ESS Conversion Guideline
- Michelle Drewes
- Lori Nye
- Matt Calmes
Conversion Timeline
May 2024: Employee self-service released in “early access” form. We recommend ITCs perform test imports only during early access due to the age of the current Kiosk extracted data (May 19th). We are working with the Kiosk developers to increase the frequency of the extracted data so that it reflects on or within a day of the Kiosk extract’s created date so that it is ready for production release.
July 2024: Employee self-service first official production release.
May – September 2024: Existing Kiosk districts must be converted to the new Employee Self Service application.
September 30, 2024: The existing Kiosk application will reach end of life for all features (exception IPDP). Users will no longer be able to access Kiosk application functionality in legacy.
Kiosk IPDP features will continue in Legacy Kiosk until July 2025,
Legacy Kiosk
For those districts using Leave Requests in Kiosk:
All leave requests (including historical) in Kiosk (regardless of their status) will not be imported into ESS. They will be included in the Legacy Kiosk extracts for archival purposes.
Districts should schedule an ending date for entering/approving leave requests in Kiosk and a starting date in ESS to enter leave requests. Districts should notify their staff of these important dates.
We recommend the District Kiosk Administrator (or ITC Kiosk Administrator) access the Kiosk Functionality on their configuration screen and uncheck the ‘leave request’ option after the district’s deadline date. This will prevent accidental creation of leave requests in Kiosk.
Outstanding Leave Requests
Outstanding leave requests in Kiosk are leave requests that do not contain the status of exported. (Exported leave request means the leave request has been extracted from Kiosk for posting into USPS). Outstanding leave requests include:
newly submitted requests (Kiosk status of Initiated)
requests that have been partially approved (Kiosk status of In-Process)
requests that have been fully approved (Kiosk status of Approved)
If Kiosk contains outstanding leave requests AFTER their district deadline date, the district must decide on how they want to handle their outstanding leave requests (since leave requests are NOT being imported into ESS). SSDT has provided two recommendations however it is ultimately the decision of the district on how they want to handle their outstanding leave requests.
Option 1: require users re-enter their outstanding leave requests in ESS. Once entered, the leave request will follow the ESS workflow approval process.
To assist users with re-entering their leave requests in ESS, we recommend they access Kiosk to download spreadsheets of their outstanding leave requests so they can easily reference the leave request details when re-entering their leave requests into ESS.
From the Kiosk menu, users may access:
Leave Request> My Requests in Process: to download any leave requests that are initiated and/or in progress (not fully approved) into a spreadsheet.
Leave Request> My Processed Requests: filter the Status for Approved only (do not include Exported status). Download approved leave requests into a spreadsheet.
Option 2: continue using the ‘Export Approved District Request’ option in Kiosk to extract fully approved leave requests for posting into USPS. Leave Requests must be fully approved in order to export them for posting into USPS.
Up until September 30th, the Kiosk Leave Manager or Leave Export Administrator continues using the ‘Export Approved District Request' option to extract fully approved absences in order to post them into the appropriate payroll in USPS.
After September 30th, the Kiosk Leave Manager or Leave Export Administrator may run a final export of the remaining fully approved requests. They can save this spreadsheet, using it to import approved absences into the appropriate payroll in USPS. This spreadsheet may contain absences for multiple payrolls so you will need to extract the appropriate absences from the spreadsheet in order to import them into the payroll you are currently working on.
If you have workflows that are not being used in Kiosk, you can either clean them up prior to conversion or you can wait until after conversion and clean them up in ESS.
We strongly recommend ITCs work with their districts on a plan to store the Legacy Kiosk extracts for archival purposes.
Kiosk/AESOP Integration
The AESOP integration pieces in Kiosk will need to be turned off as part of the ESS conversion process. The Kiosk developers have updated the existing ITC Kiosk Administrator Role to allow ITC staff to turn off Absence Management integration in Kiosk for their districts. When the district is ready to turn off Kiosk/AESOP integration, please do the following in the order noted:
Log into the LIVE Kiosk instance (https://kiosk.managementcouncil.org/) using your Kiosk user account (ensure your Kiosk account has ITC Kiosk Administrator role)
Under the ITC Kiosk Administrator option, select ‘Update/Delete District Configuration’. This will display a grid containing your ITC’s Kiosk districts. Click on the IRN of the district you need to turn off AESOP Integration for.
Scroll down near the bottom of the screen to the AESOP Integration window. Click on ‘Configure AESOP Integration’.
Scroll down near the bottom of the screen to view the three ‘initiate synchronization’ jobs.
Click ‘Cancel AESOP Absences/Sub Assignments Job’ to de-sync this job
Click ‘Cancel AESOP Employee Leave Balances Job’ to de-sync this job
Click ‘Cancel AESOP Employee Job’ to de-sync this job
Once the three jobs have been de-synced, return to the District Configuration, scroll back down to the AESOP Integration window and click on the drop down under the ‘Enable AESOP Integration’ and select “No'.
The final step is to click ‘Update Integration State’ to save the changes you have made to the Kiosk/AESOP integration. There will no longer be communication between the two applications.
For those districts who wish to integrate with Absence Management (AESOP) in ESS, Frontline Education requires you reach out by emailing absencesupport@frontlineed.com and include the note “HR Kiosk to ESS Transaction” in the subject line or body of the email. This will help route the request to their Technical Support team. There will be a required template change on the Absence Management side and they are ready to assist you. Frontline will provide the district with new Template ID numbers for your ESS/Absence Management (AESOP) integration. Do not enter your existing template IDs from Kiosk.
For more information on integrating Absence Management (AESOP) in ESS, please click here.
Employee Self Service:
In USPS, please verify the following prior to importing Kiosk extracted data in ESS:
In Core>Codes, you will need to ensure Building Code Types' Building IRN contains a valid IRN for each building they wish to filter on in ESS. If there are obsolete building codes, those can be ignored and not updated.
If you have districts that never updated SSNs to EMPIDs in Classic (prior to migrating to USPS-R), you have the ability to mass load them in USPS. Please click here for further details.
Please refer to the Employee Self Service Installation Guide which will walk locally hosted ITCs through setup of the Employee Self Service application. For those hosting with the MCOECN, please refer to the installation documentation provided by the MCOECN. For MCOECN hosted ITCs, if you are planning on rolling out several districts at once, please notify Chad Carson at the MCOECN.
Once a district’s installation is complete and you are ready to import Kiosk extracted data into their ESS instance:
For those districts who have data that needs to be extracted out of Kiosk in order to archive it and/or import some of the extracted data into ESS, please refer to the Extracting Data out of Kiosk guideline on how to extract each of your district’s Kiosk data out of the Kiosk Test Instance.
Refer to the Employee Self Service Import from Kiosk manual, following the steps in the order provided. Please review any error messages generated from each import as well as the error file generated. Please fix the errors on the generated error file (not the original CSV) and import the updated error file to fix any errors. Repeat until all errors have been resolved.
Further information on ESS roles is provided in the User guide on Kiosk/ESS Role Crosswalk as well as a guide to the ESS Menu Options available by Role.
If your districts currently do not have a workflows engine (they not using USAS requisition approval or USPS onboarding), ESS is dependent on workflows if districts plan to use the leave request approval system or timesheets in ESS. The ESS Installation Guide provides information on how to set up workflows.
Post Import Steps
In USPS, if your district intends to use Timesheets in ESS, the ‘Timesheet Required' checkbox must be enabled if the employee’s position is a timesheet position. Also ensure the timesheet position has a supervisor assigned to it. Please refer to USPS Mass Load chapter for details on how to mass load these fields.
Kiosk usernames will convert to ESS however, Kiosk passwords will not. Please refer to the ESS manual for information on how to bulk reset passwords (Users chapter) for converted users and optionally mass change ESS usernames (Mass Load chapter) if so desired.
If using Leave Request Approval Workflows in ESS, email configuration needs to be setup in order for users to receive email notifications regarding leave request submittals and approvals. NOTE: It will use the email address listed in the user’s User record.
System>Configuration>Email Configuration: Configuration menu to enable email notifications
System>Test Email: May be used to send a test email to an ESS user to ensure email notifications work for their leave request submissions/approvals
System>Configuration>Leave Request Workflow Configuration: May be used to customize the verbiage on the default emails sent during the leave request workflow approval process.