Setting Up ePerformance

This chapter discusses how to:

• Define system settings.

• Work with Manage Profiles business process

• Work with approvals.

• Modify self-service pages and email notifications.

Defining System Settings

To define system settings for ePerformance, use the General Settings (EP_INSTALLATION) component.

This section provides an overview of system settings in ePerformance and discusses how to define system settings.

Understanding System Settings

System settings control certain processing options. You can modify these delivered system settings to meet your business needs:

• Whether users can generate documents in languages other than the base language.

• Debug settings.

• Starting number for document ID generation.

• Fields that appear on the page from which users select documents.

• The email notifications that the system generates.

Page Used to Define System Settings

Defining System Settings

Access the General Settings page (Set Up HRMS, Install, Product and Country Specific, ePerformance: General Settings, General Settings).

Last Document ID	Enter the number from which the system begins generating document IDs. The system automatically generates the document ID by adding 1 to the Last Document ID. Warning! Entering a value that is lower than the value that appears can cause unpredictable results.
Allow Document Language Override	Select this check box to enable document generation in a language other than the system base language. If this check box is deselected, the system generates all documents in the system base language. The base language is defined using the Manage Installed Languages page in PeopleTools.

Debug Options

Configure Email Notifications

Select the check box next to each event type for which you want the system to automatically generate and send notices.

Configure Document Selection Page - Displayed Fields

Select the fields to appear in the document list from which self service users select documents.

See Accessing Documents.

Working with Manage Profiles

This section provides overviews the rating models, content catalog, and profile types.

Using Rating Models

ePerformance using rating models to rate an employee's performance or level of proficiency. Rating models define the qualitative values, such as A, B, and C, or 1, 2, and 3, that the system uses to rate or score and employee's performance.

Rating models are assigned to the sections that make up performance or development documents. Managers, employees, and peers can then select an appropriate rating that best reflects the employee's performance in that area.

Ratings can have expanded descriptions that can be used to further describe the behavior one exhibits when performing at a specific proficiency level. These expanded descriptions display on the performance or development document.

See Defining Rating Models.

Using the Content Catalog

ePerformance uses content types and content items defined in the content catalog to identify the items by which employees are measured. Content types are used as categories for grouping similar content items. Content items are the specific items that you want to measure.

Content types are associated with the sections that form the structure of a document template and performance or development document. ePerformance uses content types to define the category of content items that can be added to document templates and performance documents.

This list includes some of the content types delivered and typically used by ePerformance:

• MISSION

  Mission statements express an organization's purpose and vision. Typically, senior management defines and the board of directors or senior staff approve of an organization's mission statement. Business units might also establish mission statements to help guide the creation of initiatives, goals, and responsibilities. You can include one or more mission statements as items on performance documents, but more often, you'll include this on performance documents for informational purposes only.

• INITIATIVE

  Initiatives are high-level plans, activities, or goals that support an organization's mission statement and define its direction. Initiatives usually guide the creation of goals and responsibilities. An organization may have multiple initiatives at any point in time.

• GOAL

  Goals and objectives are specific results to accomplish. Typically, these statements describe a target that will be met or a condition that will exist when the desired outcome is accomplished.

• RESP

  Responsibilities are usually based on job function. These are often broken down to specific tasks.

• COMPETENCY

  Competencies are directly related to an employee's current role and may encompass skills, abilities, knowledge, or behavior, such as experience with office equipment, knowledge of special manufacturing processes, or a background in financial planning.

Once content types are defined, you can begin to link content items to content types.

This table provides examples of how content types and items in the Content Catalog for ePerformance might be set up:

If you need to create new content types and content items, this table shows field mappings between Manage Profile and ePerformance:

Note. ePerformance enables you to associate sub-items to items. To accomplish this in the Manage Profiles business process you set up the relationship for the content item as a child of another content item.

See Defining Content Items.

See Understanding Custom List Values.

Using Profile Types

A profile type is a collection of content items that describe the qualitative attributes of a person or business entity. If a profile type is used to describe a person, it is called a person profile. If a profile type is used to describe a business entity, such as a job, business unit, or job family, it is referred to as a nonperson profile.

You can use profiles in ePerformance in these ways:

• To download content items from a nonperson profile into a document template.

• To download the content items from a nonperson profile into a performance or development document.

• To update or create an employee's person profile (ePerformance supports any person profile type for this purpose).

Note. ePerformance supports these nonperson profile identity options for downloading content items from a nonperson profile into a document template, performance document, or development document: Job Code, Job Family, Job Function, Position, Salary Plan and Grade, Reg Region, Company, Business Unit, and Location and Department.

When items are added to an ePerformance document from a Non-Person Profile, ePerformance downloads these fields from the Profile record:

These fields always come from the Content Catalog.

• JPM_DESC90

• JPM_TEXT_1325_1

• JPM_TEXT_1325_2

See Managing Profiles.

Working with Approvals and Reviews

ePerformance uses the Approval (PTAF_TXN) component to define its approval processes. There are five approvals processes. Three processes use the new approval framework, which includes:

• ManagerOnly

  This is a one-step approval process that routes the transaction to an approving manager.

• ManagerToAdmin

  This is a two-step approval process that routes the transaction to an approving manager and then to the ePerformance human resources administrator.

• AdminOnly

  This is a one-step approval process that routes the transaction to the ePerformance human resources administrator.

The approval process definition is linked to a document type using the Document Type page.

In addition to assigning the approval process definition to a document type, you also define when you want the employee review to occur within the performance process. Your choices are:

• Approval Before EE Review Held

  The system follows one of the approval processes. The document is approved before the manager discusses it with the employee.

• Approval After EE Review Held

  The system follows one of the approval processes. The document is approved after the manager discusses it with the employee.

• Approval. No EE Review Held

  The system follows one of the approval processes. The manager does not review the document with the employee.

• No Approval. EE Review Held

  The system does not follow an approval processes. The manager must review the document with the employee.

• No Approval. No EE Review Held

  The system does not follow an approval processes and the manager does not review the document with the employee.

See Setting Up and Working with Approvals.

Modifying Self-Service Pages and Email Notifications

This section list prerequisites for sending email notification and discusses:

• ePerformance text catalog settings.

• Text substitution.

• Notifications.

ePerformance provides standard text that appears on self-service pages and in automatically generated email notifications. The text catalog stores these text entries. You can modify the text catalog entries as needed or create new ones to meet business needs.

See Also

Configuring the Text Catalog

Prerequisites for Email Notifications

To ensure email and workflow notifications are working properly, complete the following steps:

1. Activate emails using the Worklist System Defaults page.

2. Define the method used to notify originator using the System Workflow Rules page.

3. Define user notification preferences.

4. Define user's email address on the Email Addresses page.

5. Select email user as a routing preference on the User Profiles - Workflow page.

See Setting Up and Working with Self-Service Transactions.

ePerformance Text Catalog Settings

ePerformance makes use of the text catalog for storing text that appears on self-service pages, including field labels, button names, links, page instructions, and warnings as well as the text and subject lines of automated email notifications. You can modify text that appears on a page or in an email message by editing text in the Text Catalog feature.

The text catalog is partitioned by the applications that use it. Each partition can store and access data differently. To access the text catalog items that belong to ePerformance, enter HEP as the object owner identifier on the Maintain Text Catalog search page.

These are the unique settings that apply to ePerformance:

Sub ID

ePerformance partitions its text catalog entries by performance and development. To retrieve text catalog entries, follow the instructions in this table:

Text Catalog Keys

ePerformance designates these four keys for storing and retrieving its entries:

When the system retrieves text from the catalog:

• Section type key takes precedence over author type

• Author type takes precedence over user role.

• User role takes precedence over document status.

Note. An empty key functions as a wildcard. Entries with wildcard keys pertain to all possible values for the key.

Example of Text Retrieval in ePerformance

For example, if you define two different instructional messages for completing the Goals section of a document, one message for employees and an alternate version for managers, you would define the four keys as shown in this table:

First, the system looks for entries with an exact match on Key 1 (section type). If it finds entries that match the key value (including the wildcard entry), it searches only those entries for the other values and picks up the best match. In this case, the section type for both entries is Goal, so the system looks at Key 2 (author type). It applies the same logic. Both values in this case are wild cards, so both entries remain possibilities. Now, the system looks for a match on Key 3 (user role) and finds an exact match on Manager. The system only considers entries where Key 4 is blank if it cannot find any match on the key.

Text Substitution

Text substitution in the Text Catalog feature works just like substitution in the PeopleTools Message Catalog. You supply the text values for the tokens in a PeopleCode function call at runtime. The values are replaced by parameters in the PeopleCode when the text is rendered on evaluations.

To use this feature, you must know PeopleCode. If you want to update the delivered text IDs such that the substitution tokens take on a different meaning or are resequenced, you also need to make corresponding changes to the PeopleCode that calls the Text Catalog feature retrieval functions, since this copies supplier values to use in place of the tokens.

These are the tokens and the substitution text for each token that are delivered by ePerformance. You can insert up to five substitution tokens from the following list:

• %1: The document type from the Document Type table (EP_REVW_TYP_TBL).

• %2: The employee name formatted as first name, last name.

• %3: The employee ID.

• %4: The period begin date for the performance period.

• %5: The period end date for the performance period.

• %6: The due date of the evaluation.

• %7: The component link that transfers the user directly into the applicable evaluation.

• %8: The list of employees for whom an evaluation was successfully created during the background run.

• %9: The list of employees for whom evaluations were not created.

• %10: The Form-Create-Msg, which is one of two alternate messages that appear depending on the type of process that is run.

Notifications

This table lists the delivered text entries that ePerformance includes in system-generated email notifications. It specifies when and to whom notices are sent. Most text entries have two versions, one with the suffix _SBJ for use in email subject lines and a corresponding entry with the suffix _BDY for use in the body of email messages. When a notification is triggered by a status change or an action request on an evaluation, the body text that is generated contains a link to the evaluation(s).

These notification messages are used in email body text only.