Post Authorization Notifications (PAN)

The Post Authorization Notification (PAN) sub-system is a means for informing a designated individual (i.e., a reviewer) in a service center or central office that an update to an employee record has occurred and that it should be reviewed. The PAN provides to the reviewer information about a newly hired or re-hired employee as well as key information on any changes to existing employee records. Transactions in the Payroll/Personnel System (PPS) are essentially completed by two individuals: the preparer (the person who enters an approved action on-line) and the mandatory reviewer (the person with responsibility for reviewing the transaction after the Employee Database (EDB) has been updated). It is assumed that these notifications are the primary means of departmental review of Payroll/Personnel entry/update activity. Most transactions require review by a mandatory reviewer; if a mandatory reviewer has not been set-up in the system to receive a PAN for a given transaction, the system will not permit the update to take place.

In addition to a mandatory reviewer, PANs can be sent to other interested parties either automatically (set up in the system as automatic, but non-mandatory) or via user entry (i.e., the preparer enters a reviewer's PPS User ID at the time of update). For example, a unit head may be interested in knowing when all hire transactions are completed; the unit head can be designated in the system to receive an automatic PAN for all hires in the unit.

Each reviewer (mandatory as well as automatic, non-mandatory) will have information entered into the PPS designating the employee populations and payroll/personnel transactions about which they will be notified. The criteria utilized to determine the transactions an individual reviewer will receive are:

• Department Code (Distribution Department or Home Department)
• Mandatory or Non-Mandatory reviewer status
• Employee Population* (Academic, Staff and/or Student Employment)
  *For EDB Actions only; OPTRS PANs cannot be routed by employee population.
• Event
• Personnel Action Code

Each of the criteria is described in some detail below. While it isn't required to understand all aspects of the criteria, a basic understanding is necessary for service centers in completing the PAN Routing Worksheet, which is utilized to set up reviewers in the system.

The Department Code may either be the Home Department Code (i.e., denoting the Service Center) or the Distribution Department Code (Org Level 4 of the Chart of Accounts), each of which is represented on the employee record. The Department Code will be utilized to limit PANs in a Service Center and/or unit to its respective area of authority and purview. Normally, a PAN reviewer would see PANs for the same area of responsibility for which they can review employee records using Inquiry.

The responsibilities of the Mandatory Reviewer are provided in Section 1.2, Roles & Responsibilities of the PPS User Manual. Each automatic reviewer will be set up in the PPS as Mandatory or Non-Mandatory. It is possible for a reviewer to be designated as "Mandatory" for reviewing some events and "Non-mandatory" for other events.

Characteristics of the employee record (i.e., the Appointment Type, the Program Type, and Student Status) will be utilized to enable PAN distribution based on the employee population for which a Reviewer is responsible. For example, if a Mandatory Reviewer is only responsible for reviewing PANs for non-academic student employees, it is possible to exclude any PANs about staff and academic employees in the service center by selecting the student category. The employee populations are broadly categorized as Staff, Academic, and Student; and are further sub-categorized as shown in the following table:

An event which requires that an individual or office be notified may be characterized as follows:

• any change for which it has been determined the individual inputting the transaction should not assume sole responsibility for the impact of the change.
  
• any change which impacts data for which programmed data edits could not reasonably be implemented (e.g., a pay rate change).

Following are two lists of events for which it has been determined a notification is required - one for EDB actions and one for Time-Reporting actions. For each event, the general trigger conditions (changes to the employee record) which define the event are described. Notifications will be generated whenever a value of a "trigger" data element is changed on an employee record, whether the value is explicitly changed by the user or implicitly changed (derived) by the PPS. There may be more than one event per employee record update, (e.g., there may be a Labor Relations notification along with an Appointment/Distribution notification for an employee reclassified to a position in another bargaining unit); notifications for two events will be combined into one PAN. It's a good idea to process multiple changes to an employee record during a single update whenever possible; otherwise, there will be a PAN generated for each transaction. A limited number of the following events will be the responsibility of a central office to prepare and/or review rather than a service center (e.g. Work Study Changes).

EDB Actions

The Personnel Action Code enables the distribution of a notification to an addressee who will review PANs pertaining to a specific personnel action(s) (e.g., reclassification, add stipend, appointment renewal, etc.). The personnel action code makes it possible to narrow the range of notifications generated for Appointment/Distribution Change Events. Normally, however, this criterion will be used only in the set-up of a non-mandatory reviewer. For mandatory reviewers it is more appropriate to use the Appointment/Distribution Change Event to ensure all transactions and resulting PANs of this Event type have a mandatory reviewer. (The most common Personnel Action Codes are included on the PAN Routing Worksheet.)

The following instructions outline the step by step process for establishing a PAN Reviewer in the PPS. It is expected that this process will be coordinated by the service center manager or manager to whom service center staff report. (Forms and matrices discussed in these procedures can be found at the top of this web page.)

The Service Center Manager will:

PAN Procedures for Temporarily Re-directing PANs to the Back-Up Mandatory Reviewer:

To Restore the PAN Routings Back to the Original Configuration:

(this is a key step to ensure that the process has completed the loop, and everything is set-up as appropriate according to the PPS Roles Matrix and PAN Routing Worksheets.)

• The Service Center needs to notify the PPS Office to re-distribute the PANs back the original set-up.

For long-term changes to your Service Center's PAN Routings, you must complete the PPS Roles Matrix and PAN Routing Worksheets and submit them to the PPS Office, as described above.