Once you have your Categories, create your templates. Remember that you need a template for each “virtual” piece of paper! Give each template a descriptive name and assign it to one of the Categories you have created. For example, in your On Boarding category, you might want to create templates for Interview, Reference Check, Offer, Background check, Orientation, etc.
When you create each template, consider the following:
- Can Activities be seen by Person For?
- If this is not checked, the person the Activity is for will not be able to see the Activity. For some Activites, like Off Boarding, this might be appropriate. For other entries, like Time Off requests, you will want your employees to be able to see the activity.
- Can any user create an activity from this template?
- For most Activities, like those falling into the Categories of Performance Appraisals, Training & Certifications, On Boarding, the "Create Activity" button should not be visible to employees.
- For Time Off requests this should be checked because you need employees to be able to create Time Off requests.
- Recurring settings allow you to automatically generate the same Activity and Workflow.
- For example, Background checks and CPR Certification usually need to be renewed every few years. You can set up your Template so that at the point when it needs to be repeated, PartnerHR will automatically recreate the Activity and assign it to the appropriate people.
- The Set default due date setting allows you to set the Activity to be regenerated at your specified number of days before the next period would start.
- Let’s use the example of your CPR certification needing to be renewed every three years and assume your initial certification is valid from Jan 1, 2021 until Dec 31, 2024. You might want to give yourself a couple of months' heads-up that your certification needs to be renewed so you have time to find a course and complete it. You might set your “days from start” to 60. PartnerHR will regenerate the Activity and assign it to you at the beginning of November leaving you November and December to arrange your CPR training and ensure it doesn’t lapse.
- Followers: if set at template level that a specific person follows that template, every time a note or activity is created the follower gets an email. The “Following” button on the home page allows you to see everything you are following.
- Status associations: the checkboxes indicate who has permission to put the template into the checked status.
- Activity for: the person the activity belongs to - whose record will the Activity be stored on?
- Assigned to is the person responsible for ensuring the action/activity is completed
Template Notes/Instructions and Documents
To help make the process easier, you can add instructions to the employees in the Template Notes field to tell them what steps to take. You can also add a document to the Template. Each time an Activity is created the note and document will be attached to the Activity.
In this example, we will be editing a Template for Annual Review that is in the Performance & Reviews Category.
Go to Settings > Template and find the Annual Review template. Click the pencil to edit.
To add a document to the Template click the Browse button and select the document you wish to attach.
To add Instructions in the Notes field, simply type them in.
Save the Template.