New Employee’s Import/Bulk Edit Page

DataByte is pleased to introduce the newer, faster way to import new employees into WorkForce.  

This new import allows more control and visibility of the processes (import/export of templates).

The import process starts by first downloading a ready made template from WorkForce with all the fields selected by yourself, then once downloaded data is inserted into this said template and this same template is imported into WorkForce.

This process is done to import new employees into WorkForce and also bulk edit of employees’ data.

Importing New Employees on WorkForce 

The new import function can be found WorkForce People>Employees>Import 

Upon clicking on Import, the below page will appear: 

The process for an import to take place, is to first download a ready-made template from WorkForce by choosing fields that you specifically require. Once the template is downloaded (as an excel sheet) the data can be inserted into the template accordingly, then this same template can then be imported back into WorkForce.

This process is done to import new employees into WorkForce and bulk edit of employees’ fields.

Explaining the Tabs used for the import:

The first three tabs: Basic Fields, Basic Lists, and Product Links will allow you to populate the information needed in the employee’s profile.

Custom Fields and Custom Lists are to be used for those employees who are licensed for the People Advanced module.

Download Area is where you will find all the downloaded templates

Imports Queue is where you will have all the information necessary for example if the import was successful or not, and if not, you can download the Download Validation File to check what is missing and why the import failed.

Let us create all the employees of a new company together step by step:

Basic Fields Tab

This section will allow you to populate all the fields from the General Information, HR Information, Employment Details, Payrun Adjustments, Working Schedule and leave information tabs which are not in a table format. Basically, ALL the fields except: Salary Details, Fringe Benefits, Direct Credit Details and Fixed Payroll Data can be populated from the Basic Fields Tab.

Let us keep in mind, that this has the same context as when a new employee is added from ‘Add Employee’, meaning that just the Basic fields are necessary for the employee to be created in the software. However, from Select Fields, all the options available can be chosen as per below example:

Since it is a new company and there are no employees created yet the field for select employees should be left empty, and the ‘Include basic required fields’ will be left ticked.

Note: The fields that are in the ‘Include basic required fields’ tick option are: Employee Number, First Name, Last Name, Team, and Engagement Date.

Note: We suggest for every template that is downloaded, a name is given to the template, so if in the future, it is needed again, it is easily found by the Template name given previously.

Note: The ‘Select an employee sort order’ drop down menu, should be used if there are already existing employees in the company, this is not required if there are no existing employees yet.

The first template will be named New Company Template, and this will have just the Basic Fields only, as required.

Press: ‘Download Import Template’ (once downloaded, all templates can be found in the Download Area, from where it can be downloaded to the computer:

Note: The templates downloaded, will remain in the download area for 35 days.

Upon pressing download, the template will be downloaded as an excel sheet and can be retrieved from: This PC>Downloads

Upon opening the excel sheet, it is noticeable that the excel has two sections. The first section is greyed out and cannot be edited, this section will populate itself if you are using the template when there are already enrolled employees in the company.

The other half will need to be populated with the fields that you requested after downloading the template.

Since the company is new and there are no employees yet, you will then proceed to fill out the second part of the excel sheet with my employees required basic fields as per above example.

When the fields are populated with the data, you can proceed to import this file from the Upload import file section in the Basic Fields Tab:

To upload the Import File, click on Add File, choose the relevant file, and press the Upload Import File button.

After the import is successful, you can make your way to the List of Employees, and there you will find, the employees that you have populated in the template:

Keep in mind that these employees have just the basic fields, so now you will have to populate other data.

From the Basic Fields tab, you can download the new template populated with the required basic fields and from the Select Fields option, select the options required next such as below example:

The ‘Include Basic required fields’ option was left unticked since this information is already populated by now.

Now the new template looks like the below, on the left side there are the employees that have just been created and on the right side are the new fields that have been requested to be downloaded as a template:

This process can be done as many times as one needs so that all fields in the employees’ profile will in the end be populated.

Will focus on one employee to populate all the data needed for all the Modules, as an example:

E.G: Employee 006 – Claudio Spiteri

From the Basic Fields tab>Select Fields you select the fields you want populated, in this case: personal email, company email, ID card no, telephone, mobile, gender, nationality, badge ID, office and position were selected, and the template was downloaded as per below:

And then populated as necessary:

After the excel was saved and uploaded:

And now we can see that the fields were populated in Claudio’s profile in WorkForce People as per below screenshot:

So far, the General Information Tab is populated, the process will be repeated for the other tabs.

And as per below screenshot the above were populated as well:

Basic Lists Tab

This tab is used to import details such as: Salary Details, Fringe Benefits, Direct Credit Details and Fixed Payroll Data.

Note: The List Type must be selected when downloading the template and when uploading the import file.

How to download the template and import Salary Details

So, you download the template after selecting the Salary Details from the list type, populate it as per below:

Note: Column G ‘Is Part-Time Hourly Rate’ if you choose FALSE, it means that the employee has an annual salary and if TRUE is chosen it means that yes, this employee has an hourly rate.

To upload the import file from the Basic Lists Tab it is important that you select the list type of what you are trying to import as per above example.

How to download and import Fringe benefits

After downloading the template, and populate it with necessary data as per below:

You will then import the file:

Reminder: Fringe benefits needs to be selected from the List type field (as per above screenshot) when you are importing the fringe benefits.

Below are how the fringe benefits that have just been imported will look like in the employee’s profile:

How to download the template and importing Direct Credit Details

After downloading the template, and populate it with necessary data as per below:

Note: Is Percent, if it is FALSE (not a percent) in the Value field insert the value of the monthly pay, if it is TRUE (a percent of the salary) in the value field insert percentage.

Now you can go ahead and upload the import file:

Note: To upload an import file remember that it is required to select the correct list type as per above screenshot.

How to download and import Fixed Payroll Data

Download the template from the Download Area Tab.

and populate data as necessary:

Note: within the excel sheet there is another sheet with all the available Fixed Payroll Data fields that can be used for the upload.

Next step is to upload the import file:

Upon checking the employee’s profile, you can verify that this information was successfully populated:

Product Links Tab

After populating all the necessary information of an employee, you can now link the employee with the relevant modules according to the licenses.

Downloading template to link employee 006 with Leave, TimeKeeper, Payroll and People modules, The below screenshot is how the downloaded excel sheet will look like:

After you open the excel from downloads, you can now change from False to True so that when uploading import the employee will be linked to the modules:

After the upload of the import, you can see that now employee 006 is linked with the 4 modules as per below screenshot from the employee’s profile:

The below Tabs can only be utilized if there is an active WorkForce People Advanced license for the employees and they can create the Custom Tabs.

There is no limit of how much Custom Tabs one can create, as an example for Custom Fields and Custom Lists the focus will be on the Emergency Medical Outreach tab as per below screenshot (screenshot taken from a People Advanced licensed employee profile)

Importing Custom Fields

The only field in the Emergency Medical Outreach is the blood group, as per screenshot below:

Let’s download the template for the blood group:

When the template is downloaded, for each employee choose the relevant blood group:

Keep in mind that when uploading the import file, the select fields and the select employees are required:

Below is the profile of Charles Miller, and it can be noticed that Charles now has the blood group showing in his profile:

Importing Custom Lists

This is the same concept of the Basic Lists tab; however, it will be the Lists found in the Custom Tabs.

And download the template:

The template will allow you to choose the employee from the drop down, write the type of Allergy and any comment needed:

Please note to import the template, the List type is required:

After the import was uploaded:

The profiles of the employees were updated accordingly.

Bulk edit of employees’ data

This import also allows you to bulk edit existing data of the employees in your company.

Let us take for example changing the company email of all the employees:

So, after choosing the field that would like to change, for all the employees, the template was downloaded as per below screenshot:

Let us add .mt after each .com as an example

As you can see from the above screenshot, the .mt was edited after each .com and now the template can be uploaded, so that this change will also be affected in each employee profile:

From the Imports Queue tab, you can check if the import was successful or not:

And you can confirm that the .mt is now added with the email in the employee’s profile:

Failed Validation – when an import fails to upload

When you try to upload an import and it fails, you have the facility to check what went wrong/why did it fail to upload.

The Imports Queue Tab will hold that information.

To check which imports failed validation you can filter them from the Filter Import Status and press the refresh button so that you will have a list of all the imports that have a failed validation as per below:

To check why a specific import upload failed, you need to tick the information button and a pop up will appear as per below:

From here you can download the validation file so that when it opens it will let you know exactly why the import failed such as the below screenshot:

In Column J there is a description why the import did not upload, once the errors are corrected/updated, you can then upload the import again.