Managing Reviews and Approvals

This chapter provides an overview of review and approval processes and discusses how to:

• Conduct reviews.

• Approve documents.

• Update person profiles.

Understanding Review and Approval Processes

This section lists a prerequisite and discusses:

• Review and approval process options.

• Document statuses during review and approval.

• Review processes.

Prerequisite

You must enable the review and approval notifications on the General Settings page for ePerformance for this process to work correctly.

Note. The Alternate Role User feature is not available in ePerformance.

Review and Approval Process Options

This section discusses:

• Approval processing.

• Approval process participants.

Approval Processing

When you set up the document template, you select a review and approval process option and designate the roles that need to approve the document. The approval process controls when documents require approval and whether or not an employee review is required.

Review and approval processes are designed to:

• Notify employees and managers of status changes when a review is required.

• Automatically route documents from one designated approver to another in the approval chain, and notify each approver by email when it is his or her turn to approve a document.

• Manage workflow; that is, the order in which the review and approval steps are performed.

The review and approval process options are:

• Approval Before EE Review Held

  The document is approved before the manager discusses it with the employee.

• Approval After EE Review Held

  The approval process is initiated after the manager has reviewed the document with the employee and the employee or the manager acknowledges the document.

• Approval, No EE Review Held

  The manager does not need to review the document with the employee, but approval is required.

• No Approval, EE Review Held

  The manager must review the document with the employee, but the document does not need approval.

• No Approval, No EE Review Held

  The manager does not review the document with the employee, and the document does not need approval.

Note. The approval process within ePerformance does not support group ID. Group ID cannot be used as an approval method because the system does not store group ID on the document. Therefore, the system does not have a way to determine which group ID to use when a user is approving a document.

Approval Process Participants

The persons that must approve a document are determined by the approval rule set option that you select when creating the document template definition. You can have documents approved by:

• The manager's manager and the ePerformance human resources (HR) administrator.

• The ePerformance HR administrator only.

See Also

Setting Up ePerformance

Defining Document Processes

Document Statuses during Review and Approval

Employee reviews and management approvals are not required in all cases. If they are required, the manager's evaluation is the one that is reviewed and approved, and the status of this document reflects the review and approval status.

The manager's evaluation is the final document in the performance process and becomes the document used to communicate the employee's performance. A manager can consolidate other evaluator comments and ratings into the final document by using writing tools and average ratings. In addition, the manager document is the one that other applications such as Salary Planning and Competency Management use for official purposes. Therefore, it is the document that goes through the approval process.

Status codes provide a way of identifying the stages that an document moves through during the review and approval process cycle. Status codes also control when users can view or edit document data, what actions they can perform, and what page controls are available to them.

The statuses through which consolidated documents must pass and the sequence of these statuses are determined by the approval process option that is defined on the template.

These statuses are:

• In Progress

  This is the status of an evaluation when it is first created. While the status is In Progress, the employee and manager can modify all sections of their respective evaluations that the template definition permits. The evaluations stay in this status until the manager finishes the document and clicks one of the Available for Review, Complete, or Submit for Approval buttons. The exact buttons that appear depend on the setup and approval process that is required.

• Available for Review

  A manager can mark an evaluation as Available for Review only when the current status of the evaluation is In Progress and one of the following two conditions are met:

  • The review process is either Approval Required After Review Held or No Approval - Review Held.

  • The review process is Approval Required Before Review Held and the approval status is set to Approved.

    To change the status of an evaluation to Available for Review, the manager must click the Available for Review button. This enables the employee to view the consolidated document and add comments to the Employee Comments section. While the document is in Available for Review status, the manager can only edit the Manager Comments section.

    While the consolidated document is available for review, the Review Held button appears on the document. This button enables the manager to change the status of the document to Review Held and indicates that the manager has met with the employee to review the consolidated document.

• Review Held

  This status indicates that the manager has discussed the consolidated document with the employee. While a document has the status of Review Held, the employee and the manager have read-only access to the document, except to enter or edit the Manager Comments or Employee Comments sections of a document, if these sections exist.

• Acknowledged

  This status indicates that the employee or the manager has acknowledged the document. When this status is in effect, the Employee Comments and Manager Comments sections both managers and employees have read-only access to the document. When a document is in this status, only the HR administrator can change the status back to In Progress.

• Complete

  This status indicates that the evaluation process is finished. No further changes to the document are permitted. With this status, employees and managers have read-only access to the document and are unable to edit or modify the content. The manager, however, can click the Rework button on an employee or other participant evaluation to return the document to the employee for revision. When the manager returns a document, the system changes the document back to In Progress and makes the Complete button available again.

  The employee clicks the Complete button to change the status of the document back from In Progress to Complete. This button becomes available when the document is first created or sent back for revision.

  Note. Only the manager has the ability to send the document back for revision when the status of the consolidated document is In Progress.

• Cancelled

  This status indicates that the document and all its associated evaluations is cancelled. Managers can cancel documents on the Manager Evaluation page until the time that the document status is Acknowledged or Complete. HR administrators can cancel documents at any time using their own Cancel Document page.

Note. The Available for Review, Review Held, and Acknowledged statuses never apply when the approval process option is set to No Approval - No Review Held or Approval No Review Held. In these cases, employees can only view the manager's document when the status is Complete.

Review Processes

This section discusses:

• Process overview.

• Approval before review held.

• Approval after review held.

• Approval no review held.

• No approval no review held.

• No approval review held.

Process Overview

Review process options, document statuses, and approval status values control:

• The page elements that are available.

• The different levels of access that managers, employees, and HR administrators have to the document.

• The actions that managers, employees, and HR administrators can perform at different points in the review and approval cycle.

Note. Other evaluation participants are not affected by review and approval processes.

The tables in this section illustrate how document status and approval status work together to control user actions on the manager document for each approval process option. The buttons that are listed in these tables are hidden until they are valid for use.

Approval Before Review Held

This table describes the Approval Before Review Held process actions and statuses.

Note. If approval is denied in step three, the document status remains In Progress and the approval status changes to Denied.

Approval After Review Held

This table describes the Approval After Review Held process actions and statuses.

Note. If approval is denied in step six, the document status changes to In Progress and the approval status changes to Denied.

Approval No Review Held

This table describes the Approval No Review Held process actions and statuses.

Note. If approval is denied in step three, the document status changes to In Progress and the approval status changes to Denied.

No Approval No Review Held

This table describes the No Approval No Review Held process actions and statuses.

No Approval Review Held

This table describes the No Approval Review Held process actions and statuses.

Conducting Reviews

This section lists the pages used to conduct reviews.

See Also

Entering Comments and Ratings on Evaluations

Consolidating Feedback from Evaluators

Pages Used to Conduct Reviews

Approving Documents

This section discusses how to:

• Select documents to approve.

• Approve documents.

• Resolve approval transactions in error.

• Delegate approvals.

See Also

Viewing Approval Status

Pages Used to Approve Documents

Selecting Documents to Approve

Access the Select Transaction to Approve page (Manager Self-Service, Performance Management, Approve Documents, Select Transaction to Approve).

This page enables you to view the documents that you need to approve. It is identical to the View Approval Status Summary page except the Select Transaction to Approve page lists only documents that you have not yet approved, while the View Approval Status Summary page lists all documents where you are an approver or an originator.

Approving Documents

Access the Approve Transaction or the Approve Performance Documents page (select a document on the Select Transaction to Approve page).

Note. These two pages are identical in use, except that the Approve Transaction page is used by managers and the Approve Performance Documents page is used by HR Administrators.

Performance Document Details	Click this link to display the Manager Evaluation page in display-only mode. This page contains the consolidated evaluations and comments from all participants.
Process Detail	This group box displays detailed information about the approval process.
Evaluation Approval Chain	This group box displays the approvers in the approval process and their status. Click the name link to open a new browser window containing detailed information about the approver.
Comment	Use this text box to explain the reason for approving the document, or denying approval.
Approve	Click this button to approve the transaction.
Deny	Click this button to deny the transaction.

Resolving Approval Transactions in Error

If an error occurs and the system is not able to route the transaction to its intended approver, the system automatically routes the transaction to the administrator, as defined on the approval process definition. The administrator can then review the transaction using the Monitor Approvals (PTAF_ADMIN_MON) component to approve, deny, or reassign the transaction to the appropriate approver

See Administering Approvals.

Delegating Approvals

Approvers can delegate the approval of a performance or development document to another peer or subordinate.

To delegate the approval transaction:

1. An administrator must activate the EP_APPRAISAL transaction on the Configure Delegation Transaction page.

2. The manager must assign a proxy using the Manage Delegation page.

See Working with Self-Service Delegation.

Updating Person Profiles

This section provides an overview on the update person profile process.

Understanding the Update Person Profile Process

When the document is complete, the employee's person profile can be updated with the information from the performance or development document. To update the employee's person profile:

1. The system checks that the Update Person Profile check box is selected on the Template Definition - Structure page - Profile Management tab for the role.

2. If the Update Person Profile check box is selected, then the system identifies the profiles types that need to be updated for the employee. If a profile does not exist, the system create one for the employee.

3. The system copies all items for each section into the employee's profile.