The roll-out of v1.18 for cloud sites is aimed to commence after business close, Wednesday xxth xxx 2023

Roster acceptance is a new feature that allows administrators to require employees to acknowledge acceptance of any roster shifts that are assigned to them.

To use Roster Acceptance, it must first be enabled in the employees Award. Once enable, all rosters assigned to all employees in that award will require 'acceptance' by the employee before the roster shift is considered active for the purposes of rules calculations (like rounding, OT, time off requests and more).

Notification must be configured in System Notifications to notify an employee of any changes to rosters, and this can be set to send a notification via email, SMS or Mobile APP.

Once the employee receives the notification, they would access the Employee Self Service portal or Mobile APP and Accept or Decline each pending roster shift.

The manager also has a new Home Panel to display roster shift status and can display the pending roster shifts as well as re-send notifications to those employees where the shift has not yet been addressed, as necessary.

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• Any roster shifts within a defined 'change lock-out' period will need to be addressed by discussing the shift with the manager as the employee is forbidden from making changes too close to the current date. By default, this window is set to 3 days (but can be modified) - so an employee can accept shifts assigned more than 3 days from the current date. This is to stop employees accepting or declining or modifying shifts that are imminent, where the manager may not be aware the shift has been changed or declined until it the shift is upon them.
  

A new option in the Award to enable roster acceptance.

A new option in master rosters. If a master roster is assigned to an employee linked to an award using roster acceptance, then you have the option of requiring the employee to accept each shift by disabling this option. Enabled by default.

This planner page has two employees selected. Employee 6430 is linked to an Award that is NOT using roster acceptance and employee 6101 is linked to an Award that IS using roster acceptance.

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• We are editing this planner screen on Wed 08/03/2023. The current lock-out window is set to 3 days - today, tomorrow, the next day. So, you see the behaviour below.
  
• When we move an open shift on 10/03/2023 to employee 6101 it is identified as being applied to the employee within the acceptance lock-out windows (3 days) - so it automatically sets the status to “Accepted” and displays the warning message.
• When we apply an open shift on 11/03/2023 to employee 6101 is will apply with a status of pending and the employee will be notified and asked to address that shift.
• If we try to apply a shift to employee 6430 (not using roster acceptance) there is no status assigned to the roster shift and if you move the shift between employees, it will create or remove the status as required depending on whether the employee is linked to an award that uses roster acceptance.

New system notifications are available in Systems Notifications configuration. These new notifications have an extra method of dissemination - APP. This will send a push notification to the mobile app (running build 3.0.20.x or later). You can also send these notifications to the current email / SMS / internal bell.

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• The APP dissemination method is not available for all System Notifcations.
  

The notification options are:

• Roster Change - will send a notification when a roster is created or edited.

• Roster Acceptance Review - will send a notification when the “Renotify” button is used on the roster acceptance home tile.

• Time Off Approval - will send a notification when a time off request is approved by the supervisor or manager.

The notification will be received at the app like this:

A new home panel that allows managers and supervisors to check roster shift status. Usefully, you can create a panel that displays shifts that are pending or declined from today to xx days in the future, to ensure that the shifts are addressed before the date they are required. The manager / supervisor can also re-send the notification from this panel for any shifts currently displayed to prompt the employee again to address the shift.

There are new Approve / Decline all options in time sheet.

Previously only Approve\Ack ALL:


Now Approve (any unreviewed), Decline (any unreviewed) and Reset (clear all):

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• Missing In, Missing Out and Absent will NOT be acknowledged, these must be addressed manually before the timesheet can be reviewed.

The timesheet review home panel now has a new “Review All” button to allow you to review all timesheets displayed in one click.

<fc #ff0000>Note:</fc>

• Only reviews Timesheets that would successfully pass the checks when the Supervisor/Manager sets the “Review Lock” on an individual Timesheet.
• A message will display to say the process has commenced and a second message will display when the process has completed. Please wait for the 'completed' message.

The have been changes to the time off screens. Whilst workflow should be familiar to those uses who have used the time off screens before there are a few changes to note.

These changes have been made to allow editing of approved time off requests (especially those that cross pay periods where older periods are closed or locked) and add a new dialog window for creating time off requests to make it faster, particularly for requests of long periods.

Creating a new timeoff request will now begin with a pop-up dialog - not a calendar screen. Previously you must select each day / date of the request manually, the new dialog allows you to select the start day and the end day and then provides several options to select the correct days / dates within that timeframe.

• begin a new time off request using the + button in the left panel.
• The left panel now displays 6 months of calendars (scrolling up/down). Previous / Next will scroll back and forward 6 months at a time.
• The accrual balances are now displayed at the bottom of the calendars.

• A new request starts with the new dialog. Select the start and end date or select from one of the quick choices at the top. If you select a quick choice, it will populate the dates for you based on the employees pay period.
• Once the start and finish dates are selected - choice from the options to define what dates should be used within that period.
  • use “Auto Dates” to select only dates there is a roster (or would be a roster based on the employee’s master or work pattern) within the start/finish dates.
  • use “Skip Holidays” to skip any holidays linked to this employee withing the start/finish dates.
  • use “Skip Specific Days” to skip any specific days of the week (weekends) within the start/finish dates.
• The number of days based on the selections is displays at the top of the dialog.

• Once the dates are selected click the tick to proceed to the detail page.
• The detail of the request can now be completed. Request Reason, specific time period if not all day and paycodes and qty as required.
• Individual days / dates can be removed on the left. With the right security permissions days / dates can be remove easily for approved request, even those spanning previous pay periods. Any dates in periods that are locked will show a lock symbol and connect be removed - but dates in the current open period can be edited.

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• As the warning mentions on the centre of the page, the request is not final until saved with the tick on the right.

The notification menu has been updated -

• to display more information about each notification
• to allow read notification to be easily hidden
• to display the date
• a new link to navigate to notification detail and make 'read' in one step
• to mark all as read in one step