Creating event reasons during implementation

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to Create an event reason.

Event and event reason administration

Events are job occurrences that span over the employee lifecycle. Employee Central delivers a standard exhaustive Events picklist. You cannot add a custom Event. You can, however, deactivate or relabel the Event picklist values.

Employee Central also lets customers differentiate the reasons behind an event using the Event Reason foundation object. For example, a promotion could be a lateral promotion with no pay change or a vertical move with a salary increase.

Review the following interaction for examples of events and event reasons.

Event and Event Reasons allow customers to do the following:

  1. Keep a clear report about what changes were made.
  2. Comply with the legal or corporate policy regarding employee changes.

Employee Central requires an Event and Event Reason for every job and compensation change. Hence, initiating Job and Compensation Information transactions always requires an Event and an Event Reason.

Event Reason

Event reason is an XML-based Foundation Object. The records are managed through the Manage Organization, Pay and Job Structures interface. In the following figure, Event Reasons, you can see an example of an event reason for ACE, Corp.

Event Reasons are tethered to Events and define the employee status. Do not modify or repurpose the employee-status picklist to ensure the status is correctly assigned to event reasons.

Event reason derivation

Event Reason Derivation

No Event Reason DerivationEvent Reason Derivation (Preferred)
Event and Event Reason are manually chosen for changes made to employee dataUse Business Rules to trigger an Event, Event Reason, and Workflow based on changes made to employee data
Use Business Rules to connect Workflow to triggered Event ReasonRequires more initial setup
Quicker more simplified solutionMore accurate reporting
 User-friendly

You learned that Event and Event Reasons are mandatory for employment-related transactions. When managers initiate a transaction, they manually choose the appropriate event and event reason, making it error-prone and the resulting reports unreliable.

To streamline this process, Event Reason Derivation (ERD) can be set up for customers so that the system automatically selects the correct event reason according to the changes made to an employee's data. The employee status is updated, if necessary, depending on the event reason.

Appropriate event reasons are determined using business rules. ERD requires a lot of initial setups since each possible data change in Job Information and Comp Information must be anticipated and tied to a specific event reason. For example, the system must differentiate between employee transfers, promotions, location changes, pay changes, position changes, etc.

Customers who want ERD set up for their system should first determine the event reasons they need to cover for all types of changes in the system. Then they need to determine the field changes associated with each event reason. If a rule does not set the event reason, the system issues an error, and the initiator cannot resolve the error.

For Hire, Rehire, and Termination events, event reasons are manually selected. You cannot create a derivation rule to assign event reasons for such events automatically.

If a customer chooses not to use ERD, the Event and Event Reason will always be chosen by the user initiating the transaction.

Business rules can trigger a workflow tied to the event reason to ensure the transaction goes through the appropriate approval process before it is active.

Bypassing Event Reason Derivation

Even with Event Reason Derivation turned on, those given the RBP rights to Insert New Record from the history of jobInfo and compInfo blocks can bypass this process. If you do not go through the Take Action button available on employee files, you will manually choose the event and related event reason for the change you are making. When you update the necessary fields and choose Save, the change is automatically stored, and no workflow is triggered.

This is referred to as an HR Edit and only given to an administrative audience.

To review, when ERD is turned on and the individual performing the change navigates through Take Action or uses the Pencil icon (edit) on the block the system chooses the correct event and event reason. This then triggers a workflow if one is configured for that particular change. If the individual navigates through History → Insert New Record, they must manually choose the event and event reason, and no workflow is ever triggered.

Event Reason Derivation on Imports

To have the event reason derived during imports, you must enable the Enable Business Rules for selected entities’ permission for imports.

If a value is entered in the event reason column of the import template, it takes precedence over the Employee Reason Derivation by the onSave rule. If the column is empty, the event reason is derived by the onSave business rule.

Country-specific event reasons

Customers operating in multiple countries/regions often have event reasons specific to that country/region. As the employee is always clearly assigned to one legal entity and one specific country/region, you can set up the system to show only the relevant event reason records for that employee.

When it is set up, administrators and managers can use the records on all screens with an event reason field. These could be Employment/Personal Information pages, Update Employee Records pages, History pages and others.

This feature is helpful for the following reasons:

  • Large customers operating in multiple countries/regions that have several legal entities in one country
  • Customers that have a high number of country/region-specific event reasons

High-Level Configuration Steps

  1. Modify Country/Region object to include a composite association with Event Reason Wrapper.
  2. In Manage Data, add to include event reasons applicable for each country. You can also import using Import and Export Data tool.

Exercise: Create a job change event reason and workflow

Business Example

ACE Corp wants to create a new event reason and workflow as preparation for automating their process.

Note

You must have completed Prepare an Instance (Unit 1) and Prepare the Data Models (Unit 2) exercises before completing this hands-on. This exercise activity is not required for completing succeeding hands-on exercises for this course.

Steps

  1. Go to Manage Organization, Pay and Job Structres to create a new event reason. Use the table to define the event reason.

    Event Reason FieldValue
    Effective Date01/01/1990
    Event IDJOBINFOCHANGE
    Event NameJob Info Change
    StatusActive
    EventData Change
    1. Log into your instance.

    2. Navigate to Manage Organization, Pay and Job Structures.

    3. Select Create NewEvent Reason

    4. Use the table to define the event reason and choose Save.

    5. OPTIONAL: Set up the permission of the new event reason for the System Admin Role. Edit the permissions for the System Admin role to include all Event Reasons in the Employee Data permission category.

  2. Go to Manage Organization, Pay and Job Structures to create a new workflow. Use the table to define the workflow.

    Workflow FieldValue
    Workflow IDJOBCHANGEWKFLW
    Workflow NameJob Info Change Workflow
    Approver 1Current/Source Employee’s Manager’s Manager
    Approver 2Current Employee HR
    ContributorCurrent Employee Manager
    CC RoleCarla Grant
    1. Navigate to Manage Organization, Pay and Job Structures.

    2. Select Create NewWorkflow.

    3. Use the table to define the workflow and Save.

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