Direct Hires

Also known as "E-contracts," direct hires in Oracle process the appointments of various short-term employment types, including student workers, graduate assistants, part-time faculty (including those current employees who teach credit courses for extra compensation), temporary employees and students/temps needing a non-recurring "one time pay."

Training

Understanding how the direct hire process works in Oracle is crucially important for department initators and approvers. the guidelines for extra compensation, faculty summer compensation and part-time faculty, including extra compensation for teaching. Additionally, gain knowledge on processing one-time pay. Enhance your proficiency in managing the direct hire process for diverse employment categories.

NOTE:
The following training modules are currently being updated with more detailed information. In particular, the section about correcting data on contracts requiring termination & restarting is being changed. Most changes can be accommodated by Human Resources once they have been written to Oracle with all approvals via a Change Assignment action. These actions should be initiated by Human Resources. If you require such a change, please contact Human Resources before attempting any terminations/reissues. Terminations may proceed if truly terminating and no corrected contract is needed.

Also, please note that the Recruitment and Direct Hires tile is now under the Hiring tab in Oracle, NOT the My Client Groups tab as shown in these videos.

The following online trainings are available:

• Faculty Summer Compensation
• Graduate Assistants
• One-Time Pay (for students & temps)
• Part-Time Faculty
• Student Workers
• Temporary Employees

Initiating a Contract

Only roles identified in Oracle Security may initiate a direct hire. Typically, these employees are line managers, business officers, administrative associates, etc. Direct hires are initiated in Oracle by navigating to Hiring > Recruitment and Direct Hires > Select Hire Type > Direct Hire, then selecting the type of appointment being made.

Approval Steps

All direct hires follow the following approval workflow with between 3 & 7 steps. If a particular step is unnecessary for a given contract, that approval step is skipped.

After the department initiator submits a direct hire, approvals follow this order:

1. Line Manager (selected on the direct hire; the initiator and the line manager can be the same person)
2. Line Manager's Manager
3. Graduate School (graduate assistant contracts only)
4. Grants & Contracts (grant/project-funded hires only)
5. Financial Aid (student worker & graduate assistant hires using federal work study funds only)
6. Human Resources
7. Human Resources AVP (temporary employees only)

All contracts will be routed to steps 1, 2 & 6. Steps 3, 4, 5, & 7 are dependent on the type of contract or specific details of the contract. 

Approvers are sent an e-mail from Oracle to secure approval of the details of each direct hire. Approvers may only approve or deny a contract; they may not make changes. If changes are needed, the direct hire should be rejected and the initiator told to resubmit.

If the e-mail message is lost or misdelivered, approvers may access any direct hires pending their approval within Oracle by navigating to Hiring > Direct Hire Workspace > My Tasks. 

Tracking Your Direct Hire

Upon full approval of a direct hire by all levels, the initiator, the department head, and the appointed employee all receive a copy of the approved contract. If that e-mail message has not been received, the direct hire has yet to receive all approvals. Direct hires can be tracked via the Direct Hire Transaction Table in Oracle. This data may be accessed in Oracle by navigating to Hiring > Direct Hire Transaction Table. Generally, the easiest way to navigate this large data source is to click Export in the upper right corner and downloading to Excel.

Once you have downloaded the Excel file, use the Filter option to show only the contract(s) you are interested in. Columns that may be helpful include Column AU (Contract Status: Success, In Progress, or Error); Column BE (Error message that caused your contract to fail--see below for explanations of the most common errors); and Column BI (shows the last action for this contract).

Error Messages

Even if a direct hire has received all approvals, the contract may still go into an Error status, meaning Oracle was unable to accept the contract's data as submitted. The initiator and Human Resources will receive an Error notification e-mail if a direct hire contract errors out. Sometimes Oracle errors can be cryptic. Here is a list of the most common error messages, along with an explanation of what they typically mean. Keep in mind this list of errors is not an exhaustive list.

ERROR MESSAGE	MEANING
"A Pending worker already exists for the person and it is not converted. The existing pending worker needs to be converted before creating another person with the same legal employer."	The employee you are attempting to appoint already has an approved pending assignment in the system that is set to begin on a date after the begin date on the assignment for which you received this error. For example, if John has an assignment in Oracle approved and set to begin on April 1, a separate contract to appoint him on March 15 will generate this error, because Oracle does not consider him "hireable" until April 1 or later.
"The Employee doesn't have an active workRelationship so add assignment cannot be performed."	When your contract was initiated the employee had an active assignment in Oracle, so the Direct Hire assumed this was an additional assignment on top of that one. Oracle calls this action an ADD_ASSIGNMENT. However, by the time this transaction received all approvals, that initial assignment had reached its end date, meaning the action is no longer an ADD_ASSIGNMENT but instead a REHIRE. Oracle cannot process an ADD_ASSIGNMENT on an employee who has no active assignments when the final approver signs off. The contract will have to be re-entered by the initiator on a date AFTER the termination date of the employee's most recent assignment.
"You need to enter an assignment start date that's on or after the work relationship start date and on or before the work relationship termination date."	The employee already has an active assignment in Oracle that begins on a given date. The contract you attempted to submit had a begin date before the date of that previously existing assignment, and that is not allowed in Oracle. For example, if Mary's first approved assignment in Oracle began on March 1, a second contract to appoint her on February 15 will generate this error, because Oracle sees that employee as "beginning" on March 1.
"Error occured during the salary assignment process to the person: You must provide a value for the AssignmentId attribute."	An issue occurred with the contents or format of the salary you entered on the contract.
"The street number for the address couldn't be found."	The person you are attempting to appoint does not have a valid US address on file in Oracle and/or in the Banner Student system. A valid US mailing address must be on file in Banner Student before you can proceed. This particular error is due to an invalid street number.
"Target REST endpoint response payload processing failed"	Generally, this error means your contract contained too much information in one of the text fields and Oracle was unable to consume it all. This could also be an extra space after the Working Hours field or the typed e-mail addresses of the employee and/or Department Head.
"Error occurred during the salary assignment process to the person: Target REST endpoint request payload processing failed."	Generally, this error means your contract contained too much information in one of the text fields and Oracle was unable to consume it all. The assignment may have been created but with no salary. Contact Human Resources in this case.
"Applying List binding LOV_account with given set of values leads to multiple matching rows for a row of type:BaseWorkerAssignmentDEO_ InformationPayroll__Cost __DistributionprivateEO_ internal_accessor_j_ CategoryPerAsgEitprivateVOToInformationPayroll__ Cost__DistributionprivateVOVL_ InformationPayroll__Cost __DistributionprivateVO, key oracle."	One of the values in your Chart of Accounts string (either for salary or tuition or both) is missing. Most often, it is a missing Program code).
"CASDK-0041: An error occurred while invoking the REST endpoint."	This general error indicates that something in your contract entry was misconfigured and unable to be passed to Oracle.
"Error occuring while adding payroll details to the person. For more information please refer to the integration instance."	Generally, this error means that the contract did load successfully to Oracle, the the associated salary did not. This is usually due to the format the salary in which the salary was keyed. VALID:   15  or  15.00 INVALID:  $15   or  $15.OO (capital letter O instead digit 0) VALID: 1000  or  1000.00 INVALID: $1000 or 1,000 or $1,000
"No work address exists for this employee."	The Location field was left blank (probably inadvertently) on the Direct Hire entry form.
"String index out of range: 0."	The student you are attempting to appoint does not have a Social Security Number on file in the Banner Student system. (NOTE: This error should no longer be received as this is no longer a required field to begin a direct hire.)
"The ZIP Code attribute value is required."	The student you are attempting to appoint does not have a valid US ZIP Code on file in the Banner Student system. A valid US mailing address must be on file in Banner Student before you can proceed.
"Error writing to CBO Table"	The values in one or more of the Comments, Duties Description, or Salary Formula fields contains too many characters.
"You need to enter a different number."	Two contracts for the same employee were approved within 30 seconds of one another; approvals for multiple contracts must take place no more quickly than about a minute apart.