Workgroup reminders in Chris21

Workgroup reminders enable you to set up automatic email and diary alerts in Chris21. These alerts will help to keep employees and their managers up to date about upcoming key events. For instance, if employees require valid licences to perform their duties, workgroup reminders are an excellent way to help you manage this.

You can configure workgroup reminders to be emailed to both the employee and the manager at a specified time prior to the licence expiring. This is called the Offset Period and you can set this to a length of time that best suits your requirements. Do this on the Automatic Entries (ADE) form in Chris21.

When creating a workgroup reminder, you may decide that you would like to set the reminder to be sent one month prior to the actual licence expiry date. To do this, enter -1M in the Offset Period field on Automatic Entries. If you wanted to make this two weeks instead of one month just enter -2W instead.

You can also configure the message you want to send in the email. In Just the same way as you do with your leave workflow emails, you can add fields directly from Chris21 into your reminder emails. In this way you can tell the employee which licence is expiring and the date.

Another handy feature on the Automatic Entries form is the ability to create a diary reminder. This enables reminders to be displayed in Chris21 to users who may need to know this information. The training coordinator would be a good example. The Reminder Enquiry (DRI) form will be displayed whenever the training coordinator logs into Chris21. This will show the coordinator a list of reminders that have become due and helps the coordinator to keep up to date.

The great thing about workgroup reminders is that they don’t require any ongoing maintenance. Once created, they will continue to send reminders as expiry dates become due.

Of course, workgroup reminders aren’t just for licence renewals. Consider some other examples:

• Employees who are returning from leave without pay. Payroll need to know this so that they can ensure payments are resumed;
• Skill next refresher dates so that employees can be booked on training courses before their skills expire;
• Probation dates so that HR can send letters to employees and managers when probation periods end.

These are just a few examples, there are many more scenarios where workgroup reminders can benefit your organisation. If you would like some more information on how to set this up leave a comment and I’ll be glad to help.