During one of our monthly PDS User Group meetings last fall, two subjects came up: how to allow the employees to update their marital status on the employment page (for our Florida Retirement system), and how to allow the employees to choose whether they would want their 1095-C’s on paper or electronic. Although emails and workflows were one option, we wanted to try and combine the two together and come up with some idea where we would get the most responses. That’s when our Board of County Commissioners Project Manager said, “How about if we incorporate it into the Open Enrollment Wizard since all employees will be doing their ESS Open Enrollments?”
Then they looked at me and I said, “Sure we can do that!”
The goals were as follows:
- Marital update: Display the employee’s current marital status and then allow the employee to update their status from the list provided if needed. Display text explaining why this information is being requested.
- 1095-C: Since the 1095-C requires the employee to choose yearly if they want electronic or paper we wanted to display their current 1095-C selection (electronic or paper) and allow the employee to select an option for the current year. We also needed to update the emp-user table – add/update the field_code of ‘PRINT1095C’ and the corresponding selection and date. Display text explaining why this information is being requested.
- Continue to use the radio button as it conforms to the current OE process screens.
So off I went looking at the code to try and get these two items added to the Open Enrollment (OE) wizard. After doing some research, I determined changes needed to be made to \Web\Applets\wizard.vb. I needed to add in 2 new ‘steps’ to the wizard so I modified the program as shown below:
I also added the following to ‘Private Sub AddGroupSteps()’ process in the same wizard.vb program:
Next came the hard part. Create the code that will populate these two new steps. After a lot of trial and error, I was able to get the steps to populate but they just weren’t working 100%. That is when an email to Bill Davies of PDS came into play and he helped me to achieve my goal.
The final outcome:
Marital Update
1095-C Update
Unlike the rest of the OE wizard, these two steps update their respective tables immediately when the employee selects the ‘OK’ button on the screen.
For those of you, like me, who are visual learners, click here to see my custom source code. You’ll need your PDS Support login and password to download the file.
Results
Our percentage for the electronic version of the 1095-C was around 60%. While we wished it was higher we feel the process was a success and next year the percentage will be even greater as employees realize that the electronic version looks exactly the same as the one that gets mailed. After all, we are at 99% for electronic W2’s!
Barbara Cobb
Application Architect
Lee County Clerk Of Courts
bcobb@leeclerk.org
