Employee Forms: Properties and Settings

Modified on Tue, Oct 15 at 11:52 AM

Basic Form "Demographics"

Code - Code to identify the Employee Form to the system. This is selected in the "Add Employee Form" process and cannot be changed.
Description - The description of/name for the Employee Form. This is a text field that can be updated at any time.
For can be filled once per: - This the "Frequency" setting for the Form. Possible settings include:
- Unlimited - The Form can be filled any number of times by a staff member.
- One time ever - The Form can be filled only one time by a staff member.
- School Year - The Form can be filled once per school year by a staff member.
- Day - This is a Daily Form that resets nightly and can be filled in once per day per staff member.
- Weekly - This is a weekly Form that resets once a week and can be filled on once each week per staff member.
Status - Forms can be Active or Inactive. Inactive forms are not in use and are not available to be created and filled by staff members.
- Active status appears with green background when selected
- Inactive status appears with yellow background when selected
Folder - This is the Employee Forms Folder this Form will be found in. This can be updated at any time.
Allow Ability to Tag Other Staff - When checked, this gives the Employee Form's originator to designate (that is, 'tag') additional staff members to receive the status emails about the form.

Form Initiation Options

The "Require the filler to choose a location" option forces the user to select a location from a drop down of locations when they begin filling in the form.

The "Require the filler to choose a department" option similarly forces the user to select a department from a drop down of departments when they begin filling in the form.

Form Options: How to Generate a PDF for Output

This section determines what type of Employee Form you are building and how the 'output PDF' will be generated.

Choose 1, 2, 2 and 3, or 3 to generate the PDF Output

There are three options in this section. The Employee Form can consist of 4 possible combinations:

Option 1 alone: This creates an Employee Form to publish a document out to staff members.
Option 2 alone: This creates an Employee Form with an attached Web Form to gather input from staff members. The Web Form's own embedded PDF generation capability is used to generate resulting PDFs as they are needed.
Option 3 alone: This creates an Employee Form with an attached PDF Form that will be used to generate "recipient-aware" PDFs, meaning data can be pulled from the receiving staff member's personnel records.
Option 2 and 3 together: This creates an Employee Form with both an attached Web Form to gather input from staff members and an attached PDF Form designed to create output from the input captured in the attached Web Form.

Option 1: Attaching an Existing PDF

If you select a PDF to be uploaded here, you are choosing a pre-existing PDF to - in some way - distribute to the staff members to whom this Employee Form will be published. Clicking the "Attach A PDF" button brings up a standard file chooser option:

Option 2: PDF Created from a Web Form

This specifies the input-collection Web Form. Web Forms include their own mechanism for generating a PDF for output (or storage). If only Option 2 is selected, the Web Forms own internal PDF will be generated. If Option 3 is also specified (see below), the PDF Form selected there will be used to generate the PDF for output.

Option 3: Output to PDF Form

This allows the selection of a PDF Form to generate output - with or without a Web Form selected in Option 2 above. The attached PDF Form can pull data from an attached Web Form, the user's own personnel records and the Employee Form's signature options (see below) in order to generate a completed PDF.

Input Options: How to Specify a Web Form to Capture Input

Web Form - The Input Form / Output Form

The Web Form setting is to choose the input of responses staff members may need to enter. Once the Web form is chosen, the staff members will be able to type in data that will populate directly on to your PDF Employee Form that you created.

Email Options

When an Employee Form is submitted for approval, any number of emails can be initiated from the setting listed below. The district should select the e-mail template if the respective option is "active".

Send an Email when Published

This control is used to send an 'announcement' email when an Employee Form is published. The email is sent to all staff members to whom the Employee Form is being published.

The "Email Method Type" selects how an email address will be selected for each staff member. Note that only 1 email is sent to each recipient. There are 3 options for selecting the email to send the announcement to:

First email found - The announcement email is sent to whatever email is located first on the staff member's "Contacts".
Work email - The announcement email is sent to the first email identified as a "Work email" on the staff member's "Contacts".
Non work email - The announcement email is sent to the first email NOT identified as a "Work email" found on the staff member's "Contacts".

Form Submission / Signature Requirement Options

This is where you can setup if staff member's need to sign off on the form and add in a signature statement to be displayed when signing the form. You can also determine if you would like an Employee Flag to be assigned to them once they have signed off on the Employee Form.

There are two options and a text box here:

Digital Signature Required - This determines if the staff member originating / submitting an Employee Form must digitally sign it.
Signature / Submission Statement - This is the text of the prompt displayed to the staff member on the signature field.
Set this user flag when submitted or signed - This drop down contains a list of all existing User Flag fields. A User Flag can be selected here: when the submitting user signs the Employee Form to submit it, the user flag is turned on.
Must Fill Option - This setting allows you to block the receiving staff member from doing any other work until the Employee Form is signed and submitted, or you can simply display a message on every screen until the Form is signed and submitted:
Allow form filler to cancel form after submitting for approval - This allows the form's originator to cancel it after submitting it and before it is approved. If it is not checked, they do not have this option.

Document Management Integration

There are 4 Document related parameters here:

Allow Attachments to be Uploaded: - This specifies if the originating/submitting staff member can upload attachments (i.e. files) to the Employee Form.
Do not allow form to be submitted until this many attachments are uploaded - If this is non-zero, then the originating/submitting user MUST attach as least the specified number of attachments before the Employee Form can be submitted. That is, this option requires the submitting staff member to upload attachments.
Allow attachments to be uploaded or deleted after form submission - If this is NOT checked, once the form is signed, it is "locked" for adding and no attachments can be added. If this IS checked, attachments can be added after the form is submitted and before final approval. This will allow, for example, a form to be signed, approved and then still have documents attached to it - e.g. receipts for a training, doctor's notes, etc.
Allow attachments to be deleted after form submission - If this is NOT checked, once the form is signed, it is "locked" for deletions and no attachments can be deleted. If this IS checked, attachments can be deleted after the form is submitted but before final approval.
Notify last approver in chain if an attachment is uploaded/deleted after form submission - If the form reaches the final approver and a document has been uploaded or deleted after the form was submitted, they are notified. This lets them know that prior approvals could have occurred without all of the documentation or after which, some documentation has been removed.
Document Type: This is the Document Management Document Type to be used to store the uploaded documents/files.
Document Title: This is the title to be given to PDF documents generated from this Employee Form when they are stored in Document Management.

Form Publishing

Unlimited Forms

Unlimited forms - forms that can be submitted any number of times - are treated differently than all other "limited" forms. They are not truly "published" to staff, but only made available for staff to create as needed.

When "published" these forms indicated that they have been "published to 0 employees" - This is because, as noted above, they are not really published but simply made available to create.

Delayed Availability

Unlimited Employee Form availability to staff members can be delayed to a selected date:

If a future date is selected in the "Do not publish or ake available for use until" field, the Employee Form is not made available to the staff members until that date. It is not published, but made available to be created. See the section on the "Publishing Screen" below.

Once, School Year, Daily, Weekly Forms

These forms can be auto-published to staff members from a selection of staff options:

Staff List - This is a specific static or dynamic list of Staff Members that can be altered - or can automatically pick up new staff members - at any time.

Primary Location on Demographics - This specifies a location (e.g. district building) and will publish the Employee Form to all staff members at the selected location as identified on each staff member's Demographics screen.
Staff Category - This specifies a staff Category (selectable on the Demographics screen) and will publish the Employee Form to all staff members assigned to the specified staff Category.
Eval Category - This specifies an Evaluation Category (selectable on staff members' NJ Smart Eval screen) and will publish the Employee Form to all staff members assigned to the specified Evaluation Category.

Automatic Form Publishing

If the 'Enable Auto Publishing' checkbox is checked, the form will be automatically published to staff members who newly qualify for the form based on the selected criteria.

Click the blue "i" icon to learn about this:

Publish Form

To publish the form, select the recipient parameters, then click the button. This brings up the following confirmation dialogue:

Click OK to proceed and publish the for with all specified parameters.

Publishing Screen

CAVEAT: WHEN PUBLISHING AN UNLIMITED FORM, IT WILL ALWAYS SAY "PUBLISHED TO 0 STAFF MEMBERS".