Understanding Self-Service History and Workfiles

Employees can use the Work With Employee Self Service History program (P085585) to review changes to their company benefits. When an employee enters changes to benefits, either as the result of a qualifying life event or during open enrollment, the system tracks all changes and saves them in history files. An employee might use this program to review current benefits to see if they need to be updated or to check the records for errors.

A system administrator can use workfile maintenance programs to enter changes to the benefits self-service workfiles. Although entering changes directly to a workfile should be an unusual event, you can directly change the data in the workfiles to correct errors or enter changes that occur outside of normal parameters. You might use this approach for any of these tasks:

• Review files for data errors

• Correct errors

• Enter changes to data outside of open enrollment

  Important:

  Access to this program should have the highest possible level of system security because when you revise self-service benefits information manually:

  The system does not validate data entry.

  Changes entered in this program can create unintentional detrimental effects in other programs.

  Data can be removed or changed that negatively affects payroll processing and employee benefits.

  Only an expert software user should enter changes to benefits self-service workfiles. The user should be aware of all of the benefits self-service tables and understand the interactions of the enhanced self-service software. No data integrity checking is performed by any of the maintenance programs. For example, if a system administrator changes an employee enrollment from family coverage to employee only, errors result unless associated dependent records for the family enrollment are also changed.

  A system administrator can remove data from the workfiles without replacing the data with valid values. For example, if an administrator mistakenly removes a benefit plan option, all employees enrolled in the benefit plan option are affected. The self-service workfiles might require rebuilding as the result of potential errors.

  If you find it necessary to enter manual changes to self-service benefits history tables, back up your history workfiles and contact Oracle for technical support.