Workday 19 released - Greater focus on Financials and Mobile

Workday unvelied release 19 few days back. It is mentioned that the new release comes with 170 odd new features. Here are the main improvements that were noted from the press release given out by Workday:

1. Workday 19 comes with the capability to add custom fields and change labels of fields. This has been projected as a major enhancement in release 19. While I totally understand the need for this from customers, it is surprising that it took 19 releases for Workday to bring this out. From my understanding of Oracle Fusion applications, these capabilities are native to Fusion apps. You can read more here on the various 'composers' of Fusion, which can be used to 'configure' the application to change page field labels, page layout etc. globally or for a targeted population.

2. Workday has traditionally had a 'mobile-first' strategy and the user friendliness of their iPad and iPhone apps are legendary. Continuing with that focus, Workday 19 embraces Android with a workday app available for Android.

3. Workday has stated that it's Financials Suite will be a major area of focus in 2013. True to that, Workday 19 has close to 40 new features delivered for Financials. Another focus I have seen is a push to present HR and Financial data together.

Here is a picture gallery of Workday 19 released by Workday. It is interesting to note that Workday is working on a greenfield recruitment module which is expected to release in early 2014.

Business Value Proposition of PeopleSoft Time and Labor 9.2

Why should you consider an upgrade to PeopleSoft 9.2 for Time and Labor? How does the new features impact business indicators? The following presentation summarises the business value proposition of PeopleSoft Time and Labor 9.2



If you are interested in discussing further on this, write into jiju@hroiconsulting.com

PeopleSoft 9.2 - T&L Feature summary by role

I had detailed most of the new features in Time and Labor in PeopleSoft 9.2 in previous posts. While we can find information on standalone features through Peoplebooks, Oracle Cumulative Feature Overview tool and other blog posts, I think it is extremely useful to present these features from an alternative point of view to help analyse the feature in the context of an organisation.
So, here is a short presentation on the new T&L features classified by impact to different roles in an organisation - Employees, Managers, Time/Pay Administrators, HRIS and Implementation consultants.



Hope you find this insightful. Next in our series will be an analysis of the new features based on the value proposition to an organisation.

If you are looking to evaluate the features of PeopleSoft HCM 9.2 and want an indepth, under the skin discussion on this topic, reach out to me at jiju@hroiconsulting.com

PeopleSoft 9.2 feature review - T&L WorkCenter - A high impact feature

The Time and Labor WorkCenter introduced in PeopleSoft 9.2, is probably one of the top features of the module in the new release. WorkCenters themselves have been part of previous Peopletools releases and one could argue that customers on an application release prior to 9.2 could easily create new workcenters for Time and Labor without having to move to 9.2. This is a valid argument, but from a practical perspective, I believe that a delivered workcenter for a module like Time and Labor will greatly help drive down the total cost of ownership and benefit a larger number of PeopleSoft T&L customers.
To truly understand the value of a workcenter in T&L, I think it is imperative to look at the tasks carried out by someone managing employees using Time and Labor in PeopleSoft. Given below is a generic list of period-end activities that a T&L manager would have to carry out in PeopleSoft:

1. Check if there is time and absence pending  approval.
2. Check if there are exceptions requiring attention and clear them.
3. Manipulate the timesheet of employees on an on-demand basis - correcting missing punches, incorrect punch order errors etc.
5. Make changes to work schedules as required.
4. Run certain time consolidation and audit reports to ensure that there are no discrepancies in the time generated for the pay period.

There are two important characteristics about the above tasks that have to be highlighted:

• The above tasks have to be ideally carried out in a specific order.
• The above tasks have to be repeated, every pay period.

When sequential tasks have to be carried out repetitively, it is important that:

• The steps to do the tasks are kept to a minimum.
• The sequence of steps to be carried out are clearly articulated.
• The marginal investment on new user training is kept to a minimum.

Page navigation design plays a very important role in helping organisations meet the above goals. The navigation structure in PeopleSoft has traditionally been limited to individual transaction pages, with hyperlinks in a page leading to other pages related to the current page. A good example of such a navigation design is the Time and Labor launchpad. True to it's name, the Time and Labor launchpad provides a common entry-page for employees and managers and contains links to related T&L pages.
Given below is an example of a Time and Labor launchpad for a Manager, with links to different transactions.

While the above design helps to collate related links, it is rarely helpful in guiding the users through an end-to-end business process they have to carry out.

The T&L WorkCenter is designed to specifically address the above needs. The T&L WorkCenter can be utilised as the 'go-to' page within T&L (and even Absence Management, as the workcenter definition can be easily extended through configuration) for Managers and Administrators to carry out their routine tasks. It integrates most of the navigations used within the module, displays pending work items (like approvals, alerts etc.), gives a list of links with sequential activities, provides a list of reports/queries to run etc. In summary, it brings together most of the information and pages that a T&L Manager or Administrator would require. A sample of the Time and Labor WorkCenter is given below:

The delivered Time and Labor WorkCenter page contains a new landing page that summarises most of the commonly used pages with T&L for a manager or administrator. The tabs and pages within each tab can be easily configured using the 'Manage Tabs' functionality that has been newly introduced in the Setup of Time and Labor. One could say that this is pretty similar to the related content functionality - but I think that from a navigation perspective, this layout is superior to that offered by  related content framework.
The WorkCenter utilises the standard WorkCenter pagelets like 'My Work', 'Links', 'Reports/Processes' and 'Queries'. These pagelets are highly configurable and can be modified from: Enterprise Components > WorkCenter/Dashboards > Configure Pagelets
The 'My Work' pagelet (this is a Peopletools feature per se and is common to the WorkCenter framework and not specific to Time and Labor) is conceptualised really well as it gives a snapshot of pending approvals and alerts for a certain user.
Note: There is also an 'Approval Pagelet' that is delivered as part of the 'Manager Dashboard' functionality introduced in PeopleSoft HCM9.1 Feature Pack 2. The Approval Pagelet and the My Work pagelet are similar in functionality - both of them are designed to display pending approvals to a user. I would suggest to evaluate both these pagelets during your implementation/upgrade and deploy the pagelet that is most appropriate for your use (my personal preference is the My Work pagelet as it is more elegant and flexible that the Approval Pagelet).
The 'Reports/Processes' pagelet provides an effective way to enable end-users (especially managers) to run PS Queries and other reports without the need to access a tool like Query Manager. This is important from a Time and Attendance point of view as typically there will be audit and time/absence analysis reports that will need to be executed by those managing time of employees.

Overall, I opine that the Time and Labor WorkCenter can be utilised as the 'landing page' for all Time and Labor transactions for a T&L Manager or Administrator. The simplification that this brings to the overall navigational requirements, training and communication is immense. Imagine telling your managers to just go to one single page to do everything related to T&L, rather than training them to remember individual page navigation. The T&L WorkCenter functionality should be thoroughly examined and rolled-out in any upgrade or implementation involving Time and Labor 9.2 - the operational improvements that this feature can bring in is immense.

For more in-depth review of PeopleSoft T&L 9.2 features, click here.
If you want to discuss more on the new features in PeopleSoft 9.2 or want an in-depth system demonstration, write into jiju@hroiconsulting.com

PeopleSoft 9.2 feature review - Enhancement to Monthly Schedule page in ESS

The Monthly Schedule page in PeopleSoft Time and Labor Employee Self Service, provides a calendar based view of the work schedule of the employee for a certain month. Details of absences and/or trainings (if integrated with PeopleSoft Enterprise Learning Management suite) are also displayed for each day of the month. A sample of the page is given below:

 

In PeopleSoft 9.2, I have noticed that there is a slight enhancement to the Monthly Schedule page. The T&L product team has added a grid on the page with daily breakdown of the employee's work schedule for the selected month. The new grid on the page is shown below:

As seen above, the grid gives a day by day break-down of the scheduled hours (and with indication of whether there is an absence/training or holiday on a certain day) for the selected month. While this looks like a duplication of the data shown in the calendar format in the same page, employees will be able to download the schedule information from this grid.

Point of View:

• This is a minor enhancement that duplicates the data that is already present in the same page.
• This feature will give employees the ability to download their work schedules into an excel sheet.
• If the purpose of adding this grid was to enable downloading schedule data - wouldn't a 'Print Schedule' link, similar to the 'Print Timesheet' link, served the requirement better? 

PeopleSoft 9.2 feature review - New Value List types

Value lists are an extremely useful setup option available in Time and Labor. Value Lists can be used to create a list of certain setup values (like list of departments, companies, workgroups, shifts etc) which can be then used in custom programs and rules to check if the value being processed belongs to a certain 'list of values'. Some examples of the use of value lists are: check if the employee being processed falls in a specific list of departments, check if the employee has reported a TRC that falls in a specific list of TRCs etc. As you can deduce from the examples, the advantage of having a value list is that it eliminates the need to hardcode a list of values in code and the list can be extended/maintained from PIA when needed. These features make value lists a highly useful tool in developing efficient rules and customisations in Time and Labor. For an application of value lists in reporting, refer here.
One of the limitations of the value list functionality has been that lists can be built only for certain specific pre-defined fields. In v9.1, there are 17 fields on which a list can be built. Examples are Company, Pay group, Grade, Step, Punch Type, Workgroup, Jobcode, Deptid etc.
In v9.2, Oracle has added 9 more fields in the purview of value lists. The new fields are:

• Attendance Violations (these are attendance actions from attendance programs in Time and Labor)
• Absence Take
• Compensatory Time Off Plan
• Benefit Plan
• Reported Time Status
• Payable Time Status
• Absence Status
• Exception
• Severity (this is severity of exception)

Implementation consultants can now make use of the above 9 fields to create values lists in 9.2, while creating rules or customisations.
Post-Note:
What prompted Oracle to add these new fields?
Most of these 9 fields are used in the new Time and Labor Alert framework. I am sure that it is the necessity to build Alerts based on the above fields that lead to them being added as new list type options. 

If you have questions or need more details on the new features in PeopleSoft HCM v9.2, mail into jiju@hroiconsulting.com

PeopleSoft 9.2 feature review - Enhanced configurability to timesheet layout

As discussed in previous posts, a major area of enhancement for Time and Labor in v9.2 is the timesheet component. In this post, I would like to briefly introduce enhanced configurability of the timesheet pages that has been delivered in the new version.
The delivered timesheet pages in PeopleSoft contains a number of fields and grids that are selectively used by different customers. It is a common requirement to hide unwanted fields from the timesheet page to improve usability of time reporting transactions. From an implementation consultant's point of view as well as from a total cost of ownership perspective, it is heartening to note that Oracle has introduced further configurability to the layout of the timesheet pages.
The Time Reporting Template setup page has been enhanced to add setup options to control the display of the timesheet page. The Time Reporting Template page can be accessed from
Setup HRMS > Product Related > Time and Labor > Time Reporting > Time Reporting Template.
 In 9.2, you will find a new section in the time reporting template setup page, called 'Timesheet Controls' and a screenshot of the relevant section is given below:

As seen from the above screenshot, the display of a number of sections within the timesheet page can be controlled at the time reporting template setup level. This enhancement should be considered by all consultants during an implementation/upgrade to identify opportunities to drop customisations.
Important points from my analysis on this functionality:

• The 'Submit Option' field can be used to control whether the submit confirmation page should be displayed after clicking on the 'submit' button in the timesheet pages. You can choose to display the confirmation page or not. Choosing not to display the confirmation page will help to reduce one click in the overall transaction. If ever you felt that this 'one' extra click has to be inconsequential, it turns out that it is not always true. I have faced numerous scenarios where end-users and UAT business testers have demanded the extra clicks presentated after submitting timesheet as well as absence to be removed!
• The display of 'Apply Rules' button that can be used to trigger real time rules from timesheet, can also be controlled. I find it useful to have the option to also setup whether it should be displayed in ESS or MSS timesheet pages. This is similar to the setup option that we have for forecasting in Absence Management, where forecasting can be enforced at the time of submission of an absence or approval.
• Note that the 'Print Timesheet' link can also be controlled using this setup.

PeopleSoft 9.2 feature review - Timesheet lockdown

Payroll processing in a company with a PeopleSoft Payroll module, Time and Labor and/or Absence Management will be an iterative, sequential process. Payroll, Time and Absence are separate modules in PeopleSoft and data flows from one module to another during a typical payroll cycle. This siloed architecture calls for detailed audits and data 'finalisation' in each of the upstream modules (upstream modules to payroll in this case are Time and Labor and Absence Management), before the actual payroll calculation can be finalised. Given below is a graphical representation of the data flows between the various modules when Payroll for North America, Time and Labor and Absence Management are used together. 

More information on the integration of Time and Pay modules in PeopleSoft, including a similar diagram for Global Payroll, can be found here.

The need to maintain data integrity in individual modules during payroll processing is a challenge faced by most payroll processing teams using PeopleSoft. As payroll processing involves multiple audits and data transfer programs in PeopleSoft, payroll administrators prefer to 'freeze' data in a certain module once all audits and calculations for the pay period for that module has been done. Prior to  PeopleSoft 9.2, there was no specific feature in Time and Labor, to allow administrators to prevent employees from making changes to time for a certain pay period during payroll processing.
In PeopleSoft 9.2, Oracle has introduced a new feature called 'Timesheet Lockdown'.

What does this new feature do?
The Timesheet Lockdown feature can be used to 'lock' timesheets for employees and managers for all periods prior to the start of the current pay period.

What does 'lock' imply?
Lock in this context means that the timesheet will be read-only to employees and managers during the time frame the timesheet is locked.

How is the current pay period determined?
The current pay period is defined as the pay period intersected by the current date. This information is retrieved from the pay calendar table for employees on Payroll for North America/Payroll Interface and from the calendar period table for employees on Global Payroll. So, assume that the employees are on a Monthly pay period. In this case, if the timesheet is locked by administrators today, then all dates prior to 1st March, 2013 (i.e. start of current monthly pay period) will be displayed as read-only to employees and managers.

How can administrators 'lock' a timesheet?
The new timesheet lockdown page can be accessed from:  
Main Menu > Time and Labor > Report Time > Timesheet Lockdown

A sample of the page is given below:

 

Locking and Unlocking the timesheet is as simple as selecting a checkbox. But, the important point to note here is that locking is done at the pay group level. The Timesheet Lockdown page displays all active pay groups in the system (includes all active pay groups from Payroll for North America, Payroll Interface and Global Payroll) and administrators can select the pay groups have to be locked. Once the checkbox to lock a timesheet is selected, the timesheet for employees falling in the locked pay groups will be displayed in read-only mode. Administrators can unselect the checkbox to unlock the timesheets after payroll processing. 

Will employess be notified when the timesheet is locked for processing? 

A message will be displayed on the timesheet if timesheet locking is in place. The new HR Announcements framework could also be utilised to notify employees when timesheet locking is in place.

A sample screenshot of a locked timesheet is given below:

Can Administrators continue to Edit the timesheets when locking is on?
Yes. Timesheet Locking is applicable only to employee and manager profiles. Administrators will continue to have edit access to timesheets during the locked period.

Important observations, limitations and notes:
While this is a useful enhancement provided by Oracle, there are some fine points and limitations that need to be kept in mind.

• As the Timesheet Lockdown feature is implemented at a pay group level - it is necessary that the employee is enrolled in a pay system in Job data. This means that those customers who are using time and labor without enrolling employees into a pay system will not be able to use this feature.
• The definition of the period used to lock-down the timesheet is not flexible enough to cater to global requirements. As detailed earlier, the timesheet will be locked down for all dates prior to the start date of the current pay period. Here, current pay period is the pay period intersected by the current date.This means that the timesheet locking feature is suited for organisations where payroll processing is done after the end date of the pay period being processed. An example of this would be, processing the payroll for March in the first week of April. This is true to a good extent for payroll processing of hourly (non-exempt) employees in the US, where payroll processing happens after the end date of the pay period. But, this is not true in most instances outside US. For eg. in Europe and Asia, it is common to have payroll for a period processed prior to the actual pay period end date. For eg. the payroll processing for a monthly period ending March 31st, might happen from 21st March to 24th March. In this case, payroll administrators would ideally want the entire month of March to be locked down. But, with the current design of the timesheet lockdown page, March will remain open as it is the current pay period being processed. Let us take another payroll processing scenario - it is common in APAC to have a different processing period for Time and Labor and Payroll for the same run. For eg. in the payroll period from 1st March to 31st March, time entries from 16th February to 15th March will be processed. This implies that when the payroll period ending March 31st is processed, administrators would ideally like the period from 16th February to 15th March to be locked in Time and Labor. In the current design, the period from 16th February to end of February will be locked, but the whole of March will be open. This is a major limitation of this functionality that reduces it's utility in certain geographies. A more appropriate design would have been to provide a page where administrators could enter either the Calendar Group id of Global Payroll or Pay Run Id of Payroll for North America to lock timesheets. This way, the framework could get to know the time period to lock the timesheets. This could have also addressed the scenario where time and labor period differs from payroll period.
• Global Payroll User security is not considered while displaying the Global Payroll pay groups to be locked, in the Timesheet Lockdown page. This means that any user who has access to the Timesheet lockdown page, will be able to lock/unlock timesheets of employees in pay groups that the particular user has no access to. This can be an operational security issue for organisations running multiple country payroll in PeopleSoft.
• For customers using both Time and Labor and Absence Management, it would have been appropriate if this lock down feature was extended to absence management as well. From an operational perspective, both Time and Labor and Absence Management need to work together and a lockdown for payroll processing should have meant restriction of editing both time and absences.
•  While looking at the code used to populate the pay groups in the Timesheet Lockdown page, I noticed that even Payroll Interface pay groups are printed as Payroll for North America.
• An informational message is displayed in the timesheet page when the locking is in place. When a certain utility is locked/shut down, I think it is useful to also convey when the utility will be available again. So, instead of just displaying, 'The Timesheet is currently locked down', it would have been more useful to have a message like, 'The Timesheet is currently locked down and it will be available at 2pm PST on Thursday'. We drilled down to find out the message catalog which is used to print the delivered message and it is Message Set: 13504 and Message Number: 89.

So, in conclusion, the timesheet lockdown feature is an enhancement that will contribute to further payroll processing accuracy and will be welcomed by a number of payroll processing administrators. But, the limitations with respect to the dates that will be locked down will have to be kept in mind during an implementation. I suspect that this limitation will make the feature less popular outside North America (unless customised!).

Looking for more 9.2 feature reviews? Click here.

Want a 9.2 feature walkthrough?

We have a dedicated HR Tech lab researching the new features of 9.2 as well as developing innovative solutions utilising 9.2/8.53 features. If you want a feature walkthrough of 9.2 and a discussion on the new features, mail into jiju@hroiconsulting.com

PeopleSoft 9.2 feature review - Timesheet sign-off message

A new feature in Time and Labor 9.2 is the ability to display a message to employees on submitting the timesheet. This can be utilised as a sign-off validation of the timesheet by the employee submitting the timesheet. This sign-off message is also printed in the output of the 'Print Timesheet' functionality.
Here is a screenshot of the message displayed to the employee on submitting the timesheet:

 

Where can this be configured?

This feature can be setup at the Workgroup setup component. The layout of the workgroup component has undergone a bit of change in 9.2. The relevant section where the Sign-Off message can be configured is shown below:

Here's more details on the functionality:

•  The 'Require Employee Sign-Off on Timesheet' checkbox can be used to display the sign-off message to the employee. If this checkbox is unselected, the sign-off message will not be displayed to the employee.
• Once the checkbox is selected, then the Message Catalog details that contain the text of the sign-off message will have to be given.
• The Signature Statement is a non-editable field and displays the detailed text of the message number entered.

Pointers on this functionality:

1. This message is also printed in the report produced by clicking on the 'Print Timesheet' link on the timesheet page.
2. This message is displayed only in ESS. If a manager/administrator submits time on behalf of the employee, this message will not be displayed.
3. Considering that this is intended to be a 'sign-off' message given to employees, I found it a bit strange that the message is displayed after the timesheet submission confirmation page is displayed. It would have been more appropriate if the sign-off message is shown prior to the final timesheet submission, so that employees have an opportunity to acknowledge the submission before the changes are saved in the system.

While we are staying on the workgroup setup page, I would also like to point out the new feature to control whether non-administrators can submit time on behalf of an employee. Notice the checkbox called 'Allow Others to Submit Time for Employee' in the screenshot. Unchecking this checkbox will prevent non-administrators from modifying the timesheet of the employee. This means that only employees and administrators can make changes to an employee's timesheet once this option is unchecked. Managers will still continue to have a read-only access to an employee's timesheet.

One theme that I am seeing in some of these changes in 9.2 Time and Labor -  is increasing time/wage hour compliance. Let it be the print timesheet functionality, timesheet sign-off feature or restricting non-administrators from modifying an employee's timesheet - they all add up to reducing the risk of time related litigations for an organisation. Should help the business case for a 9.2 upgrade!

PeopleSoft 9.2 - Business Process Maps available!

In what should be good news to the consulting community, Business Process Maps for HCM 9.2 business processes is now available online. You can find the BPMs in the below link:
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E39904_01/hcm92pbr0/eng/hcm/index.html?content=i_BPMS

PeopleSoft 9.2 feature review - TRC display control based on role

A very welcome enhancement in PeopleSoft Time and Labor 9.2 is the ability to restrict the display of TRCs on the timesheet depending on the role of users.

What is this enhancement about?
It is possible to restrict the display of a TRC in the timesheet page depending on whether the user is an employee, manager or administrator.

What is the benefit of this enhancement?
Most organisations with complex Time and Attendance requirements have the need to display different TRCs to different users, based on their role. This is a customisation in versions prior to 9.1. Thus, this enhancement will help customers go with a vanilla solution and increases the maintainability of the application.

How were the TRCs displayed prior to v9.2?
The TRCs displayed for a certain employee was controlled by the TRC Program attached to the workgroup of an employee. Any user accessing an employee's timesheet was able to see all active non-absence management and non-rule Time Reporting Codes in the timesheet. Thus, conditional display of TRCs to different users was not possible prior to v9.2.

Where can this be setup?
The setup for conditional TRC display is to be done in the TRC Program setup page.

 

The TRC Program page in v9.2 is shown above. You will notice, two new fields on this page:

a. TRC Access: The TRC access field can be used to indicate the user roles that can have access to the particular TRC. The options available are: Administrator Only, Manager or Administrator Only and No Restrictions. Only those TRCs setup with a TRC display option of 'No Restrictions' will be available in ESS. 

b. Ordering sequence: The ordering sequence field can be used to order the TRCs in the drop down in the timesheet page. This is again a small, yet useful enhancement to the product.

How does the system determine whether a user is an employee, manager or administrator?

Here is some undocumented insight into how the system determines the level of a certain user's access:

a. A user is treated as an employee if the timesheet page is accessed through the ROLE_EMPLOYEE menu.

b. A user is treated as an administrator if the timesheet page is accessed through the ROLE_MANAGER menu and if the user has access to the TL_MSS_TIMESHEET page in the DEFINE_TIME_AND_LABOR menu.

c. A user is treated as a manager if the timesheet page is accessed through the ROLE_MANAGER menu and if the user does not have access to the TL_MSS_TIMESHEET page in the DEFINE_TIME_AND_LABOR menu.

For the most in-depth and comprehensive reviews of Time and Attendance functionalities in PeopleSoft 9.2, click here.

Have questions or want to discuss on this further?

We have a dedicated HR Tech lab researching the new features of 9.2 as well as developing innovative solutions utilising 9.2/8.53 features. If you want to discuss further on this new feature or on 9.2 in general, mail into jiju@hroiconsulting.com

PeopleSoft 9.2 feature review - Timesheet page gets a major facelift

'I reported 45 hours this week, but has not been paid any weekly overtime. Could you take a look and tell me why?'

Questions on the (in)accuracy of time calculations are probably the most common query that a Time and Attendance administrator will have to face (right up there will be queries on absence balances as well!). If the above question came to the T&A administrator of a company running on PeopleSoft Time and Labor prior to v9.2, what would she have done? Let us try to trace the steps she would have gone through in PeopleSoft while trying to answer this question:

1. Open the timesheet page to check the actual number of hours the employee reported. 

2. Open the payable time detail page to view the payable hours generated for each day of the week and compare it with the hours reported on the timesheet.

3. Open the work schedule page of the employee to verify the schedule assigned to the employee.

4. Check the exceptions of the employee to ensure that there were no unresolved high severity exceptions.

5. Check whether the payable time was approved.

6. Check whether there were any absences for the week.

Assuming that there are no customised reports in the system to aggregate the above data, the T&A administrator would have had to navigate to multiple pages and compare data across different pages to troubleshoot this issue. Wouldn't it have been better if most of the information related to 'time' and 'absence' were available in one single place? Going a step further, wouldn't it have been better if the employee herself had the right tools/data to figure out what was going wrong with her overtime?

With a revamped design of the timesheet page, PeopleSoft v9.2 has taken steps to move towards that direction - bring together all relevant information related to time/absence transactions and reduce the number of navigational clicks. The new timesheet page is given below:

I would like to highlight the following changes to the timesheet functionality in v9.2:
a. The UI of the page has been revamped by arranging different related information areas as tabs (highlighted in the red box in the above screenshot) in the timesheet page.
b. The Apply Rules button will run time administratin process in real time and populate the payable time details in the payable time tab in the timesheet. I think this is an excellent feature that will give lot of transparency to users regarding what they will be paid out and should help improve operational efficiency. We had configured the employee used in the demo to have simple California specific overtime rules. As seen in the payable time tab - the employee can immediately view the regular, straight OT and double time generated for the week and compare the results with the time reported.
c. The print timesheet functionality is new and we had discussed the details of that functionality here.
d. A timesheet sign-off/acknowledgement message can be configured at the workgroup level which will be displayed to the employees when they submit the timesheet.
e.  The fields and sections to be displayed on the timesheet can be configured at the time reporting template level.

To be fair to previous releases, the product has had grids for absences, reported time summary etc. in older versions as well. PeopleSoft 9.2 has a revamped look, with the grids which were arranged one below the other being arranged as horizontal tabs. The major enhancement that I notice on this page is the introduction of a tab to display the Payable Time data alongside reported time from timesheet. This will enable employees, manager and administrators to easily compare reported and payable time on the same page and will lead to operational efficiencies. Another interesting enhancement is with the way the 'Apply Rules' functionality behaves. On clicking the 'Apply Rules' button (the display of the button can be controlled by timesheet display settings in the Time Reporting template setup), certain sections of the time administration process is invoked real time. Once the time administration process completes, the payable time, exceptions and attendance tabs on the timesheet page is immediately refreshed with the newly calculated data. This will help especially employees and managers to immediately see the results of reported time and take necessary action, if required. This has potential to greatly improve operational efficiency as more actionable data and alerts are presented to employees and managers. The only question I have with respect to using the 'Apply Rules' functionality is the impact on system performance, which has to be verified.

The fact that other related information like Absences, Exceptions, Compensatory and Leave Balances and Attendance actions are present in the same page as multiple tabs will help in troubleshooting and alerting issues faster. I am also sure that this will drastically reduce the training/learning curve that users of the system will have, as most of the related information is present in one page. 

Given below is an example where the attendance infraction details are immediately shown to the employee on the timesheet.

I foresee the below operational advantages due to the revamped timesheet design in 9.2:

a. Better usability of the system and reduced number of navigational clicks.

b. More issues will be self-diagnosed and resolved by employees/managers given the information easily available to them. End users can also request for information on an on-demand fashion, which will further aid productivity.

c. Faster and more accurate payroll processing/closure with the ability to Apply Rules at an individual timesheet level and empowerment of employees/managers to resolve issues faster.

d. Shorter learning curve for users.

e. Lesser number of incidents to HR services and faster turn around time on incidents.

Looking for more 9.2 feature reviews? Click here.

Have questions or want to discuss on this further?

We have a dedicated HR Tech lab researching the new features of 9.2 as well as developing innovative solutions utilising 9.2/8.53 features. If you want to discuss further on this new feature or on 9.2 in general, mail into jiju@hroiconsulting.com