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Training: Making Distribution Changes

Doing Work (printable Doing Work)

Finding Someone's Appointment On Line

Figure: Basic Selection

Exercises:

Type in an ID for someone you know who has only one appointment. Press the Enter key. You should have dropped into the Detail screen. Click on Selection Menu to bring back the previous window. Press the Clear button.

If you did not get a Detail screen, did a warning box appear? If so, close the box by clicking OK, then click the Clear button on the left side of the screen to clear whatever you typed previously. If something else happened, please contact: pronline@u.washington.edu for help.

Next, try typing in an ID number, but make a deliberate mistake - only type the first eight digits. A box should appear saying "An Employee ID has to have nine digits, or be in the form xxx-xx-xxxx". Click on OK to close the box (a.k.a. screen edit) and correct the error. Now press the Enter key. You should have dropped into the Detail screen. Click on Selection Menu to bring back the previous window. (Note that the fields have cleared automatically.)

Next, specify an ID for someone who has more than one appointment, without specifying the appointment number. You should see a List screen, allowing you to select which appointment you want. Click on Selection Menu to bring back the window. Press the Clear button.

Now type a partial name into the Name field, e.g. the letter L, and your Unit number. Click on Find. A list of all the people in your unit whose name starts with an L should have appeared.

If a list did not appear, did you get a warning message stating that no appointments match your selection? If so, try another letter. If something else happened, please contact: pronline@u.washington.edu

Let's take a closer look at that list.

Figure: List details

Exercises:

First try scrolling the list using the (arrow) buttons. (Remember, do not click on the buttons, simply place your cursor over the button and the scrolling will activate.)

Next try the PgDn (Page Down), PgUp (Page Up), Btm (Bottom), and Top buttons.

Finally, click on one of the appointment links. This should drop you into the detail screen for that appointment.

Making Changes

At the Detail screen level you can review distribution(s), and make changes to them.

Figure: Appointment Details

Exercises & Notes:

Locate the familiar PAF fields. See how fields that cannot be changed differ from the ones that can. You will still need to send in a paper PAF for changes to those fields.
Though the distribution lines have many enter-able white fields, you do not have to fill in all the fields on a distribution line, only the ones you normally use. In particular, you would rarely fill in a distribution amount - the field is usually derived. The Distrib. Amt. field is available for entry because there are some instances when a distribution amount needs to be entered, e.g. supplements like ADS or TPS.

Try typing in a new distribution line for this person. Use tabs to move from field to field, or the mouse to click into a field on another line. Click on Submit when ready.

If you did not get a Messages window (or box), but were presented with the Confirmation Box, congratulations! You have made your first on-line distribution change. If you received the Messages box, then you may have made a mistake or the system may be detecting a possible problem with your entry. We will go into much further detail about the Messages box in the section called What if Something Goes Wrong.

At the Detail Screen level you can also review appointment information, and make changes to select information.

For all salaried employees, the only appointment level changes you can make would be to the appointment end date.

Figure: Detail Screen-Salaried

Exercises & Notes:

Try changing a salaried employees appointment end date. Click on Submit when ready.

If you did not get a Messages window (or box), but were presented with the Confirmation Box, your submit was successful. If you did receive a Messages window, you may have prompted an Error or a Warning. The next section-What if Something Goes Wrong-will address the Message window in detail.

For all hourly employees, including student hourly, you can make changes to the appointment start date, appointment end date and the rate of pay.

Figure: Detail Screen-Hourly

The fields that are available to enter in the example above will be available for entry on all Active and Expired appointments. The only appointments that you will not be able to make changes to are appointments belonging to Separated employees.

When making a change to an hourly rate of pay, a new appointment may need to be created. If it is necessary, the system will do the work for you. In order for the system to determine if a new appointment is required, a Question Box will appear on the screen once a new rate is entered and you click on Submit.

In the following example, we have changed the rate of pay from $7.50 an hour to $8.50 an hour.

Example: Change to pay rate

You can also make changes to the distribution lines at this point, if you desire.

Note:

- The effective date under the rate of pay. This indicates on which day the rate of pay took effect. In our example, the previous rate of $7.50 took effect on 05-18-1999.

Upon clicking Submit, the system brings up a Question Box. In this case, the Question Box is asking on which date the new rate of pay take effect. Once you have entered the date the new rate takes effect, you will need to click on Finish.

Example: Question Box

For rate changes that take effect on the first day of the current pay period or on a date in a prior pay period (retroactive), the system will change the rate of pay on the existing appointment. No new appointment is necessary.

Exercises & Notes:

Try making a change to an hourly rate of pay on one of your hourly staff.
Did the Question Box appear? If not, did you hit Submit?
For the effective date, use the first day of the current pay period, or a date in a prior pay period.

What if the effective date is in the middle of the current pay period or in the future?

In the next example, we indicated a change to the rate of pay from $7.50 to $8.50 effective 03/20/00.

Example: Pay rate change

Since the change to the rate of pay is occurring in the middle of the current pay period, a new appointment must be created for the new rate of pay. This is because each appointment can only have one rate of pay effective for the current pay period.

A new appointment will be created each time the effective date for a change to the rate of pay is a day other than the first day of the current pay period or the day is in a future pay period. In both of these cases, the Question Box will return with additional questions.

Example: Question Box

The choice you make on this Question Box will lead the system in one of two directions. It with either end the existing appointment on the day before the effective date of the new rate of pay or continue the existing appointment along with the new appointment with the new rate of pay.

The default will be "No. The old rate will end on XX-XX-XXXX."

In our example, we will choose "No." Note that the end date of the old rate will be 03-19-2000, the day before our new rate is effective.

Here is what the employee’s appointments look like after we click on Submit.

Example: Original Appt. after rate change

Both the appointment end date and the distribution end date on Appointment #1 have been changed to reflect 03-19-2000, just as we had indicated in the Question Box.

Where is the new rate of pay? Let’s look at Appointment #2.

Appointment #2 contains the new rate of pay. Note the appointment and distribution begin dates both reflect 03-20-2000 just as we had indicated in the Question Box.

A warning has also appeared indicating that Appointment #2 is new and that is a change of rate from appt. 1.

Example: New appt. after rate change

For the current pay period, 03/16/00 - 03/31/00 in our example, both appointment #1 and appointment #2 (and therefore both rates of pay) will appear on our PTR.

Examples and Notes:

Try a rate change effective on any date during the current or a future pay period, with the exception of the first day of the current pay period.
Did the Question Box appear? Choose "Yes. Please continue both rates."
Was the appointment with the original rate of pay affected at all?
Is there a new appointment reflecting the new rate of pay?

What if something goes wrong? (Messages)

If you do not have a message box on your screen, you could bring one up by making the total Dist. % FTE add up to more than the amount on the Appointment and clicking on Submit.

Figure: Message "box" (window)

Note: These messages appear as a result of HEPPS edits. They are different from the screen edits you saw when you were asked to mistype an Employee ID earlier. The screen edits perform simple, on-the-spot checks for reasonable entries, e.g. whether a Budget Number has six digits or whether the End Date on the Distribution line exceeds the Appointment End Date.

HEPPS edits perform in-depth checks. These edits can return three levels of messages: Error, Warning, and Informational:

(1) Error messages appear when the HEPPS edits find what is called a "fatal" error, e.g. if an inappropriate Earnings type was used. These kinds of errors have to be fixed before the changes can take effect.

(2) Warning messages appear if HEPPS noticed something that was a likely error, but not fatal. For example, you might enter a Budget that does not belong to your unit. Since there are legitimate reasons why you may want to enter such a budget, it is possible to click on Submit to save the work without making a change.

(3) Informational messages require no further action on your part. They serve as feedback, e.g. to inform you that changes were saved, etc.

Error messages will always appear at the top of the list, in red letters, Warning messages next, and Informational messages at the end.

Exercises:

Fix any problems that appear in the message, and resubmit the change if necessary. You can also select Cancel to discard the pending record with all your changes.

Select another appointment if you wish (the same one will do nicely), click on Clr to erase an expired distribution line, and overwrite it with new information. (Note: that this line is in a different color to indicate that it has expired.) Click on Undo to bring back the previous information (this only works until you press Submit again).

Figure: Screen Detail

Notes:

See that the Appointment is now in Pending status. (Look up what this means in the Glossary.) Click on Current to view what is currently active in HEPPS, then click on Pending (which has now replaced the Current button) to return to the pending record which contains the changes you just entered, but have not successfully submitted yet.

Move your cursor over the button that says Continue (right next to Submit) and read the text of the baloon help. It says:

"Save Changes for this Appointment; then select another Appointment from List for this employee."

Many people find this option confusing. You do not have to use it - you can always use the Submit button instead. However, it may sometimes be to your advantage to use Continue. Here's an example:

Let's say you were making changes to an employee that has multiple appointments in your unit. (This usually happens when someone has too many distributions to fit onto a single appointment, usually with faculty that receive funding from many grants.) Imagine you had to make changes that affected more than one appointment. Once you had made the first changes, let's say increasing the %FTE on a particular distribution, you still had to go to another appointment to decrease the %FTE on one of those distributions.

What would you do? If at this point you clicked on Submit, the changes would be edited against the HEPPS database and you would get an error message that the total %FTE to the employee exceeds 100%. Instead, you could click on Continue, and your changes would be saved, but certain edits would not happen until you indicated that you were ready to save everything by clicking on Submit - after you made changes to the second Appointment. Most importantly, the notification message would not go out for each appointment change separately, but for both of them together, which probably makes more sense to your reviewer.

You may want to experiment some more with making changes to get a feel for typing in distributions and getting feedback. Remember that you can always click on Cancel to discard your changes after you have clicked on Submit or Continue.

Finally, here is an example of when you might want to use the Undo feature on a distribution line:

Let's say you were making changes to an hourly employee and you had added six distribution lines with various budgets, but one of the budgets had a problem. You may not want to leave the entire person in pending status while you sort out this one budget, so you might choose to click on Undo for that line and submit the other five lines immediately.

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