People Inc. Features

NEW Recalculate Data Screen Wizard for People Inc.

Introduction

As a People Inc. user you will already be aware that People Inc. as a number of fields that are automatically calculated to save you time. For example, the Probation End Date is calculated automatically when a value is entered into the Date of Join, Probationary Period Amount and Probationary Period Units fields.

People Inc. Triggers

People Inc. uses ‘triggers’ to calculate information in the Yellow Calculated fields through the system. These can be configured to calculate data either when a record is Created, Updated or Deleted.

Triggers can also be customised or new triggers can be added using the People Inc. Screen Designed module. For example, users may wish to show a cost of the expenses claimed by an employee when they attend a training course and then add this to the Cost of the Training Course to calculate the total cost of the training in a new field (as shown in the example below).

Custom Total Cost field on Training History screen.

More advanced triggers can be created (usually by one of our qualified consultants) to perform complete workflows or processes.

People Inc. Daily Run

In order to make sure the content of the calculated fields is kept up to date People Inc has a utility that runs overnight called the Daily Run which calculates the key default triggers in the system. For example, to ensure that the Length of Service is calculated correctly each day.

There are triggers however that are not included as part of the daily run (usually custom or user defined triggers) and therefore these may need to be recalculated periodically by resaving a specific record. This however does not recalculate data for every record.

With this in mind a new wizard has been created to allow users to recalculate all of the records on a specific People Inc. Data screen.

Recalculate Data Screen Wizard

The new wizard allows the user to select one of the People Inc. screens and then select which records are to be recalculated using one of the existing filters on the chosen screen (for example, Current Employees).

Recalculate Data Screen wizard – Selection screen

This is beneficial for a number or reasons/situations:

• To force a recalculation of the records when data is manually imported (and therefore the normal triggers are bypassed). For example, recalculating Calculated fields such as Hourly Rate or Pay Per Period on the Salary History screen after the importing of Salary records)
• To run a new trigger that has been added to a screen for the selected records. For Example, to generate new actions for the selected employees after a new Action List trigger has been created.
• To update records after a change to a setting within the People Inc. System. For example, to recalculate the Absence Allowance records for a specific Absence Rule if the existing Absence Rule is changed.

NOTE: Some People Inc. Triggers are designed to work only when a new record is create or a record is deleted rather than when a record is ‘Updated’. These kinds of triggers are therefore ignored by the new Recalculate Data Screen Wizard.

How do I get this new functionality?

The New Recalculate Data Screen Wizard is available for free to existing People Inc. users. Please contact us if you would like a copy of this new wizard.

People Inc. Ongoing Development Programme

People Inc. has an extensive ongoing development programme (by the software developers, P&A Software Ltd) to continually look at ways to improve the functionality within People Inc.  As part of this programme, work is being done on the Wizards functionality within People Inc. not only looking at improving the existing Wizards but also identifying new Wizards to speed up some of the multi-step or repetitive processes within People Inc.