Chris21 reporting from HR21 has been a feature of the system for some time now. I’ve looked at this from time to time but haven’t really found it to be very useful. With the possible exception of an e-Performance implementation where reports were made available to show different stages employees were at in the review process.
I’ve raised the topic today as a result of a question that was posted by a Chris21 user. If you are unaware, I am the group owner of the Chris21 Support Network on LinkedIn. This gives members the opportunity to ask questions and look for answers. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and join the group.
The user was questioning the usefulness of providing managers with reports directly from HR21. This was due to the following issues:
- The reports are only displaying 15 lines per page. Managers then have to click the next page link to see the next 15.
- When printing, only one page at a time will print and there is no option to export, for instance to Excel.
And there is another issue that I have come across. While it’s easy to see the merits of wanting to provide reports from HR21 to managers, think staff leave balances and leave taken reports as examples, it’s also important to consider the security implications. Its security that has been the stumbling block when I have attempted to implement this functionality in the past.
The difficulty with security is ensuring that managers only have access to the employees who report to them. HR21 uses the Relationships (REL) form in Chris21 to determine manager access to staff but security over reports is a different matter, using organisation levels instead. This means that extra security has to be built into you HR21 configuration.
My main concern is that trying to get the security configuration right will inevitably mean greater maintenance for system administrators. I expect that tweaks to security settings will have to be made whenever managers move between positions. And manager movements happen a lot in most organisations.
The question is, are these issues insurmountable or are there better ways to configure the system? It would be great to hear from any Chris21 users out there. I’m interested to hear if anyone has been able to successfully implement Chris21 reporting from HR21 or alternatively if you have had your own difficulties while attempting this.
Hi Tony
Version 8 now has HR21 reporting based on Relationships which is so much easier than setting up security profiles based on the org structure. The relationships are defined in the Report Designer report.
This is a big improvement and makes delivering reports via HR21 much more feasible. But unfortunately, they have not improved the report display so it’s still not the full solution.
Thanks for the post. It was great to read another person’s point of view.
However, in (I think) the last major engine upgrade, a feature was added to Report Designer to allow reports to be based on the user’s relationship structure. In the Options tab, there’s a box now labeled List Staff Members By Relationship, in which you select the Relationship, the number of levels and whether the user will see themselves.
I’ve used this report to put together some basic lists for managers to use, in which one report will give each manager their own department, such as birthday lists and emergency contact lists.
Reports that aren’t relationship based have been more troublesome so far, but I’m still working on that.
Thanks for the feedback Maggie and Julia. I’ve learned something here! This will make the reporting functionality from HR21 much easier. I’m working with a client on an upgrade to version 8 at the moment so I will check this out.
Thanks and regards,
Tony.
We currently use reporting in HR21 and it has been configured so that the report output is in Excel (although not very pretty). Unfortunately this functionality is not available in the upgrade and we will have to revert back to XML reports until a fix is developed which I believe will not be until June/July.