The New Metalink Fiasco & Lessons for HCM Implementation

I am sure, many of us were a frustrated lot over the weekend when Oracle switched over Metalink over to the new Avatar!
Users experienced numerous problems ranging from unable to log in to finding the SR numbers revamped and some going dizzy when the Flash player hung up at 90% mark. The outage lasted more than a day, for sure and my mailbox was flooded with die-hard fans of the Old Metalink spitting their venom over the new makeover.

Yes, its true, it appears that the folks at Oracle didnt get their act correct - not that they have got it right on all earlier occasions, but something drastic seems to have been missed out when the cutover happened. Did they not anticipate the load? This may probably not be the case because afterall, Oracle wasnt releasing anything spectacular - like a MJ-This is it. There are pretty slim chances that their severs crashed due to an upsurge in hits. It appears that the folks at Redwood Shores' blue towers missed some links in the Performance testing which led the users to vent their venom.

Anyway, that brings up an important parallel. Imagine such a situation when a fragile module like Oracle Self-Service goes live. It is very essential to have a solid back-up plan to handle any eventuality including ability to extend the life-support of the legacy systems, having a trained front-end helpdesk staff to handle questions from the users and guide them in navigation etc.

A poorly planned Helpdesk is bound to create a high degree of frustration for the new users leaving a bad patch that takes a long time to clear up. It is very important to incorporate these factors into the Project plan and prepare for the contingency and mitigation.

Talking about poor support, I remember seeing a mail from a frustrated end-user to his manager "This is the worst application I have every seen. If you have paid 1 cent for this product, let me tell you - you have paid too much" !!

I will leave you to guess what the product / application was.

HRMS and KM

Okay, there is a lot to write about this, but first I have to share my thoughts on Content Management and Social Software. While this concept is not part of any HRMS suite, I see the distinct possibility of a social networking site within the intranets of organizations and the managing/regulating of that may fall into the HR domain. I will be expanding the thoughts on the same in subsequent sessions.

A recent article by Gartner found that the term Knowledge Management (KM) ranked 40th among their search terms. 40 is a very high score considering their tens of thousands of terms. Innovation and KM, sometimes can be seen as two sides of the same coin. Innovation often is based on certain brilliant ideas, like flashbulbs that go on while oberving someone doing or saying something, or observing someone's conversation about something etc. Ideas from here could lead to something new, and an entirely new idea or product or concept may be born.

Technology is only a tool that enables KM and is primarily focussed on capturing knowledge into a "usable" or "explicit" form. As a matter of fact, content management is often touted as KM in most organizations. But there is a vital step that is missing here. How do you enable people to share their knowledge?
As I see it there are two aspects to this issue. The first is, what I term as a 'Soft Issue' is that the workforce should be motivated to come forward and share their knowledge and collaborate with each other. This is actually the most difficult part too, as it involves the organization culture, the organization's policy and processes. It is here that the Human Resources team can play a vital role. They can act as catalysts to create a learning culture and foster a employee-friendly environment. More about that term in a subsequent blog.The Second aspect, is that of the enablement of the employees to collaborate. While it is vital that an environment is created that is conducive for sharing and learning, employees need to have the necessary mechanism or tools to do so. Enter "Collaborative Software" tools that allow people to connect and share their knowledge.

Collaborative tools have, to an extent bridged the gap between Content Management and Colllaboration, but still there are considerable gaps that needs to be filled in. Social Software, is another tool that is being touted as the panacea to fill this gap. Social software like facebook, twitter, blogs are essentially a platform to vent out the thoughts, ideas, express opinions and frustrations. This could be in the form of a text, image (photos), videos (like Youtube) etc. In fact Blogs and Youtube could perhaps be the germinating grounds for the next generation of business enterprises and drive innovation.

However, the one gap that can't be addressed by any software system is that Human emotion and motivation. This gap is perhaps, the most critical, and can only be filled in by the management through a well-thought out policy, HR practice coupled with a reward-for-performance measures.

Core HR: Profiles for DateTracking

Question: The profile DateTrack: Date Security enables to:
Option a) Set your effective date to perform transactions in the past, present or future dates
Option b) Enables setup of security restrictions for responsibilities and functions
Option c) Enables setup of security restrictions for responsibilities, menus and functions
Option d) Option b and c
Correct Option a

Question: The profile DateTrack: Reminder is helpful for
Option a) Reminding the user when the next transaction is due to begin
Option b) Reminding the user of all the historical transactions that have occurred on the record
Option c) Reminding the user of all the future transactions that are pending on the record
Option d) Reminding the user on the effective date whenever a window containing date tracked information is opened
Correct Option d

I saw these two questions at a site recently on HRMS quiz and this prompted me to explore the rest of the date-track profiles that exist in Oracle and understand their usages. Questions like these are common in objective type quizzes that one may encounter in objective tests. Hope this learning helps you.

DateTrack:Date Security profile option determines whether you are allowed to change your effective date. This is generally set by the system administrator in the beginning of the project and contains the following values:
All: You can change to any other effective date.
Future: You can change between today's date and any future dates.
Past: You can change between today's date and any past dates.
Present: You cannot change to a date other than today.
DateTrack:Reminder profile option displays a pop-up decision window that prompts you with the effective date settings whenever you open a window that contains datetracked information. Though many see this window as a pain in the neck due to its constant appearance whenever you open a form that has date-tracking, but I would strongly recommend to enable this profile, especially during configuring / testing phase and also when you have relatively inexperienced users handling the application. This profile has three options:
Always pop warning window
Never pop warning window
Not Today

Always and Never are self-explanatory, but the ‘Not Today’ option causes the reminder to appear when you navigate to a datetracked window and your effective date is not today's date.

There are two other profiles that are related to datetracking, but which are not set at the user level. They are:
DateTrack Enabled: This should be set to “Yes” at the application level and
DateTrack:Login Date (YYYY/MM/DD): I haven’t seen this being used much. This profile is generally set together with the profile DateTrack:Date Security. Set this to a value early enough (like 1900/01/01) so that users may not set a date earlier than this. If a user has the has DateTrack:Date Security set to Future and DateTrack:Login Date set to 1900/01/01,they can change their effective date to any date after January 1 1900,but not before.
As I said earlier, I have rarely seen this profile being edited frequently.

Hope this information is helpful.

MD50 and MD70

I keep hearing these questions from many of the junior consultants:

What is the difference between MD50 and MD70 documents? Do I have to prepare both the documents even for minor extensions/interfaces?

Well, as you are probably aware, MD50 is AIM document that is used for the documentation of functional design for extensions and Interfaces (& other RICE objects). MD70 comes next where the Technical parts of the requirements are documented. Sometimes, it will be too cumbersome to prepare MD50s and MD70 for certain minor objects. Many organizations combine MD50 and MD70 into a single document with a seperate name like MDZIP or MDSHORT etc.

The adavantage of this consolidation is that the same document can be used for the functional part and later for the technical part. This is known to reduce the time for handling multiple versions of the document, approval cycles etc.

ENWISEN - Oracle Integration

One of the recent integrations between Oracle and external vendors includes ENWISEN. There has been some recent additions to this and I share a bit of my Exploration. This is yet a work in Progress, but I hope it should get you started.

Enwisen (http://www.enwisen.com) is a third party solutions vendor that operates on a hosted, on-demand SaaS model; has tie-ups with Oracle, PeopleSoft provides solutions for onboarding, HR Portal, Shared Service Center and Total Rewards Statement through its hosted solution called as AnswerSource. I picked up these pictures from their website, which summarizes their offerings:

The main thrust and USP seems to be addressing the needs of the employees on their first day at work, when the new hire has to fill out various documents and do paper-work etc. Enwisen appears to ‘lighten this load’ by getting the employee to log on to their website through the company’s portal and perform these tasks. Apparently, Enwisen can build (adapt) their portal look-and-feel to match the client’s website so that the new-hire would not realize that they are actually going to another vendor’s site. Also first day induction information like a brief video (guided tour) of the company’s facility / recorded talks from the company CEOs etc. can be recorded and made available through Enwisen’s website.
Enwisen is enabled to leverage Single Sign-on capability of the clients application. A new hire can access to Enwisen’s site through Oracle Apps login or even the company’s portal login.
It provides the employee with a single-point access to all the enrollment forms, company policies and other help manuals.

While many of the functionalities the product offers already exists in products like Oracle Employee Self-Service modules, there are some cool features like, an online dialog box where the employee can post any question that they may have. This feature is called as “Ask a Question”

Other features include participation in acknowledgment of having read & understood the company policies, harassment policies etc.
Another interesting feature in Benefits side is that Enwisen helps the new hires to compare various benefits options that are provided by the company and choose from among the ones that are best suited. One thing which needs to be confirmed is that if this functionality is usable only when the company uses Benefits modules of Oracle / PeopleSoft. If the company has outsourced the Benefits administration to a third party then this may call for further integration with the Benefits vendors and may in turn reflect on the cost.

AnswerSource also has a Manager and Administrator modules. Managers and administrators have a graphical display on the progress made by the new hires’ onboarding activities.
AnswerSource seems to straddle across the span of employee life in an organization, including assisting the employees when they are transferred/relocated to a new department or place, help them plan their benefits elections and even assist them in offboarding process when they are terminated / retired. Apparently, even retirees can continue to get access to the portal so that they can stay connected if they are still eligible for benefits.

You can also get the following information from Metalink on Configuring Links Between HRMS Products and Enwisen
1. Set the HR: Extension Agent profile option to enable the Info Online functionality.
2. Set the HR: Enwisen Login URL profile option.
3. Enable the Info Online content container and Topics region by setting the HR: KI Topics Enabled profile option.
4. Use the Personalization Framework function to display the Info Online content container on the product pages that support Enwisen integration.
5. Enter the login and authentication details that you receive from Enwisen for Ewisen:Provider integration on the Integration Options page.
6. After you implement the basic steps, you can carry define user specific additional security to access Enwisen by creating a Java class that implements Oracle's predefined Java interface: oracle.apps.per.ki.kiserver.KIDataFetcher. Provide the Java class value in the HR: Class Name to Fetch KI Data profile option to enable users to launch Enwisen from Oracle HRMS product pages that support Enwisen integration.

HR: Enwisen Login URL: This profile defines the URL of Enwisen web site, a third-party information provider that end users can access from Oracle iRecruitment, Oracle Performance Management, Oracle SSHR, and Oracle Time and Labor pages.

HR: Class Name to Fetch KI Data: This profile option has to be set to implement additional security when accessing Enwisen, a third-party information provider. The value for this profile option must be a fully qualified name of a Java class that implements Oracle's predefined Java interface: oracle.apps.per.ki.kiserver.KIDataFetcher. The Java class contains the method to retrieve login values when end users access Enwisen from Oracle HRMS product pages.

Hope this summary helps you in your discussion. Please share your experiences with this product integration with Oracle SSHR

CORE HR: Valueset with No Validation

A friend of mine had a query on whether a valueset without any validation in a Key Flexfield. I hope the below note helps.

There is a ton of material available in the metalink and it takes time to read and digest it. Here is a synopsis on valuesets and specifically for validation type = None.

A value set is primarily a container in which we can store any business-specific. Valuesets can be defined so that you define your value set such that it can also validate and check the of values that may be entered by a user. It can prevent any undesirable type of data from entering into the flexfield segments.

There are several types of validation that you can build, such as:
• Number,

• Character,

• Time,

• Standard Date,

• Standard DateTime.

You can also define controls such as
• Length of the values that can be entered,

• Precision (for decimal value entries),

• Numbers (Restrict the entries to only Numbers),

• Uppercase (you can specify whether the value set should be restricted to revieve only uppercase characters),

• Right-Justify and Zero-Fill Numbers: If the allowable size is set to 5 and if a user enters a value 320, then you can have the value to be stored as 00320,

• Minimum Value (You can specify the minimum value that can be stored in the valueset),

• Maximum Value (You can specify the maximum value that can be stored in the valueset)

When you specify Minimum & Maximum values. the user will not be able to enter a value outside that specified range. For example, you can build a value set of Number format type and if you specify the Miminimum as 0 and Maximum as 100, the user can enter only the values between 0 and 100.

As most consultants are aware, a Valueset Validation types include:

• Independent• Dependent• None• Table• Special• Pair• Translatable Independent• Translatable Dependent

Impact of not choosing a valueset for a flexfield Segment:

If you do not choose a value set, the flexfield segment assumes as if it were using a value setwith validation type None, with format type of Char and allows the user to enter values (width) as long as the underlying flexfield segment column, with mixed-case alphabetic characters and will not provide any right justification or zero padding

For example, if the value set does is restricted to allowing only numbers, then the users could enter numbers and not alphabetic characters. The values of the segment using this value set are not otherwise validated, and they will not have descriptions.Note: Because a 'None' type value set is not validated, a segment that uses this value set does not show any list of values for your users. Any flexfield segment that uses this type of value set (a non-validated segment) cannot use flexfield value security rules to restrict the values which a user can enter.

CORE HR: Inserting records into EIT

Another intersting business case that was discussed recently:

Question: Is it possible to insert a row of data in between a set of records in EIT?

Analyst Description: Client has populated five rows for a particular employee in an EIT, one record for each year. After the records were stored, it was then realized that one row was missed out for the third row. Client wants to insert the record in between rows three and four in the existing set. Is it possible to do that?

Answer: It is not possible to ‘insert’ a row in between a set of records. Though it appears that Oracle allows to enter the record in the right spot, once you save the record, you will find that the record is saved at the bottom.

Oracle generates an internal sequence for each row. And as you know the sequence is a running serial number something like 6001, 6002, 6003, 6004 etc. So when you insert a record, the new record will always get the next sequence number and hence will be displayed at the bottom of the heap.

Here’s an example:
Client has a couple of records already inserted ( for Academic for performance and succession) and saved and then realizes that a record which was to be inserted in between.

The client tries to insert a record between the 2000 and 2003 records. Click on the blank field and the DFF will open up. Enter appropriate values and save the record. Select the record and enter the values in the DFF.

Once the values are entered, submit the record.

Save the record and return to the application. You can see the record displayed at the bottom of the set, rather than the place where you inserted it.

CORE HR: People Group KFF or Bargaining Unit?

Recently saw a debate on whether to use People Group KFF for storing Union Information?

Well, here's my learnings:

To store data inside a Bargaining Unit, you can navigate to the Assignment window and thereafter, select the values as shown below:

1. Choose the Bargaining Unit tabbed region.
2. Enter a bargaining unit code for your employee's assignment. This is usually the legally recognized collective negotiating organization.
Note: You set up your different bargaining units as values for the Lookup type BARGAINING_UNIT_CODE
3. Select whether the employee associated with the assignment is a member of a union.
Note: This tab is not available when you are hiring a Contingent Worker.

Oracle provides People Group KFF for several purposes. If an enterprise wants to group certain set of people based on certain parameters like work type, or location type or benefit eligible types etc, then you can use People Group KFF. These groupings could be based on parameters like ‘Supervisory staff’ or all people belonging to Florida etc. Also you can store Union Information, though Oracle provides a separate placeholder to store Union Information

CWB: Time estimation for Implementation of CWB

Question: We are in the process of implementing Compensation Work Bench (CWB). We would be interested to know how long it took other to implement.

I saw this question on a forum and share my reply. This is a typical question that every functional consultant would have been asked at some point in thier career.

As a thumbrule, I would say 20-30 weeks is normal time-period, if you want to implement any HR Modules, though I have to say Benefits & Payroll may need more time and also these modules have other dependencies like Annual Open Enrollment periods (in Benefits) or Year-end and Balance upload (Payroll).

However, there are other factors that you may want to consider before arriving at a high level time lines. Some the questions that need to be asked/answered are:

1. What is the population of the workforce ?

2. Is the organization a hierarchical or relatitvely flat?

3. Is CWB being implemented for multiple countries (legislations)?

4. Do you have to handle multiple currencies?

5. What consititutes the CWB scope? Annual Merit, Bonus and Stocks? Are all three involved?

6. Are there any other types of Benefits that are to be included in the scope?

7. What kind of reporting needs are the clients looking for?

8. Does the client also have Oracle Payroll or Benefits?

Answers to these questions go a long way in helping to arrive at a balanced decision. To make the long story short, CWB is more complex than it sounds.

SSHR: Display Expense Account in Self-Service HR

I saw this question the other day at a forum where a user had posted and this set me to research and find the answer for you.

Business Scenario: Employees are attached to a Default Expense Account. This expense account changes whenever an employee is transferred across departments. The expense account and the Organizations (Cost Center) data has to be always maintained in sync.
This organization uses Employee Self Service and Manager Self-Service. When an employee is transferred, they also need to change the expense account value.But in Self-Service, this field does not seem to be visible. What are the options to acheive this?

This is a common requirement by many companies and its surprising that this feature is still not enabled in SSHR, though there is a Enhancement Request open since Oct 2008, the same is not yet built into SSHR till date (Sep 2009) in version 12.1.1; and the Enhancement Request is still in an "Internal Review" status. Surely, you dont need one year to 'Internally Review' a request that has been logged by several companies, but then thats Oracle's pace of new enhancements !!!

As a work-around the following can be considered: Build an audit report that identifies all the departmental changes that has occured with the effective date. This report can then be picked up by the HR department who can manually query the record from Core HR and update the value to the correct Expense account. Its a cumbersome and error-prone process, but nevertheless doable. One only hopes that Oracle provides this functionality atleast as part of 12.1.2 release.

BENEFITS: Cafeteria Plan & Flexible Spending Account (FSA)

This topic came about while at lunch, when a colleage wanted to know about Cafeteria Plan in Benefits.

A Cafeteria plan is a type of employee benefit plan offered in the United. Its name comes from the earliest such plans that allowed employees to choose between different types of benefits, similar to a cafeteria lunch menu that you can choose and order. This plan first started in 2005 through which employers could design plans that provided reimbursement benefits on health insurance, group-term life insurance and Flexible Spending Accounts. A certain portion of the employee’s salary is deducted every month and deposited into this account. These deductions are treated as pre-tax deductions and hence attract employee participation


A Flexible Spending Account (FSA) allows an employee to set aside a portion of his or her earnings to pay for qualified expenses as established in the cafeteria plan, most commonly for medical expenses but often for dependent care or other expenses. Money deducted from an employee's pay into an FSA is not subject to payroll taxes, resulting in a substantial payroll tax savings.

There are several types of FSAs and the most popular types are:

Medical Expense FSA
This is used to pay medical expenses that are not paid by the insurance companies. Such expenses usually include Copayments or other deductibles or other expenses that are generally not covered by dental or vision policies including over-the-counter (OTC) drugs.
Remember, a medical FSA will not reimburse expenses for health insurance premiums, cosmetic items such as cosmetic surgery, equipments, or items that improve "general health".

Recently companies that provide FSA programs have introduced FSA debit card that allows for the automatic electronic transfer of pre-tax dollars from an employee account when paying for qualified expenses. Employees are able to receive immediate reimbursement of their medical, dependent care, and commuter expenses simply by using their card at the point of service.


Dependent Care FSA
FSAs can also be used to pay certain expenses for the dependents, like child care, or parental care (for dependent parents who stay with the employee). The dependent care FSA is federally capped at $5,000 per year. While married spouses can each elect to have this amount deducted from their paycheck and applied to expenses, at tax time all withdrawals in excess of $5,000 are taxed. Unmarried couples can each deduct and use $5,000.

Flexible Spending Account plans help employees to reduce their taxes and in turn, save more. They can save on out-of-pocket healthcare and childcare expenses through FSA.
There are several vendors who provide FSA services. Some of the key service providers include: WageWorks, PayFlex, Aflac etc.

Business process: The Business process in most companies generally works like this:
· An employee who wishes to enroll into FSA plan approaches the company either as a new hire or during open enrollment and selects a particular plan.
· This enrollment information is sent by the organization’s benefits department to the service provider, like say Aflac or Mellon Bank.
· The service provider, would then calculate and inform the amount (to the Benefits department) that has to be deducted from the employee’s salary.
· This information is then fed by to the Payroll system, which would then make the deduction from the employee’s payroll.
· This information is then sent to the Benefits department, which arranges to send the amount to the service provider.

Role of the Consultant
As an Oracle Apps functional consultant, you would have to identify and map this business process flow; identify the data elements that are generated at various sources and prepare a flow diagram to show the data flow process. Once you get the client’s agreement and concurrence on the Business and data flow process, it would help you to prepare a technical specification and hand over the same to your technical team for preparing the interfaces.

In many cases these service provider will perform the necessary calculation and handle the claims directly with the employees. However, the ERP system, such Oracle Core HR or Benefits will be responsible for housing the employee and compensation/benefits data.

SSHR: DFFs on a Self-Service Page

Q. How do you find the DFFs that are supported on a particular Self-Service ?


I got this frantic call today morning from a friend who wanted to know how to find the DFF's that are supported on a particular web Page in Self-Service and more specifically, wanted to display a few segments from the Additional Job Details DFF on the Self-Service screen. Well, here is what I have learnt:


Let us take the example of ‘Change Job Function’ that is called from Manager Self-Service Responsibility. When the page opens, you can find the 'Flexfield References' section, a list of the flexfields which are supported by this page are listed. These are DFF for which you can Create an Item for.


If a DFF you wish to add to the page is not in this list, then this page cannot have the DFF added to it without customising the code. Offcourse, this would not be supported by Oracle.



You can navigate to the Change Job function > Under Change Job: Assignment Select About This page


You will see the possible DFF the form could support if you attached this DFF on this form:


Remember: Additional Job Details DFF is one of the DFFs that is not supported in Self-Service by Oracle, though no one knows the reason. There are several Enhancement Requests pending and one can only hope that it will find its way into the group sometime post 12.1.1 release.

CORE HR: Workers Compensation Code

Overview:
Workers Compensation (WC) is a type of insurance coverage provided for employees who may get injured while at work. Employees who are covered under Workers Comp by their employers relinquish their right to sue the employer for negligence. Employers enter into an agreement with Insurance companies (also called WC Insurance carriers). Jobs that exist within an organization are categorized based on the hazards associated with the job and each job is given a WC Code and a rate.

Generally jobs with similar profiles are grouped together under a common WC Code. A given job does not necessarily have the same classification and code from state to state. However, within a state, the same code normally covers a number of different jobs judged to have a similar risk level, so in each state all your jobs may fall into a fairly small number of codes.

Many states provide WC Coverage through state run funds, but in certain states, the government permits employers to use private WC insurance carriers. All such carriers will use the same WC Code. However each carrier may quote a different rate for the job. Also, the rate quoted by the insurance carrier for the same Job may vary between different locations within the same state.

Workers Comp Override:
In certain situations, it may be necessary to override an employee’s WC Code from the default value associated with the employee’s job. Example, if a field engineer working in Kansas is deputed for a certain temporary period to Alaska, the WC might have to be overridden with a new value assuming that the risk level at Alaska is different from that of Kansas.

Workers comp regulations exist in several countries and are called by different names such as Compo in Australia, INSS (Instituto Nacional do Seguro Social) in Brazil etc.

To setup a WC Codes and Rates, follow the sequence shown here:

· All your WC carriers in this state must be set up as external organizations with the classification Workers Compensation Carrier. For states that do not have private carriers, there will be only one carrier.
· If there are carriers whose rates differ for particular work locations, those locations must be entered in the system.

To enter WC work classification codes and rates:
1. Query the state and carrier for which you are entering codes and rates. To enter rates for a particular location, also query the location. If you leave the Location field blank, the rates you enter are the default rates for this carrier and state.
2. Enter each code and its associated rate in the Code and Rate fields. When finished, save your work.

Select the Carrier and the state. If there are multiple locations in the state which have different WC rates, then the same should be recorded separately.
Enter the various codes and enter the employer rates and employee rates (if applicable). There are certain situations where the employees also contribute to the WC fund and the rate or amount entered here will be picked up by Payroll for processing.

Calculation Methods: Oracle supports three types of calculation methods:
1. Percent of Subject Earnings
2. Hourly Rate
3. Flat Amount Per Period
Percentage of Subject Earnings: Here the deductions are based on the amount that the employee earns and is a flat amount. Also the period should be chosen. Example: If the period is selected as ‘Year’ and if $7.50 per year is specified, then $7.50 will be deducted from the next pay period and then again in the first pay period of the following year.

Hourly Rate: Here the Period field is not relevant. Example: If the employer and employee rates are in units of dollars per hour, say 1.50, then the WC rate will be deducted at the rate of $1.5/Hour and the total amount will be calculated based on the total hours worked by the employee. The hours used to calculate the amount deducted are the regular hours worked. Overtime can be included in the calculation.

Flat Amount Per Period:
The WC amounts are specified in units of dollars per specified period, where 10.0000 = $10/Period. For this calculation method a period must be specified. The valid choices for Period are Year, Month, and Quarter. The amount specified will be deducted at the beginning of the period.
For example: If the period is specified as Year, and If 25.00 is specified, then $25 will be deducted from the next pay period and then again in the first pay period of the following year.
Percent of Subject Earnings is the default calculation method if none is chosen

Entering Workers Comp Codes in Oracle Apps:
Use US HRMS Manager (or equivalent) responsibility. Navigate to Work Structures>Jobs>Workers Compensation

Some states impose an Executive Weekly Maximum, which sets an upper limit on the amount of an employee's earnings available for inclusion in his or her payroll exposure. Hence the value entered for Executive Weekly Maximum caps the dollar value for any employee's earnings.

Select the State. If the state allows for overtime to be included in the calculation for the WC fund contribution, then select the overtime categories. In the Codes for Jobs, select the Jobs and enter the corresponding codes.

Entering a WC Override Code

You may be required to enter a WC code for an employee that overrides the default code associated with his or her job. This situation can arise when, for example, workers in a relatively high-risk job classification begin work at a job site, and the risk of injury for any worker at the site is judged to increase.
Enter WC code overrides in the window GREs and Other Data.

Prerequisites
• The employee's assignment must include a work location and a job with a WC code.
• The employee's assignment must have a SUI state and a GRE on record. There must be a WC insurance carrier entered for the GRE. An association of the WC codes for the SUI state with the default rates of the GRE's WC carrier must be in place.


To enter a WC override code:

In the WC Override Code field, select the override code.

Note: If no list of codes is available, check that all the prerequisites for override code selection are in place.

CORE HR: Multiple Salary Bases for a single element ??

A friend of mine sent me this question “Can we create multiple salary bases with the same element?”

Yes. From an application standpoint you can, but there are certain constraints. Besides, before you embark upon the need to create multiple salary bases on the same element, stop and think – What is the business need for doing the same? Are you using multiple assignments in your organizations where you want the pay information to go to the same element for costing purposes?

Oracle looks for a uniqueness while creating the salary basis. The element Name + the Input Value + Grade Rate combinations should be unique for you to create multiple salary basis for the same element. If this constraint is violated then Oracle will throw up an error and will not allow the creation of a second salary basis.

I have built a sample scenario to explain the concept.
Create an earning element as shown below.

Create Input values as shown here. Notice that I have created three Input values: two input values that have Money as the Units and one as the Hour. You will understand the reasoning behind the same as you read further.


Navigate to Total Compensation > Basic > Salary Basis. Create a Salary basis as shown below and select the element that we have created above. Select the Input value as shown below. You may notice that when you select the LOV in the ‘Input Value Name’ field, you will see two values (a) Pay Value and (b) New Pay Value.

The reason is quite obvious. Both of them have the units as money and you create a salary basis with input values that accept monetary units.

After saving the salary basis, create another salary basis. I have chosen the name as “AP_Test_Salary_Basis 2”. When you tab out after selecting the element name, you will see the caution message. You can click OK and continue. Now in the ‘Input Value Name’ field, you can select the other input value “New Pay Value”. You can proceed to save the salary basis.




Finally, create a third salary basis and select the same element. This time, you will encounter the caution message again. Click OK to continue and when you select the Input value, you will see the error message.





The reason for this error message is that Oracle looks for a unique combination to exist between Element Name, Input value and the Grade Rate (Here I am assuming that you don’t use grades).

So bottom line is that you can create multiple salary basis for the same element provided you do not violate the unique constraints. But in real-time scenarios, it is suggested to create salary bases with separate elements.

CORE HR: SIT and EIT

Oracle Apps provides several unique features that enables the storage of additional data elements that do not find a storage in the seeded Oracle forms. These include Special Information Types (SIT) or Extra Information Types (EIT). Though either one can be used to store data, there are certain peculiarities which an implementation consultant should be aware of. Appropriate choice would make the implementation effective and also enable data security.

The section below addresses some of the key differences between the two

Special Information Types (SIT)
SITs are created from Personal Analysis flexfield, a type of Key Flexfield and are visible across the Business Group
SITs are primarily attached to People related data; can also be used with Jobs, Assignment & Locations
SIT form has a start date and end date associated with the SIT row.
Sometimes, SIT can cause performance issues (though very minor)
SITs have limited security restrictions, thus making them unsuitable for storing sensitive data
The Business thumb rule to be adopted while deciding to go for an SIT is dictated by the nature of the data that is to be stored. Generally individual (personal) data that is not very sensitive can be stored using SIT


Extra Information Types (EIT)
EITs are a type of Descriptive Key Flexfield; can be restricted to specific Responsibility
EIT's can be attached to People, Assignment, Job, Position, Location and Organization (via a classification)
EIT forms do not have start and end dates. If you want to create dated information, then you would have to use two of the EIT flexfield attributes to store this information.
EIT’s can be used at Person, Assignment, Job, Location level etc. related issues (like Bonus, Incentive info etc.) may be created in EIT
EITs don’t have any performance issue
EITs can be tied to a responsibility so that the appropriate population can also access the EITS. Since EITs are a type of DFF’s it can be migrated across instances using a tool like Kintana which is not possible with Key Flexfields, to which SITs belong.

The Business thumb rule to be adopted while deciding to go for an EIT is dictated by the nature of the data that is to be stored. Generally compensation data that is may be of sensitive nature (like Employee Incentive Bonus plans, Stock option data etc.) can be stored using EIT

PAYROLL: Salary Indicator for a Hourly Employee

I wanted to share this lesson that I learnt from the HR Business team today:

Do not quote annual salary figures to new hires who will be on non-exempt basis. Always indicate the hourly rate to the person. If an annual salary is indicated to a non-exempt, then there could be rounding issues as explained in the example below:

Assume that the annual salary which has been indicated to a non-exempt new hire is $60000. The standard working hours for the person is 37.5 hrs per week. So the hourly rate for the person will be 60000/ (37.5*52) = 30.76923. If this is rounded to 30.77 per hour. So the annual salary will be 30.77 * 37.5*52 = 60001.5. Though the employee may not complain (because he/she is getting more than 60K), the same employees would scream foul if they got lesser than 60K.

Assume that the annual salary that is quoted to a new non-exempt hire is $44,000. If the standard work hours for this person has been defined as 37.5 hours per week then the hourly rate will work out to 22.5641. If this is rounded to 22.56, then working backwards, we can see that the annual salary that this person earns would be $22.56*37.5 hrs per week * 52 weeks per hour which would be 43992.00 which is a good eight dollars less than what was indicated in the offer letter. Surely this would raise some questions, some of which may even have a legal implication.

CORE HR: Descriptive Flexfields on a Oracle Form

Q. How do you know which descriptive flexfields are available on any form?

This is a frequently asked questions during many interview discussions. Even seasoned consultants may occasionally need to identify a DFF on a particular window. This section helps in the same.




Navigate into any HR form. As an example, you can see the DFF on the Terminate window. Once the window opens up, from the menu, select Help > Diagnostics > Examine. From the Block field, click the list of values (LOV) and select value $DESCRIPTIVE_FLEXFIELD$. Now click on the LOV for the Field field. In this LOV, you will see all descriptive flexfields available on the form. Upon clicking any value here, this will populate the Value field with the full name of the descriptive flexfield.

Example: If you need to find the name of the Flexfield that is available on the termination window (End Employment), you can follow this sequence:

Query the employee record.
Click on Others Button and select ‘End Employment’.
When the Terminate window opens up, Click on Help menu and select Diagnostics > Examine




You may be prompted for an apps password. Enter the same.
When the Examine Field window opens up, open the contents of the Block field. Select the value $DESCRIPTIVE_FLEXFIELD$


Click on the Field drop down and you can see the name of the Flexfield. Select the same and the description can be found in the value field as shown below

Though this might seem very rudimentary, I have seen several consultants fumbling around, trying to find the information.

Another useful information for those who need to identify the base table behind this window, the same method can be used. Select the parameters as shown and you can see the complete query that fetches data to this window:

SSHR: Displaying DFF Segments in Self Service

Problem: I have a DFF (Additional Qualifications Details) which has five segments. I want only the first two to be displayed for Employees Self Service. How do I achieve it?

Analysis:
Through Self-Service Personalizations, we can restrict the segments that can be displayed and hide those that we don’t want.

Example 1: If we have a DFF (Additional Qualifications Details DFF) that has a context called as US_JOB and we have 2 segments defined in that context, then to display both the segments, go to the personalization link and in the Segment List, enter the values as displayed here:
NOTE: Replace the Asterisk "*" displayed here with a Pipe symbol. Due to the limitation of this blogsite, the Pipe symbol is not displayed
US_JOB * Segment1 * Segment2

Example 2:
If you want to display only Segment1, then personalize it as:
US_JOB * Segment1


Displaying multiple context codes by using a double separator .
Example 3: Here, we have certain segments displayed under Global Data Context and certain segments displayed under a separate context called US_TCC then we can define it as follows
"
Global Data Context * 50 PCT Base* 50 PCT Base * * US_TCC* 50 PCT TCC * 50 PCT TCC * Comp RatioComp Ratio
"
Please ensure that the value of the context (from the code) is displayed as the first part.

Example: If a DFF (say Additional Qualification Flexfield) has five segments and if we have to display segment 1 and 2 then we have to personalize it as shown below:

Make sure the segment name is as defined in the flexfield.
Segment1 * Segment2

If we have to display segment 1,2 and 4 then we have to personalize it as shown below:
Make sure the segment name is as defined in the flexfield.
Segment1 * Segment2 * Segment4

NOTE: Replace the Asterisk "*" displayed here with a Pipe symbol. Due to the limitation of this blogsite, the Pipe symbol is not displayed

CORE HR: Pre-requisites for an organization to be available for an employee assignment

Issue: Client has created an organization and classified it as HR Organization. However, the same is not visible from the Employee Assignment screen.

Analysis: For an organization to be available in the Employee’s assignment, there are two conditions to be satisfied:
The organization should have a classification as HR Organization
The organization should be classified as an internal organization.

Steps to address the issue:
Responsibility: US Super HRMS Manager (or equivalent)
Navigation: Work Structures>Organization > Description
Query the Organization.

Query the Organization. Example ‘0805’ is an organization to which People have to be attached.

Once these two conditions are satisfied, then the organization will become visible from an assignment screen as shown here:

A Note on Organization Types: Organization Types are defined by the user and are used for Reporting purposes only. They have no other significant impact in the way the organization functions. Businesses have different levels of hierarchy and may call their various levels by different names. Example: At the Highest level, we may have the Corporate Office (Headquarters) Below that we may have the zonal head offices (called Divisions) Below the Divisions, we may have several Business Units and below them may be the various Groups. Finally Cost Centers (departments) may be the lowest level to which employees are attached. So to accommodate this type of a hierarchy structure, we can create various types called as Corporate Office, Divisions, Business Units, Groups and Cost Centers.
Use the Lookup Type called “ORG_TYPE” to create / edit the various Organization Types. A sample list of Org Type is shown here:

Navigation: Other Definitions > Lookup Tables

Internal versus External Organization: Use the Internal or External field to select whether the organization is internal to the enterprise or external. Example of External Organization includes: Benefit Carriers, third party insurance and benefit carriers, agencies to receive alimony payments or Child Support. For an organization to be available in the assignment window, as described above, the field should be populated as an Internal organization.