HR Help Desk: Embracing Release 25A & Reflecting on 2024’s Improvements
Author: Shelley Yeomans, HCM Consultant, Namos Solutions
Wow what a year that was! 2024 saw Namos work on multiple projects implementing HR Help Desk (HRHD) and Case Management. We’ve supported clients moving from Classic to Redwood, implemented Case Management for a client who was already using HR Help Desk and configured a number of other HRHD/ Case Management modules as part of broader multi-pillar HCM implementation programmes. I now finally have the time to tell you about some of the new features introduced in the quarterly updates over the last year as well as what to look forward to in 25A.
With the Redwood UI, Oracle continue to improve both the user and agent experience, making HR Help Desk more intuitive and user friendly. Case Management is helping businesses track, record and manage complex cases allowing clients to move away from messy spreadsheets and disjointed file management, keeping everything in one place, leveraging HCM data security and joining up reporting with a one source of truth approach.
24A Feature Spotlight:
- Personal information can be manually redacted from existing messages. This is a great new feature and helps our clients make decisions around GDPR and when to delete/ purge information within HR HelpDesk.
Agents or managers are able to flag when a message within an SR contains Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and edit the message and redact the PII.
- Securing Cases by using Access Groups. The Oracle Case Management roles provide full access to all cases, which has been a challenge for clients prior to this enhancement. Access Groups allow us to use rule-based conditions to secure cases, we can even stipulate if the members of the group have full or read only access. Some of the examples of the conditions we’ve configured are as follows;
- Investigation Manager and Hearing Manager Access – Grant full access to case details to the case worker if they are the Investigation Manager and/or Hearing Manager. This ensures that HR/ER teams can provide access and manage users assisting with cases without granting them access to all cases.
- Non – Confidential cases – Give all Case Managers access to non-confidential cases but secure confidential cases to a select group of Case Managers
24B Feature Spotlight:
- HCM journeys. Personally, I’ve been waiting for this feature for a while now! It really levels up the search feature for HRHD users in MyHelp, letting them search existing SRs, Knowledge and Journeys to prevent the need to even raise an SR in the first place. It also helps make the agent role a lot easier too, giving agents a SmartAction to assign relevant Journeys within an SR provides a much smoother agent experience. This stops them having to leave Help Desk, find the Journey and assign from there – no more jumping between screens! Plus this feature is flexible, you can have both the User and Agent feature switched on or you can just switch on for the agent or vice versa.
My Help page including Assignable Journeys
My Help search functionality
24C Feature Spotlight:
- SmartAction Escalate to Case. This is a perfect addition to the HRHD and Case Management integration, giving the agent a more efficient way to escalate an SR to a Case. Previously the process was a little clunky, so it made sense that this action is a SmartAction for the agent. There is a small amount of configuration to set up but it’s definitely worth the effort in my humble opinion. Don’t forget you can map attributes on the escalate action to move across data from the SR to Case Management, the basic ones are Title, Description, Copy Attachments, Primary Contact and any custom fields you have that you need the agent to update.
- Start Conversation with Details. For anyone moving from Classic to Redwood one of the features in Classic, that was a big hit, was the ‘Forwarding’ option and some were disappointed that this wasn’t in the Redwood experience…. Well, it is now and it’s re-branded as the ‘Start Conversation with Details’ feature! It basically gives the agent the ability to forward an SR from HRHD and choose which attributes, attachments, and message threads to include in the forward. The agent is then able to edit the message before it gets sent out. This is helpful if the agent requires clarification or to ask advice from a subject matter expert who doesn’t have access to HRHD Desk. Massively saving time for the agent having to copy and paste or take out of the system.
24D Feature Spotlight:
- Enhanced Case Note Management. Users of HRHD will already be familiar with the power of SmartText, from the time it saves an agent to the consistent messaging that is expected from HRHD. Oracle have now brought this into Case Management within the notes section, case workers are able to use the ‘#’ feature and bring up a list of formatted notes’ templates to keep all case notes consistent. Case workers with appropriate privileges can edit or delete case notes that they’ve created which is new functionality too. This allows you the freedom to ensure only relevant and appropriate notes are available in the Case.
- Fully customisable Button Bar. By default, you will now see the ‘Assign to Me’, ‘Create Appointment’ and ‘Compose Note’ buttons on the Case Detail page, but you can edit this to bring in other buttons. It’s a 1-click process for those frequently used SmartActions to help case workers save time and effort.
These are the available SmartActions that can be configured as buttons.
- Add Document
- Add Household
- Assign to Me
- Copy Case
- Create Appointment
- Create Case
- Create Relationship
- Create Task
- Create Conversation
- Compose Note
- Delete Case
- Update Queue
25A Feature Spotlight:
- Suggest knowledge to employees when creating a Help Desk Request. Another awesome feature helping users find answers to their questions without having to even ask the question! By enabling the ORA_HD_KM_SUGGEST_ON_CREATE profile option you can decide if relevant knowledge articles are presented to the user after the Subject has been entered, after the Subject and Category have been entered, or once they have Saved the SR.
- SmartActions are now available within Action Plans. Oracle have now added SmartAction as an action type in Action Plans, so these are tasks that already appear in the action bar when a case worker is in the case detail page. By adding these to the action plan it keeps all case actions in one place, for instance the first action could be ‘Assign to Me’ SmartAction type so when you complete it, the case is automatically assigned to you. I think this could be very powerful and will help build meaningful action plans to incorporate all tasks involved in resolving complex cases.
There have also been some new AI features announced for HRHD that are part of the Oracle Fusion Service – AI and Automation Beta Program, I’m very excited to see these come into general release as I think they will really help your HR teams work smarter not harder!
If you are considering implementing HR Help Desk and/or Case Management and would like to have a chat or request a demonstration, then please do get in touch. Or if you are interested in implementing some of these new features and need some support, we’d be very happy to help.
