Analyzing Disconnected Events
This section provides an overview of event disconnection and discusses how to:
Investigate and void disconnected events.
Reconnect open enrollment or Snapshot events.
When the system flags a participant event as being disconnected, it means that information that the system uses to track the event, process it, or both was deleted at some point after the event was triggered. Once an event is disconnected, it can no longer be processed by the system, except to be voided. A participant event can become disconnected in two ways:
The changed HR record that previously triggered the event is deleted.
One or more HR records needed for eligibility processing no longer exist.
The disconnection needs to be analyzed to determine any impact on benefit processing of the participant associated with the event. If an event is disconnected after it is finalized, you may want to void the event through reprocessing.
Disconnection Due to Loss of Event Trigger
When the system processes event triggers on the BAS Activity table, it looks at the source of the triggered activity. If the triggered activity results from the change of address, employment, or job information, the system needs to determine what type of change occurred: an information insert, a data change, or a deletion of information.
When you update employee state, postal code, or job information by inserting new records for that information into the system, the system creates a new participant event in BAS_PARTIC.
If the trigger was a correction of those same types of information, the system sets an eligibility change flag for any existing participant event that depended on that information, indicating that reprocessing for the flagged event may be necessary.
If the trigger was a deletion of participant state, postal code, or job information, the system disconnects the participant events associated with that information.
Note: When you correct the effective date of a particular address or job information record, the system simultaneously creates a new participant event and disconnects any participant events that were initially triggered by that address or job record.
Disconnection Due to Loss of Eligibility Information
When the system prepares options or validates elections for participant events, it must access the current HR records that provide the event's eligibility parameters. If eligibility data has been deleted or no longer exists as of the event date (because the effective date of the eligibility data was changed), the system can no longer process the event. It must assume that the event was originally triggered in error or has been superseded. Benefits Administration disconnects these events, preventing them from being processed further by the system.
Under most circumstances, you should verify that a disconnected event did not occur due to a data entry error in the HR data associated with the event.
You also want to review the impact of the event's disconnection as well as the impact of the correction of the event disconnection. For example, if the disconnection takes place because HR data was inadvertently deleted, the correction of that mistake will most likely cause the system to create new BAS_ACTIVITY records and possibly a new participant event.
If a participant event is disconnected after it has been finalized (also because eligibility information related to the event was lost), you may have to void the disconnected event to back out any election information it entered.
To void a disconnected event:
Access the finalized, disconnected event on the Controls page of the Processing Controls Update component or the Event Status Update page.
Select a Process Indicator value of Void.
Reprocess the event.
When you do this, the system backs out elections associated with the event, sets the event status to Void, and sets the event's process status to RE.
Disconnected open enrollment or Snapshot events can be reconnected with the Schedule New Participants feature, which enables the automatic scheduling of participants who were added to the system after open enrollment or Snapshot processing for a selected schedule has begun.
The following sample sequence illustrates how a disconnected open enrollment participant event can be reconnected:
During scheduling and assignment for an Open Enrollment schedule, the system processes Open Enrollment events for three participants with the following employee IDs: 8001, 8002, and 8003.
The system disconnects the open enrollment event for employee 8003 because job eligibility information associated with the event has been lost.
Employees 8001 and 8002 are scheduled, and assigned, and have their options prepared.
While employees 8001 and 8002 are reviewing their enrollment forms and making their new elections, you fix the event trigger information for participant 8003, resulting in a reinsertion of a record for 8003 in the job row.
At the same time, a new employee, with an employee ID of 8012, is hired.
When you next run the Benefits Administration process for this Open Enrollment schedule with Schedule New Participants selected, the system picks up the new employee, 8012, and assigns an open enrollment event.
The system also picks up the reinserted record for participant 8003, resulting in a reconnection of the disconnected open enrollment event for that employee.