Products and Services Update – Q4 2017
Holidays and tough weather didn’t slow down the PrismHR team in Q4, and there’s lots of activity to share with you in this Products & Services update for Q4 of 2017. From the introduction of Pulse and Sense powered by ClientSpace to significant infrastructure/support improvements to a wide range of product updates, the PrismHR team has packed the last quarter of 2017 with a ton of accomplishments.
Choose any of the topics below and click on the down arrow to learn more.
New Products and Features
Introducing PrismHR Pulse and Sense
It’s been a big ask from the PrismHR community:
- When can you give us easy-to-use alerts and notifications when things change in PrismHR?
- When can you really help us make sure that we can orchestrate, assign and track specific tasks so all the work associated with those critical changes gets done?
- When can you make it easy to track and manage questions and requests from clients?
To meet these needs, PrismHR is adding new capabilities to the core platform: PrismHR Pulse and Sense, powered by ClientSpace. They will be activated for your organization as part of your annual contract renewal process.
PrismHR Pulse is a new area for you and your team to interact with tasks, dashboards and client cases. It provides workflow capabilities to orchestrate processes and to set and manage alerts and notifications so your team knows what needs to happen and who needs to take action. PrismHR Sense is a service that watches data in PrismHR and makes sure you can get notified when something you care about happens or changes. It serves as the central nervous system of your operations, helping you stay abreast of key updates as they happen.
To learn more, view the webinar below that provides an overview and demo of Pulse and Sense and outlines how they will be enabled for your team in 2018. And read the Pulse and Sense FAQ.
Data Retriever Update – Demo Now Available
Learn about how Data Retriever can help you and your clients in the brief demo below.Data Retriever allows you and your clients to quickly and easily generate custom reports that are not available in pre-built reports. Today you can report on any field in the employee record. Based on customer input, we have accelerated adding the ability to do the same with client details, which is now coming in 2018. With the ability to easily export to Excel and save templated reports, satisfying your clients’ special reporting requests has never been easier. In addition, since Data Retriever is so easy to use, you can enable access for your clients, empowering your client managers & saving you time.
Product & Infrastructure Updates
PrismHR Winter 2017 Quarterly Release
The Winter 2017 quarterly release included PrismHR 1.9.0, API 1.11, HRPyramid Cloud 14.2 Service Pack 14 and Benefits Enrollment 2.7. View the video below to learn what is included in the release.
PrismHR Payroll, Benefits and HR
PrismHR 1.9.0 includes updates to W-2, functionality to do multi-check reversal, and ACH Direct Deposit Report generated during payroll processing. This release also includes a number of ideas submitted by the PrismHR community including the Employees Without Pay Report and reprinting the Fax Back Report within PrismHR (You can submit ideas for the future at PrismHR Ideas). View the PrismHR 1.9.0 release notes here. The PrismHR 1.9.1 release includes further enhancements to tax forms, ACA, payroll, benefits, Data Retriever and reporting. View PrismHR 1.9.1 release notes here.
Many other updates were made to PrismHR prior to the Winter Release, including Maximum Creditor Garnishments for CA Residents and Data Retriever Action Menu. Here are the release notes for PrismHR 1.8.1, 1.8.2, and 1.8.3.
Benefits Enrollment
Benefits Enrollment 2.7 contains 30 new features and enhancements including turning notifications on/off per client from grid, option to make dependent SSN required. Release notes are here. Benefits Enrollment 2.7.1 enhancements include benefit eligibility for disabled dependents who are over-age and several other enhancements and fixes. Release notes are here.
Many other updates were made to Benefits Enrollment prior to the winter release. These include benefit plans display in alphabetical order and existing legacy enrollments can now post. Here are the release notes for PrismHR Benefits Enrollment 2.6.1, 2.6.2, and 2.6.3.
Many organizations have implemented PrismHR Benefits Enrollment, making their end-customer benefits enrollment experience fast and easy. Learn more by viewing the webinar below with PrismHR customer XMI discussing the benefits they’ve achieved, as well as reading this case study and blog post. If you’re still using OnHRP benefits enrollment, now’s the time to migrate! Contact your account manager for more information.
API
API 1.11 includes exporting G/L accounting files to top accounting programs. It also adds client benefit setup and rules, detailed user role permissions, deleting employees, total premiums and participants in medical plans, and waiving benefit plans by category. The upgrade kit and release notes can be found here.
Many other updates were made to PrismHR API prior to the winter release. These include absence journals, future employee changes by subscription, methods relating to payroll, employees’ benefit statuses, client details, managing PrismHR client contacts, and more. Here are the release notes for PrismHR API 1.9 and API 1.10.
Updated PrismHR API Support Policy: To ensure the best quality and performance of the PrismHR API, the support policy for the PrismHR API is changing. This applies to all PrismHR customers and partners who use the PrismHR API. Effective March 31, 2018, PrismHR API versions 1.7 and earlier will no longer be supported. Moving forward, only the five most current versions of the API will be supported. Review the complete support policy in the Customer Resource Center or the PrismHR API Documentation.
HRPyramid
The HRPyramid Cloud 14.2 Service Pack 14 includes a wide range of fixes. Read the release notes here for HRPyramid 14.2 Service Pack 14.0 and for HRPyramid Web Edition 14.2.14.0. HRPyramid 14.2 SP 14.1 includes tax enhancements, ACA enhancements and payroll enhancements. There are also several fixes. Here are the Release Notes.
And a range of other updates for HRPyramid were made in Q4 before the winter release. View release notes for HRPyramid 14.2 Service Pack 13.1 Release, HRPyramid 14.2 Service Pack 13.2 Release, HRPyramid 14.2 Service Pack 13.3 Release.
Timeline for End of HRPyramid Support and Migration to PrismHR: Today, PrismHR supports multiple software platforms. By consolidating, PrismHR will be able to serve you more effectively, including moving faster to improve user experience and enhance strategic initiatives like reporting and the API. As a result, support for HRPyramid will be ending on January 1, 2020, and new features will no longer be developed as of January 1, 2019. If you are an HRPyramid customer, you should have your contract in place to move to PrismHR by April 1, 2018. Review the HRPyramid Migration Program FAQ for additional details.
Infrastructure and Security
We know your access to PrismHR is critical, and PrismHR invested extensively in 2017 to ensure you have a secure, highly available system. These improvements include numerous enhancements around system scalability, reliability and data security.
- Improved capacity planning: Proactive performance adjustments; better load profiling.
- Enhanced application and server monitoring: Leveraging the latest tools to continuously monitor and audit all tiers of our platform applications.
- Expanded rollout testing strategy: Best practice processes implemented to ensure infrastructure updates/changes are stable, efficient, and repeatable.
- Improved team and coverage: 24/7 on call coverage; upgraded skills and talent.
- PrismHR consistently meets or exceeds 99.9% uptime, and this continues to improve. Uptime for 2017 was 99.967% for the core PrismHR production environments. (Note that Printing, which is tracked separately, did experience an uptick in outage behavior in December; those issues are being aggressively addressed.)
Strengthened data protection posture:
- PrismHR has also added multi-factor authentication and strengthened the overall data security infrastructure
- Increased investment in intrusion detection, vulnerability scanning, additional investment and coverage for external penetration testing.
- Improved data retention: PrismHR goes beyond retaining just customer data to taking snapshots of entire application instances.
- PrismHR is on track for SOC 2 Type 1 certification for Q1 2018, with Type 2 planned for end of 2018.
Compliance
Over the past quarter, compliance has focused on two themes:
- Year-end processing updates (W-2, 1099, 1095). Updates here include release of 2017 forms, resolution of printing issues, and federal, state and third party file specification updates
- SBEA development. Updates released a 940 R report, baseline MasterTax RTS integration, supporting logic enhancements and bug fixes.
Bridging both themes required substantial development to handle IRS uncertainty regarding how PEOs should produce and file W2s. We therefore developed an approach to provide certified PEOs flexibility: W2s can now be produced on the traditional, employer-only level or they can be broken down by client FEIN within the employer, with the client name and FEIN appearing on the W2. This solves the dilemma of potentially “over-reporting” social security and medicare for any employee working for two clients under the same employer. We will continue to monitor for any further developments from the IRS on this front and expand this functionality accordingly in the future.
Notably other enhancements include the capacity to set “tip allowance” as a pay detail column on check stubs and modifications regarding creditor garnishments in California.
PrismHR LIVE 2018
We’re heading to San Antonio, TX, for PrismHR LIVE 2018, the industry’s largest technology conference, June 10-13. And, early bird registration is now open!
This year’s PrismHR LIVE program will give you even more opportunities to learn how to:
- Improve operations
- Save time
- Lead your company toward growth
You will also get the chance to network at a real working ranch in Spring Branch, TX. So, dust off your 10 gallon hat and register now!
Don’t miss out! Early bird pricing of $1495 ends February 28.
Want more information? Visit the PrismHR LIVE website and read the latest blogs on why you should attend PrismHR LIVE 2018. Questions? Email us at events@prismhr.com.
Company and Organizational Updates
Expanded “Response Engineering Team”
In Q4, we piloted a strategic response initiative to significantly reduce the volume of issues that are lower priority but are still very annoying to our customers. Hundreds of these types of issues have been resolved since the inception of the team in Q4, resulting in record-breaking backlog reduction.
For 2018, we have rolled the staffing and charter behind this strategic response initiative, along with our pre-existing Rapid Response “emergency tiger” team, into a single, but more substantially staffed “Response Engineering Team.”
Customer Support
ACA Video: 1095-C Creation
View the video below to get helpful insights and tips regarding 1095-C creation including:
- Reviewing factors that feed into 1095-C creation
- Deep dive into calculations
- Reviewing situations that can cause issues
2017 Year-End Webinar
Held on November 30, this year-end webinar provides helpful insights and tips to make year-end go as smoothly as possible. The webinar provides guidance and suggestions for the best ways to handle many key year-end tasks. View the recorded webinar below, and you can download the webinar slides here. Additional information regarding 2017 year-end is available in the Customer Resource Center.
Customer Support Update
Restructured Support Organization
As part of PrismHR’s overall initiative to achieve greater efficiency, faster response times, faster issue resolution, and to ensure follow through on all support issues, the Customer Support group has restructured. There are now teams dedicated to specific complexity levels of issues (we call these Tier 1 and Tier 2). This allows subject matter experts to own and address the most complex issues, and ensures more ownership and accountability across the team.
New Support Operations Team
PrismHR Customer Support is constantly striving to improve the team’s quality and efficiency, and the newly created Support Operations team will contribute to that effort significantly in three ways:
- Since more knowledgeable support representatives equates to better customer service, we now have a Support Trainer who is developing formal training programs to accelerate the learning curve of new hires as well as existing staff.
- To drive ongoing process improvement, a support analytics expert has joined the team to help measure and then optimize activity.
- We are continuously adding new articles and other resources to the PrismHR CRC Knowledge Base which you can access here. Be sure to check out all our year-end documentation and videos!
Customer Resource Center (CRC) Technology Enhancements
PrismHR is implementing a second round of technology enhancements to the CRC to improve your overall user experience. We strive to improve your CRC experience, including logging and managing cases and accessing Knowledge Base content. We are also streamlining our internal workflow and reporting processes, ultimately ensuring an even more efficient support system for you.
Professional Services & Training
Updates to PrismHR Training
PrismHR Training includes access to online sessions and a learning management system (LMS). It is constantly growing, with new courses added continuously.
Two new courses have recently been added:
- ACA 1095-C Creation: The ACA video provides an overview on 1095-C Creation, including factors leading to 1095-C creation, a brief review of calculations, and situations to avoid
- PrismHR Sales Demo Training: This course is designed to help salespeople and other client facing employees learn how to give an effective high-level technology demo.
Two new learning programs have also recently been added:
- Benefits Enrollment (BE): The program contains three courses that cover the setup and administration of PrismHR BE. The learning content has been expanded from one course to three with new interactive modules and confidence check questions added.
- Sales Demo Environment: This program consists of two courses. The first course walks you through how to create your sales demo client. The second optional course has additional reference material for topics covered in the first course if you need/want a deeper dive into any of those topics.
Access PrismHR Training here, or contact your account rep to learn how to get access to PrismHR Training.
Sales & Marketing Resources
SEEDS
Are you a member of the PrismHR SEEDS program? SEEDS gives you sales and marketing resources to help make it easier to market and sell PrismHR technology. Sign up or login.
What’s new and what’s next in the SEEDS program:
Articles to help you sell and market: SEEDS Blog
The SEEDS blog provides the latest sales and marketing best practices as well as new resources for the SEEDS program. Check out the latest blog here: 4 Signs it’s Time to Let Go
Marketplace Resources
There are now sales and marketing resources for Marketplace partners now available in the SEEDS portal. New resources will be added on an ongoing basis. Marketplace partner resources currently feature JazzHR for applicant tracking and JuvodHR for employee performance management. Each partner has a datasheet that you can download and co-brand to make your own. As new resources are added, SEEDS members will be notified via email.
New Migration Datasheet
Are you currently in the process of migrating from Summit Apex to PrismHR? The newest migration datasheet features the key improvements your clients can expect. Additionally, the migration datasheet for HRPyramid to PrismHR has been updated to reflect the latest changes to PrismHR, including the new employee portal being released later this quarter. The migration datasheets highlight key benefits to the SMB and their employees and can be edited to best fit your needs.
HR Service Provider Trends Survey
Share your insight in the third annual HR Service Provider Trends Survey, brought to you by PrismHR. This research looks at key business and technology trends for HR Service Providers, including PEOs and ASOs, and helps you benchmark your services, technology and offerings.
By participating, you will be the first to receive the Annual HR Service Provider Trends Report, providing insights into the evolution of the PEO and ASO market that can help you make informed decisions about your business. The survey takes less than 15 minutes to complete, and you can take the survey here.
Roadmap*
The areas below outline our core initiatives for the future, combined with the efforts of the Response Engineering team that we noted earlier.
Here are some areas where PrismHR will be focusing in the first quarter of 2018:
Improved User Experience
More HRPyramid & Apex Features
Employee Portal
Onboarding
API
Reporting
PTO Enhancements
ClientSpace and Pulse
Benefits Enrollment
Compliance
Looking further out, here are some key priorities for later in 2018: