Qualifications Forms vs. Documents of Record page

Recently, I got asked this question about where employee qualifications should be captured? The context was that the client wanted to move to Documents of Record for all attachments. So I made a note of considerations:

#	Feature	Qualifications Screen	Documents of Record Page
1.	Primary Focus	Emphasis is on capturing details of Education. While documents can be attached to this screen, that focus is secondary	Emphasis is on capturing and managing documents. Capturing of Educational details such as subjects, etc. is secondary.
2.	Ease of navigation	In ESS & MSS, a separate link called “Qualifications” is available under “Performance Management & Career Development” parent link.	A link to a copy of Documents of Record page can be provided under “Performance Management & Career Development. However, when employee clicks on this link to enter Qualification information, employee will also be able to see information entered for other documents, such as Passports, Visas, etc.
3.	Field Names	Names of fields are “suited to purpose”. E.g. Ø  Start Date Ø  Awarded Date Ø  Awarding Body, etc.	Names of fields are standard* for all types of documents. E.g. Ø  Valid From Ø  Issued Date Ø  Issued By, etc. *Note – In case a copy of Documents of Record page is created, the fields can be renamed in that copy of the page to be more “suited for purpose”.
4.	Field availability	Qualifications screen has area to capture individual Subjects studied and also capture “Majors” information. Unlimited number of subjects can be listed on this screen in individual rows.	Documents of Record screen does not have native fields to capture subjects. While these fields can be configured as part of DFF, there is a limitation to the number of segments available in this DFF.
5.	Compliance	When entered through SSHR, Education documents are stored on the People screen with no reporting capability (and therefore very little control over compliance). Also, employee does not have access to these documents through SSHR.	Documents are stored against suitable categories (such as Qualification Information) and compliance information is readily available through building simple custom Discoverer reports. Employee and Manager also have ready access to these documents through Self-Service.
6.	Supervisor verification of docs	Native – Supervisor “approves” the Qualifications transaction only after “Sighting” the document. However, Supervisor will not be able to change the value of the “Status” field to “Sighted” using MSS – this field will be blank for records created via MSS.	Native – Supervisor “verifies” a document, rather than approving it. A verified document indicates that the document is sighted.
7.	iRecruitment	Qualification Types are ranked, which helps in quickly filtereing out suitable candidates in iRecruitment module. Also, when an applicant enters his qualification details via iRecruitment, this information gets stored on the Qualifications screen and gets carried over when Applicant is made an Employee.
8.	Security	Security can be controlled by correctly defining Menus and Responsibilities.	Security is easily switched on or off by responsibility. E.g. - You could potentially have two categories under Qualifications – 1) Education 2) Professional Certification. Access to these two categories can be easily limited to two different teams who can then manage only those records entered under the category they have access to.