Processing Event Maintenance On Demand

This chapter provides an overview of on-demand event maintenance processing and discusses how to:

• Begin the On-Demand Event Maintenance process.

• Move events through the process.

• Reprocess participant events.

• Set up and manage on-demand event maintenance.

Understanding On-Demand Event Maintenance Processing

The administration of an event maintenance or open enrollment schedule can extend from several days to several weeks, depending upon the number of employees involved. This can involve time correcting processing errors, delivering enrollment forms, entering employee elections as the forms are returned, validating elections, and sending out confirmation notices.

With on-demand event maintenance, you can run an individual participant through the entire Benefits Administration process—from participant event scheduling to enrollment confirmation—with a single page.

Using on-demand event maintenance, you can:

• Process participant events quickly, without setting up run controls.

• Correct processing errors as they occur.

• Link to Benefits Administration pages to review processing information and enter option elections.

On-Demand Event Scenarios

You might use on-demand event maintenance for an employee who has been promoted and is transferring offices in a few days. In one day, you could:

• Produce a benefits package.

• Enter elections.

• Produce a confirmation statement.

You can also integrate the On-Demand Event Maintenance page into the standard Benefits Administration processing cycle. For example, a new hire is typically scheduled as a participant event during a regularly scheduled Event Maintenance batch process. However, what if the new employee needs to submit an enrollment form right away to make a doctor's appointment and show proof of medical insurance? You can use the On-Demand Event Maintenance page to produce the enrollment statement on demand. The employee makes elections that same day using the company's interactive voice response system or self-service website with eBenefits, and the system finalizes the elections and prints a confirmation statement during the next run of the Benefits Administration process for the normal event maintenance schedule.

See Also

Moving Events Through the Process

Beginning the On-Demand Event Maintenance Process

This section discusses how to:

• Start the On-Demand Event Maintenance process.

• Select an activity to process.

Pages Used to Begin the On-Demand Event Maintenance Process

Starting the On-Demand Event Maintenance Process

Access the On-Demand Event Maintenance page (Benefits, Manage Automated Enrollment, Events, On-Demand-Event Maintenance, On-Demand Event Maintenance).

Empl Record (employee record number)	Used for employees with multiple jobs. Employees with multiple jobs can have different sets of benefits elections. The system keeps track of the different sets of elections by assigning benefit record numbers for each benefits package.
Activity Date and Show Activities	This is the date on which the trigger activity for the Benefits Administration event occurred. If the system finds only one activity for the employee, the system automatically displays the date. If more than one activity exists, click the Show Activities button to select an activity to process.
Source	Displays the type of action that triggered the activity record: a change to the employee address, multiple job flags, or job data; manually adding an event through the Review Bas Activity page; or a passive event.
Schedule/Prepare Activity	Click to run the Schedule/Prepare Activity process.
Pending Activities	Displays the number of activities waiting to be processed into participant events for this employee ID and benefit record number combination. As activity triggers are processed into participant events, they are deleted from the Review Bas Activity page. If no activities are waiting to be processed, the Pending Activity field is blank and the Show Activities button is not available.
Action	Displays the type of job action associated with the action trigger. For example, if the triggering action is a hire of an employee, the action is HIR. When the system processes the activity into a participant event, it uses the action to determine which event classification governs the event.

The remaining features, discussed in the following sections, are unavailable until the activity is scheduled.

Selecting an Activity to Process

Access the BAS Activity page (Benefits, Manage Automated Enrollment, Events, On-Demand-Event Maintenance, On-Demand Event Maintenance and click the Show Activities button on the On-Demand Event Maintenance page.

Select	Select to process the activity. When you select an activity record, information from that record populates the Activity Date, Source, Empl Rcd#, Pending Activity, and Action fields on the On-Demand Event Maintenance page.
Event Effseq (event effective sequence)	If more than one event for this employee occurred on the same day, this field indicates the order in which it occurred.
COBRA Action	This indicates whether this is a COBRA qualifying activity.

Moving Events Through the Process

This section discusses how to:

• Schedule and assign activities.

• Prepare options.

• Print enrollment statements for on-demand event maintenance.

• Enter elections.

• Validate and finalize elections.

• Generate confirmation statements.

Scheduling and Assigning Activities

To schedule the activity record as a participant event and assign the event to a benefit program, click the Schedule/Prepare Activity button on the On-Demand Event Maintenance page.

The Schedule/Prepare Activity button is active only if an activity is waiting to be processed.

If the activity record is processed successfully, it is:

• Scheduled as a participant event.

• Deleted from the list of activities waiting to be processed.

• Added to the BAS Participant table.

• Assigned to a specific benefit program where event classifications are determined.

• Prepared (option eligibility and costs are calculated).

Note. In certain cases, the system processes the event to FP status, in which case the event is closed and processing stops. This can happen, for example, when event processing rules have Use History selected and no change has occurred in eligible options.

The system always assumes that you intend the selected activity on the On-Demand Event Maintenance page to be the event currently in process. So if you're working with a participant who currently has an event midway through the Benefits Administration process cycle and a pending activity record selected for on-demand maintenance, the system closes the current event by changing its event status to Closed, converts the activity trigger into a new participant event, and gives that event an event status of Open.

See Also

Scheduling Events and Assigning Benefit Programs

Preparing Options

Typically, after the event has been scheduled and assigned, options and costs are automatically prepared (so long as no errors occur during scheduling and program assignment). However, if errors occur and need further resolution, click the Prepare Options button to continue automated processing and to prepare benefit options and election defaults.

Due to an error during the scheduling and assignment, the Prepare Options button is available only when the event's process status is AS, AE, or PE.

See Also

Process Status and Option Preparation

Printing Enrollment Statements for On-Demand Event Maintenance

After options have been prepared, click Enrollment Statement on the On-Demand Event Maintenance page to generate an enrollment statement for the participant. The Enrollment Statements button is available only when the process status is PR or NT.

The Run Date field displays the date that an enrollment statement was last run for the participant event currently in process.

In the Frequency group box, you can indicate how to display benefit option cost information on the enrollment statement. Use Deduction Frequency to print the cost of the benefit per pay period for each available option. Use Annual Frequency to print the annual cost of the benefit option.

Note. If you're using eBenefits, this step may be optional (because the employee has access to enrollment choices directly from the self-service website).

Entering Elections

After options have been prepared and you've received the participant's election choices, click the Election Entry button to access the Benefits Administration data entry pages. The button is available only when the process status is PR, NT, EE, RE, or ET.

On the On-Demand Event Maintenance page, the Entered ... Of ... field tells you how many plan election choices have been entered for the participant versus the total number of plan election choices the participant can make. When an election has been entered, you can also click Show Plans to review changes.

See Also

Entering Participant Benefit Elections

Validating and Finalizing Elections

After entering elections, click the Validate/Finalize button on the On-Demand Event Maintenance page to validate and load the information to benefit tables. The button is available if the process status of the event isET, EE, or RE.

Note. If a participant's elections have not been updated and event rules dictate that the participant cannot keep some or all current elections, the system determines default elections for the participant and enrolls them.

Select the Finalize/Apply Defaults check box to force-finalize a participant's elections and enroll the participant in default elections, even if the current elections are in error. Events with a process status of PR and NT can be force-finalized, as well as events at ET, EE, or RE.

See Also

Validating and Loading Elections

Generating Confirmation Statements

After validating and finalizing the participant's elections, click the Confirmation Statement button on the On-Demand Event Maintenance page to generate a confirmation statement. The Confirmation Statement button is available when the process status is FE or EE.

The Run Date field displays the date that a confirmation statement was last printed for the participant event in process.

See Also

Setting Print Options

Reprocessing Participant Events

If an event requires reprocessing, click the Reprocess button on the On-Demand Event Maintenance page to reprocess the event to a previous stage of the Benefits Administration process. The Reprocess button is not available for events with AS status.

As with the normal Benefits Administration process, use the Event Status Update page to identify events that may need reprocessing. To open the Event Status Update page from the On-Demand Maintenance page, click the Event Status button.

Note. If you need to reprocess an event that has been closed, open Event Status Update, close the currently open event, and open the event that you want to reprocess. When you return to the On-Demand Event Maintenance page, the system displays the event that you reopened for processing.

Use the Process Indicator menu to indicate the level to which you want the system to reprocess the event. The following table describes Process Indicator values:

See Also

Analyzing Disconnected Events

Reprocessing Events

Setting Up and Managing On-Demand Event Maintenance

To set up online printing, use the Online Printing (BAS_ODEM_PRINT_PG) component.

This section discusses how to:

• Set print options.

• Review changed elections.

• Review and update event status.

• Review error messages.

Pages Used to Set Up and Manage On-Demand Event Maintenance

Setting Print Options

Access the Online Printing page (Set Up HRMS, Product Related, Automated Benefits, Processing Controls, Online Printing, Online Printing).

You set up print options only once for each user ID. Use the fields in the Output Destination group box to determine the output destination of the enrollment and confirmation forms that you print with the On Demand Event Maintenance facility. If you want to print the report on a printer, select Printer. If you want the system to generate the form as a text file, select File. In File/Printer, enter either the path to the directory in which you want the system to save the file (if you've selected File), or the printer to which you want the system to send the form (if you've selected Printer).

Note. Reports are always run from the client.

Reviewing Changed Elections

Access the Elections page (click the Show Plans button on the On-Demand Event Maintenance page).

Election Made	A value of Y indicates that election has been entered or changed.
Option Code	The benefit option code can also indicate that the participant has waived a certain option.

Note. The Elections page displays only the plan types for which the participant is currently eligible to choose or change benefit option elections. It might not display all of the plan types in which the participant is currently enrolled.

Reviewing and Updating Event Status

Just as in the normal Benefits Administration process, you can use the Event Status Update page to open and close events and reprocess events. You can also use the Event Status Update page to review the participant events currently associated with the participant and benefit record number combination with which you are working. To open the Event Status Update page from the On-Demand Event Maintenance page, click the Event Status button.

See Also

Manually Updating Event Status

Reprocessing Events

Reviewing Error Messages

Access the On Demand EM - Error Messages page (click the Show Errors button on the On-Demand Event Maintenance page).

The error messages generated by the last processing action that you initiated appear in the Messages area. Each time you run the Benefits Administration process, the system deletes the error messages generated by the previous run. If errors from a previous run are not corrected, the error messages are generated again with the new run of the process.