The UKG Pro™ 2021 Spring Release is finally live for all customers! So, what does that mean for you? Plenty of features and time-saving functionality that makes it easier to manage and support your workforce. We know it can be difficult to get up to speed with learning the ins and outs of a new release on top of all your daily responsibilities, so we’ve rounded up a few of our favorite enhancements and are spotlighting them here, so you can get right to the important stuff: putting them to work for you and your people. Please note, if you’re not logged in to the UKG Ultimate Community, you may be asked to enter your credentials when accessing the links that follow.
Feature: Secondary Jobs Enhancements
Category: Human Resources
What It Does: Your employees are as multifaceted as your business needs. This feature helps you track your people’s additional roles and allows you to store data like alternate title and supervisor, in addition to giving you access to secondary job history.
Use It Now: You’ll have to head to your Web Access Rights page to configure this one. This guide will show you how.
Feature: Workforce Continuity Benefits
Category: Human Resources
What It Does: If the last year and a half has taught us anything, it’s that our workforces need to be flexible and that it’s important to have communication channels in place to account for all types of unexpected scenarios. This feature lets you check in with your people, regardless of where they are, to see if they’ve been impacted by a crisis. You can also use it to monitor your employees’ well-being as it relates to the pandemic and their vaccination status, as shown in the example here.
Use It Now: Select the Workforce Continuity feature toggle from the Workforce Continuity Settings and enable Web Access Rights to get started. For more information, check out our Workforce Continuity Administration Guide.
Feature: Business Rules Import
Category: System Configuration
What It Does: This new feature gives you the power to automate the formerly manual process of adding data to your business rules. Once it is configured, you’ll be able to easily add, update, and delete data in business rules for jobs, locations, organization levels 1–4, and projects.
Use It Now: Head to Menu > System Configuration > Business Rules > Business Rules Import to turn on the fields you’d like to enable.
Feature: UKG Bot for Microsoft Teams
Category: System Configuration
What It Does: Let your SSO go OOO for the day and let your people speak to you from the platforms they’re already using. This new feature allows your employees to complete human resources tasks—like requesting time off, viewing paychecks, or searching your business directory—directly from Microsoft Teams.
Use It Now: This tutorial in the Learning Center will walk you through the process of how to first enable the mobile app and then turn this feature on in System Configuration so you can take advantage of it.
Feature: Enhanced Pay Rate for Payout Option
Category: Payroll
What It Does: When it comes to determining an employee’s daily pay rate, you want to be as accurate as possible, and this feature lets you do just that. Get additional configuration opportunities to accommodate unique business processes or regulatory requirements. Plus get new options when it comes to defining the lookback period as either calendar days or days worked.
Use It Now: There’s a whole Payroll Knowledge Hour dedicated to this one, and it’s worth a watch to discover all the things this new feature gives you the flexibility to do. You can view it now in the Learning Center.
Feature: Updated Payroll Gateway
Category: Payroll
What It Does: OK, so you’ve likely noticed the changes to your Payroll Gateway by now, but its new look merits an extra mention. Our favorite part? The four action buttons that were added to the top of the page that act as quick links to the most-used features in the gateway: Add Off-Cycle Payroll, Manage Adjustments, Create Instant Checks, and Unresolved Payroll Items.
Use It Now: There’s nothing extra you have to do here. Your Payroll Gateway refresh is live and ready for you to use in your solution! If you’d like a full demo that goes into more detail on the changes, tune in to this Release Webcast recording.
Feature: Workforce Management Pay Integration
Category: Timekeeping via Workforce Management (Dimensions)
What It Does: This feature provides a secure connection between UKG Pro and your UKG Pro™ Workforce Management (also known as UKG™ Dimensions) solutions that allows you to pull information from the latter directly into Pro instead of individually downloading payroll files and reuploading them, making the payroll process much more efficient.
Use It Now: Fast-forward to minute 45:30 in this Workforce Management Spring Release Webinar recording to learn about the new API integration designed to make your life a lot easier.
Feature: Auto-Assigning Shift Criteria Enhancements
Category: Timekeeping via Time and Scheduling (Ready)
What It Does: An employee’s Seniority date in the Dates widget and/or an employee’s skill level in the Skills widget of the Employee Profile in the UKG Pro™ Time and Scheduling (also known as UKG™ Ready) solution are now able to be considered by the scheduling engine for shift auto-assignment, making it easy for shift managers to meet the requirements of union organizations or internal business rules.
Use It Now: Learn more about this feature in Release Notes, and get even more information about what’s new to Time and Scheduling on the Release Information page in the Learning Center. You could also hop over to this handy blog post right here on Working Smarter Cafe.
Looking for more? If you want information on everything the release has to offer, in the form of presentation decks, tutorials, and webcast recordings, head to the Release Information page in the Learning Center or take a look through the Release Notes.