After a busy period of development we have made live the changes which are primarily there to make the software easier to use.  An exciting new addition is the new document/file management system which lays across the whole site and supports other areas.

 

New Modules

Document/file management system Read More

 

General

Newly added employees can now be added with their work pattern, working year calendar and mandatory leave calendar.

Edit links have been added to People, Groups and Areas making it quicker to reach the edit page

A Notes area is now available to add your own messages and reminders about each employee in People > Person

A development plans page is now available in the footer of the site which gives details of currently available modules and future ones

Better controls have been added to help the system decide where best to go from one page to another

The People page has moved the licence information to one side and included the employees first name

The layout of some fields have been adjusted to provide a better user experience

The Calendars now include a list of the employees who are using them and allow for an employee to be moved from one to another, in a similar way to the work patterns

Welcome emails can now be sent to all site roles including Client Admins from the Resend welcome email link in their People > Person > Edit page

Messages can now be presented from the development team via the login page

Navigation though the site has been improved

'Specific to' has been removed from the work pattern > Add page

Sickness

The sickness interview now starts in a state where it can be closed immediately on completion rather than having to start the interview first

Expected return to work dates highlight red in the dashboard when they fall in the past.  This date should be either updated or the actual return to work date should be added (if the employee has returned)

 

Leave

Added a totaliser form to the leave year page for an employee which allows you to specify exactly how much you want the total entitlement to be and the software works out what the adjustment should be.  This will be particularly useful when rounding up or down for a new starter.

Mandatory leave that is zero days due to the employee not working on that day is now not shown in their leave list

Added a button to trigger the recalculation of mandatory leave when a new date has been added to an existing year

Hours and days are better represented across the system

The Leave Year page includes the average working day information to help with certain adjustments

Leave Years are created in one step - no need to refresh the page

The urgent warning when recreating a leave year has been removed

ToDos

Tasks have been styled to allow better presentation of the information

Training

Criminal Records Bureau checks (CRB) have been replaced with the new Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) although CRBs can still be recorded for the sake of historical records

Records for the Training Courses Attended (TCA) are styled to allow better presentation of the information

 

HR Lite/Equality and Diversity

Sex and date of birth can now be completed by the employee themselves at My Details > Work

A range of important documents can be recorded in the Work Document area such as Drivers License, MOTs, insurance, Passport and Visas.  Each one with an expiry date.

When looking at your list of People the Super Filter (in the search area) can look for any Work Document that are expired, expiring in 8 weeks or 4 weeks and just show any people it finds.  The date(s) that meet the Super Filters criteria are highlighted in red, orange or yellow to clearly show the offending document and the urgency of its renewal.

You can capture notes for an employee at People > Employee Name > Person (dropdown) > Work/Edit

 

We protect your information in a number of ways.  Firstly the site role give minimal (User), senior management (Management) and Administrative (Client Admin) access to the site. 

Welcome emails are only sent when you are ready to do so.  If the user doesn't receive a Welcome email then they can not login in. 

Line managers of groups can automatically see and manage the employees in their group, even if they are minimal users.

Furthermore Functionality Roles can be given to minimal users to extend their access into the specific areas that they need to see.

Sometimes your sickness types that are included in your site by default might need to be changed and now you can by going to Admin > System Functionality > Sickness > Sickness Types.  from here you can add new sickness categories and edit and remove existing ones.

To create an Admin for a group go to the person you want to be the Admin by going to People > employee name > Person (dropdown) > Work and change their Home group to the Group that you want them to be the Admin for and submit.  Then return to the Home Group area and remove the tick in 'Remove Old Group' and change the Home group back to what it was - the Managers real home group - and submit.  Now go to Groups in the top menu (the groups of this employee).  Here you need to change the 'Role in group' for the group they are an Admin from Member to Admin which you can do by clicking the link.

If you want the admin to receive the same emails as the Manager does then go to Admin > Settings > Email > Email Settings and type #AllAdminsNotMgr# into 'Inc CC Any Excluding Approval' and then click on the 'Moved to' link under Sickness an add the same text in the field 'Email Failover - Alt Admin CC'

#AllAdminsNotMgr# in the CC fields for sickness and leave will copy the same emails sent to the Groups Manager to any Admins setup in the Group. 

If you haven't added an Actual Return to work date (and the status is still Initial report or updated report) then you can remove it by finding it on the list of sicknesses on the Dashboard and clicking the Sickness Reference to open it.  You will find a Remove button at the bottom of the Sickness.

If the Return to work date has been added then you will need to Kill it.  To do this you will need to know which employee was sick and the numerical part of the sickness reference (e.g. SR001234 = 1234).  Then go to Admin > System Functionality > Sickness > Kill Record.

A user can withdraw leave in the future by clicking the Absence Ref in the 'My Future Leave Requests' list on their Dashboard.  At the bottom of the leave request is a Withdraw Request button.

OR

As a line manager (i.e. a Manager of a Group) they can find their direct reports by going to My Details > Groups and click on an employee.

As a Client Admin (the access you have) or Management Site Role you can access an employee simply by going to People > employee name.

...From there go to Leave > Leave and click on the Future leave request to cancel.  Click the Approved link to open the decision box and change the decision from Approved to Cancel Request and Submit.

In some cases you will want to cancel leave that falls in the past and to do that you must be a Client Admin and go to Admin > System Functionality > leave > Kill Record.  You will need to know the person its for and the numerical part of the Absence Reference (e.g. Ar001234 = 1234).  This extra control on past leave gives you more security in the system.

Go to Admin > Settings > Calendars > Your Calendars and choose the 'Working Year' Calendar.  From this page you will see a list of the years at the bottom (e.g. 2011 - 2014).  To add 2015 you should change the 'Num periods' from 4 to 5 and Submit.  This will add another year to the list at the bottom of the page.  Then you should check to see that the new year includes all the appropriate Bank Holidays.  You can do this by clicking on the Period name for 2015.

This is the only required yearly task but doing it about now for the next year is a good idea.  Obviously you could add a few years by changing it to 7 for instance but if you go to far ahead the Bank Holidays won't be added automatically (so you'll have to do this yourself) and this is a good way to restrict leave being booked too far into the future before you've added rules for that year or mandatory leave etc.