Premier ESS Release Notes - VIP Payroll

Employee Self Service (ESS)
version 5.1
May 2013

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Release Notes v5.1 (May 2013)
This topic details the new features, enhancements and bug fixes that have been incorporated into version 5.1 of the Premier
Employee Self Service (ESS) Application.
This version of ESS must be installed immediately after installing the Premier Payroll version 4.1b update.
Refer to the separate installation instructions for a step by step guide to installing this ESS update.
This is a mandatory update that should be applied as soon as possible.
Web Browser compatibility
It has come to our attention that a number of our clients are still using older versions of Internet Explorer and other
browsers.
The following table summarises the support levels of commonly used web browsers.
Browser Supported Supported with limitations
Internet Explorer 10 X (1)
Internet Explorer 9
Internet Explorer 8
Internet Explorer 7 X (2)
Internet Explorer 6 X (2)
Google Chrome (latest publicly
released version)
Mozilla Firefox (latest publicly
released version)
Apple Safari (latest publicly
released version)
X
X
X
X
X (2)
Not supported
Know limitations
1. Internet Explorer 10 needs to have the ESS website added to the Compatibility View list in order for users to be able
to login to ESS and use all features. A detailed description of how to add the ESS website to the Compatibility View list
is given at the end of this document.
2. Not all features and functionality of the ESS website will work with these browsers, however the core functions of
ESS will perform normally.
We encourage our clients that are using Internet Explorer 6 and 7 to upgrade to at least Internet Explorer 8 or 9 to
ensure full compatibility with future releases of ESS.
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Server Support - Windows Server 2003 end of support
Please note that from the March 2014 release of Employee Self Service we will no longer be testing and supporting ESS
on any version of Windows Server 2003 (including 2003 R2).
We therefore encourage our clients to upgrade their ESS server to Windows Server 2008 R2 before this date to ensure
uninterrupted support for the ESS Application.
Any queries regarding this can be directed to the ESS support team via email: ess@vippayroll.co.za
Server Support - Windows Server 2012 and SQL Server 2012
We are hard at work testing the Employee Self Service Application for compatibility with Windows Server 2012 and SQL
Server 2012. Our current target is to be compatible with these products in time for our August 2013 release of ESS.
Any queries regarding this can be directed to the ESS support team via email: ess@vippayroll.co.za
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Bug Fixes
• When registering a non-employee user the Administrator role check box was incorrectly greyed out and the role
could not be assigned as part of the registration process.
This has been fixed.
• When a user activation email was sent to a user from the User Details Page, the email sent confirmation message
did not show just below the button at the bottom of the page.
This has been fixed.
• When an employee changed the Maiden Name field on their Personal Details page and submitted the change,
this change was not shown on the notifications sent to the employee and approvers.
This has been fixed.
• The field search boxes on most grids were not filtering correctly.
This has been fixed.
• When viewing the Employee or Manager Leave Calendar and hovering over a transaction, the Transaction
Detail pop-up was incorrectly wrapping the text.
This has been fixed.
• When applying for leave and a Leave Reason is required, the tool tip message that displayed had a spelling
error.
This has been fixed.
• In certain circumstances employees received an error when trying to access the Cancel Posted Leave page.
This has been fixed.
• When users try to open documents that have been attached to an ESS Request, the documents appeared to be
corrupt and did not open.
This has been fixed.
• When users opened the ESS website using Internet Explorer 8, the website displayed in Internet Explorer 7 (or
compatibility mode) and the page did not render correctly.
This has been fixed.
• When viewing the Employee or Manager Leave Calendar, the legend below the calendar did not show all leave
types.
This has been fixed.
• When an ESS User performs the forgotten password process, the email address was incorrectly validated using
case sensitivity. It should be case insensitive.
This has been fixed.
• When completing a Performances Review via ESS only the first 20 lines of the review were displayed and for
longer reviews validation errors prevented the review from being saved.
This has been fixed.
• When trying to deactivate an ESS employee that is still linked to groups or has an approver role, the message
advising that further action is required did not display.
This has been fixed.
• The Export to file options on the Manage Users grid did not work.
This has been fixed.
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Changes to Existing Functionality
Message change on login screen
When a user opens the ESS default page, the message displayed in the top right hand corner read "Not Authenticated
to Premier ESS!" this has been changed to read: "Not logged in to Premier ESS!"
The change in text colour and wording will result in fewer employee queries.
Authentication error email to ESS Administrator
When an ESS User is unable to login for a specific reason, there is an option on the Authentication Page for the user to
send the ESS Administrator an email with the detail of the error message that the user received.
Once the ESS User has clicked on the "Email the Premier ESS Administrator" button, the button becomes disabled and
displays a message confirming that the email has been sent as well as the date and time.
ESS User will no longer be able to click on this button multiple times between login attempts.
Approver Comments no longer display in blue
When an approver added comments to a request, these comments were displayed in blue when the next approver
viewed the request status tab or when the ESS Administrator viewed the Workflows in Progress or Workflow History
pages.
This change in formatting resulted in some web servers treating the HTML code as a potentially malicious code injection
and the browser generated an error.
This formatting has been changed and the comments will now display in black text, the same as all other text in that section
of the Workflow history.
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Leave Calendar no longer displays by default
When an employee is applying for leave (or an approver approving leave) the employee leave calendar no longer displays
by default. This was done to improve the performance of the Leave Request and Leave Approval Pages.
There is now a check box on the page that can be ticked and then the leave calendar will display as normal.
Leave request warning messages
The warning messages displayed to employees when submitting a leave request have been changed to make the messages
more prominent. They now display in Bold Red.
The messages that were changed are:
• When an employee is trying to apply for leave and they have insufficient leave and the line in Premier Payroll
leave control is set to Stop, then the following message displays: Not enough leave available for planned
transaction.
• When an employee is applying for leave that will result in a negative leave balance and the line in Premier Payroll
leave control is set to Warning, then the following message displays: WARNING: This transaction will
result in negative leave taken.
Calendar event when approving a leave request
When a leave cancellation request was being approved, the approver had an option to add the leave request to their calendar.
This has been removed as leave cancellations are generally not added to a calendar.
When a leave request approval email was received by the approver and the Leave event attached to the calendar was
opened by the approver, this event incorrectly had an Accept / Decline option, which resulted in a meeting acceptance
email being sent to the employee. This event definition has been changed from a meeting to an event, which removed
the options to Accept / Decline.
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Leave Request page content display
When applying for leave, the employee typically selects the leave type followed by the From and To dates and then
leave reason. This page will now hide the fields after each change while the relevant validation is being done by the
server. It was found that some employees were selecting additional options while the server was doing the validations,
which could result in unnecessary server load and poor performance of the ESS Application.
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Internet Explorer 10 Compatibility View Settings
To add the ESS website to the Internet Explorer 10 Compatibility View list, follow these steps.
1. Browse to home page of the ESS website.
2. From the IE 10 menu, select the Tools menu followed by the Compatibility View settings item.
TIP: If the menu is not displaying in IE10, press the ALT key to display the menu
3. The Compatibility View Settings dialogue will open with the ESS website address listed in the "Add this website"
field.
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4. Click on the Add button to add the ESS website to the list of sites that should be displayed using Internet
Explorer 10 Compatibility View.
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5. Click on the Close button.
6. The page will refresh and you can now login to ESS.
7. These settings should be remembered by the browsers and should not need to be repeated unless your
IT department has group policies which overwrite these settings.
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