Self Report a Life Event with Approvals & Alerts

Welcome to the demo of 24D Self Report a Life Event with Approvals and Alerts feature in Oracle Cloud Benefits.

With this new feature you can configure approvals and alerts by life event within the benefits life event page. Employees can now submit their life event online and add comments and supporting documents. Once the employee has submitted the life event, administrators can view submitted documents, approve, deny or request more information. Using the new approvals and alerts feature allows the administrator to insure the employee submits the correct documents. Employees can now be kept in the loop on the status of their life event and if needed supply additional documents and comments upon request. The outcome of the self-report a life event with approvals and alerts feature is to enhance the employee's self-service experience, allow you more control of self-assigned events and improve handling of these events. In the following demonstration I will show you how the new feature works, then I will review how to setup the approval and alerts and discuss best practices to help maximize their benefit to your organization. Here I have logged in as an employee, I've navigate to me, let's click on benefits. This will open the new Redwood self-service benefits landing page, let's click on report a life event under quick actions.

The self-report a life event page has been redesigned to make reporting a life event much easier for employees. Let's take a closer look at some of the new features. Employees who report life events after the Redwood pages have been enabled will see a history of life events reported along with the status. In our example here, the employee reported a marriage life event in June and the status is approved which means the administrator has approved the life event allowing the employee to go in and make enrollment changes. Clicking on the view icon, employees can see life event details. If the life event status shows submitted or more information requested the employee can edit or delete the life event. If the life event status shows auto approve, rejected or approved they can only view the information, the delete and saved buttons are grayed out, they can only view the information. Let's click cancel and this returns to the main page.

Once employees have added life events they will follow a guided process to add and update dependents and then submit for review if approval is required or navigate to the enrollment flow if the life event is auto approved.

We have two types of self-report life events, those that are auto approve and those that require approval and documentation. Let's start by reviewing a life event that requires approval and documents. Clicking on Add a Life Event button the employee will first see the new grouping "Whom is this life event for", this allows you to group your life events making it easier for employees to find the correct life event.

I want to report the birth of a new child so I will click on My Child and select I recently gained a child.

I will enter a life event occurred date of August 5th. And I can add comments, let's add in "Birth certificate is from Germany and is in German."

You can add additional text also, this is to help the employee if there are specific documents that you require for this life event. In our case we have "you must supply a recent birth certificate for new borns and adoption papers for adopted children. Documents cannot be older than 31 days."; Employees must include at least one supporting document. If the employee tires to save without adding a document, they will receive an error message. Let's add a birth certificate document. If the employee was reporting an auto-approved life event they would not see the instruction text or upload a document. They would just see the life event, the occurred-on date and add any comments here. Let's save and see what happens.

We see the I recently gained a child life event with an occurred date and its in a status of submitted. The employee can come into the report a life event page at any time to view the status of their event. Also, employees cannot submit duplicate life events on the same date. Let's click continue and the "Add and Update Dependents" page is displayed. Here the employee can add or update any dependent information pertaining to the life event requested. I have already added contacts so I will click continue.

The confirmation page will change based on the type of life event. If it is auto-approved the employee will be allowed to enroll in benefits immediately. If the life event requires approval, they will see this message stating the life event has been submitted and is under processing. Clicking done will return the employee to the self-service benefits landing page.

Let's now see how the life event looks on the benefits summary page.

Here I have logged in as the benefits administrator and navigated to the new Redwood benefits summary page and searched for our employee.

In the overview area I can see there is one self-reported life event listed. If I click on the self-reported life event area it will take me to the new self-reported life events section. Let's start by reviewing the information in the new self-reported life events area. In the default view we have the life event name, the occurred on date, submitted date and status. Clicking on the expand arrow I can see the life event instruction text which is what the employee sees in self-service as the life event name, I see comments made by the employee and if this is a resubmitted life event, I would see administrator comments. I also can download the document supplied by the employee to verify that it is correct.

Clicking on the three ellipses allows me to perform actions on this self-reported event.

Let's quickly look at each of these.

Selecting the reject I can assign a rejection reason, this is an extensible list of values, and I can add comments on why it is being rejected, such as the life event date is too far in the past to be approved. I will click cancel to return to the main page as I am not going to reject this event.

Selecting more information I see where I can add comments on what additional information is needed such as a missing a document or the document is unclear and needs to upload again. Let's cancel again as I am not requesting more information.

Finally let's select approve. The administrator can add comments or just click save. Notice the submitted event is no longer listed in the self-reported life event areas. Approving moves the life event to the potential life events area where it can be evaluated and the employee can make enrollment changes. Clicking on the show approved or rejected life events hyper-link will show prior approved or rejected life event information. Here I see the same information that was listed above.

Self-reported life events are stored in a separate table, so they do not interact with the potential or evaluated life events until their approved. We have reviewed how the employee can report a life event and how benefits administrators can approve, reject or request more information but what about alerts?

Employees will receive alerts when the life event is submitted, approved, rejected or more information is requested. Here are a few examples of delivered alerts. We have seen how employees can trigger life events and benefits administrators can approve. I have also shown you examples of alerts sent to employees but how do you setup these new features. Let's review setup steps for the self-assigned event rule and benefit life event alerts. Here I have logged in as the benefits administrator and navigated to the benefits life events page. I have searched for the life event I want to add an event rule. Your life event will need to have the self-assigned checkbox checked to enable the self-assigned event rule. If you wish to group your events you will need to select your grouping in the self-service grouping field. The life event instruction text is the life event name you want the employees to see in self-service benefits. This allows you to have a different setup name then what the employee sees. And if you want to prevent employees from submitting a life event in the past, enter your past event reporting limit in days number, in this example the employees cannot go back more than 31 days from today's date. Be sure to check your session effective date before adding your new self-assigned event rule. Click on the self-assigned event rule tab.

Click on the add-self-assigned event rule button.

The approval required checkbox must be checked to use the self-assigned event rule. If you wish to send alerts check the approval alert required checkbox, or if you do not want alerts sent you can leave it unchecked. Checking the document required checkbox forces the employee to submit a document at the time they request a life event. If you do not require a document you can leave this unchecked. You can also enter additional text to help employee understand what is needed for this particular life event if you have enabled the document required checkbox. In this case we've added "You must supply a recent birth certificate for new borns and adoption papers for adopted children. Documents cannot be older than 31 days."

Any life events you have without a self-assigned event rule will be considered auto approved and no alerts, approvals or documents will be required. Click save and close to complete the setup.

Let's now look at the life event alerts.

To enable your life events alerts you need to navigate to tools then alert composer. I will enter Life in the search field to list all life event related alerts. Notice there are alerts for successful submission, request for more information, rejection, approval and auto approved events.

Let's look at the approval of self-reported life event alert as an example.

The self-report life event alerts are defaulted to Yes so you do not need to enable them, this is done with the benefits life events setup. You can change the name of your alert and the description if desired.

We have delivered a seeded template that you can modify. To modify click on edit and select manage recipients and message.

In the Recipient area you can designate your communications method. Such as work email, personal email, worklist or benefits representative if you are using areas of responsibility. You can also enter benefits email box if you have a central benefits email address.

You can modify or reformat the message text. For example, you could select a different font, different size, or different style. You can add graphics or change the links and add deep links. You can even add or remove the values in parenthesis.

After making your changes click apply to close the page.

If you need to add more than one template, click on the add template button and add your recipients, select your format, enter a subject and the message text. Clicking on the run options tab you can determine how you wish to handle duplicate messages. If you wish to stop duplicate messages for a time select Yes and then select the parameters such as 4 days. If you do not wish to stop duplicate messages click No.

Set your log activity history to yes to include alert information in the log file.

And setting your simulate run to yes when testing allows you to review the alert message without sending to employees. When you are ready to go live change to no.

Clicking Save and close returns you to the alert search area.

Now that we have reviewed the new event alerts, let's look at alerts history.

Clicking on the filters icon I will enter the alert I want to review in the name field, click apply.

I will click on the name hyper-link of the alert I wish to view.

Here I can see if the alert was successful or if there were any errors. If there were errors we would have another tab with the number of errors. Clicking on the expand arrow I can see who the alert was sent to, the date, time and subject. Clicking on the glasses icon I can see the message text of the alert. Here I can validate what the employee sees. This is helpful when you are doing your testing. Let's click ok to close the message box. And let's click the back arrow to return to the Alert History page.

Here I have listed some useful communication methods. If the employee has both work and person email addresses in the system they will receive alerts at both addresses.

On the benefits representative, use one of the first three expressions if more than one representative is present and you want it to select any one of them.

Use the last three expressions if more than one representative is present and you want it to select all of them with a limit configured by profile, and the default is set to 25.

This concludes this demo. Thanks for watching.

You can refer to the Self-Report a Life Event in 24D What's New document for more information on this feature.