5.12 RELEASE NOTES 10/21/2016

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1 5.12 RELEASE NOTES SmartLinx is pleased to announce the availability of SmartLinx Version update on 10/27/2016. This is a suite-wide update with enhancements, and bug fixes. The changes included in this release are covered under the Release Notes attached to this notice. There is no scheduled downtime with this release. 10/21/ SmartLinx Solutions, LLC.

2 Table of Contents Release Instructions... 2 Release Notes Summary... 2 HRMS Benefits Open Enrollment... 2 PBJ Enhancement Added... 2 Standard Benefit Carrier Integrations... 3 Feature Details... 4 Benefits Open Enrollment... 4 Assigning Benefit Groups to Employees... 4 Benefits Overview Dashboard... 7 Benefits Configuration... 9 Benefits Groups The Employee Experience Employee Benefit Plan Preview Employee Benefit Application Process Employee Benefit Application Review and Submit Admin Review and Approve/Decline Applications Process PBJ Manual Entries Adding Manual Time Entries Deleting Manual Time Entries Standard Carrier Integrations Exporting 834 EDI Files Defects Fixed Highlights Support Release Instructions Page 1 of 39

3 Release Instructions For users using Internet Explorer and earlier that are having issues experiencing the new enhancements please follow the instructions located here. Release Notes Summary HRMS Benefits Open Enrollment A major improvement to benefits administration in HRMS, this feature includes: New method for Admins to assign and manage Benefits and Benefit Groups for their employees. We are moving away from the rules model, and into an assignment type of system for clients that wish to use Open Enrollment. A new tool to do mass edits in order to move large groups of people into the appropriate Benefit Groups, simply. Adds additional fields to the existing structure to enable carrier connections and track additional data, refer to Section 2 for details. Create and define open enrollments for groups of people, or at an individual case for new hires or people becoming benefit eligible. A new banner within the current ESS module to alert and inform employees as to what is going on with their benefit enrollment. Employees can review their current benefit enrollments, access and print plan documents, etc Life Event Change option in order to change an existing benefit enrollment, outside of the open enrollment period Open enrollment guided flow including add/edit of personal info & dependents, make their elections, add beneficiaries, etc. and review everything before submitting to HR for approval. Admin dashboards to view the process of open enrollments, see who is in what status, reject or approve the applications, etc Historical records of these elections will be available on a new tab in the Employee record, under the Benefits Tab. PBJ Enhancement Added In this 5.12 Release we have included an additional feature to support the manual addition of PBJ related hours. This feature will provide comprehensive reporting in various scenarios where time is not automatically captured as part of the daily time and attendance process. Page 2 of 39

4 Standard Benefit Carrier Integrations In this 5.12 Release we also have included an additional feature to support the enhanced Benefits Administration section. This feature will provide standard 834 EDI files that can be consumed by providers. Page 3 of 39

5 Feature Details Benefits Open Enrollment Assigning Benefit Groups to Employees This new Feature alters some of the current rules setup for applying benefits to employees, to a more traditional system of using drop-down menu assignments for applying benefits to employees, on the Benefits tab in the employee record. Whatever Benefit Groups exist in the system will show here, in addition to a No Benefits option by default. This is a required field when entering a new employee. We are adding new Employee View with some additional fields. You can access it from the main Active Employees list, and click on the drop down in the upper right corner and select Assign Benefit Group. Page 4 of 39

6 Selecting Assign Group Benefits will bring up a menu where you can view all employees for the Org Level selected, employees to put into a particular Benefit Group en masse: o A select column for selecting multiple or all employees, and Columns for additional information. o A drop down menu of available Benefit Groups that you can use to assign to the selected individuals. o This dashboard can sort and filter by any of the columns on the page in order to grab groups of employees to do a mass edit or mass assignment. o A button to Assign Benefit Group o A Cancel button. o Select All and Unselect All buttons. Page 5 of 39

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8 Benefits Overview Dashboard We have created a new Benefits Overview dashboard that will show the types of Benefits that are available, and clicking on them will take you to their configuration screen. This Benefits Overview dashboard will show a breakdown of: o How many employees are assigned to a benefit group, how many are assigned to No Benefits as noted under the Benefit Ineligible number, and it will single out any employees that have no value(null) in the Benefit Group drop down menu on the employee s Benefits tab. o This last item is to identify any employees that were accidentally missed in the assignment process. You can go back to the Active Employees Dashboard and sort/filter the Benefit Group column to see which employees have no value, and then use the edit tool to put them where they need to go. Page 7 of 39

9 o The Benefits Overview dashboard will also show an Enrollments section that will depict any open enrollments at a group level, any Single Employee Enrollments for new hires or employees that became benefit eligible, and a notification area for Life Event Changes that were initiated by an employee via the ESS Portal. Any of the elements on this Benefits Overview will serve to show the status of each item, as well as a button to click to go to that particular item s details or setup screen. Page 8 of 39

10 Benefits Configuration Benefit configuration will have some changes but overall remains similar to our current system so as to stay in line with 1095c. Some additions are that we will be adding or changing: o Adding Group Number to the Provider Info, and Plan ID to the Benefit info, to aid in creating carrier connection files that require those fields to be imbedded in the file o Adding a Dependent Child Age Limit field to set the upper age limit for the provider's Benefit plan. o A radio button for Domestic Partner Eligible at the Benefit level. The reason for this is that with gay marriage now legal, same-sex couples are covered under the law and can use the traditional Spouse designation. However, some plans and employers can elect to allow couples (regardless of orientation) that are not legally married, to sign up for benefits. We are providing the option, it is up to the carrier and employer to determine if it applies. o A button to upload plan documents in the common formats (PDF, XLS, DOC, etc) so that the employees can download and view them from the open enrollment portal. o Addition of a Payroll Deduction Date. This allows the Admin to determine which paycheck they want the new Benefit deductions to come out of. Eg. The new Benefits for 2017 start on Jan 1, which is a Sunday, but they want it to come out of the check the previous Friday, which is December 30th. Page 9 of 39

11 o o o o For specific Life Insurance plans, typically Basic Life, that plan can be hard coded to show the employee what they are getting when they view their options in the Open Enrollment portal, but they will NOT have the ability to select or waive those mandatory benefits. Adding a radio button on insurance plans to designate if that benefit requires a Tobacco User acknowledgement. Adding a field in the Benefit Info section of insurance plans to designate whether or not that particular plan requires Beneficiaries. A section that shows how many Benefit Groups the Benefit is included in, how many Eligible Employees and how many are currently enrolled in it. We have added the concept of simple Age/Salary/Tenure banding to be set up in the UI. This will be used in situations where a simple Employer/Employee costs for a benefit can vary depending on things like the age of the employee, their tenure (derived from date of hire), or a salary range. Anything that is more complex than that will be configured via formula s on the back-end, as we do today. Page 10 of 39

12 Benefits Groups We are having the system to create Benefit Groups. The names of these groups will be what drives the drop down menu on the employee Benefits tab. The Benefit Group will allow the Admin to add Benefits from the prior screens into a group to be offered to the individual. Think of this as a menu, delivered to a particular audience. Executives get these menu items (Benefits), Union gets these items, etc We are adding the concept of Multi-Selection to certain benefit types. The reason is that you can only select one Medical, Dental or Vision plan, but you can sign up for more than 1 supplemental life plan, for example. Page 11 of 39

13 The Employee Experience We have added a new tab in ESS called My Benefits Added a banner beneath the tabs to provide information on an upcoming or current benefit enrollment. When they are in an active Open Enrollment period, this banner will serve as a status indicator for what stage in the process they are in. The Benefits tab in ESS will allow an employee to go in at any time to see their current benefits, costs, and download benefit plan documents. They are broken down into groups called Health, Life and Additional. We are creating a button that will allow employees to change their benefits due to a qualifying life event change on their My Benefits tab. Clicking the Add Life Event button will expose a pop-up to the employee that will allow them to: Page 12 of 39

14 o o o o o Select the type (by radio button) of life event that occurred/will occur Select the effective date of the event Allow the employee to either upload a digital copy of the document supporting the life event (marriage license, divorce decree, birth or death certificate, termination letter of dependent, etc) Or the employee not having the ability to scan and attach a doc, can select the radio button designating that they will need to provide said documents to HR manually. A button to submit their life event change and initiate their ability to go in and make the needed changes to their benefits Once they submit that request, the banner on the left will notify the employee that they can now go into an open enrollment process. NOTE: From this point forward, the process is the same whether due to a life event change or a global open enrollment process. All that differs is what triggered the event. Page 13 of 39

15 Employee Benefit Plan Preview The employee can now click the Enter Benefit Self-Enrollment button from the banner and it will allow them to: View their options, broken down into the appropriate tabs. Health, Dental, Vision, Etc Each of those tabs will show them the options that they have for that specific Benefit type On each tab they can review the options, pricing, coverage levels and a button to download the documents for that Benefit. Page 14 of 39

16 The employee will have the option of either closing the Preview screens, or they can select the Start Open Enrollment Application button. Employee Benefit Application Process Once an employee enters the Application process, they are presented with a new wizard to walk them through the process. The wizard will start with the Personal Information screen where an employee can review and correct their personal info. The only fields that can be altered are the name (to account for a marriage or divorce, with supporting documentation) and the address. We will allow the address to be changed for the simple reason that we want it to be verified to be correct for the carriers, without forcing the employee to exit the application, go to their profile, make the change there, wait for HR to approve it and then come back to the application. All fields highlighted that can be edited, are required fields. They must be complete to move forward to the next step. Page 15 of 39

17 We have added a Are you a tobacco user? section at the bottom of the Personal Information screen, where the employee must click Yes or No in order to proceed. Navigation buttons are added to allow the employee to click Continue to proceed, or to Save and Continue Later, with any information already entered being stored and retrieved later. Clicking on the Close button will bring up a popup similar to what you would see in Microsoft Products where it asks you if you want to close without saving, save and close or cancel. We are creating a popup if the employee does change their address, to notify them that they need to see HR in case the address change (state or zip code) impacts their tax filing status. We don t yet have a way to automate tax forms and real-time look-ups, so a notification is all that we can currently do. Page 16 of 39

18 Step 2 of the Application will be Dependent Information. The following options and conditions apply: You can only have one Spouse or Domestic Partner. Spouse covers all legal marriage types. The ability to select a Domestic Partner is dependent on whether the Admin selected that option at the Benefit Configuration Level. User will click Add Spouse or Domestic Partner button and select the correct one from a drop down menu You are limited to 99 Dependents You can delete any entry by clicking the red X to the right of their information. Required fields for all Dependents are Relationship, First and Last Name, D.O.B., Gender, and Home Address. The Home Address field will default to the Employee s Home Address on file and be displayed as such, however, the employee will be able to enter a difference Home Address for a dependent if needed. Eg. In the case of a divorce where the child lives with the ex-spouse, or a child living away at college the majority of the year, etc SSN is not a required field because it is possible for someone to not have an SSN at the time of entry (newborn, foreign citizen, etc ) The system will cross-reference the SSN against the employee s other dependents to ensure that there are no duplicates. Page 17 of 39

19 The next step will be the Benefit offerings themselves, broken out by Medical, Dental, Vision, Supplemental Life, Disability, Additional, etc Page 18 of 39

20 Each tab will display the options for that tab. If more than 2 options are available, user will be able to scroll down and see them all. We will create a Coverage for section on the left that will display all of the Dependents from the prior page (Dependents). The Employee will also have a checkbox, and it will be checked by default. If they uncheck it, it will have the same result as clicking the waive coverage button. Each option will display the: o Provider o Benefit Name o Start and End Dates o A button to download the documentation (if there is any doc(s)) o Coverage levels o Employee costs The Coverage for section will allow the employee to select the dependents that they wish to be included in the Benefit, and that will automatically gray out the options that are no longer applicable. Eg. If Employee selects Spouse, then only Employee + Spouse will be highlighted for each option on that page and able to be selected by the corresponding radio button There is a Waive Coverage button which will allow the employee to waive coverage for that specific Benefit Type. eg. Medical. Waiving coverage will bring a popup to the employee s attention, requiring them to select one of the available reasons for their waiving it. Page 19 of 39

21 For 1095C compliance whatever benefits they were offered will be stored and available for 1095C reports. We will also store the date and time that they waived it, as well as the reason that they selected. Supplemental Life tabs will not contain Dependents. They will contain Beneficiaries. The same waive coverage button is available, but they are not required to enter a reason why. The employee is required to add at least 1 Beneficiary, which will be done through the Edit Beneficiaries button. This produces a menu where the user will enter Beneficiaries for a particular Insurance plan. Required fields are: o First Name o Last Name o Relationship o D.O.B. o Address o Percentage for payment for Primary and Contingent. o All Primary(s) and all Contingent(s) must add up to 100% in their associated column to be able to to save and proceed The Relationship field will be a drop down menu Page 20 of 39

22 The Disability Tabs allow you to either sign up for the Benefit or Waive it. No coverage Levels. The Additional tab will include HSA and FSA type plans, if applicable. Employee will see the Annual Contribution Limit as defined by the IRS and configured by the Admin for that Benefit for that year. Employee will see any Employer Contribution, which will then subtract and show the employee what their limit is. Employee can waive the Benefit, or enter in the annual amount that they want to contribute and the system will divide that number by their pay frequency in order to populate the Per Pay Period amount that will be taken from their paycheck. Employee can Save and Finish Later at any point in this application process. Once employee completes all tabs, they hit Continue and the system will present them with a summary page that they can scroll through and review everything that they have entered, edited or selected in the application process. Page 21 of 39

23 Employee Benefit Application Review and Submit At this point the employee can Save and Finish Later, or they can Submit their Application to HR for Approval A dialogue box will be created with the legal disclaimer and this will be required for them to actually submit their application A successful application will bring the user to a Thank You screen where they can review their benefits for the current year Page 22 of 39

24 The Banner on the ESS portal will now reflect that the status is Pending Review. Page 23 of 39

25 If the Admin declines the Benefits Application, the user will see that noted in their banner in ESS, and they can click on the View Message button to see the details that the Admin typed in as to why it was declined. This will allow them to go back in and make the corrections and re-submit for approval. Admin Review and Approve/Decline Applications Process An icon will be placed in the main HRMS screens to allow an Admin to click on and be taken to the Employee Benefit Self Enrollment Dashboard. Page 24 of 39

26 The Employee Benefit Self Enrollment Dashboard will have 3 tabs (Open Enrollment, Single-Employee Enrollment and Life Event Change) that will mirror the main Benefit Dashboard. Clicking on the appropriate item there, will take you to the corresponding tab here. On the Open Enrollment Tab, the Admin will see: Page 25 of 39

27 o o o o o Enrollments that are set up, with their status attached (Open, Pending Submission, Upcoming, Closed) Metrics depicting how many submissions, a percentage, how many are approved, etc) The Admin can click on and of them to go into the details and applications making up those metrics. The Admin can flip through the 3 tabs at will. The Admin can select the New Open Enrollment to create and define a new one. When the Admin clicks the New Open Enrollment button, a popup will appear, giving them the ability to: o Add a Title for the Open Enrollment o Define the start and stop dates for the Open Enrollment. These are the dates that will make it available for the employees to access and make their selections via the ESS portal o Include or exclude Org Levels from this Open Enrollment, if desired o Select which Benefit Groups are to be included in this Open Enrollment Page 26 of 39

28 o User can Cancel, or click the Save Enrollment Configurations button to save and exit back to the prior dashboard. When the Admin clicks on a particular Open Enrollment from the dashboard, they will be taken to a screen to view all of the Benefit Applications that are in that particular enrollment. Each one will be color coded and labeled: o Eligible o Not Started o In Progress o Pending Review o Declined o Approved Clicking on those colored labels, or on any of the column headers, will have the system sort according to the item that the user clicked on. Admin will have the ability to select all employees, or specific ones, and then Approve or Decline their applications (Assuming that they are in the Pending Approval status). When an Admin clicks to Decline an application, either as a group of selected employees or one at a time via the review application itself, a dialogue box will be put on the screen for them to add a comment for why it(they) were declined, that will be pushed back to the employee(s) and appear in their banner in ESS. Admin will have the ability to clock on the View Enrollment Details button and view and/or edit the configuration of the Open Enrollment that they are currently viewing. The Admin will have the ability to open up an individual employee s Benefit Application, review it, and either Approve it or Decline it. Again, if they decide to decline it, they will be given a dialogue box to enter the reason why, to later be accessed by the employee. Page 27 of 39

29 The Employee will see a Declined status the next time they log into ESS, located in the Benefits Banner. They will also have a button that allows them to View Message and see what the problem was/is, and be able to re-enter the Benefits Enrollment tool to make the needed changes and re-submit Admin has access to the second tab on the Employee Benefit Self Enrollment dashboard, called Single Employee Enrollment. Page 28 of 39

30 o The Admin will see: o Employee Name o Start and End Date of the Enrollment o Last Modified Date o Enrollment Status o Progress The Admin can click on an Employee to view their Benefits Application, and Decline or Approve it, the same as any other Benefit Application. The Admin can create a new Single-Employee Enrollment by clicking said button on the screen Clicking on New Single-Employee Enrollment will allow a popup menu where the Admin can enter the new Employee s Name (using a search button) and add the following data: o o o o Start and End date for the enrollment period Select a Benefit Start Date to begin the deduction in Payroll Select the Benefits Group Optional - via the Add/Remove Offered Benefits button, Admin may select which components of the Benefit Group that they wish to include or omit, to allow for a one-off offering that is unique Page 29 of 39

31 Admin will have access to the third tab of the Employee Benefit Self Enrollment dashboard, called Life Event Change. Admin will see: o Employee Name o The type of Life Event o An Effective date for the Life Event Change o A paperclip icon to indicate an attached file o The Submission date o Application Status Clicking on an Employee will deliver a popup that gives the related information and the ability to click on and download/preview any attached documents. Page 30 of 39

32 Once viewed, another popup will be delivered to the screen to allow them to review the days, and Approve that life event change. If there are no docs attached and they need to wait for the employee to provide them, they will simply select cancel and be brought back to the dashboard and the Employee will remain in the Pending Review. We decided to do it this way because we don t want to decline the application automatically. In this case the employee noted that they would not or could not attach the supporting docs electronically, so this part of the approval process contains manual steps. An audit trail for all changes to an employee s benefits is to be recorded and displayed in the Employee s Benefits Tab on their main record in HRMS. Page 31 of 39

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34 PBJ Manual Entries Adding Manual Time Entries To access the Manual PBJ Entries screen from Time & Attendance click the Edit menu and select the PBJ Manual Time Entries option. The Manual PBJ Entries screen will display any entries that have been entered for the dates selected in the upper right section of the header line. The dates in the Start/End selection controls default to the current date. To add a time entry click the Add Time button in the lower right section of the screen and a new window will pop-up where you will select the options necessary to record the information to report to CMS. PLEASE NOTE: The entries recorded in this section are for PBJ reporting only and DO NOT appear in any other section of the Time and Attendance application or any of the WorkLinx suite of products. You will be required to enter: 1. The date for which reporting hours are to be added. 2. The employee who worked the hours being added. 3. The center or facility where the hours were worked. 4. The position worked. 5. The number of hours (Interval) that are being added. Page 33 of 39

35 When the information has been entered, click the Save button to add the information and the transaction will be visible on the screen. Deleting Manual Time Entries In the event that data that was previously added may need to be deleted, select the entries that are to be removed and click the Delete Selected button in the lower right section of the screen. Page 34 of 39

36 Standard Carrier Integrations Exporting 834 EDI Files The carrier integration section is designed to produce standard 834 EDI files for benefit carriers by provider and company combination. Each configured company in the application that requires an export definition will be require setup on the Carrier Integrations screen. The screen is accessible from HRMS Benefits File Carrier Integrations. The setup requires the selection of the Carrier from the dropdown provided along with the Company and clicking the Add Carrier button. Once the setup has been completed the files can be exported for each carrier/company combination by clicking the applicable Export button to the right of the definition line. Page 35 of 39

37 Defects Fixed Highlights ACA Additional Tab (EE Record) and Effective date field Column header display issue - Roles Right Assignment SO Weekly Totals Error Issue with ESS - Paystub screen is blank. Various other minor defect corrections. Page 36 of 39

38 Support As always, if you are experiencing any issues, please contact our Support Team by using any of the following. Telephone SmartLinx Technical Support is available by calling (Monday Friday, 8:00 a.m. 8:00 p.m. EST) For urgent system issues, our expertly trained personnel are standing by during all hours of the day and night. Online Helpdesk The SmartLinx Support Center is available for customer access at all times. Providing clients the ability to input issues of ask questions, as well as granting them access to an extensive knowledge base ( A prompt and timely response will be provided. Contact all members of our support team at your convenience by sending an (support@smartlinxsolutions.com). A prompt and timely response will be provided. Page 37 of 39

39 Release Instructions In order to be able to experience all of the new functionality that has been added to your environment, you may need to clear your browser cache. Please follow the instructions listed below to clear your browser cache and then re-start your browser. It may not be necessary for you to do this if you have automatically downloaded the latest version. You can quickly check this by looking at the version number at the bottom left corner of your login screen (Figure 1). If it is 5.8.0, then you do not need to follow these next steps. If you do need to clear your cache, in Internet Explorer 9 and 10, go to File Internet Options, then click on Settings under Browser History (Figure 2). Figure 2: Internet Options Page 38 of 39

40 You should now see the following window (Figure 3). Figure 3: Website Data Settings Click on View Files, you will see another window with all the temporary files. You can select all the files in this folder and click on Delete on your keyboard to delete all the files. Close all the Internet Explorer windows that were open by clicking the OK button. Now close all the instances of Internet Explorer you have open on your computer. Restart Internet Explorer and go to your SmartLinx URL. The updated version of the application should now load. Optional Step: To ensure you always get the latest release moving forward, set the radio button option to Every time I visit the webpage on the Website Data Settings screen (Figure 3). The application will take longer to load initially, as it will need to store all new files into the cache. If you performed the optional step, the application will typically take longer to load. Page 39 of 39