Understanding PeopleSoft Checklists

We are in the process of hiring a person in PeopleSoft (Article - Hiring a Person in PeopleSoft) and so far we have added the person through Add a Person component and the organizational relationship through Add an Employment Instance component for this person. The information that we have provided have been stored in various tables but this is not the end of it. We Still have to do whole lot of other things to complete the hiring of this person.

As I mentioned in the beginning, there are various steps in hiring process or in other words, there are things need to be completed post joining such as:

• Educational document submission and verification
• Passport details
• Relieving letter, Exp Letter Submission
• Updating bank information
• Updating Emergency Contact Details
• Permanent Address Proof
• Update Dependent/Beneficiary Details

But how do we keep track of these steps during hiring process ?
The answer is checklist. A checklist is nothing but list of items needed to be acted upon when assigned to a person.
We can create checklist for New Joiners, Transfers, Terminations, Contractors etc...
If you remember, we had assigned a checklist to this person when we were about to add organizational instance for this person. Thats the one way of doing it.
Another way is, don't assigned the checklist to person at the time of adding into PeopleSoft instead, assign the checklist after the person is added in which case we have to use Person Checklist page (Navigation: Main > WFA > Personal Information > Organizational Relationship > Person Checklist) both are same.
Now, since the checklist is already assigned lets open the Person Checklist page and see what are all the steps yet to be acted upon in the hiring process.

As you can see above, few steps are completed, few have been initiated while for others the required documents have been received and that's how we track the progress. The steps which are not yet completed such as Bank Information, Emergency Contact Details, HR can click on the link given and it will open the respective Page where the details has to be provided.
For example, If HR clicks on the link Emergency Contact Details, it will open the Emergency Contact page where the contact details can be provided.

Creating an Organizational Relationship in PeopleSoft

I would like to mention here that we are in the process of hiring a person in PeopleSoft (Hiring a Person in PeopleSoft) and in this quest we have so far added the biographical details of the person through Add a Person component. We have a choice to stop here and save the transaction and the person will be saved as a POI Type without Job record. For more details on POI please visit Adding and Maintaining Person Of Interest in PeopleSoft.

So the next step is to create an organizational relationship (or Organizational Instance) for this person. The Organization Relationship (Employment, Continent Worker  or POI) can be created in two ways: 

1. From 'Organizational Relationships' page of the component 'Add a Person'
2. From the dedicated components Add an Employment Instance, Add a Contingent Worker Instance, Add a POI Instance to add EMP, CWR and POI instance respectively.

In the first method, we can create organizational relationship while adding biographical details of a person. We can also choose the checklist which has to be assigned to this person. We need to click on the button 'Add Relationship' which will open the 'Add Employment Instance' component.

The reason we are assigning checklist here, because as I mentioned in the beginning that we need to track the progress of the steps in the hiring process. More details on checklists is given in the following sections.

The second method is used in the cases when there is such a person for which we have the biographical details but we don't have organizational details yet so we just add person's biographical details through Add a Person component and then later on when we the organizational details are with us then we can add an organizational instance for that person. We will add the organizational instance Employee (Also called Employment Instance) for the person through method 1 so lets click on the button 'Add Relationship' after selecting 'Employee' check box and a Checklist. Note that if we choose to select the checklist in this page then we don't need to assign the checklist in the page 'Person Checklist' (Navigation: Main > WFA > Personal Information > Organizational Relationship > Person Checklist)

As soon as the button 'Add Relationship' is clicked, the Add Employment Instance page opens:

Work Location Tab

This page is essentially used to define the location where the employee is working like, Business unit, Reg Region, Department,  Location etc..
Well, I don't need to explain each and every field over here as their name suggest everything however, what I need to explain is the fields with which most of us are unfamiliar.
If the organization is using full position data management and if we assign a position number to the employee in this page then most of the fields across this component are auto filled from the Position Data page. For more details on this particular part visit - 'Override Position Data' and 'Use Position Data' Option in Job Data Page.

Expected Job End Date Field

Almost all the organizations hire freshers and keep them on probation (for 1 year, 6 months, 3 months etc..)while they are going through training. So, at the time of hiring, HR users mention a date in this field which indicates that the employee will not be confirmed if he/she doesn't complete training (Probation) successfully by this date. 

Another example would be, the contractors who are working with an organization for a certain duration and their contract will be terminated after that so in this case, when these contractors are added, the HR users mention the expected job end date.

Job Information Tab

We use this page to add the details pertaining to Employee's job like whether its a part time or full time, regular or temporary, standard hours in a work period etc...
Again, most of the fields in this page are auto filled from the Position data and they are quite clear by their names however, I would like to explain few of them here:

Regular/Temporary and Full/Part Fields 

Visit this page to get the details on these fields - Part Time/Full Time, Regular/Temporary and Contingent Workers in PeopleSoft

Standard Hours, Work Period and FTE fields

Visit this page to get the details on these fields - How the FTE is Calculated in PeopleSoft

Employee Class field

Visit this page to get the details on these fields - Employee Class (EMPL_CLASS) Field in PeopleSoft 

Contract Administraion

Visit this page to understand the Contract Administration in PeopleSoft - 

Payroll Tab

In this page we essentially add the payroll related information for the new hire such as Payroll System, Absence System. If organization has license for PeopleSoft delivered payroll and absence solution and if they are using them then we will make the choice here accordingly and based on this selection other details like Pay Group, Employee Type (Salaried or Hourly etc...) will be provided. One important thing to note here is, when we select Pay Group the Employee Type field is auto filled because in Pay Group setup page we mention the default Employee Type for which this pay group will be applicable.

Holiday Schedule Field

Every organization defines an holiday schedule every year for each country where their operation is,  where all the holidays falling in a particular year are added. For example, in India we have 10 holidays in a year. Once the schedule is defined, it is assigned to the employees through this field belonging to that country and then system takes these holidays in consideration during payroll processing. The holiday schedules are defined from Setup  HRMS > Product Related > WFA > Absence > Holiday Schedule Table

Salary Plan Tab

This page is typically used to define the Salary Administration Plan details like Sal Admin Plan ,Grade and Step. These fields are auto filled from position data if the details have been provided there. I have never used the section 'Military' so I won't be comfortable explaining it.
A grade can have different ranges of compensation in different geographies hence we always tie Salary Admin Plan with Grade.
For more details on Salary Admin Plan, Grade and Step visit - 

Compensation Tab

This page is used to define compensation details for an employee. Nothing much to explain here, we just need to add the Pay Components for a Person in the Grid 'Pay Components' below. After that we must click on the button 'Calculate Compensation' to reflect the final compensation after calculation.
For example, in India we have various pay components:

• Basic
• HRA
• Special Allowance

So, we will add a row for each of these pay component and the Comp Rate associated with it.

Once the compensation details are also provide, finally click on Save button to save the transaction and after the transaction is saved i.e the organization relationship is added for the person, the next step is to go through the remaining process.

Hiring a Person in PeopleSoft

No offense but most of us especially beginners think that hiring in PeopleSoft means adding a person through 'Add a Person' page (Navigation: Main > WFA > Person Information > Add a Person) followed by adding a organization relationship. But, there is more to it.

Just think of yourself when you were hired in the organization where you are currently. You would probably have:

1. Gone through an interview process
2. Joined the organization on a given date
3. Gone through the document verification process
4. Added the bank account details for salary credit
5. Have give benefit choices and provided the dependent/beneficiary details
6. Provided the emergency contact details
7. Updated the other personal details

This is a very generic list of the steps to complete post joining in the hiring process, it might have some additional steps specific to organizations but the question is, how do we track the progress of all these steps in PeopleSoft ?
And the answer would be through Checklists. But before we get into that, we first need to understand how a person is added in PeopleSoft.

As far as I know, there are three delivered way of adding a person in PeopleSoft:

1. Candidate Gateway and Talent Acquisition Manager (TAM & CG)
2. Template Based Hire
3. Add a Person Page

Below diagram shows how the data flows up to the Person Model tables through different channels when a person is added in PeopleSoft.

Lets understand each of the above methods in detail.

Adding a Person through TAM & CG in PeopleSoft

As shown in the diagram, in this method an applicant is:

1. First added in TAM i.e the applicant's biographical and organizational data is added in TAM (Navigation: Main > Recruiting > Find Applicant).
2. Then someone from HR routes the applicant's data to Add a Person page through Manager Hires page (Main > WFA > Personal Information > Manage Hires).
3. And finally the applicant's data is added in various tables through Add a Person page (Main > WFA > Personal Information > Add a Person).

Adding a Person through Template Based Hire in PeopleSoft

In my view this is the most convenient way of adding a person in PeopleSoft as it has just one page that we have deal with and this page is called template. But before we could use this template, we have to first design it using setup pages.
At the moment however, we will assume that the template is already designed and its ready to use. We now just have to open the template (Navigation: Main > WFA > Template-Based Hire > Template-Based Hire), fill in the applicant's Biographical and Organizational details and then click on the button 'Save and Submit' which will directly load the applicant's data into various person model tables.
Done.!! Person is added in just one click.

Adding a Person through 'Add a Person' page in PeopleSoft

In PeopleSoft, we can add a person without having to add organization relationship for that person. This is the first page when we begin this process where we supply the biographical details (Name, Gender, Marital Status, Address, National ID, Contact Details etc...). A person without an organizational relationship is stored as POI. In other words, when we add a person through this page and we save the person without adding any organizational relationship then this person is stored as a POI. For more details on POI please visit the link Adding and Maintaining Person Of Interest in PeopleSoft

Lets add a person using this (Navigation: Main > WFA > Personal Information > Add a Person) page by following below steps and understand various aspects in this hiring process. 

Step 1: Adding Biographical Details

When we add a person there are two types of information we provide to the system, biographical and organizational. The page that we use to add biographical information isn't difficult to understand. Anyone can easily understand significance of each and every field, what are all the underlying tables where biographical information is stored. Please refer to the pages Adding and Maintaining Person Of Interest in PeopleSoft and PeopleSoft 9.1 Person Model to understand how the biographical detail's are filled and what are all the underlying tables where these details are stored.

Step 2: Adding Organizational Details or Creating an Organizational Relationship

In the previous step, if we just saved the person without creating any organizational instance then the person would be saved as POI by default but our objective here is to create an Organizational Relationship for the person there we are in the process of hiring. So please visit the following article - Creating an Organizational Relationship in PeopleSoft

Step 3: Completing other tasks through Person Checklists

Visit the following article Understanding PeopleSoft Checklists

 
After all these steps are completed then the person will be considered as Hired.

POI Security in PeopleSoft

Before you learn what POI security is, you must know how a POI is created and that has been explained in the following article - Adding and Maintaining Person Of Interest in PeopleSoft. Steps explained in Case 2 in the previous article show us how to create a POI without JOB record and we have created one too (EMPLID – ST01ST20).

Security for POIs without Jobs

Let’s try to supply some more details about this POI through the component “Maintain a Person’s POI Reltn”, this is also called maintaining POI relationship.

Open the component “Maintain a Person’s POI Reltn” (Navigation: Main -> Workforce Administration -> Personal Information -> Organizational relationships -> Maintain a Person’s POI Reltn), Enter the EMPLID – ST01ST20 then click on search. 

Oops, employee doesn’t exist?

The answer would rather be, Employee exists with POI type “AUS – Non Paid Intern” but the user who is trying to access it, doesn’t have access to the POI. It means that PeopleSoft secures POI’s data under the Security Set – PPLPOI (People without Jobs) and corresponding Security Type  hence users who doesn’t have access to this POI type won’t be able to see this POI.

Providing POI Access to Users

    Step 1: Get the permission list for row security tagged to the user from user profile page” (Navigation: Main -> PeopleTools -> Security -> User Profiles-> User Profile).

Step 2: Go to the “Security by Permission list” component (Navigation: Main -> Set Up HRMS > Security > Core Row Level Security > Security by Permission List)

a)      Give the row security permission list copied (Step :1) and open the details.

b)      Navigate to the security set – “PPLPOI” (People without jobs), as you can see below this permission list has access to none of the POI types.

Step 3:  Give the permission list access to the POI type “AUS-Non Paid Intern”

a)      Select the security access type “Person of Interest type” from the first prompt.

b)      Select the POI type (AUS-Non Paid Intern) from the second prompt and click on save.

       Step 4: Verify if the user now has access to the POI which we added (EMPLID – ST01ST20).

a)      Open the “Maintain a Person’s POI Reltn” component for this person (Navigation: Main -> Workforce Administration -> Personal Information -> Organizational relationships -> Maintain a Person’s POI Reltn)

b)      Enter the EMPLID – ST01ST20 and click on search, Now you would get a row for this person.

c)       Click on the row to open the component. 
 Done, access to this POI has been granted to the user.

Security for POIs with Jobs

POIs with JOB record are secured in the same way as EMP and CWR are secured, and it has been explained in other articles in detail. You might also want to visit Peoplesoft Row Level Security Search Records

Maintaining POI Relationships

We maintain the POI relationship through the component “Maintain a Person’s POI Reltn” (Navigation:  Main -> Workforce Administration -> Personal Information -> Organizational relationships -> Maintain a Person’s POI Reltn)

   From this component we can:

1)      Add additional security criteria by assigning the person to one or more business units, locations, or institutions.

To do this, add the corresponding business unit and location access types in the “Data” grid.

 

Now, the following user will have access to this POI:

  User A, who has access to the POI type “AUS-Non Paid Intern”

  User B, who has access to the POI type “AUS-Non Paid Intern” in the business unit “AUS01”

  User C, who has access to the POI type “AUS-Non Paid Intern” in the location “6100”

2)      We can mention the planned exit date for POI and couple of other information’s. 

Once we have mentioned the addition security criteria, we can grant access to the users on this POI at Business unit/Location level instead of POI type. To do this, follow the same steps given earlier in the para   “Providing users with access to Person of Interest or POI types”.

As shown above, select security access type - POI Business Unit or POI Location, and depending upon this selection select the other keys (Key1, key2..etc).

Adding and Maintaining Person Of Interest in PeopleSoft

 A Person of Interest (POI) is someone who doesn’t provide any service to the organization in any form but is of interest to the organization. There many cases in which we create POIs for example - my organization facilitates internship program for the students coming from various colleges for few months and they are treated as POI so their POI record is created. The reason they are treated as POI because during internship organization might or might not be interested in absorbing such interns as full time employees but still they are of interest to the organization. 

Types of POIs in PeopleSoft:

  Broadly, there are two types of POIs:

1)      POI which require a JOB record

·         COBRA qualified beneficiaries

·         Pension Payees

·         Other Payees

·         Student refunds

·         Stock - board members

2)      POI which doesn’t require a JOB record

·         External trainee

·         External instructor

·         Non-paid intern

Let’s now try to understand how POI is created and its relationship with the organization is maintained in the organization.

As stated earlier also, a person can be added to the organization using “Add a Person” component (Navigation: Main -> Workforce Administration -> Personal Information -> Biographical -> Add a Person) and the added person is always a POI by default.

Please also note that, if we don’t select a POI type while adding a person then by default the person is created with POI type as “Unknown” and later on we can create a POI type relationship which is explained in following sections.

We will understand these facts by adding a person to the organization as explained below:

Creating a POI relationship with or without JOB record

Step 1: Open the “Add a Person” component (Navigation: Main -> Workforce Administration -> Personal Information -> Biographical -> Add a Person)

Fill in all the required details, Please note that in the “Region” tab you have to enter region specific info based on the country selected in “Biographical Details” tab.

Step 2: Once Biographical/Contact/Region details are supplied, go to the tab “Organization Relationship”

Now, it depends on the requirement whether the person being added should have a JOB record (Organization instance of POI type) or shouldn’t have a JOB record.

Case 1: If it should have a JOB record (Organization instance of POI type) then:

  

Step 3: Select the check box “Person of Interest” and select a POI type which requires a JOB record (Choose as appropriate)

You would probably have noticed that when you select a POI type from drop down list box, which does requires a JOB record, the field “Empl Record” also becomes available where JOB record number needs to be supplied.

To check whether a particular POI type requires a JOB record please go to Set Up HRMS -> Foundation Table -> Organization -> Person of Interest Types for more details.

    

Step 4: Click on the “Add Relationship” button which will take you to the component “Add POI Instance”

Alternatively, we can also add a POI instance from the path – Main ->Workforce   Administration -> Job Information -> Add POI Instance or  Main ->Workforce Administration -> Personal Information -> Organizational Relationships -> Add POI Instance, in case you decide to add a POI who doesn’t require a JOB record at first and later you want to add POI instance for it. 

So, the bottom-line is that the same component “Add POI Instance” is opened from all these three navigation.

Step 5: Fill in all organizational details in the tabs – “Work Location”, “Job Information”, “Payroll” etc… and then click save.

Once you complete Step 5, the organizational instance for the organizational relationship POI (PER_ORG = ‘POI’) has been created.

Case 2: If it doesn’t need to have a JOB record (Organization instance for PER_ORG = “POI”) then:

Step 3: Select the check box “Person of Interest” and select a POI type which doesn’t requires a JOB record (Choose as appropriate)    

Step 4: Click on Save as in this case we don’t have to click on “Add Relationship” button. The person is added as POI who doesn’t require a JOB record.

      

However, even if you don’t select anything in this page and click on save, Person is added   with POI type “Unknown” and later on you can create a POI type for this person from Main -> Workforce Administration -> Personal Information -> Organizational relationships -> Add a POI relationship.

So, we have finally created a POI but are we done yet ?

No, we have to also look at the security aspect of POI as to how POI data is secured in PeopleSoft.

For this visit following article - POI Security in PeopleSoft

Business Unit, Company and Regulatory Region in PeopleSoft

Over the time the three entities Business Unit, Company and Regulatory Region have always confused me as to how differently are they used when setting up the PeopleSoft HRMS system for any organization. I have read People books many times to understand them but believe me you will always run around the concept but never get to it unless you see a live scenario.

In nutshell, when PeoleSoft HRMS is setup the:

• Business Units are defined from security standpoint
• Companies are defined from the standpoint of how many subsidiaries, operations an organization has
• Regulatory Regions are defined from the standpoint of what are all the regions with different rules and regulations are there in a particular country where the organization operates.

Assume there is an organization named XYZ Corporations. It operates in 4 countries with its 7 development centers across these 4 countries, 1 Business Services in US and 1 Technology Services in India.

Country                              Location                                        Type of Operation

USA                                   2 (Texas, Illinois)                             Development Center
USA                                   1 (California)                                   Business Services
CAN                                   2 (Ontario, Quebec)                         Development Center
IND                                    2 (Bangaloru ,Mumbai)                     Development Center
IND                                    1 (Chennai)                                      Technology Services
GBR                                   1 (London)                                       Development Center        


Let's look at how the Business Units, Regulatory Regions and Company will be defined while setting up PeopleSoft HRMS system for the XYZ Corporations.

Business Unit in PeopleSoft

As stated earlier Business Units are always defined from security standpoint. Though it might not be true in few cases but it is in most of them at least where I have worked so far. So, while defining Business Units for XYZ Corporations the main aspect which will be looked at is:

How the restriction to see the control data will be imposed on these locations?

The requirements are:

1. The three locations in US shouldn't be able to see each others control data.
2. One country shouldn't be able see the control data defined for another country.

So, based on the requirement and from security standpoint below will be the Business Unit setup:

Country                             Business Unit        Description          

USA                                   USA01                    Business Unit for Texas      
USA                                   USA02                    Business Unit for Illinois      
USA                                   USA03                    Business Unit for California        
CAN                                   CAN                       Business Unit for Canada         
IND                                    IND                        Business Unit for India       
GBR                                   GBR                       Business Unit for Great Britain        

There are three locations for XYZ Corporation in US hence to enforce data restrictions on each other, three Business Units - two (USA01, USA02) for the Development Centers in Texas and Illinois respectively and third (USA02) for the Business Services in California.  Likewise, three more business units - CAN, IND, GBR for Canada, India and Great Britain to ensure that the setup reflects the requirement.

Company in PeopleSoft

As stated in the beginning, Companies are defined from the standpoint of how many operations, subsidiaries an organization has across the globe. In our case the XYZ Corporations has operations in 4 countries, have two subsidiaries XYZ Business Services US and XYZ Technologies Services India hence the Company Setup would look like:

Country                            Company                        Company Name

USA                                   XUS                                XYZ US
USA                                   XBSU                              XYZ Business Services US
CAN                                   XCA                                XYZ Canada
IND                                    XIN                                 XYZ India
IND                                    XTSI                               XYZ Technology Services India
GBR                                   XUK                               XYZ UK    

Regulatory Region in PeopleSoft

In PeopleSoft, a regulatory region is considered any region with specific rules and regulations or more importantly the tax regulations. It can either be a country or specific parts in a country for example, in US tax regulation varies from state to state but in India its uniform all across the country so in the PeopleSoft context, for the country like US there will be as many regions as the number of states but for India there will be only one Region as there is only one tax regulation.

So assuming that the country US and Canada have varying tax regulations from their one state to another, accordingly the Regulatory Region setup will look like:

Country                            Reg Region                 Description   

USA                                   USA01                        USA Texas
USA                                   USA02                        USA Illinois
USA                                   USA03                        USA California
CAN                                   CAN01                       Canada Montreal
CAN                                   CAN02                       Canada Quebec
IND                                    IND                            India
GBR                                   GBR                           Great Britain