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ESR Road Map Update

We are now two-thirds of the way in to delivering the Development Road Map – our biggest and most challenging strategic plan for ESR from its inception.  Since September last year, when we introduced the first key development into ESR - access via the internet; we have introduced  a significant number of improvements that have fundamentally changed the way the NHS now interacts and uses ESR, including:

 

Road Map timeline

Provisioning and Roll Out

Over the spring and summer the NHS ESR Team worked with organisations to provision access to the new ESR Portal.  https://my.esr.nhs.uk is the new Portal gateway into ESR.

Portal

NHS organisations in Wales completed their provisioning by the end of July and NHS Organisations in England completed their provisioning by the end of September 2017. This means that every NHS organisation in England and Wales now has access to the Portal, and the latest statistics show that at the end of September 2017 201,976 unique employees had accessed  ESR via the portal.

Having access to the Portal and Portlets is only the beginning of the journey for NHS Organisations and employees.  The real benefits are realised once managers and employees are interacting with ESR via the Portal, using the full capability within Self Service:

  • Improving data quality because individuals have greater ownership of their personal and professional record;
  • Reducing central printing and local distribution costs by switching off printed payslips;
  • Real time management of key workforce indicators linked to Compliance, Absence and much more with ‘at a glance’ Business Intelligence dashboards displayed on the landing page when Managers log in;
  • Greater compliance with e-Learning and improving attendance at class room education and training;
  • The ability to communicate to all staff across the organisation using the broadcast message on the landing page – such capability proving to be a great way advise staff of key operational updates or provide reminders – for example, communicating the need and provision for annual flu vaccination.

ESR Release 36

Release 36 was deployed at the end of September 2017 and brought further changes and enhancements into the ESR solution.

New ESR Search

This development gives users a completely new search capability and is specifically designed to help professional users of ESR e.g. Payroll, HR and Learning. The search is presented in a new page and is based on URPs held by the user, allowing searches to be conducted across multiple VPDs and returning ex-employees as at the termination date. The new page features the ability to search against the following data items:

  • Person Name
  • Employee Number
  • Applicant Number
  • Organisation
  • NI Number
  • VPD
  • Person Type

Key Features include:

  • Ability to search across multiple VPDs (subject to URPs held)
  • Launch specific forms for the search results
  • Provides a consistent approach for person/assignment in ESR
  • Displays both current and ex-employees in one results page
  • Available from the ESR Portal and forms

Searching from the ESR Portal:

Search in ESR Portal

The new ESR page for performing searches and navigating to associated records:

 Search in ESR Portal 2 

Multiple Supervisors

The introduction of this functionality facilitates the recording of multiple supervisors against a person record where, for example the Manager is part of a job share.

Existing functionality in relation to employee initiated requests will be sent to both Managers who will both have access to the assignment record to perform changes. As part of this development a new check has also been introduced to the existing Supervisor Hierarchy Ntf role to include a new section for additional supervisors.

Self Service Comments

Comments entered against the following 8 key Self Service transactions can now be captured and stored to allow them to be reported using ESR Business Intelligence

Absence Assignment
Hours End Non-Primary Assignment
Supervisor Location
End Employment Manage Hire

Continuous Development of ESR Portlets

As part of our commitment to listen to our users’ suggestions about improving ESR’ functionality and usability, the following changes have also been implemented:

Team Actions and My ESR Calendar

The ESR Calendar, available to both Employee and Manager items has been updated to include Competency Expiry and Incremental dates.

My Annual Leave

More detailed information about carry over, Statutory days and Bank Holidays is now available in the Annual Leave portlet for Employees, helping them to see how their gross entitlement has been calculated. The breakdown of the entitlement is held in a drop-down to preserve the existing design.

Local Links

We have introduced the ability to add and re-order local links for Administrators.  There is a new portlet available allowing them to be displayed on a dashboard. Users need to add this portlet to a dashboard of their choosing from the portlet library.

Release 36.2 - scheduled for deployment over 28th & 29th October 2017 (subject to completion of successful testing and release)

Class Update Portlet

Introduction of a new portlet that can be added to the Learning Administration dashboard that allows the update of the learner status on classes up to 7 days in the past.  You can learn more detail about this portlet in the next edition of the Road Map Bulletin, scheduled to be published this week.

Education

As with previous releases the ESR Education Team has developed HTML captivate lessons, which are now available on ESR Infopoint.

These lessons demonstrate the following new functionality:

  • Self Service Organisation Chart
  • Multiple Supervisors
  • ESR Search

In addition the following guides will be made available within the User Manual for ESR Portal and be accessible via the ESR Infopoint:

  • Portal Familiarisation – User
  • Portal Familiarisation – Administrator
  • Portal Familiarisation – Manager
  • Portal Familiarisation – Core User

Key Dates

ESR Release 37 is scheduled for deployment at the end of December 2017. This release will require an extended period of downtime, as communicated in the July edition of the Road Map bulletin.

Reporting Strategy

Release 36 brought a large number of changes for reporting in ESR, to enable users to more flexibly report on data held in ESR. This includes the ability to access BI Reporting on mobiles and tablets, as well as a full redesign of the reporting model for the Learning Management module of ESR

In detail BI on a tabletthe following changes for BI reporting were deployed as part Release 36:

  • Ability to report on Annual Leave and Study Leave Entitlement Balances;
  • Future Leave reporting;
  • Replication of the Date-Track Changes and Highlights reports from Discoverer;
  • Full remodel of the Education and Learning Subject area, providing significant benefits for Learning Administration Users;
  • Ability to report on Certifications;
  • Mobile/Tablet Access to ESR BI, allowing managers and directors to access board reports directly;
  • Ability to generate alerts from ESR BI based on threshold values;
  • Disaster Recovery and High Availability extended to include ESR BI;
  • Ability report on External Learners in other subject areas.

Below is an example BI report using the new Entitlement Balances information:

 BI Report with entitlement balances

 

Further Information

If you have any questions about anything in this bulletin or want more information about the ESR Development Roadmap, please contact your NHS ESR Functional Advisor or Account Manager.

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