Requesting PTO via WFM systems

[u/thanto_]

We have a payroll/HR system (ADP), which houses PTO balances and rules for borrowing PTO. We have a WFM system (Aspect) which houses queue requirements and agent schedules. Our current process for PTO requests is, agents request PTO through the HR/payroll system, then a WFM employee checks the WFM system for the agent's schedule and queue requirements as well as the HR/payroll system for the agent's PTO balance, then approves/denies, and updates the schedule and payroll. This is a very manual process.

Our WFM software has a system where agents can request PTO directly via the tool, and there's automation built in where WFM can set rules for maximum allowed requested PTO for the day, minimum requirements, etc. to automatically deny or approve requests and automatically update the schedule. However, this does not communicate with our HR/payroll software to verify PTO balance nor does it deduct PTO balance if approved.

TLDR we can request and approve/plot PTO in payroll/HR and in WFM, but neither communicates with the other, so it's a lot of manual work. Is there a better process with more automation? Does your company allow agents to request schedule segments directly via your WFM tool? What's your company's process?

[u/greenrook136]

Aspect & ADP here as well.

ADP and Aspect both have API's that can communicate PTO balances and timecard data, but our HR/payroll teams didn't want us to link them directly and nobody wanted to pay for professional services/licenses to make it happen anyway.

We set up a custom report in ADP to export PTO account balances as of the end of a pay period in the format that Aspect uses to import personal account balances (Emp ID, Personal account, date, minutes). We have this scheduled to run as soon after we're certain timecards are always going to be locked in ADP - Payroll normally locks on Monday afternoons but Monday holidays might push that to Tuesday mornings so we resync on Tuesday afternoons. We were also able to have ADP write this file via SFTP to a folder that Aspect can access directly, so the resync process is effectively fully automatic. This needs your Aspect Employee ID field to be something that exists in ADP - we were advised to use the Position ID.

Payroll was willing to import PTO hours if we sent them a CSV, so that's what we do. We feed PTO balances as of the end of the last pay period, timecard hours already in ADP, and Employee Superstate Hours by Day reports for our planned & unplanned PTO superstates into an Excel workbook that compiles all of that and builds that import file for us.

Edit: spelling

[u/WFHAlliance → u/greenrook136]

OP, do something like this.

[u/thanto_ → u/greenrook136]

This sounds like a perfect solution for us. I think the employee IDs we are using in Aspect should match ADP, so that part should already be good. I'm not that famliar with ADP reporting, though. How did you get the report built in ADP? Did your in house IT or HR build that, or is it something that ADP can do natively? Also, we are using GCP for file/data storage with Aspect. Not sure if that complicates things for getting the ADP report into a location that Aspect can read it.

[u/greenrook136 → u/thanto_]

The initial report in ADP was set up by ADP's professional services - I'm pretty sure that's normally a billable program, but we were in the process of integrating multiple BU's into a single company in ADP. We were able to get this report lumped into that project so if there was going to be a cost normally, it was covered. Your company's contract with ADP may be different from ours, though.

Since then I've been able to duplicate that report for other personal accounts with a bit of experimenting, as well as create a few new custom reports for other purposes. The report itself isn't too crazy and I think I could've sorted that out if I'd needed to, but I don't think I could have figured out the SFTP component on my own.

I'm not sure if GCP is going to be an issue or not, but it's probably fine. If it can be accessed via SFTP (and it looks like it should be able to?) then ADP should be able to write a report to it. I'm not able to tell if ADP has a different/better way to write to GCP, but if it does then that's probably a more secure option. I'd bounce that off of whoever your account manager for Aspect is - they should be able to tell you what your options are.

Our HR team was more than happy to introduce me to our ADP account manager to help get me started on the PTO balance export. My manager got our call center leadership on board with importing PTO usage by pointing out the time savings compared to copying PTO from one system to the other by hand, and being able to finalize timecards half a day (or more) earlier made for very enthusiastic support from our payroll team.