Advanced Forms Management in HR Service Delivery

[Apani]

For many organisations leveraging ServiceNow to power their employee workflows, the need to automate the completion of employee related documents is key to a great experience. As part of ServiceNow's HR Service Delivery Paris release, we have listened to our customers and released Advanced Forms Management. 

Advanced Forms allows organisations to automate and simplify the process of filling, signing, and reviewing a document online in ServiceNow. Organisations are able to create both HTML and PDF document templates in platform, to generate standard letters or documents for HR and employee processes. In addition, multiple participants can work collaboratively on a document, and fields may be pre-populated with known data to reduce manual entry.  

The following tutorial will walk you through how to configure Advanced Forms and showcases this functionality through the end user experience. 

For more information on how to get started, take a look at the latest Paris product documentation on Advanced Forms.

[Jayesh Mohan]

@Apani : After the employee submits, can the manager also fill in some additional information or can the manager only review and send it back to the employee to submit again?

[Apani]

Hi Jayesh, 

That's right! If you choose to allow a manager to also add information and not simply act as a reviewer, then you can configure this as part of the defined process associated with the document template.

[ARP3]

Hello,

This is really helpful and great feature. thanks.

The task for this is getting generated with prefix DOCT. It is appearing in old platform UI without issues. We are configuring the Agent Workspace for HR and we are not able to see this getting listed under the tasks for the same. Is there something that need to be configured for making it visible in Agent Workspace for HR?

Thanks,

ARP

[Mrman]

@Apani 

We are using the Advanced forms making the Fillable PDF editable to the Subject person when TO DO is opened on portal . 

Subject person is able to enter the data in PDF fields and once the the To Do is closed , the PDF attachment which is getting copied to the HR case has the file name 'HR Service name - Opened by ' 

Please let me know why the Opened by name is getting appended to the attachment file name instead of Subject person . 

How can we change it show the file name with Subject person name appended.

[Kachu]

Can you show me how background check HR template appeared after PDF template creation ?? as for me it doesn't show up.. The PDF is getting created in sn_doc_pdf_template_list  and HR template shows only sn_hr_core_template_list . How should i map that to HR service  ??

[Kachu]

Also Why there is a difference between these PDF templates . HR PDF Templates Does not have functionality to parse the document  add employee to edit the Fields . and in HR service we cant even select the templates created  under sn_doc_pdf_template .The video doesn't show where its created and how is mapped to the HR template.

[brandi_head]

This is really helpful and provides the exact solution I need for an employee agreement with multiple signatures.  Can you tell me if these steps are to be taken directly in the Production instance by an HR Admin?  Or is this a developer activity that should be completed sub-prod and pushed through update sets?  I am prototyping in a sub-prod environment, but the document revision for the final solution is in Production.  @Apani Can you advise on best practice for implementing this solution?  

[charlie14]

I'm trying to do this as well.  I've created a PDF Template with a fillable pdf, mapped fields to a table, then pointed the HR Case Template "PDF Template" fields to the PDF Template I created.  Then I created an HR Service that points to the HR Case Template.  But on mine I didn't fill in the record producer like she had.  My goal is to run this as part of an onboarding Lifecycle Event.  So then I went and created an HR Task that is of type "HR Service" and pointed it to the HR Service that maps to the HR Case Template.  Then I have an lifecycle event that has several activity sets, one of which has an activity that points to the HR Task Template I created.  When I create a new case using the lifecycle event HR Service that I've created seperately, all of the tasks generate properly, but when I go to the fillable PDF Task, it simply displays "You are either not authorized or record is not valid.".   I've watched this video https://www.servicenow.com/community/hrsd-articles/advanced-forms-management-in-hr-service-delivery/... - about 20 times.  What she doesn't show is the Record Producer associated with the HR Service or how it is created - so I think that's where I'm going wrong.  She has a record producer associated with the HR Service and I do not.  When I add one, it displays whatever record producer I select, but not the fillable PDF.... but in her video she get's a nice fillable PDF at the end.  What am I doing wrong?

[Kachu]

Hi @charlie14 Can you share screen shots of the record producer, HR service & hr template?

[anandpara_s]

Very helpful video, thanks Apani.!

Just a question, how can we include a condition before the letter can be generated.? It could be the content of the document which changes based on the condition, or a decision whether the letter generation should happen or not in first place.?

[michaelj_sherid]

@anandpara_s at this time there is no ability to conditionalize the document based on what is entered into the document. I recommend to submit an Idea in this Community by selecting Resources from the Community header then selecting Idea Portal to submit your idea along with the detailed use case.

Regards,

Mike

[leahdany]

@Apani @michaelj_sherid  Can either of you advise how to use that same HR service in a Lifecycle Event? I have created the document per the video instructions along with the case template and the HR service. I do not have a record producer for the HR service because I don't need one, I just need to present the fillable PDF form. The HR service works as a standalone service when I submit a case from the backend it displays the document to the subject person as a document task. As soon as I add it in the Lifecycle Event as an Activity for the Employee as an HR task w(HR task type = HR Service, HR Service is the same one I've mentioned) when the employee looks on the portal at the HR task it has the error "You are either not authorized or record is not valid.". Please help!

[michaelj_sherid]

@leahdany  It is my guess that the HR Service does not have the case option of "Automatically Initiate Document Tasks". Let me know if you have this in the case options for the HR Service that contains the Document Task. 

Regards,

Mike

[leahdany]

@michaelj_sherid It has that case option as I followed every step in the video.

Here's my Lifecycle Event Activity

[michaelj_sherid]

@leahdany It is most likely your activity configuration. I have not seen any cases where I would use a HR Template for the Employee (as seen in your print screen of the activity) for this type of Sign document. I recommend changing the Activity so that it is an Activity Type of Fulfiller with the Fulfiller type = HR Service. This is a typical configuration for advanced forms within a LE Activity. I just tested this and the Advanced form is presented to my new hire (second image).

Lastly, if this is still not working for you, I would check to see if you have any Application Restricted Caller Access records  that are impacting this functionality since the call to the HR Service may be from another scope (like the LE Scope). 

Let us know if you are good to go after configuring your activity.

Regards,

Mike

[leahdany]

@michaelj_sherid That generated a child case with the Lifecycle Event case as the parent. The child case is assigned to the parent.assigned_to. The child case has no subject person, or opened for. How is the document supposed to get to the subject person?

I checked the Application Restricted Caller Access records and there aren't any that are requested or denied from the LE scope.

[Lorenzo8]

@michaelj_sherid I am encountering the same exact issue at my client. We are investigating how to use this with LE but it does not seem possible. So far we discovered that a fillable Document template cannot be attached directly to LE Activities. Indeed, the only potential solution is to trigger an extra HR Service from within LE but this doesn't seem to work as well either. We've created an Action Script and a Flow in which we've tried to automatically generate a Document Task linked to the LE case but it seems to not work as expected.

Would you be able to advise how to configure this?

[leahdany]

@Lorenzo8  I ended up having to create an after insert business rule for the case that starts the Lifecycle Event to call a script include that submits the HR service that has the document so that the document task can be generated and assigned to the subject person. 

I have the successive Activity Set trigger condition to wait for those document tasks to be completed before continuing.

[Giuliana Martin]

Is there functionality in the Configurable HR Agent Workspace for Document Templates?

We noticed that you cannot do any document tasks in the workspace OR preview documents.

[leahdany]

@Giuliana Martin  you can add the related list Document Task -> Parent to show the document tasks associated with that case. You can preview documents in AW. In order to do that the HR service associated to that document template should not have the case option to automatically initiate document tasks, and you must be the assignee on the case and the case state should be work in progress.

[svani]

Hi @Apani ,

I have done the same thing as you have provided in the video only thing is i am unable to select the document template on the HR template on the he service configuration so could you please let me know if there is any way to attach it.

Thanks in adavance

[lrmatamoros]

@michaelj_sherid  Your solution worked for me, I modified my hr task and that was it! Now, how can I modify the Document Template from the HR Workspace? I get a message that says “Changes are not permitted as document is in use”.

[michaelj_sherid]

@lrmatamoros Document Types of PDF are not supported on the HR Agent Configurable Workspace at this time so you will not be able to modify it on the HR Agent Workspace.

Regards,

Mike

[Giuliana Martin]

@michaelj_sherid do you know if it is on the roadmap for Document Types of PDF to be supported in the HR Agent Configurable Workspace?

Thank you,

Giuliana

[michaelj_sherid]

@Giuliana Martin This is something we are looking at.

Regards,

Mike

[lrmatamoros]

Hey @michaelj_sherid  I was able to solve it now.

I'm using HTML Templates, the problem is that in my HR Service I was using Automatically Initiate Document Tasks instead of Automatically Create Draft Document and that is why I could not edit the document. But I was able to solve it now and it works perfectly.

[michaelj_sherid]

@lrmatamoros Are you using the new Document Templates, or the (older) HR Document Templates? We use the Initiate Document Tasks for the newer Document Tasks and not the legacy HR Document Templates. These are 2 different functionalities. It sounds like you are using the latter.

[lrmatamoros]

@michaelj_sherid Yes, I'm using the latest ones. The truth is that I saved myself a lot of work and thanks to your post above I was able to solve the error I had due to the activity type in the LE. Thank you very much for that.

[michaelj_sherid]

@lrmatamoros glad to hear. We are here to help. I am sure your question has helped others so we are all paying it forward. Have a great day.

Regards,

Mike