CalPath Connect - March 2022

Systemwide Updates

SARA System Application Updated to Require VPN

The SARA system application has been updated to require VPN access when staff log in remotely (outside the campus network). This update is to improve security in the application. The SARA system is the application that requests for the finance systems are routed through. If staff are accessing the system from the campus network, they will not need to use VPN.

Follow the instructions on the remote access page of the Information Security Office website to review how to log in with VPN. Please direct questions to itcshelp@berkeley.edu.

HR

Work-Study Guidance

The Financial Aid & Scholarships Office (FASO) recently sent out a very important message and guidance to ensure that the Work-Study Program is a success for your unit, business partners, and especially for your work-study students. 

This message is regarding work-study earnings that continue to hit department default chart strings that were corrected via journal. We highly recommend reviewing FASO’s helpful message.

New Salary Admin Plans (SAPs) and Grades in UCPath

New Salary Admin Plans (SAPs) and Grades were created in UCPath to reflect the change to the IX salary scales from an open range to point-based scales. Current positions were updated to these new SAPs and Grade as part of the February 1, 2022 range adjustment. 

Please remember to use these new SAPs and Grades when creating new positions for IX titles or when needing to manually adjust any records skipped during the range adjustment process. This is a spreadsheet showing the mapping of the old SAPs and Grades to the new ones for your reference. 

TAM / Recruiting

TAM Updates - Mar 2, 2022

On the evening of March 2nd, a few changes went into TAM that impact the view on the Manage Job Openings page & the Consolidated Application report (aka "View Applications").

Overview

The questions asked of applicants on the "UC Affiliation" page of the application have been updated to be more clear and to elicit more accurate information.  Additionally, those questions are now ALSO asked of Internal/Employee applicants.

How does this impact a Hiring Manager or Interviewer?

1. You may now see Internal applicants with "SPC" code(s).  Continue to work with your Talent Acquisition advisor & the SPC Coordinator for any Preferential Hires or Vocational Rehab applicants.

2. The Consolidated Application report that comes after clicking the "View Applications" action will now contain "UC Affiliation" answers for both Internal & Externals (previously it only displayed the answers for Externals & showed a defaulted "no" for all questions for internals.)

Here's how it will show on the Application Report (via "View Applications" group action) to Hiring Managers/Interviewers for an Internal Applicant.   Note: The system capitalizes all responses typed in by the applicant.

Absence Management/Accruals

Adjustment for Accruals May Not Require eForm/Case

Adjustments for accruals (service credit, leaves, vacation, etc.) should be submitted differently depending on the request. Certain adjustments will not require an eForm or a case to be submitted. 

For example, if a correction is needed for an employee’s timekeeping entry for a pay period, this can be done in CalTime as a Historic Edit. If a correction of entered leave needs to be entered beyond one pay period, then this can be processed in the Manage Accruals module in UCPath. 

The Accrual and Leave Accrual Service Credit Processing Job Aid walks through various use cases, the way the use case should be processed, and then the final column shows notes on the topic. 

Consecutive Leaves, with intermittent Return to Work

Consecutive Leaves, with short Return to Work segments cannot be processed in UCPath at the same time. For example if an employee will be going out for a month, returning for three weeks, and then going back out on leave for an additional month - the two rows can not be entered into UCPath as a consecutive leave could be. The first leave must have an “actual return” before the UCPath Center can process an additional leave. 

If it is necessary to put both leaves into UCPath at the same time, UCPC suggests submitting, but not approving the second leave until the employee has returned from the initial leave. This way all the information can be entered at the same time in UCPath, but not sent to the UCPath Center together until it can be processed. 

This update has been added to the Transactional User FAQs and to the Absence Management Training slides. 

Benefits Billing Election Form - Reminder

As a reminder, the Benefits Billing Election form should only be given to employees who are going on an unpaid leave of absence. This form is given to employees who are going on an unpaid leave of absence so that they are able to elect to un-enroll in benefits during the duration of their leave. If the employee does not elect to un-enroll in their benefits, they will receive direct billing statements for the amount owed. 

If someone is on an unpaid FML, the UC will still cover their portion of the benefits, but they are eligible to voluntarily un-enroll in benefits during the unpaid leave. 

If an employee is on a paid leave of absence, they may not cancel their benefit plans during the leave, and therefore should not receive this form.

Benefits

Benefits Termination - Reminder

An employee whose Appointment End Date passes without timely extension willlose benefits coverage. This especially impacts staff employees whose appointment will auto-terminate as of the last day of their appointment if not extended prior to the end date.

After reinstatement of their appointment, benefits do not automatically reinstate themselves. A Salesforce inquiry should be submitted as soon as the appointment has been reinstated / extended to reinstate the employee's benefits. Benefits reinstatement is a manual process which requires a Salesforce inquiry submitted to UCPath.

Important Action Items:

• Monitor End Date Reports 

• Cognos Report: R-103 Jobs with Approaching End Dates (found under UCPath Online → Quicklinks → Cognos Reports) 

• CalAnswers Report: Cal Answers → Campus Workforce Planning (HR) Dashboards → Workforce Detail → Workforce Detail Dashboard and pulling a roster of appointments, which you are responsible for

• Automatically terminated appointments that were benefit-eligible require an inquiry to be submitted to reinstate the employee's benefits
  
  

Self-Service, Adding a New Child - Reminder

There has been an increase in cases in which an employee uses self-service to add a new child to their benefits, but do not complete the process. Specifically, the child is added as a dependent, but then not enrolled in any benefit plans (medical, dental, etc.). 

This can cause the child to not be covered by insurance because they have not been added to the plan. Please encourage employees to follow the Enroll in Benefits simulation. 

This reminder has been added as a “News Article” to the Employee Resources page on our website. 

Training

PayPath Nuances Job Aid and Microlearning 

A PayPath Nuances job aid/microlearning was created to help address two main issues in PayPath at the moment around retro transactions, future dated transactions, and Job Earnings Distributions. 

In this job aid, we suggest a 1-2-3 step process for PayPath to help with these two larger retro/future dated row issues. The microlearning explains the process and walks through the details of how the current nuances/defects are impacting transactions and data in Paypath. 

Please keep in mind, one significant area that future dated rows can be seen with Job Earnings Distribution (JED) in PayPath are for employees on sabbatical. 

• When the sabbatical transaction is entered, future dated sabbatical end dates are entered into job data when an employee is on sabbatical

• These future dated rows do not contain a job earnings distribution, while the current rows, before the employee returns from sabbatical should

• Please follow the 1-2-3 step process for any PayPath transaction related to employee records in this situation
  
  

Updated Short Work Break Matrix

The Short Work Break Matrix was updated to include “Educator- Benefits Bridge Not Eligible”, which is on the fourth row of the first page of the matrix. The Short Work Break Matrix is available in the UCPath Help (UPKs).

Lecturer Benefits Eligibility Cognos Report Job Aid

New job aid created and added to the transactional user page under the "Benefits Caveats" section. Lecturer Benefits Eligibility Cognos Report job aid walks through how to access and pull a cognos report to see lecturer benefits eligibility. 

New job aid to address two nuances in the UCPath PayPath module. The job aid gives a three-step process to help validate transactions to help mitigate system-related errors.

Microlearning walks through the two highlighted nuances in PayPath and models the three-step process from the job-aid.

Payroll

Off-cycle Dashboard

The off-cycle dashboard has been recently redesigned to include more complete and timely status information for off-cycle requests. It is not necessary to submit a case after submitting an off-cycle request to check the status.

Access the dashboard by navigating from UCPath > Quick Links > Off Cycle Dashboard

A Job Aid on the Off-Cycle Dashboard is also available. 

Updated the payroll configuration codes in Quicklinks

The payment type was updated to “Hours Only” for the following earn codes:

• RPC: Reg. Paid Continuation -Salary

• RGC: REG Paid Leave-Salaried

• PTC: Paid Time Off Sal CV19

• VNC: Non FFCRA COV19 Vac Sal

• SNC: Non FFCRA COV19 Sick Lv Sal

• ESF: Emergency Paid Sick Leave - Fa

•  EPS: Emergency Paid Sick Leave - EE

• LBO: Out of Class Assignment - Hrly

• PFL: Paid Family Care & Bonding

• SPR: Staff Physician Pay-Regular

• WCS: Workers Comp-Safety

These updated payroll configuration codes can be found in UCPath through UCPath > Quicklinks > Payroll Resources > Payroll Configuration Codes > Earn Codes.

Off-Cycle Additional Pay

For some employees, their pay is processed as one-time payments through additional pay. If the pay is missed and they need the pay immediately, an Off-Cycle payment can be submitted, but it is important to be clear in the comments that this is the employee’s main source of pay. 

The comment has to have this clearly articulated or the transaction may be canceled because often additional pay is not allowed to be an off-cycle payment. 

Position Management

PayPath Error for Job Code + Location Code Change

An issue was identified in November 2021 where a PayPath transaction that updated Job Code and Location Code only would error out with a 'Error Saving Component Interface' message. Updates to these two values only would result in a failed transaction/submission. This has been resolved.

NOTE: The same update in Position Administrator is still failing to be saved. This issue is still being worked on and is tracked onUCPath Known Issues Log

Mass PayPath Error for Step Changes 

An issue identified in November 2020: if a job had asalary plan and grade change on the same job code, when entering a step change on a Mass PayPath file, the system would default two separate Comp Rate Codes:

• Current/top of stack Comp Rate Code 

• Historical Comp Rate code prior to the change in Salary Plan/Grade 

Because two comp rates were defaulted, the Comp Rate in Job Data populated  incorrectly. Please be aware that this defect only impacted a small number of Mass PayPath users where they were processing a step change where the job history had a Salary Plan/Grade change at some point in the Job Data record history. This has now been resolved as of 02/01/2022.

PayPath Entry Blanks Position Long Description

An issue was identified in January 2022 where a PayPath or Mass PayPath entry cleared out the Position Long Description (located in Position Data under the 'Detailed Position Description' link).  

If a Position previously had data entered in this field, it was blanked out. Since this field was not used; it generally defaulted the generic Payroll title, there should have been no impact. 

This has been resolved as of 02/01/2022. A separate task is being processed by UCPath Center to restore the previous values that were deleted.

PayPath Retro Position Change Error Identified & Fixed

A retroactive change to Position Data, where there was a greater effective dated Job Data row, caused the step and comp rate fields to become blank and the Compensation Rate to blank out. 

This was correctly inserted into the system for the retro- Job Data, but all rows with higher effective dates had the step/comp rate wiped out (i.e., blank compensation).  

This defect was fixed in the UCPath system on 02/07/2022. UCPath is working with all locations to resolve any remaining Job Data records where the Compensation amounts were blanked out. 

Let Us Help

Please review Frequently Asked Questions on our website. If you still have questions, please direct inquiries and feedback to ucbucpath@berkeley.edu