October is considered the spookiest month of the year. It brings us many things: trick or treating, pumpkin carving, Halloween, and a brand new UKG Ready release! So, grab your candy corn and settle in while we tell you witch of these eight spooktacular enhancements are coming to your solution in October.
Report Builder
We introduced the Report Builder back in June and have continued making improvements by listening to your feedback. In this release, we’re updating functionality to help improve the user experience around column selections and chart creations. As an administrator or manager, you’ll have the choice to display only the columns you’ve selected when building a report, instead of including the UKG default column set in Step 1. And, you’ll also be able to consume the data provided to you in a visual format. That’s right, we’re adding in the option to create and preview charts in Step 2. These changes give you the ability to quickly create critical reports with only the necessary columns needed and make it easier for you, your admins, and your managers to view and share that data.
Where to find it: Suite Experience Release Notes
Who will use it: Managers and Admins
Employee Home
This release comes with a plethora of exciting new features for admins and managers to use, but this one is dedicated to your employees! The new Employee Home is a mobile-only experience aimed to optimize the employee user experience. The Employee Home will provide quick links to top features in the app like Timesheets, Time Off, and Pay, to name a few, while allowing you to avoid menu navigation. It will also provide reminders around open enrollment and performance reviews to help ensure employees don’t miss out on important dates and deadlines.
Where to find it: Suite Experience Release Notes
Who will use it: Employees
Guided Timesheet Issue Resolution
This enhancement will help your employees be proactive in correcting any outstanding timesheet errors prior to the end of the pay period. The Guided Timesheet Issue Resolution functionality will display a warning banner with any timesheet issues or errors an employee may have when accessing their timesheet or the My Timesheet widget. It will indicate the number of missing punches there may be on the timesheet and if there are any unanswered attestation prompts. This enhancement will assist in preventing incorrect timesheet submissions and ensure your employees are paid correctly.
Where to find it: TLM Release Notes
Who will use it: Employees and Managers
Lunch/Break Timesheet Change Request
Does this scenario sound familiar? You’re constantly spending your time updating employees’ timesheets since they missed the ever-famous Lunch Punch. Well, then this enhancement was made just for you! A few releases ago we introduced the ability to add lunch/breaks using the Extra Buttons functionality. Now, we’re adding three new Timesheet change requests to Lunch/Break punches in case they forgot. The three new options are:
- Add Lunch/Break Start
- Add Lunch/Break End
- Add Missed Lunch/Break
This feature promotes employee self-service and saves you time from having to manually add in the lunch punch.
Where to find it: TLM Release Notes
Who will use it: Employees, Managers, and Admins
New Settings in Scheduler Views
In this release, we’re introducing a new setting in Scheduler Views aimed at improving performance and making your life a bit easier when it comes to editing schedules. The new setting lets you deactivate the scheduling engine while you’re actively making changes to the schedule. This way, you can edit the schedule and wait to run constraint violations until you’re done making all the necessary changes. This will help save admins and managers time when creating schedules and assigning shifts to multiple employees.
Where to find it: Scheduler Release Notes
Who will use it: Scheduling Admins
Define Dates used for Length of Service
Our next enhancement is one of several enhancements in this release that came directly from you, our customers, via the ideas in the Community. We’re adding a new widget to Global Setup that allows HR admins to define the anchor date when calculating an employee’s years of service and employment length. We’ve received requests that some organizations want to calculate an employee's length of service based on the Start or Seniority date as opposed to the Hire Date (previously the only option available). While this new widget will default to Date Hired, there will now be a drop-down menu where you can select which option you’d like to use.
Where to find it: HR Release Notes
Who will use it: HR Admins
Benefits Enrollment Experience Updates
The new benefits enrollment experience was a highly anticipated feature we released in August. In October we’re releasing more functionality based on feedback provided from you. We are introducing new employee relationship type mapping that will provide improved visual focus for your employees to ensure they access the right contacts when adding spouses and dependents for benefits enrollments. We’re also updating the button to add family members to your enrollments on the You and Your Family page and throughout the enrollment process. The Add Family Member button will take users to the listing of their current contacts available on their account, but then also provides the ability to add new ones if the contact they need to add to their elections is not configured, eliminating the potential for adding duplicate contacts.
Where to find it: HR Release Notes
Who will use it: HR Admins
Career Portal Refresh
Our final enhancement from the October release is the Career Portal refresh. With this new refresh, your organization can set themes in the career portal to better align with your organization’s website and brand. As an admin, you will be able to configure the header image, cover text, and theme color in each career portal your organization has. While this requires little to no reconfiguration, we do recommend updating any current header images to the new minimum size of 1920 x 1080 pixels.
Where to find it: HR Release Notes
Who will use it: HR Admins
This is only a quick snapshot of some enhancements coming in the October release. For a full overview of everything being delivered, be sure to check out the October Release Notes.
For more on the UKG Ready Release Resources available, check out the Your Guide to UKG Ready Release Resources blog!
Additional Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Release
- For 24/7 access to release notes and user guides, log in to your account and go to My Info > Help > Online Documentation within the UKG Ready solution.
- Bookmark the Release Readiness page in the UKG Community™ for everything you need to learn about what’s new and what’s next.
- Visit the Announcements group in the UKG Community to stay up to date on published release notes and future release dates.
- We’re always trying to make our solution the best it can possibly be. Have an idea for a feature enhancement? Make sure to submit it on the Ideas portal in the UKG Community.
- Alert groups provide you with important notifications on critical system updates. Not sure which alert group to join? Click here.
- Review our technical highlights for easy reference to key Release Notes.