policy. All of the Employee Self-Service approval setup is done within this wizard. For purposes of Benefits Administration we will focus on: Family Members Benefits Beneficiaries Other Health Insurance Investment Elections Automatic, meaning it writes the information entered by the employee directly to Ascentis HR Manual, meaning additional approval will need to be completed before the information is entered into the database. Using the pull-down menu, determine if you want the approval policy to be and Exit 146 P a g e

147 Walking through the Enrollment Wizard Depending on the Security Strategy Selected in Setup Manager> Self Service>Setup Wizard>Setup Security screen, Greg will either: Enter The User ID and password supplied to him Click on the This is my first time link to self-authenticate. 147 P a g e

148 The first screen Greg will see welcomes him to the New Hire Enrollment Wizard. The information that follows is based on the way the self-service administration for benefits was configured. In this case we configured the wizard to work during open enrollment as well as every day for new hires. Depending on how much information was available and entered into Employee Manager at the time of hire. The employee can update or add to their Personal Information. 148 P a g e

149 Ascentis HR needs to collect the information on the employee s dependents before any benefits enrollment can be completed. These dependents will be able to enroll in the various benefit plans that Greg selects. Greg can enter additional dependents here by clicking New, Otherwise click Next Remember the enrollment wizard is designed to be intuitive. If you need to provide the employee addition information, you can write personalized instructions in HTML on each and every page that displays. 149 P a g e

150 The employee will now see their benefit options in the sequence that was setup within the Self- Service Wizard. Only the benefit plans that Greg is eligible for will display. Eligibility rules are defined within the plan setup. Selecting the Plan Name will link Greg to the Plan Summary documents. 150 P a g e

151 Selecting both Medical Plans and clicking Compare gives the employee a side by side comparison between the offerings. Based on the information that you set up in the Plan Comparison setup in Benefits Self Service, this information is displayed here. The employee can drill down into the website, plan summary information and/or provider directory. Since Plan Information & Comparisons opens a separate browser page, the employee can close when finished and go back to the previous page. The Enrollment Wizard will tell the employee how much it will cost them per paycheck for the benefit. (This is an option available through setup of the Self-Service Applications). 151 P a g e

152 As Greg moves through the wizard, the total benefit costs will accumulate at the bottom of the screen. Additionally, if selected in setup, you will see the Company s total contribution. Some plans (Life and Retirement type) will require a Beneficiary designate. The following screen will detect the plan type and automatically display once the employee hits Next. Click New Greg can either enter a new person (other than a dependent in Ascentis HR) by selecting No In the drop down menu. If he wants to select a dependent and the Share is less than 100%, there will need to be an additional beneficiary assigned to take the remaining share before he can move on. The total amongst the beneficiaries must equal 100% 152 P a g e

153 Confirmation - At the end of the Wizard, Greg will be asked to Confirm his selections along with any additional custom instructions provided by the Employer. At the bottom of the window he will see a benefit cost summary total for both the Employee and Employer portion. This is configurable in Setup Manager>Self Service Setup> Setup Applications> Benefits> Customize Instructions (see below). Once Greg clicks on the Confirm Enrollment button: His selections will display on the Employee Manager>Self Service Administration>Pending tab. His Status will display on the Employee Manager>Self Service Administration>Open Enrollment Tab (or if the case may be the New Hire tab) as Confirmed. The next time Greg logs into ESS, the enrollment wizard will not kick off. Review Questions: 153 P a g e

154 1. Name two places within Ascentis HR> Setup Manager where you can enable or disable plans available during open enrollment. 2. Where do you go in Setup Manager to configure the order the plan types are presented to the employee in the Open Enrollment Wizard? 3. What three things happen when an employee clicks on the Confirmation button in the enrollment wizard? 4. Why is it considered best practice to set the approval policy for Adding Family members to automatic? 154 P a g e

155 Configuring Manager Self-Service By the end of this chapter you will understand: How to Administer Security for employees Using Manager Self-Service How to configure My Team settings Workflow Administration Approvers and their role in Manager Self-Service Ascentis HR provides the ability for Supervisors and/or Managers to self-administer their direct reports data. By using pre-defined workflows and implementing the appropriate security policies, much of the administrative burden currently housed in Human Resources can be rolled out to each Manager allowing them to view, change, and, or approve employee changes. Configuring Manager Self-Service Setup for Manager Self-Service (MSS) is done on the internet through the MSS site under Settings. Only Administrators have the ability to configure and modify MSS settings. There are three steps to configuring MSS. Security & Licensing Each Manager needs to be associated to a Role within Ascentis HR Security. This Role supersedes any of the setup done in MSS. In other words, a manager can be setup to view Employee Personal Information, but if their security role does not grant them this access they will not see it. My Team Settings For each component determine what fields Managers can view and/or change for their direct reports. Workflow Administration Delivered workflows are attached to approver roles and chains in order to complete the process of updating Ascentis HR. 155 P a g e

156 Administering Security In order for managers to utilize Manager Self-Service (MSS) they need to be assigned a Security Role within Security & Licensing. Administrators and persons designated as a Supervisor in Ascentis HR have access to the My Team tab in Manager Self-Service. Ascentis HR provides two special types of roles to assign to supervisors. These roles are used to define who and what a user designated as Supervisor can access. Setup Manager>Security & Licensing To create a Supervisor role select New Role. 156 P a g e

157 Enter a name for the role. Here is where you designate which Type of role you wish to create. You have two options to designate who the supervisor will see: Supervisor (All Levels) Use this choice to grant your supervisors access to all of their down level reports. Supervisor (One Level) Use this choice to grant supervisors access to only their immediate direct reports. You are now defining what the supervisor will see. For each sub-section within the Categories, select what you want the Supervisor to access. Click Finish 157 P a g e

158 By highlighting the entire category heading and changing the access to Change All you can then go into the specific tabs you don t want them to access and change to No Access. Expand the categories by clicking on the plus sign and view the tabs. You will now see your newly create Supervisor role displayed under the Roles tab. Supervisor Type roles are indicated with a Red key. We now need to associate the new Role with the Supervisor. Select the Users tab. If the user is already created, you can click on the Add Users button to associate. Under the Users tab you will see a list of all of the current users in Ascentis HR. Select New User 158 P a g e

159 Since you re creating Users for Supervisor s already existing in Ascentis HR, select the top radio button. By selecting the checkbox for Show only Supervisors you will have easy access to view all of your current Supervisors in Ascentis HR. Highlight a Supervisor and click Next 159 P a g e

160 The User ID will default based on how you ve configured your self-service user ID policy. Enter a Password on behalf of your manager. You do not want to grant Administrator access. You will now see displayed all of the currently created Roles within your Company. Select Supervisor 160 P a g e

161 You will see a confirmation indicating that the employee has been associated to the role. Click Finish The Supervisors that you have associated to this role will now have access to the Manager Self- Service application called My Team. New in Ascentis HR 8.5 Managers have the ability to initiate Termination with a check list through MSS. They will need Change Access Rights to Employee Information> Employment in the Security & Licensing in Setup Manager. My Team Settings Only Administrators of Ascentis HR have the ability to configure the settings for Manager Self- Service. If you have an Administrator role associated to your user in Security and Licensing, you will see a Settings menu option when you click on the pull down associated to your name in the upper right corner of MSS. Select Settings>My Team Settings>Hide or Rename Fields>Personal Information 161 P a g e

162 The Selections in the pull-down menu directly relate to the following areas within Employee Manager: Attachments, Contact Information, Additional Contact Info, Emergency Contacts, Job, Personal Information, Compensation, Employment Status and Notes. Determine which fields to hide for Managers by clicking the Hidden box. Populating and Alternate name allows you to rename the field for ESS only. What is configured in the Hide or Rename Fields section follows the level of access you have defined in your Supervisor Role in the Setup Manager>Security tab. Select My Team Settings>Designate HR Specify the HR staff member who will be assigned to handle stale requests which are routed to "HR". New in Ascentis HR 8.5 Custom tabs are now available for Managers in MSS. Along with the capability to display the information, administrators can create business processes allowing managers to make changes through workflows. Select My Team Settings>Custom Tabs 162 P a g e

163 In Setup Manager HR administrators have the ability to create an unlimited number of User Defined tabs and fields in the Customization Wizard. A few examples of this include: Assets, Skills, Education, Stock Options, Certifications, Previous Employers and Credit Card. Click on Assets to configure the Manager s view. If required, change the name as seen in MSS with an Alternate Name (we used IT Assets). Under Category decide which heading the custom tab will appear in the Employee Card. We selected the Personal category. Instructions can easily be added using the WYZIWYG editor. No HTML knowledge is necessary here! Within the Fields section, you have the ability to rename or hide fields. 163 P a g e

164 Now when supervisor Tanisha logs into MSS, she can enter Lou s IT Assets from within his Personal tab. Workflow Administration The HR Administrator now can define which business processes to enable for the managers. What the manager actually sees within each business process was configured in the My Team> Hide or Rename Fields setup. For each business process you can determine whether you want to enable it, have the transaction write straight to the database or attach an approval chain for processing. New in Ascentis HR 8.6 Leave requests utilize Workflows for approvals. A Workflow Chain can be configured to support multiple approvers for a single leave request. The requests will become Tasks and no longer appear in Employee Manager>Self Service Administration> Pending. To configure your business processes appropriately, time needs to be taken to consider what you want the manager s to be able to initiate and who needs to approve the transaction(s) prior to them writing to the database. The order in which the configuration is completed is as follows: Create your Approval Roles Create your Approval Chain Associate you Approval Chain to the Business Process Note: Once a Business Process is enabled, you will not be allowed to edit if pending changes exist. You will be directed to the Task List to view. Select Workflow>Workflow Home 164 P a g e

165 Workflow Home will give you access to the Workflows, Roles and Chains on one screen. You may need to page down to view the entire screen within your browser. Creating Approver Roles Approver Roles are used to associate a specific person to an Approval Chain, which in turn are used to manage a business process. Supervisors are always available to associate to an Approval Chain. Ascentis HR uses the reporting relationships set up in Job Information to determine the direct line approvals. For example, if you have a 1 st line supervisor initiate a business process and then you want the transaction to be approved by their direct manager and then the next manager up the line, no Approver Roles are required. However; if you want the supervisor to initiate the change, have their supervisor approve it and then have it go outside the reporting line for additional approvals, any person(s) outside of the direct reporting line will need to be assigned an Approver Role. Most organizations will assign an HR approver to finalize business processes before writing them to the database. Additionally, for some business processes, particularly compensation changes, you may want a Vice President to be part of the approval chain. In both of these instances, the HR Approver and VP would need to be assigned an Approver Role. There is no limit to how many Approver Roles you can create, and an Approver can be assigned to more than one business process. However; the Approver can only be associated to the Approval Chain once during the business process. 165 P a g e

166 Click Create New Role. Name the new Role CFO and link to employee Harold Lu. Click Save your changes Only employees that have been designated as a Supervisor and given a Security Role will be available from the Linked Employee pull-down menu. 166 P a g e

167 You now see the new CFO Role with Harold assigned. Creating Approval Chains Select Approval Chains from the left hand menu. If all of your business processes are going to follow the same approval chain, you only need to create one and associate it to all of the business processes. We will edit the existing Termination Check List approval chain to include the CFO as an additional approver. Click Edit. 167 P a g e

168 New in Ascentis HR 8.5 you now have the ability to automatically approve items for the initiator. Next we will see the details of current Termination Check List Approval Chain. You can see that the process originates from the employee s supervisor, and is routed to HR (Tanisha Jones) for final approval. By default, the initiator has one more chance to review as the first in the chain. If you want to disable that functionality, click No at the first prompt below the Chain Name. Next, Click Add Another Approver (before the Last Approver) 168 P a g e

169 An Approver 2 step will be inserted, where we will select CEO We have also redirected the flow if no action is taken by the approver. You have the ability to send the task to the Next Approver (instead of HR). Click on Save your changes. Now the Chain shows the CEO as the second approver. 169 P a g e

170 Associating the Chain to the Business Process The last step in the process is to confirm that the correct Approval Chain is associated to the business process. Select Workflow Home Select Edit for the Termination Business Process. Verify our new the Termination Check List is selected or pick from the available Approval Chains in the pull-down menu. Notice that each approver that is part of the chain shows with a text box for instructions. By supplying specific instruction to each approver, a termination check list is created. It is best practice to make HR the final approver - especially for your Termination process, as they will be required to end benefit and time off in Employee Manager. This is easily accomplished by clicking the Terminate Employee button on the Employee s Employment tab. This action will guide you through the necessary screens to complete the tasks. Click Save your changes. The changes are now reflected in the Approval Workflows window. Your new Business Process is ready for use. 170 P a g e

171 Note: Each Custom tab can also be assigned a workflow, however it is important to know that for List Type tabs, a separate workflow is required for each of the following levels of access: Add, Delete and Edit. Users New Ascentis HR version Terminated employees can continue to have access to Employee Self-Service. Please note that this feature is only available if you have Manager Self Service. HR administrators have the ability to dictate if and how long a terminated employee can access Self-Service. Select Users Click Terminated Access. You can change the settings to a number of different options. Below shows the list of termed employees who would have access to ESS and details of their last day. This list will refresh when changing settings to give you an idea of which terminated employees will have access. 171 P a g e

172 Review Questions: 1. Name the three steps required to configure Manager Self-Service. 2. What is the difference between the Supervisor (All Levels) and Supervisor (One Level) security roles? 3. What are the three components of a workflow? 4. What sets List type custom tabs apart when it comes to configuring Business Rules. 5. Can you have more than one approver for Leave Type Requests? 172 P a g e

173 Self-Service Administration By the end of this chapter you will understand: How to manage Accounts (employee access) and monitor usage How to manage employee changes How to roll out and manage Open Enrollment Employee Self Service (ESS) is a web application that makes it easy for employees to view information about themselves, their Family Members, Benefits, Time Off, Paycheck, and Company Directory. ESS allows employees to manage and confirm their own data. Newly hired employees will be able to Enroll in benefits and your Open Enrollment periods can be completed online by the employees themselves. Access to Setup Manager is required to configure ESS in Ascentis HR. See the chapter titled Configuring Employee Self-Service for instructions. Day to day administration is handled in Employee Manager>Self-Service Administration. Managing Accounts On the Accounts tab of the Self-Service Administration section, you can view the information about the account, including: Name Employee ID User ID Account Status Address 173 P a g e

174 You have the ability to Edit User ID and make the changes to the account if necessary. This includes whether the account is Enabled or Disabled. If you need to generate a new password for the account click Generate Random Password and provide to the user. Always offer instructions for resetting their password once logged in successfully. 174 P a g e

175 Depending on the security strategy defined in Setup Manager>Self-Service Setup Wizard>Setup Security Policy employees may have the option to self-authenticate the first time they log into ESS. If they fill in the question correctly, they are allowed to log in and directed to setup their password. Depending on the security strategy defined in Setup Manager>Self-Service Setup Wizard>Setup Security Policy employees may have the option to self-authenticate which will send the employee User ID to their work address and allow them to re-generate their password. If this is the case, there is no need to reset passwords or send User IDs. Another feature on this tab is the Send Account Info button via to the user. This utilizes the Employee Correspondence Wizard. 175 P a g e

176 Monitoring Progress The New Hire Tab shows any employees that have been hired within the period configured in Setup Manager > Self Service Setup Wizard > Setup Approval Policy > Benefits - New Hire Enrollment. These employees are given a new hire enrollment status and if eligible for at least one benefit, the Enrollment Wizard will kick-off when they log into ESS. You have the option of selecting which new hires you wish to view by enrollment status: Not Started - The employee has not started the Enrollment Wizard. In Progress - The employee has started the Enrollment Wizard but have not Confirmed. Confirmed - The employee name and ID will show as Confirmed once the Enrollment Wizard has been completed and the confirmation button was selected by the employee. If you do not see a new hire that should be on this window, you have the option Add any additional new hires to the window. You also have the option to run a Report. This report shows the name of the new hire and the employee ID number, the Hire Date and the status of the open enrollment (Confirmed, Not Started or In Progress. 176 P a g e

177 Once an employee reaches the "Confirmed" status, the enrollment wizard will no longer be generated for that user when they log in to Employee Self Service. Occasionally, it may be necessary for an employee to be allowed to "redo". The "Confirmed" status can be reset to "In Progress" by highlighting the employee and clicking Reset. Using the Reset button has the following affects: The "pending" changes are removed from the Pending Tab. The "approved" changes remain unchanged on the Approved Tab. The next time the reset employee logs in to ESS the enrollment wizard will be generated once again. They must re-confirm in order for their new changes to be sent to Ascentis HR. Any changes made prior will be overwritten by the new changes. All of the functionality mentioned above for the New Hire Tab, is also available on the Open Enrollment tab. Managing Employee Changes For each change an employee makes in ESS there is an approval policy configured in Setup Manager > Self Service Setup Wizard > Setup Approval Policy to handle it. The approval choices are: Automatic the changes are automatically approved and will take effect immediately Manual the changes have to be approved in the Pending tab in Employee Manager before the change can take effect. The Pending Tab shows all the changes that employees have made that need approval by a Self- Service Administrator. Note: Changes initiated in Manager Self-Service (MSS) will not be displayed in Self-Service Administration. An Administrator can login to MSS to view pending tasks. 177 P a g e

178 There are two options for which changes will display: All Changes any and all changes that have been made by employees in ESS and not approved Dated Changes any changes made during the dates you specify that have been made by employees and not approved. Once you have approved changes, they will be moved to the Approved Tab. Once you have rejected changes, they will be moved to the Rejected Tab. You can also select the type of changes to view. Use the dropdown list to select the type of changes you would like to view As you view the changes you need to either Approve Section or Reject Section which will affect only the highlighted change. You also have the option to Approve All or Reject All the selections. Be sure you want to actually approve or reject all the changes, rather than viewing each change separately. New Effective Date - You have the option of overriding the effective date that Self- Service generates for certain enrollment changes. Self-Service will automatically advance the benefit begins date of an employee's enrollment for changes pertaining to Volume or Contribution amounts. This enables you adjust the effective date before approving. Administration Guidelines During Open Enrollment There are some routine administrative duties during the Open Enrollment period: 1. Invite Employees to Login to Self-Service 2. Run the Benefit Calculation Utility 3. Review Enrollment Status and Send Reminders 4. Review Changes and Approve or Reject 178 P a g e

179 Invite Employees to Login to Self-Service If your employees are currently not utilizing Ascentis HR Self-Service you will need to Enable the employee accounts. Start this process on the Accounts tab of the Self-Service Administration window in Employee Manager. To enable or disable an individual employee, highlight their name and select the appropriate pull-down menu options. Alternatively, you can right-click your mouse for menu options. When you setup up security policies in Setup Manager>Self-Service Wizard, you were given the option of Identity Based Authentication or Invitation Based. If you selected the Invitation Based method you can utilize the Send Account Info button. If you include passwords when using Send Account Info, you will be re-setting the password for all the employees included in the notification. If your employees already use ESS, then do not include the account information in your invitation. ESS is designed to be intuitive. Employees will need little or no training if customized instructions are utilized throughout. 179 P a g e

180 Run the Benefit Calculation Utility Running the Benefit Calculation Utility becomes crucial when administering Open Enrollment. You want to ensure that employees are able to enroll in only those plans for which they are eligible. When an employee gets a promotion or changes location, they may become eligible for a completely different set of plans. In this case, running the Benefit Calculation utility would notice the change in location and rework the list of eligible plans. The Benefit Calculation utility is found under Employee Manager>Utilities>Benefit Calculation So how often should you run the Benefit Calculation utility for Self-Service? Theoretically, it is needed daily. Some eligibility rules can be based on employee age, which can change any day of the week. It is recommended you run the utility weekly. Use the Set Reminder button on the Benefit Calculation window to remind you to run the utility every seven days. 180 P a g e

181 Review Enrollment Status and Send Reminders As we saw earlier you can monitor the employees activity during Open Enrollment in the Open Enrollment Tab. Turn off the checkboxes to narrow down your view of the employees status. The Report Wizard has a Self-Service category of reports. Use the Employee Correspondence Wizard to send out reminders to all employees that are not confirmed. Select employees using the according to criteria option. 181 P a g e

182 Review Changes and Approve or Reject Based on how to setup your Self Service Approval Policy, you may need to provide final approval on processes prior to them updating Ascentis HR. To review these pending changes use the Pending Tab in the Self Service Administration window. All employees with pending transactions will be displayed in this window. You have the option of approving all or specific items by selection. You can specifically view the changes captured in the open enrollment wizard by selecting Open Enrollment in the Type drop-down list. If you choose to Reject a change, you can send an back to the employee explaining the reason(s). 182 P a g e

183 Before clicking Send You have the ability to type in your personalized message. Ascentis HR keeps track of all the Approvals and Rejections you have administered in the Approved and Rejected tabs. Depending on the level of activity, you may wish to Purge history periodically. 183 P a g e