Enable Benefits Pending Actions Alert

Hello and welcome to this 25B demonstration of Oracle Benefits Pending Action Alerts.

This new feature allows the use of standard alert functionality to send automatic notifications to benefit participants for their outstanding pending actions. Benefits administrators are often required to send manual reminders which are time-consuming and can be inconsistent. Employees often overlook critical benefit tasks that requires benefits administrators to spend valuable time tracking and sending communications. Using the new benefits pending actions alert will provide faster and more reliable communications to employees, increased completion of benefit-related tasks and reduced the benefit administrator’s workload. I have logged into Oracle with a user who has access to Alerts Composer. To enter alerts composer I will go to the Navigator, scrolling down to tools and then select alerts composer. Once the page opens I will enter BEN in my filter search, now I can see all of our benefit related alerts.

Here, like our other alerts, you can perform actions such as edit, run or copy. I am going to click on the hyper-link to enter in the alert.

This is a resource alert and it is delivered enabled. If you copy this alert it will be enabled to No and you’ll need to change that to Yes. You can change the name or the description.

In the filters tab, we have delivered two resources. Let’s look at this first one, I will click on edit. Here we have two expressions. The first one telling me that the alert will not be sent unless the coverage end date is before or on the current date. And it also has to have an action item. We can add an express, lets’ say I only want to only send this alert to a specific program. We’ll enter in a name, and in the attributes field, I will select person benefits enrollments.

Then I will select Program Name. My operator will be equals. And then I will enter in my program name. Then click on the insert into expressions button. Once you see the expression here you will click apply.

Once I’ve added all of my expressions I will click apply.

Now let’s look at our second resource. I will click on our edit.

We currently have one expression here, and it is telling me that it will only send this alert if the completed date is null.

Here you can add additional expressions also. If I click on edit you will see that the attributes are slightly different for this expression. I’m not going to create one so I’ll cancel. And I’ll cancel again.

Once I’ve completed all of my filters I will click on the templates tab.

There is a delivered template you can use, I will click on edit and then manage recipients and messages.

I can add additional recipients, such as I want to sent this to a specific person, or a specific email box like a benefits email box. You can sent it to your benefits representative using the areas of responsibility or you can send it to the employee’s person email address. I’m going to just enter in an email address. I can use this for testing my alert. Once I’ve added all the recipients I can scroll down and see the format can be HTML or Text.

I can adjust the pending actions, and I can also use expressions on my subject. I can do group by and again I can use expressions here. In the message text I can change the font type, size, I can add additional colors. I can expressions and tables and links.

So you can modify this to meet your needs. Once I’ve made all of my changes I will click apply.

Now let’s look at run options. You can run the alert on demand or you can schedule the alert. I am going to do on demand. You can enter your max messages.

You can stop messages, but if you enter in yes here you must schedule your alert. I’m going to use No.

Set your log activity to yes, to see the history. And simulate run, I’m changing that to yes because I’m testing and when I’m ready or finished my testing I will change this to no.

Once I’ve finished making all of my changes I will save and close.

Now let’s look at alert history. I will click on alerts history.

Here I can see any scheduled alerts, any alerts that are running and those alerts that have processed. Here we see the pending actions alert that I just recently submitted.

If I click on my hyperlink I can see the time it was run, I can see the parameters here listed. And down below in the success tab, I will see the number of alerts that were reviewed. If there were errors they would be in another tab. If I expand here, I can see the address sent to, the date and time. Clicking on the icon I can actually see the actual information in the alert that was sent to the employee.

Now, when I ran this it was for the program, a specific program and I only have one employee that has outstanding pending actions. At that is why we see just the one total for the messages. Here I have listed some useful communication methods.

You can send alerts to the employees work or personal email address. If the employee has both work and personal email addresses in the system they will receive the alert at both addresses.

You can send to the employee or managers worklist. And If you want to send to the benefits representative I have included the different expressions and how they work.

This concludes this demonstration. Thank you for watching.

You can refer to the 25B What’s New documentation for more information on this feature.