February 14th, 2017 Implementation / User Guide

February 14th, 2017

KasPer Pro V1.7.4.0 Implementation / User Guide

Julian Kirkness KIRKNESS ASSOCIATES SOFTWARE

KasPer Pro Implementation / User Guide

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1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................. 4

2 INSTALLATION AND LICENCING ........................................................................................................... 5

2.1 DATE FORMATS ........................................................................................................................................... 5 2.2 SECURITY ................................................................................................................................................... 5 2.3 LICENCING KASPER PRO................................................................................................................................ 5

3 GETTING STARTED.............................................................................................................................. 7

3.1 USERS ....................................................................................................................................................... 7 3.1.1 Standalone Calendar .......................................................................................................................... 8 3.1.2 Request Leave for Others ................................................................................................................... 8 3.1.3 Restrict Benefits Access on MSS ......................................................................................................... 8

4 LOOK UP TABLES AND OTHER SETTINGS .............................................................................................. 9

4.1 APPRAISAL TYPES......................................................................................................................................... 9 4.1.1 Sends Alerts ......................................................................................................................................10 4.1.2 Manager Comments.........................................................................................................................10 4.1.3 Employee Comments ........................................................................................................................10 4.1.4 Overall ..............................................................................................................................................10 4.1.5 Set Objectives ...................................................................................................................................11 4.1.6 Assess Objectives ..............................................................................................................................11 4.1.7 Hide Assessments .............................................................................................................................11 4.1.8 Hide Update Skills from Employee ...................................................................................................11

4.2 BENEFIT TYPES ..........................................................................................................................................11 4.3 COMPETENCY CATEGORIES ..........................................................................................................................12 4.4 COMPETENCY FRAMEWORKS .......................................................................................................................12 4.5 CHECKLISTS / ON-BOARDING RULES ..............................................................................................................12 4.6 ORGANISATION UNIT TYPES.........................................................................................................................13 4.7 RATING LEVELS..........................................................................................................................................14 4.8 TIME PERIODS ...........................................................................................................................................14 4.9 COLOURS .................................................................................................................................................14 4.10 SETTING UP DEFAULTS AND WORKFLOW LINKS ...............................................................................................14

4.10.1 Default User Type ........................................................................................................................15 4.10.2 Currency Symbol / Tax ID Label / Tax Code Label ........................................................................15 4.10.3 Workflow – Setting up the link to Self Service .............................................................................15 4.10.4 Payroll Number Seed....................................................................................................................16 4.10.5 Anniversary Reminders ................................................................................................................16 4.10.6 Calendar Colours ..........................................................................................................................16 4.10.7 ‘Branding’ the System ..................................................................................................................17

4.11 USER FIELDS .............................................................................................................................................17 4.12 DATA EXPORT ...........................................................................................................................................18

4.12.1 Employees with Organisation Details ..........................................................................................19 4.12.2 Employees with Qualifications .....................................................................................................19 4.12.3 Employees with Training History .................................................................................................19 4.12.4 Organisation Structure for Org Charting .....................................................................................20 4.12.5 Absence Data Between Dates ......................................................................................................21 4.12.6 Equipment Items and Assignments .............................................................................................21 4.12.7 Exporting Overtime ......................................................................................................................21 4.12.8 Exporting Appraisal Data .............................................................................................................22

4.13 IMPORTING ORGANISATION UNITS, POSTS AND EMPLOYEES ..............................................................................22

5 MANAGING DOCUMENTS ................................................................................................................. 24


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5.1 EMPLOYEE DOCUMENTS AND WORKFLOW .....................................................................................................25

6 CONFIGURING ABSENCE ................................................................................................................... 26

6.1 ABSENCE TYPES .........................................................................................................................................26 6.2 LEAVE APPROVAL ......................................................................................................................................26

6.2.1 First Level Approver ..........................................................................................................................26 6.2.2 Second Level Approver .....................................................................................................................27

6.3 LEAVE RULES ............................................................................................................................................27 6.4 ADVANCED LEAVE ......................................................................................................................................28

6.4.1 Flexi Time /TOIL Setup ......................................................................................................................30 6.4.2 Overtime Requests ...........................................................................................................................31

6.5 HOLIDAY YEAR END ...................................................................................................................................33 6.6 PUBLIC HOLIDAYS ......................................................................................................................................33

6.6.1 Importing Public Holiday Dates ........................................................................................................34 6.7 LEAVE EMAIL CONFIGURATION .....................................................................................................................35

7 SETTING UP YOUR ORGANISATION (ORG UNITS AND POSTS) ............................................................. 36

7.1 ORGANISATION UNITS ................................................................................................................................36 7.2 POSTS .....................................................................................................................................................37

7.2.1 Post to Post Reporting ......................................................................................................................38

8 EMPLOYEES ..................................................................................................................................... 39

8.1 ADDING EMPLOYEES ..................................................................................................................................39 8.2 VIEWING AND EDITING EMPLOYEES...............................................................................................................43 8.3 EMPLOYEE PERSONAL INFORMATION ............................................................................................................44 8.4 DELETING AN EMPLOYEE .............................................................................................................................45 8.5 EMPLOYEE NOTES ......................................................................................................................................46

9 MANAGING TASKS ........................................................................................................................... 48

9.1 REVIEW OUTSTANDING TASKS .....................................................................................................................49 9.2 REPEATING TASKS ......................................................................................................................................50 9.3 CREATING BULK TASKS ...............................................................................................................................51

10 MANAGING ABSENCE AND HOLIDAY............................................................................................. 52

10.1 EMPLOYEE ABSENCES .................................................................................................................................52 10.2 CHANGING AN EMPLOYEE’S LEAVE RULE .......................................................................................................54 10.3 ENTERING ABSENCES ..................................................................................................................................54 10.4 HOLIDAY ADDITIONS / FLEXI / MANUAL ADJUSTMENTS ....................................................................................55 10.5 MANUAL ADJUSTMENTS AND HOLIDAY CARRYOVER .........................................................................................56 10.6 ABSENCE REPORTS .....................................................................................................................................56

10.6.1 Absence Calendar ........................................................................................................................56 10.6.2 Absent Today ...............................................................................................................................56 10.6.3 Bradford Factor ............................................................................................................................57 10.6.4 Summary Absences ......................................................................................................................58 10.6.5 Holiday by Org Unit......................................................................................................................58 10.6.6 Holiday List ...................................................................................................................................59 10.6.7 Leave by Type Between Dates .....................................................................................................59

10.7 THE ABSENCE REQUEST PROCESS .................................................................................................................60 10.8 REQUESTING A CANCELLATION OR CHANGE TO AN ABSENCE ..............................................................................60

11 MANAGE APPRAISALS .................................................................................................................. 61

12 MANAGING TRAINING ................................................................................................................. 65


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12.1 COURSE SETUP ..........................................................................................................................................65 12.2 COURSE EVENTS ........................................................................................................................................66 12.3 TRAINING HISTORY / BOOKING ....................................................................................................................66

13 SELF SERVICE ............................................................................................................................... 67

13.1 EMPLOYEE SELF SERVICE .............................................................................................................................67 13.1.1 Absence Requests ........................................................................................................................68 13.1.2 Requesting Leave Cancellations or Changes................................................................................71 13.1.3 Flexi Time /TOIL Requests ............................................................................................................72 13.1.4 Appraisals ....................................................................................................................................73 13.1.5 Notes ............................................................................................................................................73

13.2 SUMMARY OF MANAGER SELF SERVICE FEATURES ...........................................................................................75 13.2.1 Selecting Employees.....................................................................................................................75 13.2.2 Skill Search ...................................................................................................................................76 13.2.3 Multi Employee Absence Calendar ..............................................................................................76 13.2.4 Review Absence ...........................................................................................................................76

13.3 CONFIGURING STANDALONE SELF-SERVICE .....................................................................................................76 13.3.1 Linking Directly to Leave Requests...............................................................................................77 13.3.2 Standalone View for Flexi Time and Overtime requests ..............................................................78

13.4 COMPANY DIRECTORY ................................................................................................................................79 13.4.1 Linking Directly to the Directory ..................................................................................................79

13.5 STANDALONE ABSENCE CALENDAR................................................................................................................80 13.5.1 Linking Directly to the Calendar ...................................................................................................81

13.6 STANDALONE VIEW ENABLING ENTRY OF LEAVE REQUESTS FOR OTHER EMPLOYEES................................................81 13.7 WORKFLOW .............................................................................................................................................82 13.8 USER REMINDER EMAILS.............................................................................................................................83

14 PASSWORD RECOVERY ................................................................................................................. 84

14.1 OPTION 1.................................................................................................................................................84 14.2 OPTION 2 (THE LAST RESORT) ......................................................................................................................85

15 ‘BATCH’ PROCESSING OF EMAIL ALERTS ........................................................................................ 86

15.1 AUTOMATION IN TASK SCHEDULER ...............................................................................................................86 15.2 SENDING WORK ANNIVERSARY AND BIRTHDAY REMINDERS TO MANAGERS .........................................................86


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1 INTRODUCTION

First of all, thank you for buying your copy of KasPer Pro! In this guide, we will take you through the

essential steps required to set up KasPer Pro and get you and your team using it to the full. Most of

the screenshots included in this guide are taken from the demonstration version of the system so

you could benefit from installing that if you haven’t already had a look (it is available free from the

Sharepoint Store).

KasPer Pro is an HRMS which includes facilities for HR, Managers and Staff members to access

information which is relevant to them and their role (managers can have access to their team’s

information for example). We will look at how this works in conjunction with the security and

organization structure elements of the system.

KasPer Pro is a relatively sophisticated application and so in addition to the software purchased from

the app store, we also offer users the option of joining our support service and forum which

provides an area for users to communicate with us and each other, ask questions, make suggestions

(product or otherwise) and be kept up to date with news and developments around our software.

This service is available for an annual fee and can be ordered via our website – once payment is

received you will be invited to join our user ‘workspace’ and can start interacting with us and each

other immediately.

Within the app itself (from V1.6.0.0) there are some training videos available which cover some of

the key issues. We would particularly recommend viewing the Welcome video to new users.


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2 INSTALLATION AND LICENCING

2.1 DATE FORMATS It is likely that you have already installed KasPer PRO by the time you read this document. However,

this section aims to deal with an issue which many customers have had post installation.

The app uses a large number of date fields and the format for the majority of those is set by the

Language Option presented during installation of the app (which is very easy to miss). English US will

set dates to US format (mm/dd/yyyy) and English UK will set dates to dd/mm/yyyy. The US format

seems to be the default.

It is important to determine if dates are in the format you require before implementing the system

because they cannot be changed once the system is installed (they do not, for example, follow the

date settings of the Sharepoint site). If you find that your system has the incorrect format, you

should delete the app and re-install it.

2.2 SECURITY In addition to the date format issue, it is worth considering where to install KasPer Pro. All users of

the application will require, as a minimum, Contribute permissions to the Sharepoint site the

application is installed within. In many customers’ cases, this means that the best option is to install

KasPer Pro into it’s own subsite where giving this level of permission doesn’t compromise anything

else. This should be considered early on because the app cannot be moved – so it may be best to re-

install in a suitable subsite before continuing with implementation.

2.3 LICENCING KASPER PRO KasPer Pro is licenced on the basis of the number of Current Employees it is used for (i.e. leavers don’t count). This means that after the initial 14 day trial period you need to purchase sufficient licences for all the employees you have in the system (plus a few extra perhaps). This is done by clicking the Purchase User Licences button on the About Page:


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From here you are taken to a screen where you can link to our online Store to buy licences, support time (days or hours) and also ‘unlocked’ (i.e. customisable) versions of our other two apps.

This is also where you then apply the licence codes we send you. Note that generating and sending the licence codes is a manual process and, depending up time zones, etc., may take a while to arrive with you.


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3 GETTING STARTED

Assuming you have found this document from the link in the app, you have probably already set

your own user / employee record up – if not, the screen for doing this is shown below. The reason

there is a special screen for doing this (and that you are prompted to do so on first login) is to make

sure that you have relevant access to everything from the beginning. The screen sets up your

employee record with minimum information – which you can update through the system’s regular

screens later. Before updating your own record and beginning to enter other new employees, you

need to set up some values in the system’s lookup tables, organization structure screens and

configuration options

Once you have created yourself as the first user / employee in this way, no one else will be able to

access the system until you have also set them up (using the normal new employee screens).

The next step is to set up all the lookup and default values for the system – you need to do this

before adding new employees, departments, posts etc. as the look up tables are required for this

(although you can link through to the look up table to add values in most cases).

3.1 USERS As mentioned above, User records and Employee Records are really the same – except that you

maintain an employee’s personnel data in the Employee screen and their User rights in the Users

screen:


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All employees have access rights (although they may all be turned off).

Basic user’s rights (IsAdmin, MSS and ESS) are covered in the New Employee section but the full

range of options is controlled from this screen.

3.1.1 Standalone Calendar

This is a feature setting which determines whether a specific employee can access the Absence

Calendar from outside the system (see the Self Service section for how to access this screen).

3.1.2 Request Leave for Others

This option determines whether a specific user can request leave on behalf of other employees. The

use case here would be where there are employees with no access to a computer and they are then

able to ask another person to request on their behalf

3.1.3 Restrict Benefits Access on MSS

With this option, you can prevent Managers seeing benefit details (they can see which benefits

someone has but not the value) of their staff.

3.1.4 ESS / MSS Edit Personal Data

This option enable you to determine whether this specific user can edit their personal details (or

their team members if they are a manager.

3.1.5 MSS View Employee Personal Data

Some companies have a policy that the only people with access to employees’ personal information

is HR – if this is the case then it is possible to restrict Manager’s access so that they can’t access their

teams personal information in Self Service.


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4 LOOK UP TABLES AND OTHER SETTINGS

We will start by looking at the look up tables in the system. Here is the menu with all of the main

ones displayed:

Most of these are self-explanatory but we will look at some of them specifically, starting with

Absence Types:

4.1 APPRAISAL TYPES KasPer Pro includes facilities for Managers to record the results of appraisals with their staff using

the Self Service facilities. For new employees, you can determine which Appraisal Type is to be used

as a template at the end of the probationary period (see System Settings below) – and the system

will then automatically set up the review and associated tasks for you.

There is a degree of configurability to this process, whereby you can decide which features are

enabled for which type of appraisal as well as whether you wish to set up any specific questions for

that type of appraisal, as follows:


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In this example, for an Annual Review, you will see that all of the possible options are selected. In

addition, at the Post level you can link in a Competency Framework which can then be used with

appraisals to assess staff.

Let’s consider the options:

4.1.1 Sends Alerts

This option can be set so that the system creates tasks and email alerts for both the employee and

manager reminding them that the appraisal is due.

Note that the email alerts will only be sent correctly if the URL for the Self Service option is set up

and the Appraisal Notifications are set up – we recommend the following:

4.1.2 Manager Comments

If this option is checked, then the manager is able to enter comments about this employee in the

appraisal screen.

4.1.3 Employee Comments

As with the above, if this is checked then the employee also has a field for entering their comments.

4.1.4 Overall

This field gives you the option to have an overall performance measure for the employee.


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4.1.5 Set Objectives

If this option is checked, then the manager will be able to set objectives to be assessed in a later

appraisal.

4.1.6 Assess Objectives

If this option is checked, then the manager can select a former appraisal from which to assess

performance against the set objectives.

4.1.7 Hide Assessments

This option allows you to prevent employees from seeing their assessments until released by their

manager (Appraisor):

4.1.8 Hide Update Skills from Employee

This option enables you to hide the facility (for a completed appraisal) for the employee to copy any

assessed Skills and Competencies from updating that employee’s central record of skills. This facility

would still be available to managers.

4.2 BENEFIT TYPES This screen allows you to configure the range of benefits available to employees (salary, car

allowance, healthcare etc.). The screen also shows you which employees have each benefit and what

value it is for each of them:


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4.3 COMPETENCY CATEGORIES This feature allows you to define your own categories for Skills / Competencies which are then used

to sort them in Appraisal Competency Assessments

4.4 COMPETENCY FRAMEWORKS Competency Frameworks are lists of competencies and skills with required levels of competence

required for specific roles or categories of role:

Once created, they are associated with a Post and when a person’s appraisal is set up the system

looks up the framework for their Post (Current Job) and populates the appraisal’s list of

competencies and skills to asses.

4.5 CHECKLISTS / ON-BOARDING RULES This feature allows you to define checklists and other on-boarding processes to be used when

employees join or leave your organisation. Each checklist can have many tasks associated with it and

each task can be assigned to either the person’s Manager, the person creating the record, a

specified person or the new employee themselves. The result of the checklist is a set of tasks

associated with the employee appearing in the relevant employee / user’s task list. You have a

choice (from V1.6.7.0) to have these sent to users as individual email alerts or one alert per person.

If you do choose to have a single email per person, the system will also include the emails about the

objective setting and probation reviews. However, the system will also send these email separately

unless email alerting is also turned OFF for the particular Appraisal Type.

Finally, the feature allows you to set up default starter objective setting and probation reviews (for

On Boarding checklists), together with default notice and probations periods. This will also result in

the creation of associated ‘appraisals’ as associated tasks for the employee and appraiser (usually

the Manager).


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4.6 ORGANISATION UNIT TYPES Organisation units are a key part of the KasPer solution. They are used to record details of

companies, departments, etc., in your organization and within which to place Posts (Jobs) and

ultimately people. Org Unit Types allow you to categorise your units and indicate their ‘level’ within

your structure. As you can see, the screen also provides you with a list of those units of each type

compete with drill through capability:


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4.7 RATING LEVELS Rating Levels are used in a number of places in the system – including appraisals, training etc. The

look up table is straightforward in that you simply record a numeric level of the rating and a text

description. Users will select the level using the text value.

4.8 TIME PERIODS Time Periods are used for selecting a Notice Period and Probation Period for employees and are

expressed in days, weeks or months.

4.9 COLOURS The Colours lookup table includes a range of Colour options for the Dividers / Headers of the forms

in the application. You can choose any of the options included in the application or create your own

entries using a hex colour code.

4.10 SETTING UP DEFAULTS AND WORKFLOW LINKS Once all the lookup tables etc. are defined, you can set up some defaults for us throughout the

system:


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Most of these settings are self-explanatory, however here is an explanation of a few of them:

4.10.1 Default User Type

These 3 fields determine whether a) the user has access to the full set of screens (admin use), b)

MSS access allows the user to have access to information about employees directly or indirectly

reporting to them (if any) and c) ESS access allows the user/ employee to have access to their own

information through the ESS Screen.

4.10.2 Currency Symbol / Tax ID Label / Tax Code Label

These options allow you to specify a currency symbol (up to 3 characters) and text to describe

system’s tax ID field (NI Number for the UK as an example) and Tax Code (where used). Note that

leaving these blank may cause the label on screen to say Null.

4.10.3 Workflow – Setting up the link to Self Service

The Workflow processes in KasPer PRO send emails to notify employees and managers about tasks

they need to deal with. These emails contain a link to the Self Service page of the application.


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The system can create a Hyperlink automatically (see ‘View Via Standalone Form’ above) but this is

effectively abbreviated. In order to get the full link, it is necessary to copy the link from this first field

(right click) and then pasting it into the second field and then saving it. This only has to be done once

and then the system will include a link to Self Service at the bottom of each email it sends.

Finally, V1.6.3.0 introduces an option to allow managers to use a special page for authorising Leave

Requests – this speeds up the process. Ticking the relevant box on System Settings turns this on – as

long as the Self Service link is set up.

4.10.4 Payroll Number Seed

KasPer Pro can assign Payroll Numbers to employees when they are entered into the system. Users

can choose whether to do this manually or to get the system to generate the number based upon a

‘Seed’ number. In the latter case, this is entered into System Settings and from then on this number

will be incremented by one every time a new employee record is created.

4.10.5 Anniversary Reminders

This feature will send Manager’s emails to alert them of any forthcoming work anniversaries or

birthdays in their team. These emails will ONLY be sent if you set up the batch processing option

described later in this document.

4.10.6 Calendar Colours

We had a request to make the Colours representing the number of people off on any day in the

Calendar, along with the number bands, to be configurable – the screen below allows you to do this:

This screen is accessed via the calendar button on the Action Bar in the System Settings screen. Here

is the effect of the settings above:


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4.10.7 ‘Branding’ the System

Clients have requested the ability to change the banner on the home page of the app and apply

some branding to the Self Service screens. The form below allows this to be done:

The screen shot shows the default settings but you can choose your own graphics. The banner image

should be proportioned roughly as shown and the Icon should be square and shows in the top left

corner of Self Service pages:

4.11 USER FIELDS It is quite likely that you will need a few additional fields within the app to meet you own specific

requirements and KasPer Pro provides 10 user fields for Employees which are configured in a simple


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User Fields screen. The idea is that they will be displayed on the relevant screen once you have

assigned them a name.

You have the option for the numeric fields to display the currency symbol or not. Also note the User

EmployeeLink fields – these are links to other employees in the system and can be used for a range

of things. In the case above they are used to show the person an employee would interact in the

case of grievances or disciplinary processes. In ESS, these Employee Links also display an Email

button so the employee can easily email the contact if required:

Should you change a field’s use (or stop displaying it) then the system will give you the option to

clear the data previously held in the field (Clear Data). If this option is enabled for a field, then you

will be reminded that the action is IRREVERSIBLE before clicking confirm to continue.

The fields will automatically be displayed on both the Employee screen and on the Self Service

screen when activated. The column headed “Edit in ESS” allows you to configure whether the

employee can edit the field in their ESS screen or simply view it.

4.12 DATA EXPORT We have provided, currently, five data export ‘screens’ which display information and include a

Download to Excel option.


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4.12.1 Employees with Organisation Details

This table is ideal for exporting to excel as the basis for various charting and other processes. It

includes a large variety of data for all your current employees:

4.12.2 Employees with Qualifications

This extract includes all employees and details of qualifications where they have them:

4.12.3 Employees with Training History

This includes all records of employee training:


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4.12.4 Organisation Structure for Org Charting

This option has been included in the system to provide data for an organisation charting application.

It has been tested using organimi.com – which can be free to use (but has chargeable add ons):

This chart was produced by importing a CSV file created by saving the Exel file exported from KasPer

PRO as a CSV.

http://www.organimi.com/


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4.12.5 Absence Data Between Dates

This option allows you to export absence information between dates which you input first (and

which default to the past month):

The output includes the employee’s current position and department so the data could again be

used for reporting purposes – or to import into another system.

4.12.6 Equipment Items and Assignments

This export outputs all equipment items together with the Org Unit or Employee they are currently

assigned to:

4.12.7 Exporting Overtime

Designed to be used in conjunction with the Overtime Request / Approval feature, this export can be

used to export data which payroll would use to process employees’ overtime:


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4.12.8 Exporting Appraisal Data

This feature allows for Appraisal data to be exported in a range of dates and you can then choose to

export the basic information with either the Competency / Skill records from the appraisal or and

Objectives that were assessed in the appraisal:

Note that the last three options only export appraisals where there actually are competency records

or objectives have been assessed whereas the first option will show all appraisals between the

dates:

4.13 IMPORTING ORGANISATION UNITS, POSTS AND EMPLOYEES This feature and should be used with great caution! Essentially the process is to cut and paste

information from a spreadsheet into special Views. When the View opens, you will see that it

actually shows information about all the employees currently in the system. UNLESS YOU WANT TO

OVERWRITE THIS DATA always remember to go to the first blank line at the bottom of the table and

insert your records there.


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As the initial screen says, it is a good idea to export the data first to give you a template spreadsheet,

delete the data from the Excel Sheet and then type in or otherwise load the new employees’ data.

PLEASE BE VERY CAREFUL WITH THIS FEATURE!


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5 MANAGING DOCUMENTS

There are many parts of the system where you can attach documents to records using Hyperlink

fields. The documents are not actually stored within the application but can be accessed by clicking

on the link. For example, we have a documents tab associated with Training Courses:

Clicking on one of the document (or the Add link) takes the user to the screen where the link to the

document is maintained:

You can see the hyperlink button on the bottom right of the screen which, when clicked allows you

to connect the document (actually it can also be a web page or anything accessible with a URL):


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Actual documents also need to be able to be accessed with a URL and so need to be stored online

(such as in Sharepoint Lists, Onedrive, Dropbox etc).

5.1 EMPLOYEE DOCUMENTS AND WORKFLOW Additional features have been included for the documents associated with employees to provide

some workflow processes. An example of this would be the need to check an employee’s work

permit or visa after a period of time.

Note that the Document Type itself contains the Review and Reminder parameters and then

calculates a date when the review is required. You are also able to determine whether the document

will appear in an employee’s Self Service page by altering the Show in ESS tick box for the document

type.

Review After and Set Reminder use the user definable Time Periods in the system:

Note the use of -2 in the duration field for time before the date being compared.

Each day the system checks for any documents which are due for review and will send a task and

email alert to the employee’s manager (or override authoriser) when it is due.


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6 CONFIGURING ABSENCE

Absence Management is one of the key features of any HR system and KasPer provides a

sophisticated set of capabilities which allow you to cover a wide range of scenarios. We will start

with Absence Types (accessible both from the lookup table and Leave Rules menus).

6.1 ABSENCE TYPES

Absence Types are a special case in that one of the possible values are required by the system for

calculations to take place correctly (Sickness) but when the system is installed from the Store the

table will be empty. You will see an unusual option in this case as well – the ‘Useful Link’ – this allows

you to put a URL link into the table connecting to anywhere accessible to your browser – for

example it may be a link to your Sickness policy or Holiday Policy.

There are two fields which effect how the absence type is used within the system – Requestable

determines whether employees are able to request this type of leave through the Absence Request

process.

The Comes off Entitlement field allows you to set up more than 1 type of absence which deducts

from the employee’s leave entitlement. For example, as US PTO (Paid Time Off) scheme generally

provides an overall allowance for both Sickness and Vacation – and in this case both would be set to

‘Come off Entitlement’.

6.2 LEAVE APPROVAL From V1.6.0.0, KasPer Pro includes an optional two level leave approval process with a number of

configuration options. If 2 level approvals are used, then an employee’s leave request would first go

to the first level approver and if they approve the leave then on to the second approver.

6.2.1 First Level Approver

By default, everyone’s first level approver is their Manager – this is the occupant of the Post to

which the employee’s post reports. This can be overridden at a post level:


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In this example, Julian Kirkness would be the approver for anyone in this post.

The first level approver can also be overridden at Employee level (on the Employee Absences View):

As the note says, the order of applying overrides is to take the setting at Employee level first, then

the setting at Post level and if both of these are blank then apply the normal rule (the employee’s

Manager).

6.2.2 Second Level Approver

There are several options (set in the Leave Rules View) for the second level approver:

These are fairly self-explanatory and when combined with the initial approver provide a range of

options which we intend to meet the vast majority of requirement.

6.3 LEAVE RULES KasPer is able to handle multiple sets of Leave Rules catering for different working patterns, absence

year dates, carry over rules and entitlements. If necessary, you can configure a rule to cater for the

needs of an individual employee.

The screenshot below shows all of the options available which are fairly self-explanatory apart from

Flexi Time and associated fields. You also need to know that you must manually calculate the

‘Average Hours Per Day’ field (which is simply used to calculate holiday hours from the days figure).


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Once these rules are in place (along with the Absence Types and Public Holidays), then the system

can be used to track employee holiday, sickness and other types of absenteeism. The system works

on the basis of tracking leave within a Leave Year (based on the start and end date). At the end of

the year, you will want to update each employee’s records to reflect the new year’s dates and also

carry over any outstanding leave entitlement (constrained by the Max Carry Over Days field). This

calculation is triggered using the indicated menu charm. This can also be used to apply any changes

to the rules that may occur during the period.

6.4 ADVANCED LEAVE It is also possible to configure more advanced absence rules where leave years are based upon the

anniversary of start dates, leave is accrued weekly, twice a month, monthly or annually, and to

determine length of service based rules for entitlement and carry over. This is the type of rule

customers in the US would use, for example, to configure a PTO (Paid Time Off) scheme.

The example above is of a rule using Advanced Leave features and therefore shows Leave Days as 0

on this screen (because it is set in the Rules screen as a length of service based table of values):


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In this example, the leave is accrued monthly (on the 20th) and the leave year is set to the

anniversary of the employee’s start date which means that each employee will have a different leave

year. We therefore also need to select the AutoProcess option which means that on the anniversary

the system will calculate the employee’s carry over (if allowed) and reset their leave year.

For Monthly and Weekly schemes you can specify the day of the month (or week) on which the

leave accrual is processed. Note for weekly, the week starts with 1 being the Sunday. Note that if

your accrual day is late in the week or month then you should consider setting up the DailyUpdates

process described at the end of this manual (other wise the accrual may not be processed if no one

accesses the system between the accrual date and the end of the month).

Semi Monthly schemes accrue leave twice a month on the 1st and 15th.

Annual schemes accrue once a year –either on the leave year start or anniversary of the employees

start date.

The First Year Accruals section allows you to set up accrual amounts applying for the first year of

employment based upon length of service in months – so for example you could set it so that no

accrual is created until 3 months service.

Finally, the Length of Service rules enable LOS based Accrual and Maximum Carryover. Both of these

values are in HOURS (and are converted into days as well).

In the example above, during the first year the employee gets 16 hours a month (2 days) in the first

year, 20 hours a month (2.5 days) after 1 year and 24 hours a month (3 days) after 5 years! After a

year’s service they can carry forward 40 hours (5 days) unused leave and after 5 this increases to 48

hours (6 days).


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6.4.1 Flexi Time /TOIL Setup

You will see in the Rules screen shot that there is a field to enable Flexi Time / TOIL (Time Off In Lieu)

for employees on this particular holiday rule. If this is enabled, then the employee is able to request

a number of hours Flexi Time – which if approved will be added to their holiday in the form of a field

called Holiday Additions. If your organisation imposes a limit on how much Flexi Time and employee

can take, then you are able to enter a Monthly limit (in hours) into the Flexi Rules view along with

options for the approval process:

If an employee tries to request over the limit in a month then they will be prevented from

submitting the request – which will be rounded down to the maximum they can request so that they

can submit an amount within the limit.

As you can see, you are able to specify options for who will authorise a flexi (or Overtime) request. It

can be the same as the normal leave approver or one of the 3 alternatives shown including the

Specified person (in which case you can choose a specific employee).

It is also possible to set up Override Approvers to handle any anomalies. These can be set at either

the employee level on the Employee’s absence screen:


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Or, alternatively, at the Post level:

As with Leave Request overrides, if there is an override at employee level this will take precedence

followed by any setting at Post level and finally the approver set in the Flexitime rules.

6.4.2 Overtime Requests

Note that the Flexi view has been expanded to include the facility for employees to request

Overtime payments in addition to Flexi. Whilst not strictly related to absence, it is covered here as

both use the same View and relate to compensation for working additional hours.

Whether a particular employee can request overtime is determined by a new indicator against their

Post (as shown in the photo above.

If this is turned on then the Self Service screen will enable overtime requests and the Flexi screen

will adapt to either enabling Flexi and/or Overtime requests. Both processes work in the usual way in


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that an email is sent to the employee’s approver etc. The approver for overtime is the same as for

Flexi Time requests (as they are both essentially the same feature).

Approved Flexi requests are effectively added to the employee’s Leave Entitlement as a Holiday

Addition whilst approved Overtime Requests can be exported (see Exporting Overtime) and passed

to Payroll for payment.


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6.5 HOLIDAY YEAR END At the holiday year end, you have the option as to whether to carry this over or not. In most

circumstances this will result in the same carry forward figure because the assumption during the

process is that effectively the Flexi time is taken first. This means that flexi time will only add to the

carry forward holiday if a) the amount of holiday taken in the year is less than the flexi time

accumulated in the year and b) the resulting carry forward holiday amount is less than the Max C/O

Days value for the holiday rule.

When you run the year end calculations, please note that the changes are irreversible and so should

not be run if you are uncertain. You will be reminded of this when you do click to run them by the

following dialog:

After clicking OK, the system will spend a little time doing all the calculations and will then present

you with a table of results:

This table shows all the key values which are calculated during the process and provides the option

to download the results into an Excel format for checking using the highlighted button.

Note that if you use the AutoProcess option in Advanced Rules then this process is not used and the

above report not available. However the more sophisticated rules are more likely to match your

absence process and therefore be correct.

6.6 PUBLIC HOLIDAYS The system includes a table for holding multiple sets of public holidays (as needed for employees in

different jurisdictions). You need to keep these up to date in order to ensure that absence

calculations remain correct (unless your employees work bank holidays that is).


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6.6.1 Importing Public Holiday Dates

This new feature has been incorporated to help customers implement unusual working patterns

(which don’t conform to the single week patterns allowed for in Leave Rules) and resulted from a

client who had employees working Wednesday, Thursday and Friday on week 1 and Thursday and

Friday on week two. In this case, setting every other Wednesday as a non work day in Public

Holidays in a special public holiday set ensure that the system will correctly calculate the person’s

leave.


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Ok, so you now have your holiday rules (including working patterns, public holidays, and absence

types) setup so you are in a position to begin to record absences once your employees are entered.

See Chapter 7 for more details.

6.7 LEAVE EMAIL CONFIGURATION In order for the system to send the email alerts for absence requests, it is first necessary to configure

the text for the emails – in our demo system these are set up as below:

Note that the employee’s name appears at the beginning of the message and a summary of the

absence at the end (after “Summary:” in this case).


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7 SETTING UP YOUR ORGANISATION (ORG UNITS AND POSTS)

Ideally, before you start to enter details of your employees, you should set up details of the

organisation itself. Let’s begin by setting up some Organisation Units:

7.1 ORGANISATION UNITS

This is all fairly self-explanatory – except note that units are within other units – so it makes sense to

start setting them up from the top down. You will also see that there is a facility to ‘Add Posts’ –

clicking this link will bring up the Posts screen with the Org Unit field already filled in – this is quite a

good way to set up your structure as you can consider one organization unit at a time in its entirety.

In the related information section you can see that you also have tabs for Organisation Units which

lists other units ‘within’ the one displayed, and Tasks – it is possible to relate tasks in the system to

many things including Org Units and Posts.


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7.2 POSTS Once you have some Organisation Units in your system, you can then start adding Posts (or Jobs).

Posts are able to have multiple employees ‘in’ them and also report to other posts. This is the basis

of the reporting structure in the system and enables it to provide detail of the employee’s manager

(for example as authoriser of absences).

The system provides a field against the post for storing an On-boarding rules and Checklist and

another for an associated Leaver Checklist.

Note again that the system provides links to ‘related information’ – in this case People, Posts

reporting to this one and Tasks (as with Org Units). You can link straight through to other posts both

up and down the organisation tree.

The Override Approver field is available to allow the system to override the normal reporting

structure when sending absence requests to be authorised and completing the Appraisor field in

Appraisals. In this example, the MD’s (who doesn’t report to anyone) absence requests would be

sent to Lisa Benedict who is HR Manager for Approval.

Posts can be expired in order to prevent users from assigning employees to them (through the new

employee wizard or the Change Job process).

Note also that with Manager Posts, it is important to only have one current employee in the position

– this is so that the system can work out who someone’s manager is (for authorisations etc.).


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7.2.1 Post to Post Reporting

The reporting structure within KasPer Pro is based upon one post reporting to another and in order

to help get this right (which is important for Self Service / Absence Requests etc), we provide the

following feature, accessed via the Action Bar on the Posts screen:

Using this screen, you can check the structure more quickly – and clicking on the post in the right

hand panel allows you to view and edit that post’s details.


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8 EMPLOYEES

So, we now have a part or fully configured system so it’s now time to have a look at how we manage

employees in the system.

8.1 ADDING EMPLOYEES The Add option from the employee screen starts a four or five page wizard (depending upon

whether any On-boarding tasks were created) that takes you through setting up all of the basic

information required for a new employee – including their security set up as users of the system.

The process is started from the Employees screen in the usual way:

Rather than using the current form, however, the add option takes you to the wizard, the first page

of which creates their basic information:


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Note that the photograph uploads when you click the Continue button (and takes a few seconds). If

on any of these screens you wish to cancel the new employee process, you click the Cancel Button –

at which point the button changes to Confirm! – clicking this time will permanently delete the new

person and return you to the Employees screen.

On the second page, the first field has two options for Employee Type – Either New Employee or

Existing Employee. If you choose the latter option, then the system will not use the On-boarding or

probation review options and should be used when adding your employees to the system during

initial set up. When you select the Starting Job, the system spends a couple of seconds looking up

the On-boarding rules associated with that Post and fills in the rest of the fields on the screen – you

are able to change these if you need to.

Note that if the Start Date is in the future, then the system will not be able to determine the new

employee’s Manager when creating the various tasks which require it and they will be assigned to

the user entering the new employee.

Page 3 of the wizard is concerned with absence settings and rules for the new employee and opens

already filled in with the defaults you set in Chapter 4, Configuring Absence. Once again, these can

be changed if you need to reflect the specific set up for this employee.


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A very likely scenario, for example, is that the employee will be starting mid-year and their Holiday

Entitlement will need to be adjusted accordingly (as agreed with them in their offer). If you are using

Advanced Absence rules on any of your Leave Rules then you can use the Add or Edit Accruals

button to load the accrual page so you can use this method to change the new employee’s

entitlement. Alternatively you could simply use the Manual Adjustment field to add or take away

allowance to leave.

The final stage before the system creates any tasks and other actions for the new employee is on

Page 4 and primarily relates to the employee’s rights and access to the system:


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Typically, if you are using Office 365, then users will ‘log into’ the system via their Office 365 email

address which are both unique and secure. If, however, you have one or more users accessing using

Sharepoint Online accounts then their identity can only be verified by checking their Display Name

from Sharepoint. Within KasPer, these must be unique! The following text displayed on the screen

makes this clear:

Use the Sharepoint Display Name field if the user is accessing the system as a Sharepoint Online

account user rather than an Office 365 account user. This is because Sharepoint Online users

don't pass their email address to the app. Also note that for Office 365 based login, the Work

Email should be set to the user's Office 365 Email address. Both the Sharepoint Display Name (if

entered) and Work Email MUST BE UNIQUE.

In this screen, you also set up the new employee’s access rights to the system. There are 4 options:

i. IsAdmin – selecting this option means that the new employee will have access to all of the

main menu options and features of the system. This is most likely to be reserved for your HR

staff (or equivalent).

ii. Access Benefits if Admin – this allows you to set up an Admin user but restrict their access to

benefits information (Salary etc).

iii. MSS – this option allows the employee / user to have access to information through the Self

Service screen to information about the people reporting to them by drilling down through

the hierarchy. They would also need to have ESS access to enter Self Service in the first

place. Typically, Managers would be given this access.

iv. ESS – Employee Self Service rights may well be given to all your staff so that they can see

their information (and edit parts of it as appropriate), request holidays and other absences

and interact with their task lists. This access would be given to all employees needing online

access to their data but remember that they must be set up as users.


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Once you click Finish on this screen, if the employee you are creating is a New Employee then the

system will create the required On-boarding tasks (notifications will also be sent by email to those

responsible to carry out the tasks), objective setting and probation reviews. The system will then

take you to a form where you can interact with these and check them off if appropriate:

Tasks can be ticked off directly in the listing or the edit button can be clicked to take you into the

detail of the specific task where you can make notes and other changes.

Finally, clicking Continue to Employee Record will return you to the Employees form with the new

employee selected (click one of the filter buttons at the top of the form to see other records) and

from here you can add or change any other information you may need to for the new employee.

8.2 VIEWING AND EDITING EMPLOYEES This is done through the main Employees screen on the People menu. This screen contains much of

the core HR / Employee information and is the route to many other parts of the system via the

buttons on the Action Bar (for example an Employee’s leave or Personal Details):


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You can see that there are some search fields at the top of this page and this shot shows searching

using two of them – people with status ‘Employees’ and Organisation Unit ‘Sales’. It is also possible

to search using the ‘Filter the list…’ box which can search over all fields on the screen. The screen

opens with search set to Employees (so that the display isn’t cluttered with leavers etc).

8.3 EMPLOYEE PERSONAL INFORMATION Personal Information for Employees is accessed via the Action Bar as a popup screen:


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8.4 DELETING AN EMPLOYEE

Clicking the Delete Action Bar Button on the employee record doesn’t have the usual effect of simply

deleting the current record – rather it opens the delete employee screen where you are required to

enter ‘delete this employee’ into a field and then, after tabbing out of the field, the employee record

will be unlocked and the deletion can be confirmed:


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8.5 EMPLOYEE NOTES The system has a tab on the employee record for Notes – these are dated records which can be used

for a range of purposes – you have control over the Types look up table where you can also

determine (from V1.6.7.0) whether notes of that type will appear on employees’ self-service

screens.


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9 MANAGING TASKS

Tasks are used throughout the system – including the creation of a range of on boarding tasks for

new employees as we saw in the previous section. Admin users can get access to their tasks through

the Tasks menu:

In the Task Actions screen, the user has the ability to look at their own task list:

This is where they can see all their tasks whether complete or otherwise and action them as required

(or mark as complete). They also have access here to ALL outstanding leave requests so that an HR

administrator can check (and action if necessary) and leave requests that managers have not

completed:

There is also the option here to review all Appraisals grouped by whether complete or not:


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Clicking on a record takes you to a summary screen – and from there is an option to edit the

appraisal itself.

9.1 REVIEW OUTSTANDING TASKS Like the above leave request option, Review Outstanding Tasks also shows tasks by user – but this

time all types of task – again allowing an Admin users to handle any situations where a user’s tasks

are not being dealt with (for example if someone leaves):

Again clicking on one of the entries takes the user to the screen where the task can be actioned.

Finally, there is a simple datasheet screen listing all tasks. This has been added to give Admin users

full flexibility to edit tasks if needed:

For the majority of users, however, tasks will mainly be accessed through their Employee Self Service

portal.


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9.2 REPEATING TASKS Using the Repeating task button on the Action bar of the Tasks Views, users are able to create a

repeating task – such as the example of checking production figures every Friday, as shown below:

Once a task series like this has been created, it is also possible to delete the series from a particular

point forward:

When this button is clicked you will be asked to confirm the action (or cancel):


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9.3 CREATING BULK TASKS Bulk tasks are used where you want to create a task for all or selected employees. A typical scenario

is that you need everyone to read a new or revised policy document.

In this example we are asking all executive directors to read the new absence policy. Clicking the

highlighted button on the Action Bar then allows you to see who has completed the task (and

remember that users are sent reminders from the system about tasks they haven’t completed):

You are able to select employees who tasks are created for by either Job Type and / or Organisation

Unit – leaving both fields blank will send the task to all employees.


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10 MANAGING ABSENCE AND HOLIDAY

10.1 EMPLOYEE ABSENCES We’ve configured the system, added some posts and employees – now one of the key benefits of

any HR system is the ability to manage absence and vacation / holiday. As this is such an important

area for most users, we will look at it in a bit more detail, starting with using the features available to

full HR / Admin users:

Access to the employee’s absence screen is via the button highlighted above (on the Employee

screen)…

Most of the static information on this screen is defaulted when you choose a Holiday Rule for the

employee – however much of it can be tailored for the individual – for example they may have a

different working pattern (which may need you to change the Average Hours per Day – used to

calculate remaining holiday days for the year). You also see a calculated summary for the individual

including days and hours remaining.


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It is also possible to edit the Leave Entitlement for an employee directly (unless they are on an

Advanced Leave Rule in which case you can edit the Accrual records which can also record notes).

This can now also be edited in Hours which can be useful, for example, for part timers who are

awarded their entitlement in hours.

Note that, if the leave rule used for the employee is using the advanced rules then the accruals are

shown in the Related items area.

The Action Bar also includes a link to the Individual Absence Calendar (which is also available to

employees and managers through Self Service):


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10.2 CHANGING AN EMPLOYEE’S LEAVE RULE Changing an employee’s leave rule has some ramifications that you should be aware of – hence the

brief message on the screen. If you do need to change a rule – and especially if you are using

advanced absence – then you should be aware that the system will delete ALL accrual records for

the employee and create the first record for the new rule. In some circumstances this will be correct,

but in some cases you will need to enter additional accruals manually – or simply use the Manual

Adjustment field to get the employee’s leave allowance correct.

Note that none of the employee’s absence records are effected and so you can be sure that once the

leave entitlement is correct that the system will calculate the correct figures for leave remaining ect.

10.3 ENTERING ABSENCES New absences are entered by clicking the Add Absences link at the bottom of the screen. This takes

you to the following form:

Once this record is saved, the system calculates and creates a record for each day of the absence

(which can be reviewed by clicking View Days). This is important because it allows the system to

produce more accurate reports.


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Viewing the days, you can immediately see the effect of the working pattern, the part day start to

the absence and, had there been any, any public holidays.

10.4 HOLIDAY ADDITIONS / FLEXI / MANUAL ADJUSTMENTS The Holiday Additions field is used to display the total number of days of Flexi Time / TOIL the

employee has accumulated in the year (if enabled for their Holiday Rule). Whilst the figure cannot be

manually adjusted in the employee absence screen, HR Admin users can click the View button to see

and edit the employee’s Flexi requests. Here is the employee flexi time screen:

As usual, users can access specific records from the list at the bottom of the page.

So, we’ve seen how we can input absences and see how this is reflected in the employee’s summary

figures. If you recall from the configuration section, these figures are reset at the start of each

holiday year from the Holiday Rules form.


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10.5 MANUAL ADJUSTMENTS AND HOLIDAY CARRYOVER We have seen in section 4.2 how the system calculates Holiday Carryover at the start of a new

Holiday Year. In the event that this process is either individually agree between managers and

employees or, the rule needs to be adjusted manually, then the resulting Carryover days amount

may be edited by users in the Employee’s absence screen. There is also a Manual Adjustment field

with which you can also modify the holiday for the year (the figures in these fields can be positive or

negative).

10.6 ABSENCE REPORTS Once this information is entered, the system can provide you with a number of reports from the

data.

10.6.1 Absence Calendar

The app includes two type of Absence Calendar – one for an individual and one for all employees (or

a selected Organisation Unit). In both cases, they show a month at a time and allow the user to

change the month and year:

In this case, the calendar is showing April 2016 data for the HR organisation unit.

10.6.2 Absent Today

This report shows all employees absent today, broken down by the type of absence:


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10.6.3 Bradford Factor

In the UK, one of the most requested reports is called The Bradford Factor report which calculates a

figure based upon the number of sickness days multiplied by the square of the number of spells of

absence – this is used to indicate the seriousness of an employee’s sickness record:

From this report, you can easily identify the potentially problem employee who have had large

number of short sickness absences.

10.6.3.1 Bradford Factor Alerts

Note that in the Bradford Factor Report above, you can set a threshold figure and options for

alerting managers and others when an employee goes above the threshold and then falls below

again.

Here is an example of the alert email:


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10.6.4 Summary Absences

This is a listing of absences broken down by employee in reverse date order:

10.6.5 Holiday by Org Unit

This report shows total and remaining holiday by Organisation Unit:


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10.6.6 Holiday List

This report details holiday for each employee in the organisation showing time taken and balances in

both days and hours:

10.6.7 Leave by Type Between Dates

This report gives the user a range of options to print out a summary of up to 6 types of leave totalled

by employee between two dates – here is the setup of the report:

This particular setup will produce the following output:

Note that this data can be downloaded into excel for further analysis.


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10.7 THE ABSENCE REQUEST PROCESS As part of the Self Service features for both Employees and Managers, the system includes the ability

for employees to request different types of leave (and Flexi Time) and for managers to accept or

reject those requests. Notifications in the form of system tasks are used to highlight the process.

This will be covered in the section dealing with Self Service.

10.8 REQUESTING A CANCELLATION OR CHANGE TO AN ABSENCE This feature is also a part of Self Service – an employee can review their absences on their Self

Service page and will have an option to request a change or deletion from the popup screen, this will

send a notification by email to the manager who can make the required change if in agreement.

10.9 LEAVE REMINDERS An option is available for the system to send leave reminders about staff absent Today to both

specific managers and also a single email listing all absentees to a specified email address (which

should be associated with a Microsoft account in your tenant). These options are in System Settings:

and here is a sample of the email sent to a manger:


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11 MANAGE APPRAISALS

We have discussed how appraisal types and Competency Frameworks are configured earlier in this

guide. In this section we are going to see how to set up appraisals for employees and then follow

those up by reviewing objectives later. In the section on Self Service later in the guide we will see

how these features are used by employees and managers.

Access to the appraisal feature is via the employee development charm on the main employee view:

This takes you to the employee development popup where you are also able to see the employees

training, skills and qualifications…

On the appraisal tab you can see a history of the employee’s appraisals from which you can select –

or you can create a new one by clicking Add Appraisals – filling it in up to the date field then results

in the rest of the form refreshing to show which features are available for the type of appraisal

selected (refer to the section dealing with setting up an appraisal for options).

The four buttons, Review Objectives, Appraisal Questions, Set Objectives and Competencies are

enabled dependent upon how the appraisal is configured, whether there are any questions and


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whether a competency framework exists for the employee’s post. Each button loads a different

popup screen dealing with the specific topic – and in each case there is the capability for an

employee (through Self Service) to enter a self-assessment and/or comment:


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The Assessments sections will not be editable if you are looking at your own appraisal records (for

example through Self Service) – but the Self-Assessment fields will be. Remember that the level

values are also user definable.

The objectives are designed to be set in one appraisal and then reviewed in another later and as you

can see by clicking on the View button there is more information available about them:

Finally, there are fields for employee’s comments, an overall assessment field, a document link and a

facility to set a task for the employee to comment and sign off the appraisal (which is accessed by

the employee’s task list in Self Service).


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Note that when the appraisal is marked as completed, a new option is available to update the

employee’s central skills table with the results of any skill / competency assessment from the

appraisal.


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12 MANAGING TRAINING

KasPer Pro includes an area to manage employee training – including in this release the ability to use

an Events feature to enable booking of employees onto courses (which Managers can do through

Self Service).

12.1 COURSE SETUP The basic configuration of a course is as follows:

There are some features here which are not self-explanatory:

Generic courses are a special case used essentially as a category. When recording a training activity

for an employee it gives the ability to add a manually entered title for the course. For example you

may have a generic course called Management Training, while for an employee attending a one off

management course may have the correct title entered (for example Finance for Managers). This

allows you to analyse one off courses as a group.

Renewal After enables the system to calculate a date for any employee completing a course a due

date for a refresher. A warning can be generated by using the Notify Time field – the system will

then generate a notification to the employee in their Self Service page.

You will see above that Courses have a related table of Links / Documents which you can use to

connect the course with documents accessible via a URL (eg on Sharepoint) or links to online content

or eLearning resources.


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12.2 COURSE EVENTS Optionally, you can use Course Events to manage your training schedule – including booking

employees onto courses and sending them notifications:

This form is fairly self-explanatory and note that you can use the Attendee link facility to either add

or edit attendees – for example to indicate who attended, passed etc after the event.

12.3 TRAINING HISTORY / BOOKING This screen can be used to both simply record a training activity that has occurred or a booking or

attendance on a scheduled event. If a course is entered first, then the event drop down will only

show events for the specific course.

Validation is included in this screen to make sure that information is input logically – for example you

can’t enter a booking after an Event has taken place. There are different statuses of this screen also

depending upon where they are accessed from – for example if, like above, it is opened from Events

then it assumes you are booking a person onto the event and enters it for you.

Bookings onto course events also creates a task and email notification for the employee to confirm

and to give them access to details of the course.


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13 SELF SERVICE

13.1 EMPLOYEE SELF SERVICE When a user logs onto the system they will either be taken to the normal About Screen (Admin

users) or the Self Service About Screen (Managers and Employees who are not HR Admin users).

From here, an employee can click the self-service button and will be taken to their Self Service form

(which is shown in sections below):

Not all of the information is editable from within the self-service facility (for example benefits or

holiday rules). However, an employee or manager can edit address information on the popup

Personal Details view (subject to permissions set for the specific user). There are three sections

within Self Service which we will look at specifically – these are Absence Requests, Appraisals and

Tasks (which are used with Absence Requests and Appraisals amongst other things).


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13.1.1 Absence Requests

With Self Service comes the ability for employees to request absences (of any type). We have

allowed any type of absence to be requested to cater (for example) for an employee to request sick

leave when scheduled for a period of time in hospital.

For example, here Roger is going to request a holiday for the start of August:

Once the employee has entered the dates for the absence, they can use the Who’s Away button to

see who else’s leave overlaps. This is intended to help reduce the chance of leave requests being

rejected because the employee can check for themselves before completing the request.


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With the request filled in, the employee then clicks the submit request charm and you will see that

the system calculates the duration and shows that a task / message has been sent to the approver

(the system works out who the approver should be based on the organisation structure):

Here is the Status Section after the absence has been submitted:

On closing the request screen, an Employee’s leave request screen will be updated to show the

request:

The Manager will have a new task in his Self Service screen as follows:

And will receive an email such as:


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Note the link at the bottom of the email which will take the manager to their Self Service screen or,

optionally, the Leave Request processing screen (see section on System Settings).

If you opt to link managers to their normal ESS view, clicking on the task will take the manager to the

task (and then to the request):

Alternatively, by ticking the box on System Settings, manager can link straight to a view which is

specifically designed to deal with leave requests:

Now clicking the Absence Request link (or the Process button):


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Note that the manager has the ability to see who else is away in the organisation before deciding

whether to approve or reject the request and also see the multi employee absence calendar. Let’s

assume that this is approved:

For a one level approval, the screen will be updated with the approval information and the Task will

be marked as completed. At the same time a notification (Task and email) is sent to the employee

informing them the request has been approved (or indeed rejected if that were the case) and on the

employee’s Self Service page the request will be shown as approved.

For a two level approval, on first approval the request will be marked ‘1st Level’ in the Approved field

and passed on to the 2nd level approver. At this stage if approved the employee would receive the

confirmation email and the task marked as complete etc.

13.1.2 Requesting Leave Cancellations or Changes

Employees can see their leave on the leave tab of the Self Service page:


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Clicking on any of the records will open a screen from which they can request the record be either

modified or deleted – together with an explanation (such as not being able to take holiday or to

correct an error):

Once again, this results in an email and task for the manager who needs to decide whether to agree

to the request. The response to the employee is not automated at this stage because the actual edit

required may be quite variable.

13.1.3 Flexi Time /TOIL Requests

Similar to the absence request process, Flexi Time Requests enable employee’s to request time off in

lieu of payment for additional work or other qualifying activities and reasons. Once approved, a

request adds to the Holiday Additions field for the employee, effectively adding to the year’s holiday

entitlement. Here is the request page:


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Once again the process uses notifications via the task system and emails to let managers know there

is a request to approve. Employees are notified of the result by the same mechanism.

A useful feature here is that if the screen is bought up by a manager for a team member or an HR

Admin user for anyone but themselves, then they are able to enter a request for the employee and

approve it straight away – this bypasses the whole request process. No user is allowed to edit their

own requests once they are approved or rejected.

Note that employees will only see a total figure for Holiday Entitlement on their self service page

(including any manual adjustments or holiday additions). If they open either their leave request or

flexi request pages then they will be able to see each item individually. This is simply due to available

screen space.

This process (along with leave requests) is now available to employees via a standalone view which

speeds up the process – more details in section 13.3.2

13.1.4 Appraisals

The other key process in Self Service which involves interaction between managers and employees is

Appraisals. We discussed how different Appraisal Types can be configured as well as how to Manage

Appraisals as a full HR Admin User. In this section we are going to look at how employees and

managers interact through Self Service to complete the process.

Firstly, let’s look at how a manager can review outstanding appraisals and create new ones.

13.1.5 Notes

Employees have a new screen from 1.6.7.0 to look at notes which have been made on their record:


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13.1.5.1 Review Outstanding Appraisals

Managers have a slightly different Action Bar when logged in to Self Service. The first addition is of a

Charm which gives access to outstanding appraisals they need to handle:

Clicking this Charm takes the manager to a poup view containing all the outstanding appraisals

where they are the appraisor:

From this screen, the manager can complete the appraisal record – usually in conjunction with the

appraisee. Once completed, the manager then has the option to send a notification (task and email)

to the employee to complete the employee comments field and mark the appraisal as complete.

This is optional as the process can be marked as complete by the manager.

13.1.5.2 Creating a New Appraisal

Managers are also able to create new appraisal records for members of their teams. Doing this in

advance will send both the employee and themselves a notification (task and email) to remind them

of the date etc.


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To do this, the manager selects the employee from the Select Team Member drop down (which

allows them to ‘Drill Down’ through their teams). Once on a team member’s record two additional

Charms are available to them:

These are shown on the right of the Action Bar and allow them to review and enter absences as well

as review their staff’s development:

As we can see, they also have visibility of the person’s Skills, Training and Qualifications.

When creating a new appraisal in this way, the system will automatically complete the Employee

and Appraisor fields for you. Once the date is entered, the system will then create the notifications

(if the Appraisal Type is configured to do this) for both the employee concerned and the Appraisor

(usually their Manager).

13.2 SUMMARY OF MANAGER SELF SERVICE FEATURES You will have seen that managers have access to their staff by drilling down through the organisation

and also that they have some additional charms on the Action Bar – below are some of the features

not covered above:

13.2.1 Selecting Employees

A manager can access details of any member of their team (either directly reporting to them or

reporting to managers below them). This is done simply by selecting names from the drop down.

Once actually on another employee’s record, the manager also has the two additional buttons

available as shown above. Back to Manager moves to the currently displayed employees direct


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manager and Back to My Record moves to your own record (these could be the same). They also

have the additional Action Bar Charms for Absence and Employee Development.

13.2.2 Skill Search

Managers have the capability to search for people with skills (useful for resourcing projects, etc.)

using the following charm:

This provides the following view which allows you to select the skill required and see who is available

and who their manager is:

13.2.3 Multi Employee Absence Calendar

Managers have access to the multi employee absence calendar from their Action Bar as well as from

the Absence Approval screen to assist with managing holidays:

13.2.4 Review Absence

This option provides a manager with the ability to view, add and edit absence and holiday records

for members of their teams.

13.3 CONFIGURING STANDALONE SELF-SERVICE Self Service can be accessed via the normal KasPer PRO configuration (and would probably be

accessed from here by Admin / HR users) – but for employees and managers this isn’t ideal because

they don’t have any access to many of the options presented and this can be confusing.

Version 1.2.1.0 introduced the capability to load the Self Service page separately. Ideally this would

be set up as a link from your Sharepoint Site or Intranet.


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In order to discover the URL for this, we have provided a link on the About Self Service page (which is

calculated for your installation) and from which you can copy the URL to set up on your site:

Clicking View Via Standalone Form or copying it’s link URL will allow you to get hold of the URL you

need – and this will take you to the following standalone version of Self Service:

Apart from the page layout, all the features are the same as we have already discussed.

13.3.1 Linking Directly to Leave Requests

From V1.6.0.0 onwards, it is possible to provide employees with a link directly to the Leave Request

view in Self Service (rather than having them go to the full Self Service screen first). This has been

configured to improve performance (it reduces screen load time by about 10 seconds at least

typically).

The URL for this page is the same as that for Self Service, but changing the text following “page=”

with ESSContainerForleave – the URL would therefore be similar to:

https://xxx-xxxx.sharepoint.com/kasper%20pro/viewer.aspx?page=ESSContainerForleave

Where the ‘x’s replace the private details of our Office 365 tenant and the section in red is the same as

the URL for the main KasPer Pro app before the ‘default.aspx’. The screen is then displayed as:


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From V1.6.3.0 it is also possible to direct approvers to a standalone screen for approving leave – this

option can be turned on in the System Settings screen and results in a different URL being included

in the request emails.

13.3.2 Standalone View for Flexi Time and Overtime requests

Similar to the standalone screen for leave requests, it is also possible to create a shortcut to a page

which will allow users to request Flexitime and Overtime on a specialised screen (again motivated by

speed of access and simplicity). The URL for this screen would be similar to that for leave requests:

https://xxx-xxxx.sharepoint.com/kasper%20pro/viewer.aspx?page=ESSContainerForFlexiRequest

The screen looks like this:


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13.4 COMPANY DIRECTORY The Company Directory screen is another example of a feature which can be assessed directly from a

URL – or in this case by a button on Self Service:

This is the screen in it’s own browser window (accessed from a URL):

Note the Down Arrow button to the right of the header which will load up a datasheet view of the

information which can then be downloaded into Excel.

Admin users will also see the Personal Contact Details button which as the name suggests load

contact information for the employee selected (for example for emergency purposes).

13.4.1 Linking Directly to the Directory

In a similar way to lining to Leave Requests, you can configure a URL link to connect directly to the

Company Directory. This link would be set up in a suitable location of your Intranet.


with ESSContainerForDirectory – the URL would therefore be similar to:

https://xxx-xxxx.sharepoint.com/kasper%20pro/viewer.aspx?page=ESSContainerForDirectory


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the URL for the main KasPer Pro app before the ‘default.aspx’. The screen is then displayed as shown

previously but in its own browser window.

13.5 STANDALONE ABSENCE CALENDAR Similar to the other Standalone screens available in the system, this option is available so that

people can have quick access to see who’s away at any given time (for example receptionists):

Clicking on a day when people are on leave will then pop up a list of those people:

In view of the sensitive nature of absence data however you are able to limit access to this screen to

only certain employees:

This is on the Users page along with other details of their ‘account’.


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13.5.1 Linking Directly to the Calendar

In a similar way to lining to Leave Requests, you can configure a URL link to connect directly to the

Calendar. This link would be set up in a suitable location of your Intranet.


with ESSContainerForCalendar – the URL would therefore be similar to:

https://xxx-xxxx.sharepoint.com/kasper%20pro/viewer.aspx?page=ESSContainerForCalendar


the URL for the main KasPer Pro app before the ‘default.aspx’. The screen is then displayed as shown

previously in its own browser window.

13.6 STANDALONE VIEW ENABLING ENTRY OF LEAVE REQUESTS FOR OTHER EMPLOYEES From V1.6.6.0, the system includes a new feature which enables certain users to enter leave

requests for other employees. An example where this may be relevant could be in a production

environment where some workers have no access to a computer.

The URL for this screen is:

https://xxx-xxxx.sharepoint.com/kasper%20pro/viewer.aspx?page=

ESSContainerForleaveRequestForOther

A new field has been added to Absence Requests to show which user made the request:


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When a requests is processed by the approver, the system will send an email to the person who

entered the request and attempt to send one to the address of the employee on whose behalf the

request was made as well. The email to the employee may not succeed depending upon the address.

This is because the app is restricted (by Microsoft) as to which email addresses messages can be sent

to. The email to the person entering the request should be processed and sent as normal.

This facility is only available to users who have been given permission to view the screen. This is

done in the Users page:

13.7 WORKFLOW As already mentioned in Workflow – Setting up the link to Self Service, the Workflow processes in

KasPer PRO send emails to notify employees and managers about tasks they need to deal with.

These emails contain a link to the Self Service page of the application. Configuration is handled in the

System Settings menu and the following screen:


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The system can create a Hyperlink automatically (see ‘View Via Standalone Form’ above) but this is

effectively abbreviated. In order to get the full link, it is necessary to copy the link from this first field

(right click) and then pasting it into the second field and then saving it. This only has to be done once

and then the system will include a link to Self Service at the bottom of each email it sends.

Optionally, you can opt to have leave approvers linked to a special page solely used for this purpose

(rather than their full Self Service page). This is quicker and more intuitive to use so should be

considered.

13.8 USER REMINDER EMAILS In addition to the process based emails which the system generates as part of it’s workflows, there is

also a daily (or weekly if the user prefers) email generated which provides a reminder of any due or

overdue tasks which are as yet incomplete (if the user is up to date then no email is generated for

them). Here is an example:


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14 PASSWORD RECOVERY

Under certain circumstances it is possible within KasPer PRO for ALL users to be locked out of the

system. This has happened for one customer to date and was caused by the customer changing their

email domain and so all user’s login emails were also changed. For this reason, V1.4.0.0 introduces a

feature for re-enabling access to the system for one admin user who can then edit other employee

login details. If you need to do this then please contact us via our Contact Us page on our website for

information on how to start the process:

http://software.kirknessassociates.com/support.html

14.1 OPTION 1 Once into the process, you will go through a couple of screens, as follows

This is self-explanatory and, once a correct address is entered you get to:

http://software.kirknessassociates.com/support.html


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Here you need to get the responses to the data items correct – and when they are a tick appears

alongside –in the example above Post Code is incorrect.

When all are filled in correctly you then get the following confirmation:

14.2 OPTION 2 (THE LAST RESORT) If you really can’t remember any of this data then we are still able to assist. Please contact us and we

will be able to talk you through a different process which requires a ‘password of the day’ generated

by us.


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15 ‘BATCH’ PROCESSING OF EMAIL ALERTS

Up until version 1.4.1.2, the app only send email reminders and performed other ‘daily’ tasks when

the first user logged in during the day. It is now possible to set up a scheduled task (using Windows’

Task Scheduler for example) to open a specific application page and for this to complete these tasks

automatically.

The app page’s name is DailyUpdates and the way to find out the link is to get the link for your Self

Service standalone screen and then change the value after page= to read DailyUpdates

Processing the screen may take some moments and then the complete message appears as above.

If you have advanced leave rules (Monthly or Weekly) where the accrual date is on or near the end

of the period the it is essential that this process is set up to ensure the reliable processing of the

accrual.

15.1 AUTOMATION IN TASK SCHEDULER You can create a task in Scheduler which will run Internet Explorer and load the page (i.e. the link

above). There are a couple of points to remember:

1. This will only run if the PC is on – maybe run this task on a server?

2. The task will leave Internet Explorer open and so you need to close these windows from

time to time if the machine is unattended.

15.2 SENDING WORK ANNIVERSARY AND BIRTHDAY REMINDERS TO MANAGERS This feature will only work through this batch processing facility and can be configured in System

Settings:


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In this case, the system will send a manager an email (no task) a set number of days before the dates

concerned – so it’s important that this process is run every day for this to work reliably. Here is an

example of the email:

There are 3 different possible emails that can be sent:

a. As above, for a work anniversary

b. For a forthcoming birthday, or

c. A version which caters for a Birthday and Work Anniversary on the same day,

February 14th, 2017 Implementation / User Guide

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