External Services

Services, provided by certified third parties that engage users outside of the Oracle Taleo Enterprise Edition system, can be integrated into Onboarding (Transitions) processes.

Organizations can choose to have services executed by external partners. Partners can provide services such as collecting information for tax withholding purposes, handling governmental forms including U.S. I-9 and WOTC credits, and performing background checks.

External services must be certified and deployed by Oracle Taleo before they can be included in an Onboarding (Transitions) process. Once the service is available, users with the Manage services that are provided by partners permission can enable and disable services in Onboarding (Transitions) Administration and modify them as needed.

Once a service is enabled, the Onboarding (Transitions) administrator can create tasks to interact with it. Completion values returned after the service provides its results can be displayed in forms, emails and reports. They can be exported, and/or used as conditions to drive or direct subsequent tasks. Like other tasks, external service tasks are added to form the Onboarding (Transitions) process.

Correspondence versus Invitations

When configuring an external service, the service details page may display a Correspondence section or an Invitations section. The Correspondence section is displayed if the partner needs to only communicate with the candidate/new hire and only requires a single message. The Invitations section is displayed if the partner needs to communicate with several participants and requires several messages. This is the case with all the I-9 partners who will be certified for Onboarding (Transitions).  

In the case where a single message is required, the Onboarding (Transitions) administrator can create a specific message template that includes a link that the candidate/new hire clicks to go to an external service Web site to complete a task. The message is also displayed in the list of tasks on the career section Tasks tab. The message task contains the same link and the task keeps its In Progress status until the overall service results have been returned. When all the results have been received, the status changes to Complete. Note that if the external service needs to communicate with the candidate/new hire and no specific message template is provided, or the selected message template is not active, then the Onboarding (Transitions) built-in message template named General Validation Message is sent to the candidate/new hire instead. The candidate/new hire might be requested to provide the standard Oracle Taleo Enterprise Edition user name and password, which the system validates before granting access to external service Web sites.

When the Invitations section is displayed, one line is displayed for every activity the partner can trigger within the Onboarding (Transitions) system as its request proceeds. For each line, the participant who would receive the communication about that activity is displayed. It is the responsibility of the Onboarding (Transitions) administrator to configure all message templates that will be used when each of these activities happens.

For instance, the U.S. Form I-9 process for a partner might be designed to consist of four activities:

1. Invitation for the new hire to visit the partner Web site to fill in Part 1 of the I-9 form.

2. Invitation for the Hiring Manager to visit the partner Web site to fill in Part 2 of the I-9 form.

3. Update for the Hiring Manager if the results show a negative response.

4. Update for the Hiring Manager if the results show a positive response.

Each of these message templates must be created by the Onboarding (Transitions) administrator and associated with each of these events. If any line does not have a message template, the service cannot be enabled to be used in a task.

Standard and Customized Settings

External services accept standard and customized settings. The standard settings include result validity period, sender identifier, expected reply time constraint and request time-out time constraint. Oracle Taleo consultants or Onboarding (Transitions) administrators add custom settings to a service, enabling Onboarding (Transitions) administrators to use them in processes. For instance, a service might want to include a company identifier to be used in each new hire interaction. An Oracle Taleo consultant or an Onboarding (Transitions) administrator would add that setting to the service.

Viewing Partner Results

Once a candidate or employee (and possibly other participants) have completed the external service-related tasks, the results can be viewed in user-defined forms, message templates, exports and reports, and can also be used to drive conditional workflows. While setting up forms, templates, and so forth, if the Onboarding (Transitions) administrator selects the ServiceLastRequestResults category, he/she will have access to all fields related to the service providers. If the Onboarding (Transitions) administrator places fields in forms, templates, and so forth, along with displaying certain fields as a URL field type, the results can be viewed by assignees and task owners. The Onboarding (Transitions) administrator can use ServiceLastRequestResults fields in the condition editor as well. The more complete ServiceAllRequestResults tables can be used to show all conversations/interactions between the person and the service provider. See OVI Partner Fields in User-defined Forms.