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Building and scheduling a Ripple
Building and scheduling a Ripple

Create and schedule an automated process using Ripple (Interactive and Background)

Sarah Mills avatar
Written by Sarah Mills
Updated over a week ago

This article explains how to create and schedule an automated process using Ripple. 

For an overview of what Ripple is, and the difference between the two Ripple types (Background and Interactive), click here.

This feature is available for Admins only. If you're an Admin and do not have this feature on your system but would like to, you can speak with your accounts manager by emailing ecb@peoplehr.com 

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When creating a process you have to think logically what instructions the system should follow:

  • Who would follow this workflow (ie. New Starter)

  • When the workflow would begin (ie. First day of employment)

  • What is the call to action (ie. Read and sign document, receive email etc.)

You may find this helpful to write down first, so you have a clear step by step process on how to put this into a Ripple Workflow. Once built, People can automate this workflow so you don't have to. 

To create a new Ripple:

  1. Click the 'Settings' tab on the right hand side

  2. Click 'Ripple'

  3. Click the plus icon

The next screen should look similar to this:

4. Select a Ripple type*:

Select the Ripple type you wish to create.

*Don't have this option? Don't worry! By default, Ripple customers will start off with background ripples only, but can get the Interactive ripples free of charge. Just drop an email to your accounts manager ecb@peoplehr.com - this is so we can make sure you have everything you need before we switch this fantastic new feature on for you.

5. Name your ripple:
Try using the same naming convention for all ripples so that your ripple list is clear and easy to search. 

6. Status:
You can keep this as Draft for now, and set it to Active when it is complete. 

7. Access:
All ripples triggered for an employee can be found in their employee record, under their 'Ripple' tab. You can change the access of a ripple to specify whether or not you wish for the employee or their manager to see that this has been triggered for them.

As you're building an Interactive Ripple, you'll want to make sure Employee access is set to 'Update' so that they can complete this.

8. Early Exit rules

It's vital to understand that this rule is not telling the process who to apply to (we do this later) - this is telling the process who to remove.

You might not always need an early exit rule - if you're unsure, you can skip this step for now and loop back once you have created a trigger rule. We'll go into Early Exit Rules in more depth later on in this article. 

9. Click 'Add Step' to create the first stage of your automated process: 

Adding steps:

The available steps will change depending on if you are creating an Interactive Ripple or a Background Ripple. To learn more on what each step does and how to use them, please see the relevant articles linked below:

Always remember to scroll to the top of the page and click 'Save' before leaving.

Scheduling a Ripple:

Once you have saved your ripple, you can now specify who this should trigger for and when. To do this:

  1. Go back to the main screen

  2. Click the automation icon (shown below):

You know have two choices of how to pick who this Ripple should run for, Query or Manual:

Query:

Use the query builder, our powerful reporting tool, to gather a group of employees you wis for the ripple to trigger to. This is perfect for finding a specific group of employees as well as at a particular point in time.

e.g. Find employees with 5 days remaining entitlement, or employees approaching their probation end date. 

Manual:

A quick and easy option a specific group of employees based on some standard employee information.

e.g. Employees in the Sales department, with the employment type 'Full Time'.


You can then select a specific date in which you wish for this to begin, or start immediately. 

Early Exit Rules:

As mentioned earlier, when first creating a Ripple you the option to specify an early exit rule. Now that you have built your ripple and know who this should go to, you can also use an early exit rule - for employees that fall under your trigger rule (Sales Department) but you wish to exclude (such as the head of that department).

Another example may be that there is a change in an employees conditions but the process has already begun for them, a new starter or probation process would be needed or wanted to stop prematurely for these individuals.

The process could early exit anyone who is not in the "new starter" query thats looks for anyone with a recent start date.

Or it could do the opposite. For example, a new starter process would not apply to anyone with a leave date on their record, so the process could remove anyone in the query "leavers" by early exit.

You do this by creating another query of those you wish to be excluded from the ripple, and then adding this to the query early exit rule option.

My Ripple is scheduled, what next?

You can view all Ripples that have ran for an employee within their Ripple tab:

Click into a Ripple to view the progress of each step:

Whether you have launched immediately or selected an effective date to run, background ripples run every 20 minutes - so don't worry if it hasn't started right away. 

Thanks,

Customer Services Team.



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