The Authorization process is different in some major ways when utilizing a Core Flex workflow. The Services and Assignment Package steps change significantly.
After a Policy is selected and saved, it’s possible that more information specific to the selected policy is required in order for calculations to properly function. In this case, a User Page showing User Table Fields in combination with per-policy Override Profiles can allow for a user experience that only prompts the user for the necessary information.
Once all necessary information is collected (assumed by the system to be when the step immediately prior to the Services step is saved), a custom set of benefits will be created that match the employee, relocation, and other associated data, and finally the costs for the recommended benefit choices will be calculated. The sum of these calculated costs sets the recommended estimated overall budget for the Assignment. Note that this calculation can take some time and directly depends on the complexity of the configuration of the policy benefits.
The data entered in the beginning steps of an Authorization can determine multiple things:
Available policies
Available benefits within policies
The recommended choices for benefits
The maximum and minimum choices for benefits
The cost of benefits
Due to this, if data is changed in the steps prior to the Services step, the calculated Benefit Set and any benefit choices may no longer be valid. Therefore, they are deleted and the selected policy is reset. A warning on each step describes this behaviour to the user.
When first viewing the Services step of the Authorization, cost calculations will automatically be run for all recommended benefit values. After the calculations complete, desired benefit amounts can be changed. For Money benefits, the desired amount can simply be entered into the Desired field. For Lookup benefits, the desired amount can be selected from the benefit’s available choices in its drop-down list.
After desired choices have been made, click [Save]. This will recalculate the estimated cost of all benefits and show the difference between desired costs and recommended costs. If no cost is shown, it is likely there was an error in the configuration of the cost calculation and/or an error in the User Report used with the calculations.
Example of Services step with altered desired amounts and calculated estimates for costs:
Budgeting information shown in graphs on the right side of screen indicate three useful pieces of information:
The sum of the cost column values for all recommended values
The sum of the cost column values for all desired values
The percent difference between 1 and 2
One graph shows this information for One Time (First Year and Last Year) benefits and the other for All Year benefits.
Once desired benefit amounts have been entered and saved, if there are no exceptions requested, then the Assignment Package step can be used. On the Assignment Package step, click [Create Documents] to generate the package documents. Depending on the complexity of the package and the number of requests in the system, this request may take considerable time. During this period, navigation is still enabled and Authorization information can be reviewed. However, data entered in previous steps of the Authorization is locked and cannot be changed until the package is created and a next step is chosen for the current package. A notification is displayed on previous steps to indicate this.
Example of created Assignment Package documents and next step choices:
The following options are available after a package is successfully created:
Next - Navigates to the Approval page. The Approval page is unchanged for a Core Flex policy. Please refer to the Authorizations User Manual for more information.
Retry – Discard the Assignment Package and its documents and navigate back to the benefits page where changes can be made.
Copy to New Scenario – Duplicates all current Authorization data except the created documents into a new Authorization scenario where changes can be made. See the Scenario section below for more information.
Delete Scenario – Deletes all Authorization data in the current Scenario and navigates to a previous Scenario. Not available when only one Scenario exists.
Upon completion of the Authorization, all chosen benefit amounts are copied to the configured Assignment User Tables. To view and/or modify these choices after the Authorization is complete, those User Tables must be configured to appear on a User Page for the Assignment. Please refer to the User Tables and User Pages User Manual for more information.