Specialties are used to track certification, skills, and staffing. Specialties may display on the Roster and hold expiration dates.
Specialties in general can be used to...
When a specialty contains a date in From and Through or either field, that specialty activates and deactivates according to the date or dates provided. The start date is defined by the start of the calendar day, and the end date is defined by the end of a calendar day. When Institution Focus is turned on along with differing timezones then the start and end times are based on the focused institution’s timezone. This means if the server is EST, and the focused institution is PST, the application uses the focused institution’s time zone to determine whether a specialty is valid for the date criteria.
An employee must have the specialty through the end of the Roster record to qualify for a position or job. For example, a job that starts on 10/01/2016 at 7:30AM and runs through 10/02/2016 at 7:30AM means an employee whose specialty expires on 10/01/2016 would not qualify for this vacancy because their specialty expires after midnight. However, if that same job starts at 7:30AM and it runs for 12 hours then the person is qualified because the specialty has not expired during the Start and End time of the vacancy. Additionally, the Qualified Fail icon that looks like a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark in the center shows next to a person’s name on the Roster when the person does not meet a specialty requirement at the position level.
Customers using Dimensions use Skills & Certifications, not legacy specialties. See subsequent topic, Skills & Certifications.
In version 6.7+ specialties were redesigned to provide a simple way to manage specialty type characteristics against a person rather than a profile and reduce unnecessary creation of profiles resulting from single specialties with various effective dates.
Customers using Dimensions must manage skills and certifications in Dimensions the system of record for skills and certifications. User inputs in this application via editing rights is not recommended as this could cause undesirable synchronization issues. All historical skills and certifications an employee holds, including expired, are pushed into this application. Moreover, the Dimensions application only displays currently active skills and certifications. If applying rules to qualify personnel based on skills and certifications you must review the base type People Filter <Person> argument topic to properly set the proficiency level field.
The Specialty area in Setup contains three types of specialty options to configure. Choices are:
Legacy type specialties remain the same to support backward compatibility. The recommended configuration path is to use Skills & Certifications because they are detached from the person’s profile, facilitate maintenance, allow for multiple and overlapping effective dates, and offers clear targets for external applications when specialties are required.
Customers interested in migrating from legacy type specialties to Skills & Certifications may need to revisit configuration to target new skills and new certifications and run both legacy specialties and Skills & Certification in parallel, keep legacy specialties turned on for historical references, and eventually phase out legacy specialties or not phase out because legacy specialties are deeply rooted in the business rules and or database work flow. For migrations, we recommend an application expert to review the current configuration state before migrating to Skills & Certifications.
Skills & Certifications are located in Setup > General > Specialty. Configured skills and certification can be assigned in person > Skills & Certifications. Configured legacy type specialties remain unchanged and are located in person > Profile.
Specialty Reference Table:
| Specialty (Legacy) | Skill | Certification | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Defines an attribute, characteristic, trait (Generally, not date driven) | X | X | |
| Defines a license, certification, record, permit, diploma, credential (Generally, date driven) | X | ||
| Expiration date limit | X | X | |
| Effective date limit | X | X | X |
| Effective date may overlap | X | ||
| Effective date linked to Profile | X | ||
| Effective date linked to Person | X | X | |
| Expiration date linked to Profile | X | ||
| Expiration date linked to Person | X | X | |
| Not in Assignment option (shift trade validation) | X | X | X |
| Skill (Level) | X | ||
| Proficiency Level | X | X | |
| Number (Reference) | X | ||
| Show Specialty option next to person’s name | X | X | X |
| Show Specialty option next to position’s name | X | X | X |
| Show Specialty Fail icon option on the Roster | X | X | X |
| Limit in People Filter | X | X | X |
| Target > Specialty base rule | X | X | X |
| Setup > Roster | X | X | X |
| Deploy Event | X | X | X |
| Static/Dynamic Issues | X | X | X |
| Expiration Report | X | X | X |
| Custom report targets | X | X | X |
| Person export | X | X | X |
| Multi-Day Limit | X | X | X |
| Assignment Template Limit | X | X | X |
| Bidding | X | X | X |
| Setup > General > Specialties | X | X | X |
| Person: Edit Basic authority allows person to view specialty | X | ||
| Profile: Add/Edit or Profile: Edit authority allows person to manage specialty | X | ||
| Person: View Certification authority | X | ||
| Person: View Skill authority | X | ||
| Person: Manage Certification authority | X | ||
| Person: Manage Skill authority | X | ||
| person designation | person > Profile | person > Skills & Certifications | person > Skills & Certifications |