Workflow for Capturing Information to Be Displayed in PDFs
Distinct phases are involved to create forms aligned with PDFs for capturing new hire information, configuration and runtime.
In Adobe Acrobat Professional or Adobe Acrobat 3D, the Onboarding (Transitions) administrator creates the PDF that will display all those fields which are desired for long-term static use. This PDF contains variables, created with fields analogous to the items on a user-defined form. Almost all the variables available in the Onboarding (Transitions) system that can be placed onto a form can also be placed into a PDF document. The only exception is multi-row fields. In the form builder or message template builder, the forward slash "/" used in variables must be replaced by a dot ".". For example, PersonalInfo/LastName must be changed to PersonalInfo.LastName.
Configuring a process to enter data into the system and display the data in a PDF to the candidate:
The Onboarding (Transitions) administrator puts standard and user-defined fields onto a form.
The Onboarding (Transitions) administrator puts standard and user-defined fields (variables) onto a PDF document (using Adobe Acrobat Pro usually).
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The Onboarding (Transitions) administrator puts the user-defined form in a task.
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The Onboarding (Transitions) administrator puts the form task into a process.
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The Onboarding (Transitions) administrator uploads the PDF into a document.
Because a PDF can be displayed in different ways administrators should consider:
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As a PDF task into a process, to have its completion tracked for any assignee and will be available for export at runtime.
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On a content page task that includes the variables {ContentPage.GeneralDocuments} and {ContentPage.PersonalizedDocuments} which will not be available for export but which can be viewed, saved, and/or printed by the new hire/candidate.
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Onboarding (Transitions) Center users who have the necessary permissions can view the Process page of any candidate/new hire process, and from there they can associate a PDF from the zone's library to that person in the System Documents section. In this way, the PDF will display all the specific values in the fields for that person and the personalized PDF will be available for export.
Runtime Use
Each new hire process is composed of a series of steps. Assignees of a PDF task can view the associated PDFs when the task becomes active in the step sequence. Whenever a PDF is viewed within a PDF task by assignees, field values originating from any variables in the PDF reflect the most current information available.
At some moment in time, a specific PDF (including any variables) is viewed by an assignee about a specific candidate/new hire. Then, some data in the system gets updated for that specific candidate/new hire, either via a form, Taleo Connect, the Career Section, the Recruiting Center. That same specific PDF (including variables) can be viewed again for that same candidate/new hire, and the updated values now appear. In short, these PDFs are dynamic and do not retain their original values; they always show the most current values for their variables. This PDF variable behavior is true in all places where PDFs are viewed at runtime:
When an Open PDF task is viewed later in the process by any assignee, it will display the current values for these variables. An assignee merely opening the PDF is sufficient to make the task Complete.
When this PDF document is viewed later in the process by anyone with permission to view Related Sources for tasks, they too will see the current values for its variables.
When candidates/new hires view their documents within their content pages on the Career Section's Tasks tab, this PDF will contain the current values for its variables.
Onboarding (Transitions) Center users can manually associate any PDF document from the Onboarding (Transitions) list into the System Documents section of the candidates/new hires' process pages and then this too will display this new hire's current values in any variables. This page is only visible to Onboarding (Transitions) users with the permission to view processes.
Exporting PDFs
A task of type Open PDF has reached the In Progress status within the process, though it is not necessary that the task is in Completed status. .
- An Onboarding (Transitions) Center user has manually associated the PDF with the person's process.Note: PDFs associated with a content page in the new hire's process are unavailable for export.
Completed user-defined forms can also be viewed and printed, by the new hire or any task assignees after submitted, but these forms are not as easy as PDFs to closely control the formatting. These forms cannot be exported via Taleo Connect for long-term storage.
At any point during a new hire's Onboarding (Transitions) process after a PDF is ready for them, another form could seek to update the fields that were contained in that PDF. If the assignee changes the data in these fields, any previously completed PDF will instead show the updated data when viewed or exported after the moment of this change.
Export the PDFs as soon as they are expected to be complete. For example, export them if they are completed around Day 3 even if the new hire process is configured to run through the employee's ninetieth day.
Try to ensure that no unwanted changes are made to the data before the export is completed: do not configure any additional Onboarding (Transitions) forms to capture information into the fields that also appear on the PDF; prevent Recruiting Center users from making updates to these fields; do not configure any way for the candidates themselves to make updates to their information for example in other job submissions; do not run any Taleo Connect imports to these fields.
Export the PDFs before any subsequent process is run for a new hire. For example, if an employee is terminated and rehired later for a job in the organization, some of the fields might be updated on forms in the new process and some of fields might be shared between old and new processes.