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.

Documents of Record vs. Save Attachment

In its release 12.1, Oracle has come out with a new feature to save attachments that are uploaded while submitting a transaction. This is achieved by enabling the "Save Attachment" checkbox on the review page via personalization. However, the Documents of Record (DOR) functionality overlaps to an extent with this "Save Attachments" functionality. What are the considerations in deciding which of these should be used? Read on for the points to be considered:

Feature	Save Attachment	Documents of Record (DOR)
Definition	Allows documents to be attached to Self Service Transactions. These attachments are visible during transaction approval.	DOR is independent functionality to capture documents as attachments, along with information associated with the document, such as date of issue or expiry, etc., and up to 20 additional customer defined fields per document type.
Enabled for	Absence, Qualification, SIT, Hire, Transfer, Personal Information, Competency, Worker Status Change, Pay Change, Termination, etc. Depending on the transaction type, the attachment is stored on different Core HR screens.	Seeded document types (provided by Oracle) are: Birth Certificate, Death Certificate, Degree Certificate, Driving License, ID Card, Medical Certificate, Passport, Visa, Residence Permit, Training Certificate, Work Permit. You can choose any of these or define a further unlimited number of document types to capture pertinent information
Attachment Creation	Attachment is created with the transaction that the attachment supports. E.g. Absence, Qualification, etc.	Attachment creation is independent of the transaction. E.g. Passport, Visa, etc.
Security	Same as Transaction security; i.e. employee having access to the transaction also has access to attachment.	What documents are visible can be controlled at a responsibility level.
Verification	Attachment is deemed verified when transaction is approved.	Verification status is separately tracked. Once document is submitted, it needs to be explicitely verified by Manager or HR Dept
Trace Back	Once transaction is approved, attachments are stored on Core HR screens and lose context with the transaction. Employee or Manager then cannot view such attachments.	As long as the documents are visible to their responsibility, employee or manager will be able to view the documents, even after the documents have been "verified"
Reporting	Not possible, or at best, a rudimentary reporting	Through "Search Documents of Record" function available to HR personnel, it is relatively easier to search for documents (say) expiring soon. Also, since DOR requires a number of fields to be captured along with the attachment, custom reports can later be built to pull out meaningful information