Release Notes Rollup 30
Travel and Receipt Management improvements
Sophisticated processes are available for the travel management module. The whole travel process can be managed and automated in HR for Dynamics.
An Employee can create a travel request with all necessary information which triggers an approval process. By default, the supervisor needs to approve the request. The supervisor is able to review all important information about the travel and give his approval. Supervisors and HR Managers are able to self-approve their travels, as well as create travels for their employees. Not only the travel planning and approval is covered but also the postprocessing, which is synchronized with the processing of related receipts.
Receipts can be created from different entry points and have an own process for reimbursement. Created from a travel, the given information is prefilled. Furthermore the process steps are moved accordingly to the postprocessing steps of the travel and the responsible is informed via mail (if activated) when the receipts are in the according stage. Completion of the Travel leads to a completion of related receipts which are in reimbursement. Still, it is possible to mark a receipt as not relevant for reimbursement. In that case the reimbursement information in the Business Process Flow is not mandatory.
Performance Potential Analysis
Performance Potential Analysis is used on management level for succession planning and talent management. The analysis is shown in a 9 Grid (aka 9 Box Grid). The 9 Grid is a management tool created in partnership between GE ad McKinsey in the 70 decade.
The Performance Potential Analysis aims to evaluate the employees of an organization according to their recent performance and potential for the future. For each of these perspectives you have 3 response levels that will generate 9 different sums in the background and reflect the respective evaluation box.
In HR for Dynamics you have two main features for the performance potential analysis.
1. Evaluate and store the performance and potential in an user-friendly way in the digital personnel file of an employee.
2. Analyze the organization or department with a user-friendly consolidated view.
In addition a new view is available which shows all active employees including their performance potential evaluation.
Absence Calendar for Employees
An anonymized Absence calendar is available in the Employee Self-Service App. The calendar enables employees to see absences of their department members. The absence types are hidden and the absences are all one-colored to the employee to preserve privacy related information.
Employees can select time ranges in the calendar to enable also long term planning and transparency. By default 2 months are displayed.
Extension for Virtual Time Clock
The attendance types "travel", "remote work" and "off-site work" are now available. Users can use the virtual time clock to start and end this attendances. These additions enable an organization to get a better transparency about the booked attendances of their employees. The sum of this attendances are available in the attendance record as well as the daily summaries while on the daily summary only the travel time is explicitly shown.
All attendance types are interpreted as work time and summed up to the overall attendance.
The view "Attendance List" is updated to reflect the new types. This view gives supervisors and HR managers a powerful real-time overview about the current presence of their employees.
Recruiting Portal 2.0
A collection of improvements is introduced here:
- The compatibility of the Recruiting Portal to additionally installed Power Apps Portals is improved. This is achieved by new GUID's.
- Markups to Google for Jobs are provided on the pages in the portal. Therefore, you have the option to choose whether you want to publish salary information to Google for Jobs or not. Be aware, that still the SEO of your website is crucial for the displayed position in Google for Jobs.
- Sophisticated filter possibilities enable applicants to better find suitable jobs on the portal. This enables better user experience especially for customers with many published vacancies.
- Grouping of vacancies by department is available. An additional view gives a better overview about jobs in an organizations departments. This features give recruiters new possibilities to advertise vacancies and makes it easier for applicants to find the right job.
Leave modification improvement
The dialog to split, modify or cancel a leave is enhanced.
Splitting of leave requests allows to specify the time of the day, when the next leave type becomes active. By that also half-day changes are possible. Furthermore it is possible to modify a leave request, e.g. shorten or extend the time, on a half-day basis. This allows more flexibility and accuracy. Also, some security checks are added, like a check for correct data entry on split or ad-hoc absences to be created in draft and not immediately approved after split of a leave.
Improved transparency on License usage
The license usage dashboard is further improved. The dashboard shows the values of "Total HR Licenses", "Total Staff Licenses" and "Total Employee Licenses". "Total Employee Licenses" is the sum of "HR Licenses" and "Staff Licenses". Additionally the unassigned "HR Licenses" and the "Available Entitlement for Employees" are shown. The available entitlement displays, how many active employees can be managed additionally to the existing ones.
Wage transfer on employment terms change
Inactive wages with an end date before the end date of the old employment terms don't get copied. Wages with the payment period "one-time payment" in specific, are only copied if the end date is after the end date of the old employment terms. This is handled within a workflow. This saves time for the HR manager since there is no need to validate copied wages in the new employment terms for this criteria.
Applicant duplicate detection
In case an applicant applies for multiple vacancies in an organization, a duplicate detection filters the newly created record and merges it to the existing applicant. Duplicates are identified based on their email address. Thereby it is independent from which source the applicant is created. Each application and all related records of the applicant are created and linked to the existing applicant. More specific a ruleset is introduced which applicant the duplicate should be merged to.
Also, in the background a new field "Email Address (Hashed)" is introduced. It gets automatically filled and updated based on the email address. Due to this field, the duplicate detection will also trigger for already anonymized applicants, as soon as they have the hidden field filled. This enables the HR manager to keep a clear overview about how many applications an applicant has sent and when. Furthermore already collected can be reused and gets updated by the new information. Additionally, this reduces overhead of data maintenance. The records, which are identified as duplicates and got merged to an applicant are deleted after a waiting period of one day. The deletion is handled via a workflow and can be updated due to the company's needs. In case you want to exclude specific email addresses from the duplicate detection, this can be done via the settings key "ApplicantDuplicateDetectionExcludedEmails". Therefore, add the email address you want to exclude to the value field. The email addresses should be separated by semicolon.
Stepstone QuickApply integration
In addition to the possibility of publishing vacancies to the StepStone JobFeed, this integration enables the QuickApply feature of StepStone. Applicants can apply directly via StepStone. In HR for Dynamics an applicant and an application connected to the vacancy is created. The integration enables highly structured data for best results and high efficiency in recruiting processes. By default even CV parsing is enabled at no additional costs. The integration is solved by two new flows. One flow offers an HTTP endpoint for Stepstone to post the applications. The second flow prepares the vacancy for QuickApply and adds the identifier of the vacancy to the job to have the possibility to match the application to the according vacancy.
Before applicants can use the Quick Apply, it needs to be activated by StepStone. Here you can enable it either for specific vacancies or for all vacancies you publish. Stepstone needs the following information to activate the Quick Apply:
- Tenant ID: can be found in the Azure Active Directory
- API URL: can be found in the Flow
- Company Portal URL: can be found in the StepStone Tab in Vacancy (if a specific vacancy is enabled)
The flows are available via the add-on solution "Dynamics HR Management Flows". When the authentification in the flow is done and the Quick Apply is enabled, it can be used. Please keep in mind: You have to select URL as a reply setting, so that the connection to vacancy can be created.
Automation of mapping skill grades to skills
An on demand workflow is available which helps to improve productivity for HR managers when they maintain skills and skill grades. A skill has multiple skill grades related. Skill grades have a specific type, like "Professional Skill" or "Language Skill". If you extend your skill grades, you can use the workflow to automatically assign the new skill grades to selected skills. A manual step to add each of the new grades to a skill is no longer needed.
Leave Related Processes
The features "Carry Forward Leave Entitlement" and "Rollout Leave Entitlement" are processed per department. The necessary actions are calculated and executed for each employee of the department.
The processes are reworked to improve stability during processing especially in big organizations and departments. The processes are refined to support hundreds of employees in a single department. Also hierarchical processing of departments in big organizations is stabilized by this. The, in earlier versions seen, deficiencies have been rectified.
UX improvements
We invested a lot to improve usability of the solution. These are some of the refinements we deliver in Rollup 30:
- The usability of the Leave Request form is improved
- The usability of the Time & Attendance dashboards are improved
- The usability of the HR Requests forms and view are improved
- The usability of the Time Sheet form is improved
- In the recruiting process, the applicant is pre-filled as the recipient if you create a new email
Solved Customer Tickets
- List of Daily Summaries can be changed even after the Time Sheet is approved. (CAS-15291-H0T8W)
- Internal Vacancies can be used to access Job Profiles. (CAS-15011-S3X3S)
- Review Details can be changed for inactive Reviews. (CAS-15466-G8S8)
- On payment generation the payment amount is converted to the base currency.(CAS-16415-T6T8B)
- On modification of an approved Leave Request, when a duplicate is detected, the Leave Request is already cancelled.(CAS-16448-J2R7F)
For more technical information we provide our Technical Change Log.