Using SharePoint, Nintex & DocuSign for Employee Onboarding and Open Enrollment Workflow Processes

Editor's Notes

• #6: Today’s presentation is to showcase a re-usable workflow design pattern for managing the recruitment, onboarding and open enrollment processes that most HR departments deal with. We’re going to focus specifically around the need to capture numerous forms and signatures that are a key part of the HR process. Today’s presentation will consist of 15-20 minutes for slides 15-20 minutes for “end user” demo 15-20 minutes for “technical / IT” demo (key concepts for our design pattern). 5-10 minutes for Q&A I’ll be getting into the weeds a bit on this portion, to show how you could create this solution yourself using Nintex. But if you prefer, we can simply deliver it as a turn key solution.
• #8: I
• #9: Recruitment – Job application Pre-Employment (When offer is accepted, but before first day on the job) Onboarding (First day on job) Open Enrollment (Annual or semi-annual) Change of Status Ad-Hoc Off-Boarding / Termination But today, we’ll only be discussing the first 4 stages. While the concepts in in these stages can also apply to change of status and/or off boarding staff, we just don’t have enough time in one hour to cover everything.
• #10: This represents a high level example of a typical HR onboarding process. Nintex Workflow is commonly used to automate, manage and track all aspects of HR workflows. However, this presentation is focused on the Forms portion of this process. Comment: Presenter should click when reading Forms to run the animation. HR departments require forms from employees at various times: Recruitment – Job Application Pre-Employment (background check, agreements) Onboarding OPen
• #11: There are various technology choices for online forms, and numerous considerations that go into the decision (mobile, anonymous access, integration requirements, design). But for purposes of this presentation, I’m only going to focus on two variable: Does data from the form need to be captured in SharePoint (or other systems) Does the form require a signature
• #12: These types of forms are typically just signed and sent to the government, various benefit providers or simply archived as a record. Most organizations do not need data from these forms to be saved into SharePoint lists or as document metadata (column values). For these types of forms, use of Nintex Workflow with the DocuSign actions, is the ideal solution
• #13: Beyond the Open Enrollment process, most companies have an open enrollment process once per year, where all employees can make adjustments to their various benefits. The process usually entails the employee simply re-submitting one or more of the same forms, but with different information. However, signatures are still needed by the employee. So when we get to the demo, you’ll see how we can create a great solution for managing and automating this process.
• #14: DocuSign is an electronic signature solution that allows secure signing of electronic documents. It can be used with ad-hoc documents and to capture data in a form, that can then be signed after it is filled out.
• #16: DocuSign provides both standard fields (Full Name, Email, Company, Date Signed) and the ability to create custom fields as needed.
• #19: Connection – select the DocuSign connection Template Name and Recipient Role – these map directly to the DocuSign template settings that we discusses earlier. Recipient Email and Name – these map to other standard DocuSign fields Email Subject and Message – values used in email message that will be sent from DocuSign to the user Field names – this expects a Collection variable with an array of values that map to the DocuSign “Label” for each field that you wish to prepopulate. Field values – this expects a Collection variable with an array of values that you wish to populate into the corresponding Field names. EnvelopeID – This is the unique ID (GUID) value returned by DocuSign to identify each instance of a template that is sent in this manner. Our workflow will use this envelopeID for further processing of our template.
• #20: Connection – select the DocuSign connection EnvelopeID – In this case, we are providing the existing EnvelopeID that was returned by a previous Populate Template action. Recipient Email and Name – these map to other standard DocuSign fields Email Subject and Message – values used in email message that will be sent from DocuSign to the user
• #21: Connection – select the DocuSign connection Content to Sign – You’ll typically use the option for Current Item or Existing SharePoint Content or and specify the URL to a document in a SharePoint library. (When running in a Site workflow the Current Item option is not displayed) File name – this is the name that will be used for the document to be uploaded into the DocuSign envelope. Recipient Email and Name – these map to other standard DocuSign fields Email Subject and Message – values used in email message that will be sent from DocuSign to the user Field names – this expects a Collection variable with an array of values that map to the DocuSign “Label” for each field that you wish to prepopulate. Field values – this expects a Collection variable with an array of values that you wish to populate into the corresponding Field names. EnvelopeID – This is the unique ID (GUID) value returned by DocuSign to identify each instance of a template that is sent in this manner. Our workflow will use this envelopeID for further processing of our template.
• #22: Connection – select the DocuSign connection EnvelopeID – In this case, we are providing the existing EnvelopeID for the template whose status we need to check on. Status – the following status values may be returned: Draft: The envelope is in a draft state and has not been sent out for signing. In Process: The envelope has been sent and is waiting for one or more recipients to complete their actions. Completed: All recipients have completed the actions for the envelope. Declined: A signer has declined to sign/complete the envelope. Voided: The sender of the envelope has canceled an envelope or the envelope expired before the receiver took any action. Template: The envelope is a template. Message - If the DocuSign user Declines or Voids a template, they should provide a message/reason which would be returned in this variable. We need this action to know when a document or template has been completed (signed) or voided/declined. We typically run this action within a loop while the status is “In Process”, and then continue with remaining logic.
• #23: Connection – select the DocuSign connection EnvelopeID – In this case, we are providing the existing EnvelopeID for the template whose status we need to check on. Output – Select from two choices: URL – Enter a server relative URL to a document library within the current site. Include filename and extension. Current Item Attachment – Enter file name, including extension. Note: We can’t really use the Download Document action without first using Retrieve Envelope Status.
• #25: The design pattern we are showing today is enable an extremely flexible way to manage and track all of the various forms, without making custom WF processes for each form. Our assumption is that you will use DocuSign for capture any forms that require a signature and Nintex Forms for any forms that don’t require a signature. This solution allows you to plug in any forms that your organization uses.
• #29: The Status and EmployeeNumber controls are only displayed when the form is viewed internally (hidden when form is opened from Nintex Live) HR Staff updates Status during interview process When ready to hire, assign Employee Number and set Status to “Accept Offer”. (This could be done automatically in a workflow, but for our demo I will manually enter the new EmployeeID.) Nintex Workflow creates new item in the Employees list to initiate the onboarding process. This form is customizes to your organization’s standards
• #30: When a new item is created in the Employees list, the default status is “In Process”, which means that the employee hasn’t actually started yet and they don’t have an Active Directory account created yet. But this does initiate the “Setup New Employee” workflow.
• #32: The HR Form Templates list contains an item for each HR related template that you create in DocuSign. The “Title” in this list here must match the corresponding Template Name in DocuSign. Notice how each template can be assigned to one or more HR Processes (Pre-Employment, Onboarding or Open Enrollment). When each process runs, the Nintex workflow will dynamically select which forms to assign to the employee based on the items in this list.
• #33: Now, what is the biggest complaint about filling out forms? It’s the amount of duplicate data that needs to be manually re-entered on every form. However, we can leverage the DocuSign actions in Nintex Workflow to pass values from the employees List into each DocuSign form (name, Address, job title, etc.). So when the employee gets the form, those fields are pre-filled for them. Each list item in the HR Form Templates list, has two additional fileds
• #34: We have a Nintex Form on our Employee list. The top section is populated by the Employee Application workflow that created the new item in this list. The rest is filled out by the HR staff or hiring manager.
• #35: Once we have created an Active Directory account for the new employee we can update the Employee record to set the Status to Active and set the Employee Account to the users account. This will trigger the “Onboarding” process, which sends any “onboarding” templates to the employee. Now that we have an AD account and mailbox setup for the new employee, the onboarding forms will be sent to their company email instead of their personal email.
• #36: This is a list in SharePoint that will coordinate in sequence all the DocuSign actions required to send templates to employees, track DocuSign template status, retrieve DocuSign documents, store documents in SharePoint. Is important to notice the multiple loop blocks that will get envelop status and download document