Understanding Search and Compare Profiles

The Search and Compare Profiles feature uses the PeopleTools Search Framework to search and compare profiles. Search and Compare Profiles enables employees, managers, and administrators to search for profiles that match selected search criteria. You configure searches for your profile types and your users. Here are examples of the types of searches that are possible:

• Employees can search for jobs that match their own personal profile.

• Managers can select an employee who reports to them and search for other direct or indirect reports with similar skills.

• Managers can search for direct or indirect reports who match the profile for a job opening that they want to fill.

• Administrators can select a job profile and search for similar job profiles.

Define search types for your organization on the Define Search Configuration page. The high level keys for a search configuration are the object owner identifier, the sub application id, and the search ID. The object owner identifier enables other products to easily interface with the PeopleSoft Manage Profiles search engine. For Manage Profiles searches, select the HCM Profile Management (JPM) in the Object owner identifier field. The Sub Application Id field indicate other products using the Search and Compare processes, such as Succession Planning.

For each search, you define:

• Who can run the search.

  You can set up searches for one or more of the roles: employee, manager, and administrator. Users can only run the searches that are defined for their role. In addition, the search results list only those profiles to which the user has the appropriate security. For example, if a manager searches for employees that match a job opening, the search results include those employees that are direct or indirect reports of the manager.

• Source and target profile types.

  The source and the target profile types are the two profile types that are being compared in the search. The source is the profile type that forms the basis for the search criteria and the target is the profile type being searched for matching profiles. These profile types must share a common set of content types, otherwise no search criteria items can be entered. For example, if an employee searches for jobs that match his or her personal profile, the source is the employee's person profile type and the target is the job profile type and all content types shared by both the person profile type and the job profile type are exposed as search criteria content sections.

• Criteria rule.

  The Criteria Rule field defines two aspects of the search:

  • Whether the system populates the search criteria based on the profile that the user selects for the search.

    If you select the criteria rule Default and Display or Default, No Display, the system populates the search criteria using the source profile that the user selects for the search.

  • Whether users can view and adjust the search criteria.

    If you select the criteria rule Default, No Display, the system populates the search criteria and runs the search without displaying the search criteria page. If you select any other criteria rule, the system displays the search criteria page and users can adjust the criteria before running the search.

• The maximum number of profiles returned by the search query.

This table lists the search configurations delivered for the administrator with the system:

The profile type definitions are the basis for Search and Compare Profiles so it's important to understand how they affect the search results. When users select a search, to build the search criteria the system:

1. Identifies the content sections to include in the search criteria.

   The system compares the source and target profile types to identify which content sections appear in both source and target. Only the content sections that are common to the source and target profile types are included in the search criteria.

2. Identifies the properties to include in the search criteria for each of the content sections identified in the previous step.

   The properties included are those defined as searchable in the target profile type.

See Setting Up Profile Types.

Example Search Criteria

To illustrate how Search and Compare Profiles works, consider the example of an administrator searching for employees who match a given job profile. In this example:

• Source profile type is JOB.

• Target profile type is PERSON.

Suppose that the JOB profile type has the following content sections and properties that are defined as searchable:

Content Section	Searchable Properties
Competencies	JPM_CAT_ITEM_ID (Competency) JPM_RATING1 (Target Proficiency)
Degrees	JPM_CAT_ITEM_ID (Degree) COUNTRY (Country)
Test/Examinations	JPM_CAT_ITEM_ID (Test)
Responsibilities	JPM_CAT_ITEM_ID (Responsibility) JPM_YN_2 (Critical)

Suppose that the PERSON profile type has the following content sections and properties that are defined as searchable:

Content Section	Searchable Properties
Competencies	JPM_CAT_ITEM_ID (Competency ID) JPM_RATING1 (Proficiency) JPM_INTEREST_LEVEL (Interest Level)
Degrees	JPM_CAT_ITEM_ID (Degree) COUNTRY (Country) MAJOR_CODE (Major Code)
School Education	JPM_CAT_ITEM_ID (Education Level) SCHOOL CODE (School Code) COUNTRY (Country) AVERAGE_GRADE (Average Grade)
Test/Examinations	JPM_CAT_ITEM (Test)

In this example, the search criteria are:

Content Section	Properties
Competencies	JPM_CAT_ITEM_ID (Competency) JPM_RATING1 (Target Proficiency) JPM_INTEREST_LEVEL (Interest Level)
Degrees	JPM_CAT_ITEM_ID (Degree) COUNTRY (Country) MAJOR_CODE (Major Code)
Test/Examinations	JPM_CAT_ITEM_ID (Test)

Notice that:

• Responsibilities and School Education are missing because these content sections do not appear in both the source and the target profile types.

• The properties included in the search criteria are those defined as searchable in the target profile type.

• The labels displayed on the Search Criteria page are those defined in the source profile type for those properties that are defined in both the source and the target profile type.

  In the example, the label for the property JPM_RATING1 is Target Proficiency in the source profile type and Proficiency in the target profile type. When users run the search, the JPM_RATING1 field is labelled Target Proficiency on the Search Criteria page.

Importance and Mandatory Properties

The Importance (JPM_IMPORTANCE) and Mandatory (JPM_MANDATORY) properties appear on the Search Criteria page for each of the content sections included in the search criteria. The system automatically adds these fields to enable users to adjust the search as follows:

• The Mandatory check box enables users to specify profile items that must appear in the matching profiles.

  If the Mandatory check box is selected for any profile item, the search results include only those profiles containing that profile item and having the same property values as those in the search criteria. For example, if the search criteria includes an item 0100 - Abstract Thinking and a proficiency of Good for the item, if you specify that the item is mandatory, the search results include only profiles that contain both the 0100 - Abstract Thinking item and a proficiency equal to Good. Any profiles that have the item but with a lower or higher proficiency value are not included in the search results.

  If the Mandatory property is included in a content section definition, the system uses the setting of the check box in the profile as the default value in the search criteria, but users can override the default.

• The Importance field is a way to define the profile items that are most or least important.

  When the search runs, the search framework uses the Importance field to determine the ranking of matching profiles. The default value is 3 - Average, but users can override this value.

  For searches with a criteria rule of Default, No Display that do not allow users to modify the search criteria, the system automatically assigns the default importance value (3 - Average).

See Searching and Comparing Profiles.

Search Filters

The Search Criteria page includes search filter links if you have set up searchable profile group types for the target profile type. Search filters enable users to narrow the search to specific profile groups, locations, or travel preferences.

To illustrate how this works, consider the following example:

• The profile group type GLOBAL includes the profile type JOB.

• The profile groups for GLOBAL are REGION1, REGION2, and REGION3.

When users select a search where the target profile type is JOB, the search filter link enables users to select one or more of the profile groups REGION1, REGION2, and REGION3. The search results are limited to profiles that belong to the selected profile groups. The Search Filter feature is particularly useful if your organization has large numbers of profiles.

Current Location and Travel Preferences filters will only be available if the target profile is configured to include those content sections.

See Searching and Comparing Profiles.

See Creating Profile Group Types and Profile Groups.