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The external training module of PD Place™ v3.8 has been enhanced with new features and greater flexibility to help you customize the associated screens and processes.
In this blog, I’ve provided an overview of two major features and give you examples of how you would utilize them.
Funding Allocation
This new feature allows you to allocate funds to specific groups of individuals within your organization based on employee groups. You can also assign a date range to the funding allocation. This funding would represent the amount of dollars an individual can spend during the period specified. It can cover reimbursement expenses (food, accommodations, fees, etc.), supply staff costs, or a combination of the two. The system can either enforce the funding allocation, whereby the user cannot submit a request which would result in exceeding their allocation, or you can allow them to submit the request knowing they will only receive funding up to the maximum allowed.
In conjunction with the budgets, you can configure the system to provide complex fiscal controls. For example, you may have $10,000 for professional development for each of the next three years, but individuals in your organization are entitled to a maximum $500.00 funding. The new funding and budget interaction will allow the system to control this by allowing each staff to spend only a maximum of $500.00 at some time during the three years, but will also limit the overall expenditure to $10,000 per year.
External Training Groups and Types
In PD Place v3.8 we introduce External Training Groups and Types. An External Training Group can have any number of associated External Training Types.
External Training Groups allow you to subdivide external training into logical units to help manage processes within your organization. As an example, you may want staff to be able to enter records of their own non-subsidized external training so that they maintain a complete list of all of their professional development. On the other hand, you may also want to provide funding for specific types of external training, equipment purchases, etc. This can successfully be handled by setting up two groups: “Personal Records” and “Funded Projects.” The “Personal Records” group would allow users to enter information about non-subsidized external training, whereas the “Funded Projects” would be controlled by administration.
The real power comes in the form of External Training Types. Here you can define the details of what the users can see and do, and how the system processes will work. Within the External Training Type, you can set which field will appear on the screens, indicate whether expense reimbursement and/or supply staff funding is applicable, which approval routing will be used, and many more options.
Since each External Training Group can have multiple External Training Types, you can basically configure an unlimited number of funding opportunities, etc.
In future blogs we’ll dig deeper into Funding Allocation and External Training Groups and Types, and we’ll also look at some of the other features new to PD Place’s External Training functions.
