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Friday Feature – HRA Packages

Previously, we discussed how HRAs work and what an HRA item is. Now, we are going to put that together into HRA packages. Since I like to cook, I will use that as an analogy for HRA packages. It’s like this — your HRA package is your meal, your items are the meat and potatoes, and your To Dos are the spices that go on each of your Items.
Check it out. Let’s use a typical HRA Employee Separation package for our meal. For an employee to separate, you need to change their assignment, pay, and create a vacancy. Those items are our meat, potatoes and vegetable. Then there are several To Dos that are required when an employee separates, like gathering their assets, turning off their network access, and conducting an exit interview. Those To Dos are the spices on the meat.

In addition, the package has its own status, as does each item. So, just because you finished eating your potatoes, your meal is not complete, mister. In other words, the package does not change to the Complete status, until every item and To Do has been completed.

Ok. Enough of the analogy. Let’s look at a real Employee Separation Package. There are three items in the package: Emp Separation, Emp Pay Separation, and Vacancy.

The Emp Separation ends the employee’s assignment, sets the termination date, rehire flag and other demographic information.

The Emp Pay Separation ends all of the employee’s payroll records, including setting the last paycheck date. This item is created automatically when you submit the Emp Separation item.

The Vacancy item is created based on the question, “What do you want to do with the assignment?” asked in the Emp Separation item. Depending on the answer, different types of items are created. In this case, the assignment is now vacant, but it could have been an End Position item.

Now, I have to admit that we haven’t really discussed To Dos, but we will have a taste today and then gorge on the details next week. When the Emp Separation was submitted, three tasks were created (due to the workflow definition). Whenever an employee terminates employment with this district, three things must happen:

Technology group must retrieve the employee’s district assets
Technology group must remove all access points to district networks and services
HR group must conduct an exit interview, including all of the paperwork related to the termination.

As you can see, To Dos do not have approvals. They are simple tasks that must be performed. The workflow definition notifies the appropriate roles and when the work is complete, the person sets the Complete flag (last column) to YES. In this example, you can see that the Technology group has gathered the assets, but not yet removed all access points, nor has the HR group done the exit interview.

Another interesting point is that To Dos are associated with a single item (first column). All of these To Dos are tied to the Emp Separation item.

Next week, we will dive deeper into To Dos, their setup and how to create them manually. Bon Appétit!

Friday Feature – HRA Items

Last week, we started our series on HRAs by giving you an overview of HRAs. This week we are going to look at HRA Items, the detail form for routing changes.
Let’s quickly review what we learned last week: HRAs allow for approval routing and notification of proposed changes including employee separation, new employee, changes to position, etc. When all approvals are granted and the item is posted, the changes are applied to the records as defined in the item. Each HRA item can have a different workflow, defining approvals and notifications.

Now, what exactly is an HRA item? An HRA item is a form where you can enter data that you want written to a permanent Escape Online record after you have received approvals. For example, the Employee Demographic Changes HRA has many of the same fields as the first tab of the Employee record. You enter the data you want to update, route for approvals, and then when approvals are given, Escape Online writes your data to the Employee record.

In the end, it is exactly the same as if you had gone into the Employee record and directly entered your data. The HRA simply provides approvals and notifications BEFORE the changes are written to the permanent record.

Here we have a Demographic Change Form (one of the HRA Items that is currently being used at a customer). Notice how only the Last Name and Previous Name fields have data. That’s because you only enter what you want to change! So, if the employee got married AND moved, the address would be filled out too. It’s that simple.

But what if you want something a little more complicated, like an employee separation? We have several sample HRA Items — employee separation, employee payroll separation, position change, position end, and position recruitment — which can be customized to fit your needs. They all use the same concept: enter the data you want to change, answer a couple of questions to determine the logic for the item, send for approvals, get approvals, and update the database.

You can see how these items can work together to vastly improve your workflow. And, indeed, they do in a feature we call HRA packages, where an employee separation automatically creates an employee payroll separation and, depending on your logic, automatically creates a position change, position end or position vacancy HRA item.

Pretty awesome! Stay tuned for the next installment on July 11 (we will be closed on July 4), when we walk through an employee separation HRA package!

Friday Feature – HRA Overview

This seems to be the year of the series. We have had a series on leaves, workflows, payroll encumbrances and manual approvals. And, now we are going to have a series on HRAs. In preparation for Terri’s upcoming webinar (sign up now), we are going to take a close look at this incredibly powerful feature.
First, let’s start with the question that is on everybody’s mind, “What is an HRA?”

So glad you asked! HRA stands for Human Resource Authorization – what we call workflows. It is an electronic document that allows you to route changes to employees, positions and other HR records for approvals, notifications, task requests (called a “To Do”) and eventually updates to the records. Before we begin the discussion, let’s define the terms:

HRA – Create a custom form (or use one of our standards) to enter the data you want to change.
Approvals – Route a request to groups or an individual for approval. For example, you may want to get approval for a new employee from the Principal, HR, Payroll, Budget, and/or the Superintendent. This is the same workflow we discussed earlier in the workflow series. If you want to dive deep into workflow approvals, I would check out the Workflow Approval Leveling and Workflow Approve All Flag blogs.
Notifications – Send an email to someone who needs to know but does not need to approve. For example, you may want to notify the Department Chair that all approvals have been given for the hiring of a new employee in the department.
Task Requests (To Dos) – Route a request to a group or an individual for a task to be completed. For example, you may want to notify the graphics department that you will be placing an ad for a new employee. Or, you may want to notify IT that an employee is terminating so they can pick up the person’s tablet.
Record Updates – Once all of the approvals have been given, Escape Online uses the data you entered to update the database. So, if you have a new employee HRA, once approved, Escape Online creates an Employee record, Assignment record, Person (retirement) record and any other record that your custom HRA may require to be created.

Pretty cool! Let’s look at an example from one of our customers that has been using HRAs for over a year. Here is their New Employee form:

When someone enters the data and submits this form, this LIVE customer has the following workflow setup:

Approvals – Routes to the Program Manager, Business Services and the Project Liaison.
Notifications – Sends an email to the person who created the HRA and any previous approvers if the HRA is denied, returned to the Open status, cancelled, put on hold, or taken off hold. In addition, when the HRA is complete or if there is an error in the posting, an email is sent to the person who created the HRA.
Task Requests (To Dos) – Routes a request to an individual in HR to print a copy of the HRA and create an employee file.
Record Updates – Creates an Employee record, Assignment record, and Person (retirement) record.

Doesn’t sound like how you would set it up? Exactly. That is the beauty of HRAs. They are what you want them to be.

Let’s spend the next few weeks diving deep into how HRAs work, so you can imagine how they might save you time and money. Beautiful!

Friday Feature – Alternative Leaves

Last week we talked about leftover leave balances. Let’s continue the conversation with a twist: alternative leave balances. This is where one usage affects more than one balance. For example, sick leave is affected by personal business and personal necessity.
Check it out.

Here is the setup from a LIVE customer. They have “personal business” set up to affect “personal necessity” and “sick.” In addition, they set up personal necessity to affect sick leave, if that leave type is used instead of personal business.

That’s powerful.

And, it all happens simultaneously. So if an employee puts in for a leave of personal business, when the HR technician enters and saves that leave usage transaction, Escape Online creates the leave usage transactions for the alternate leave balance codes and deducts the leave from all three: personal business, personal necessity and sick.

On the other hand, if the leave is for personal necessity, Escape Online deducts the leave from personal necessity and sick. Finally, if the leave is for sick, Escape Online ONLY deducts the leave from sick.

Now that we understand the concept, let’s take a look at a LIVE example from an employee of that district.

The highlighted rows are exactly the same except for the leave balance. This shows how the HR technician entered one transaction, affecting three balances. Notice how they all have the same Create, Begin and End dates.

Also, notice how the last row in the graphic (not highlighted) is for sick leave and that there is only one line for that transaction.

Escape Online processes each type of leave accordingly. And, it does it all automatically, based on some simple setup. Amazing!

Stay tuned for next week’s topic on transferring leave balances, a new feature that is going to knock your socks off.

Friday Feature – Leftover Leave

You may have heard the cliché, “use it or lose it” but have you heard of “use it or get an extra paycheck?” Of course, I am referring to vacation balances. Some of our customers have a vacation policy that does not include carrying over a balance, and that means that something must be done with the leftover. Escape Online supports paying off leave balances and docking pay for leave overages. Let’s take a look at how this works.

Docks. Each leave balance profile can be set up to go negative or dock an employee’s pay every earnings period.
Payoffs. Each leave balance can be set up to payoff excess leave in the employee’s last earnings period.

Here is the setup. It is super easy!

All you have to do is set the flag in the Leave Balance Profile and specify the addons to be used in the Organization record.

Everything else is automated. The users entering the leave transactions simply enter the transaction. They don’t have to do anything special. This is awesome because many of our customers have their site users entering leaves.

Escape Online creates the docks/payoffs automatically based on your setup. And, it gives you two opportunities to override.

First, when the HR/Payroll Technician loads leaves into payroll (in the Leave Status activity), Escape Online shows each dock or payoff, giving the technician an opportunity to allow the leave to go negative or carry over.

Second, when the leaves are posted Escape Online creates the addons for the dock or the payoff. Again, the user has the opportunity to override the amount in the Adjust Payroll activity.

Slick!

Let’s take a look a “real” example. Say an employee has 6 hours of vacation but uses 10 hours; the payroll technician has the option of docking the employee’s pay for 4 hours or allowing the vacation balance to go negative.

On the other hand, say an employee has 20 hours of vacation but has only used 10. Escape Online would create an addon paying the employee for those 10 hours on their last earnings period. Again, the technician has the opportunity to override and allow those 10 hours to carry over to the next year, or adjust the amount for any other reason.

Leave docks/payoffs are one more example of how Escape Online provides expert functionality with simple setup, and that is very slick indeed.

Friday Feature – Controlling Cash

While cash is always important, this time of year the control of cash is imperative. Districts and County Offices of Education need to close cash and make sure that nothing changes in the closing fiscal year.
Fabulously, Escape Online gives you the control you need. Not only can you control when cash is closed, but also at what level. Let me explain.

The When

The “when” is controlled through the cash and close dates in the Fiscal Year Status activities. (Districts only need to fill in these dates if they want cash to close on a date earlier than defined by their COE.)

For each month, you have two fields that control the closing of cash:

The Close Cash field defines the date when cash for the level can no longer be changed.
The Close field defines the date when the ledger is closed.

At What Level

The “at what level” is controlled by the JE Check Cash Closed Option field in the Organization record. (COE control is in the System table.)

This field defines at what level users will be stopped from posting journal entries that move cash after the cash is closed. Levels include:

Any – JEs will not post if there are any cash accounts in the journal entry, as determined by the cash object.
Fund – The journal entry will not post if there is a change in cash at the fund level. For example, if a journal entry transferred between funds, the JE would not post. However, users can post JEs that transfer cash between resources.
Overall – JEs will not post if there is a change in overall cash across funds. Users can post JEs that transfer cash between funds as long as overall cash is not changed.
Resource – JEs will not post if there is a change in cash at the fund or resource level. Users can only post JEs with changes to cash where the accounts are within the same resource/fund combination. In other words, if a JE transferred cash between funds — or even across resources within the same fund — that JE would not post.
SACS Fund – JEs will not post if there is a change in SACS fund rollup cash.

What Happens

When you attempt to post a JE, Escape Online checks to see if the JE affects cash and at what level. Then, it checks the appropriate date in the Fiscal Year Status: the Close Cash Date or the Close Date.

Affects cash for level specified – Checks today’s date against the close cash date for the Fiscal Year status month of the transaction date. If today’s date is after the close cash date, the journal entry is automatically put on hold (instead of posted) and a history record is written.
Does not affect cash for level specified – Checks today’s date against the close date for the Fiscal Year status month of the transaction date. If today’s date is after the close date, the journal entry is automatically put on hold (instead of posted) and a history record is written.

Fabulous! Escape Online puts you in control of the cash!

Friday Feature – Final Payment

We are about to enter Year End for school business. This is a time when expenditures and revenues cross fiscal years. It is a time when decisions need to be made: which requisitions will be accrued, carried forward to the next year or closed. One of the ways Escape Online helps you manage this process is through the use of the Final Payment flag for vendor requisitions.

With one click of the mouse, you can signal that this requisition has received all of the payments that it is ever going to receive. Escape Online takes it from there.

If you mark a payment as final, Escape Online releases any unused liability amount(s), adjusts the account amounts to reflect the actual payment account amounts, sets the requisition total amount to the sum of all payment amounts and updates the requisition adjusted amount by any difference between the original total amount and the payment total amount. And, finally, changes the status of the requisition to “Complete.”

That’s pretty awesome for a single flag!

But that’s not all. Escape Online tries to help you set the flag at the right time! If the sum of all payments for a requisition (including the one you just entered, but not including any that have been denied or cancelled) is greater than or equal to the requisition amount and you did not flag the payment as the final payment, the payment will be put on hold and the message “Final Payment?” will be written to the Status Comment field.

This handy-dandy little flag allows you to easily make partial payments and even keep a requisition with a zero balance open so that you can process it on your year end list!

Time and Attendance: Frequently Asked Questions

If you have questions about our time and attendance tool (formerly known as VeriTime), you’re in the right place! We’ve put together the questions we most frequently hear from school districts who are looking to use Frontline Absence & Time to manage employee time electronically.

What is Frontline’s Time & Attendance software?

Time & Attendance (formerly known as VeriTime) within Frontline Absence & Time is a web-based time and attendance management system built specifically for K-12.

Why isn’t it called VeriTime anymore?

When we launched our time tracking software in 2011 as a counterpart to Absence & Substitute Management (known as Aesop at the time), we chose the name VeriTime.

As we began to move toward a more holistic set of solutions instead of individual products to support improved collaboration in our customers’ organizations, we found that our old product names no longer supported our goal of offering a single integrated platform. So, we retired the name VeriTime and replaced it with a more functional descriptor (‘Time & Attendance’).

What are some of the benefits of tracking employee time with Frontline Absence & Time?

With our time and attendance tool, K-12 organizations can electronically capture employee time, easily approve timesheets, automatically apply unique payroll rules (even comp time and exception pay) and streamline the payroll process.

That means your school district can:

Save hours spent managing employee time
Eliminate the need for spreadsheets or paper timesheets
Improve compliance with labor laws and bargaining agreements
Increase accountability and control labor costs
Ensure accuracy when running payroll

How does it help your district save money?

In an average school district, labor costs take up 70-85% of the overall budget. On top of that, the average organization overpays their employees by 1.2% because of payroll errors and inaccuracies. That could be from inaccurate timesheets (solved by electronically capturing employee hours) or mistakes made from manually entering data into your systems.

Frontline Absence & Time solves both of these problems by electronically capturing employee hours, automatically calculating and processing payroll rules and integrating with your payroll system. Plus, you can prevent unnecessary overtime by monitoring hours in advance.

How does it work with Absence & Substitute Management (formerly known as Aesop)?

We built it to work hand-in-hand with our absence management tool, giving you the full picture of employee attendance. You can track positive time (when employees are present) and negative time (when they’re absent) within the same solution, without needing to log in and out of different systems. This allows you to ensure that timesheets are accurate before running payroll.

Another wonderful benefit of having both tools under one roof is the ease of managing accruals — employees can accrue leave based on their actual hours worked, and leave balances update automatically as employees take time off. If your district provides paid sick days to substitutes, Frontline Absence & Time can manage that entire process for you, too!

How does it capture employee time?

Our solution gives you a variety of options for tracking employee time. You can choose to have online timesheets that employees fill out easily from their own computer, or you can have timesheets auto-populate based on the user’s work schedule, which the employee then validates or changes – complete with electronic signature. Or, employees can easily clock in and out with their ID and PIN on any computer, tablet or other internet-connected device (whether their own device or a kiosk you set up). You can also choose to have them scan in using barcodes, proximity cards, magnetic cards or even biometric scanners from other vendors.

You can also use the IP address range feature to prevent employees from clocking in at home or from the wrong location. And to further improve accountability, employees cannot alter timesheets without their supervisor’s approval.

What about integrations?

In addition to being compatible with a wide array of clock-in devices, Frontline Absence & Time also integrates with most of the payroll providers commonly used by school districts. You can find out if your preferred vendor already integrates with our solution on our partners page. If you don’t see one of your vendors on the list, just send us a message and we’d love to discuss your needs.

{See if your vendor is already an integration partner.}

What makes Frontline’s solution different?

Our tool was designed with K-12 school districts in mind, offering a simple-to-use product that’s just what you need, without being bogged down with unnecessary features you can’t use. You can customize the system for all your different bargaining groups, manage split funding and gain real-time visibility into where your employees are in case of a drill or emergency. And because it’s part of Frontline Absence & Time, you gain unprecedented visibility into employee attendance across the district.

Learn more about Frontline Absence & Time

Absence and Substitute Management (Aesop) Frequently Asked Questions

Questions on our absence and substitute management tool formerly known as Aesop? You’ve come to the right place!

Here are a few of the most frequent questions we hear from school districts who are researching Frontline Absence & Time for automated sub-calling and leave management. Don’t see your question here? Don’t hesitate to contact us!

Why isn’t it called Aesop anymore?

Once upon a time, we only had one product — Aesop. And ever since then, we’ve enjoyed hearing everyone’s ideas about what the name actually means. Did we name it after a famous Greek storyteller? Or could it stand for Artificial Earth Satellite Observation Program? It actually stands for Automated Educational Substitute OPerator.

It’s still automated, and it still finds substitutes for education organizations, and it still operates. But it does more than that, so Aesop is now the absence and substitute management tool within a larger Frontline solution (Frontline Absence & Time).

Will teacher absences increase with an automated management system?

Some districts worry that an automated system will make it easier for teachers to take unnecessary absences because it requires less accountability than talking to a “real” person.

But in fact, the opposite is often true. A study by the Substitute Teaching Division of STEDI.org showed that when principals have access to teacher absence monitoring technology, absenteeism lowers by nearly 14%.

With our tools, central office and campus users have access to electronic reports on everything from leave reasons and balances to the most common absence types and high absence days. You can use this data to monitor trends, have conversations with employees and encourage attendance.

It’s all about using the data that you have!

Learn More

Lower your district’s absence rates and save money
See the big picture of teacher absenteeism

How much does Frontline Absence & Time cost?

Districts pay a monthly subscription based on the number of active employees on the system (not including substitutes). This subscription actually includes just 10 months of the school year; two summer months are free. Districts also pay an initial setup and training fee. Please contact us for a quote.

Teachers and substitutes do not pay anything to use the system through their local school district(s).

How will we get the most qualified substitutes in the classroom?

Research shows that between kindergarten and 12th grade, students will have spent the equivalent of 2/3 of a school year with someone other than their regular teacher. So it’s important who is filling those absences. Frontline Absence & Time offers a sophisticated set of tools to ensure the best sub is placed each time.

For one, you can set up specific skills and requirements to match a qualified substitute to the absence (for example, requiring a “math” skill for a math teacher absence).

If you wish, you can also create district-, school- and teacher-level preference lists and exclusion lists to further refine who the absence is pushed out to when. For example, you can set more specific criteria further out and then open the job to a wider pool as the start time gets closer. You can even let teachers specify a list of favorites, too, and you can allow both teachers and substitutes to leave feedback.

We also offer online video courses to train substitutes and paraprofessionals to be more effective in the classroom.

Will we lose the personal touch if we switch to an automated system?

While it’s true that Frontline Absence & Time is not a live person, we’ve built a lot of options into the system to help you keep a personal touch in your interactions with your employees.

For example, many districts are using our software’s web alerts to send messages to teachers and substitutes right within the system, and others are using the custom Letter Writer tool to send out helpful communication on a regular basis. We’ve observed that the districts that proactively send helpful tips to their substitutes often seem to have a more satisfied substitute pool.

Who is using Frontline’s absence and substitute management system?

With school districts in every state using our software, there’s a good chance a district near you is using the system! To date, over 4,000 school districts have partnered with us, representing more than 1 million teachers and 500,000 substitute teachers nationwide.

And Frontline Absence & Time isn’t just for teachers, either! Many districts have also discovered the benefits of also tracking and managing leave for other district employees: custodians, bus drivers, para-professionals and even administrators.

Does it integrate with my other software systems?

The built-in Report Writer tool makes it easy for you to export the data you need to share data with many of your other payroll and other HR applications. Plus, our team offers a variety of custom options, including custom-built reports, automated file transfers via SFTP and web services connections.

In fact, we have experience integrating our solutions with more than 100 other software systems!

Is there an app?

Frontline Absence & Time includes mobile-friendly websites for building-level users and employees, making it easier to access critical features on the go from any smartphone, tablet or other internet-enabled device.

With the campus (building-level) mobile site, users can approve absences, assign a substitute, view the daily absence report and more. Our mobile site also includes all the same permission settings as the full site for a consistent experience. The teacher mobile site makes it quick and easy for teachers to create an absence. Current users can access their account at m.aesoponline.com.

Substitutes can also use the system on mobile devices, or use the Jobulator app, a subscription service that constantly checks our system and notifies substitutes when a new job becomes available for them. You can learn more at www.jobulator.com.

Does Frontline Absence & Time integrate with my other software systems?

No, Frontline is not a recruiting or staffing firm. However, we do partner with a number of great staffing companies who do offer these services if you are interested in getting some help recruiting and hiring substitute teachers.

What Frontline Absence & Time does do is track all of your substitutes’ job offers, work history, demographic information (which can often be imported from your other HR systems), and even ratings and feedback on job performance (if you choose to use this feature).

And with Frontline Recruiting & Hiring, you can easily recruit, hire and onboard new substitutes in a fraction of the time. And because our solutions integrate, you can quickly transition new substitute data into our absence and substitute management tool.

Is our district too small to use Frontline Absence & Time?

Would you be surprised to find out that some districts with less than 5 teachers use our tools to manage absences and subs? In fact, more than 500 districts with 100 employees or less use it for sub-calling, leave tracking or both.

Since the subscription is based on the number of employees on the system, it’s more affordable than smaller districts often think. No matter the size of your district, everyone has room to reduce paperwork and increase efficiency, and that’s exactly what Frontline Absence & Time helps you do.

How does Frontline Absence & Time fill jobs?

The system is designed to work exactly the way you want it to! That’s why we were the first to come out with online substitute placement (formerly known as Aesop) and we continue to offer flexible options.

You may be interested to know that the vast majority of absences are not filled over the phone but by proactive substitutes looking for and accepting jobs online. That’s why it’s important to provide communication to your substitutes and to use the tools available in the system to set your requirements and preferences for substitutes for each assignment.

However, many districts still find value in the automated calls to fill absences, especially last-minute absences. Many districts also fill absences by going into the system and assigning a sub of their choosing manually, as well. The choice is up to you!

How many phone lines will I get?

We don’t think you should ever have to worry about things like phone lines when it comes to filling absences. That’s why we don’t delegate a few phone lines to your district (and then later add more or even charge to add more as you grow).

Instead, we provide unlimited phone capability to all our clients and we don’t charge you for extra phone capacity.

What hardware or software do I need to install?

None.

End of story! Our tool formerly known as Aesop is Software-as-a-Service, with zero hardware or software installed at your district. You never have to worry about power outages – the system is monitored 24/7 in our redundant state-of-the art data facilities, ensuring 99.99% system uptime.

Better yet, the system is multi-tenant SaaS — different than others in the industry — which means instead of each district having their own server (and we all know servers can go bad!), everyone is using the same version, which is then hosted across our many servers. That means if one server goes down, the system keeps running; it also means when we make an update, every client benefits from the update immediately!

How is Frontline Absence & Time different from Aesop?

Despite the name change, our software hasn’t changed in terms of functionality. The Aesop product name has been retired, replaced by a functional descriptor (“absence and substitute management”). And to support our goal of giving every district a full picture of employee time and attendance, Aesop is now bundled together with the time-tracking system formerly known as VeriTime — the two tool sets together form Frontline Absence & Time.

Learn more about Frontline Absence & Time

Friday Feature – Workflow Notifications

Escape Online workflow definitions also include a powerful notification feature. Let’s take a look!

This is a screenshot of a step within a workflow definition. Honestly, this is not a LIVE example because I wanted to show you all of the options in one shot, so to speak.

As you can see, there are three types of notifications that you can set up.

Notify User: This allows you to notify a specific Escape Online user of an event. For example, say Celeste is the Principal and she wants to be notified every time an HRA is completed for her school. To do this, she would have the location set in her Workflow Role User record and have her user specified here in this step.

Notify Other: This allows you to notify a particular type of user, like document originator or previous approvers. Many of our LIVE customers use this to notify users of cancellations or documents that were denied during the approval process.

Notify Workflow Role: This allows you to notify a group of users, like purchasing, budget managers or IT. Some customers have used this to notify budget managers of requisitions over a certain dollar amount going to the Complete status. Others have used it in HRAs for employee termination to notify the IT department about an employee’s departure so they can remove the employee’s access points.

All three of these options can be used in combination with each other. In fact, you could create several steps in a workflow so that you could closely control who gets notified and when.

Friday Feature – Workflow Approve All Flag

As we can see here, the ALL flag is set to yes for level 10, workflow role Admin Appr. (When you see this flag set to YES that means everyone with the workflow role for that level MUST approve the document before the next level of users would receive notification of required approvals.) To see who is attached to the workflow role, we need to check out the System-Setup-Workflow-Workflow Role Users activity.

The Workflow Role Users activity is where you tie a workflow definition to a User record in Escape Online and define how the user works within the workflow structure for documents, departments, locations, goods/services and accounts.

Here’s a snapshot of the Workflow Role Users activity.

Actually, in this LIVE example from a customer, there are quite a few workflow users for this workflow role, so I focused the graphic on only those approvers for location HR97, and I highlighted some of the account component codes so we can get deep into the intricacies of workflow.

Let’s say we have a requisition for location HR97 and its account has 5043 for the management component. That requisition MUST be approved by Jamie, Jan and Randy before moving onto level 20. Here’s another one. If the requisition is for HR97 and the management component is 7279 (the second code on Jamie’s line), the requisition would need approvals by both Jamie and Randy. If the requisition has management code 5042 (not in Jamie, Jan or Jim’s list), then only Randy will have to approve.

But what if the Approve All flag was set to NO?

I sometimes find being contrary can help me understand concepts better. If the flag for level 10 was set to NO that means that anyone who matches the criteria can approve for the whole level. Using our first example, if a requisition is for location HR97 and its account has 5043 for the management component, then Jamie, Jan OR Randy can approve.

In this LIVE example, there are a lot of levels and a lot of criteria for each level of approvals. The COE that developed these workflow definitions spent a lot of time discerning how workflows could be used for their business practices. Escape Online allows workflows to be as complex or simple as you need them to be, with users working together or separately to approve documents as they go through the life cycle.

Friday Feature – Workflow Approval Leveling

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Or in this case, the principal or the superintendent. The key feature of workflow approvals is flexibility. You can define approval paths any way you like. You can go for the simple (principal, budget manager, purchasing) or the complex (principal or assistant principal, budget manager but only if over $500, program manager for certain account components, and CBO). Even though these seem very different, both of these scenarios have only a few levels. You could go really crazy and create up to 99 levels, because that is how flexible workflow approvals are.

Let’s take a look at two LIVE examples of leveling currently being used at two different districts.

The first example has many levels. The levels tell Escape Online the order in which the approvals are to take place.

We can see that the department chair for this Unified School District is the first to receive an approval request. Once the chair approves, the Department Head has their chance, then Budget, then the Site Administrator and then the Program Manager.

But what’s this? We have two level 20s. This means that both of these approvals are going to happen at the same time.

Now, why would you do that? Because the Director and the Categorical Managers are two different people. You could have put them into a group, but then your workflow users and groups could become too complicated to maintain. This simplifies the workflow.

What happens in Escape Online when you have two approval items at the same level is that the requisition (or HRA or other document) will not move onto the next level until ALL items at that level are complete. In other words, the Technology Verifier is not going to get to see the requisition on the approval list until BOTH the Director and Categorical Manager give their approvals.

Our next example is a little more streamlined, or so it seems.

It has only five levels, but there is a lot going on under the hood.

First, the Approve All flag is set to YES, which means the workflow role Admin Approve has many people assigned to it. This is extremely powerful and needs a Friday Feature all of its own, so we are going to talk about this next week.

In the meantime, let me point out that the last approver has a Dollar Min set. We saw this in the first example too. Setting a dollar minimum for an approval level means that the person (or people) for that level will not see the approval request on their list unless the total amount of the document is greater than that amount. Pretty impressive!

Which brings us back to the age-old question, which came first the chicken or the egg? Well, with workflows in Escape Online, the answer is you get to decide.

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