IRIS HR Professional Q3 2021 Product Update

As part of our ongoing efforts to continuously improve the features and functionality of IRIS HR Professional, we also want to ensure the application has a contemporary look and is intuitive to use. To this end, we have embarked on an exciting new journey to refresh the User Interface (UI).

It’s a modern-looking UI that paves the way for some exciting enhancements and new features. The first step in that journey is to update some of the basic fonts, colours, and size of objects within the application. Don’t worry though, if you have custom styling or branding already enabled, this will not be affected, and the update will compliment your existing settings.

Why are we changing the way IRIS HR Pro looks?

• Consistency increases intuitiveness! We’re embarking on a company-wide initiative to ensure all our products look and feel the same, creating a consistent experience across all IRIS products. This will apply no matter what products or solutions you use
• Accessibility. Software should be all-inclusive, and we want all customers to have an equally great experience accessing it. By making our products more accessible, we are ensuring that all users, including people with disabilities, have a better user experience and can more easily access and view information
• Modern look and feel. By listening to feedback from IRIS HR Professional users like you, incorporating accessibility best-practice, and employing some great UI design, we wanted to make sure IRIS HR Professional kept pace with the modern world

We would love your feedback on the changes. If you have any suggestions on further improvements we could make, please use the Big Ideas link which you can access on the Guide page.

As part of our ongoing efforts to continuously improve the features and functionality of IRIS HR Professional, we are bringing the login screen in line with the new User Interface (UI), giving it a modern look and feel and improving accessibility.

The new Login screen provides:

• Larger and more contrasted font and buttons, improving accessibility so that everyone can easily access all content
• Full-screen graphics with larger images, for an improved branding experience
• Several rotating stock images which change each time you log in

If you have purchased the branding package and your current login screen was built with the Custom Login Screen Builder, it will be updated with the new design. Your company logo and branding colours will be translated to the new Login screen.

If you want to make any amendments or completely refresh your login screen, you can do so from the Login Screen Builder. Find it at:

System Tools > Utilities > Company > Custom Login Screen Builder.

There will also be a new Login Screen Builder guide you will be able to access from the Support site.

If your current login screen was custom made by IRIS, the new UI may not be automatically applied to it. However, if you want to adopt the new login design you can manually update your current login screen by selecting new colours or images from the Login Screen builder at:

System Tools > Utilities > Company > Custom Login Screen Builder.

To add a new company logo visit:

System Tools > Utilities > Company > Branding

Upload the logo as a transparent.png, the system will automatically add it at the right size for you.

Custom Login Screen Preview

When using the Custom Login Screen Builder, you can now see a preview of the login screen as you are working on it to immediately see the effect of the options you choose.

Branding screen

We have made changes to the branding screen bringing it in line with the new UI. The branding screen can be found here:

System Tools > Utilities > Company > Branding screen

It’s now possible to add Additional Roles underneath Role on the Contract tab. This is particularly useful in school environments where a person can hold a number of responsibilities.

• Additional Roles contain the same look up values that currently exist in Role
• Each Role in the dropdown has a tick box next to it and multiple roles can be ticked
• This creates the corresponding number of additional role fields

o             For example, ticking 5 additional roles creates 5 separate fields, ticking 3 additional roles creates 3 separate field etc.

o             Each new field has a cross next to it to allow an admin to delete it

• All these fields are reportable and available through the current Employee Contract API

Employees can now sign within an area on the screen to replicate their signature more accurately in electronic format.

This enhancement was requested via the big idea portal and directly from customers.

• A new Acceptance Type called E-Signature can be set up in Read and Accept > Create New
• When the E-Signature type is selected and the Read and Accept sent, the employee clicks on Accept and sees a box in which they can draw their signature using a mouse (or finger/stylus on a touch screen)
• E-Signature image is included on the Read and Accept page, under Signature
• E-Signature also displayed on the Read and Accept report
• E-signature form has a Save signature check box and a Clear button
• Save signature checkbox saves the signature to make it available for reuse in future Read and Accepts
• When user returns to the E-Signature form, the previous signature is visible and ready to use
• Clear button (trash icon) removes a saved signature from the box to allow you to start again

You can now enable and choose between displaying holiday entitlement and holiday accruals.

If Holiday Accruals are enabled, the software calculates the amount of Holiday Accrued to Date for each employee as follows:

• Takes the annual Holiday Entitlement and divide it by 12 then multiplies it by the full months that have been worked in the current Absence Year

Holiday Entitlement / 12 X the number of partial months

For example – 30/12 * 6 = 15 days holiday (rounded up to the nearest half day)

• Holiday Accrued is calculated based on current system date
• For new Starters joining part way through the year the system calculates Holiday Accrued To Date from Continuous Service Date till the end of the Absence Year. For Leavers this number is calculated based on Absence Year start and Termination Date
• Works with all current Holiday functionality i.e. Brought forward / bought / sold
• If your company is using the Employee Absence Year function then the accrual calculation uses those Absence Year dates
• Once turned on, Holiday Accrual applies to all users in the system
• Holiday Accrual fields then become visible on My Details > Absence and the Home screen. You can toggle between Holiday Accrued and Holiday, Holiday Accrued is displayed by default

The Search bar has returned to the main screen allowing users to search for employees. This search bar is in the top right-hand corner next to the user’s profile image.

IRIS My ePay Window now uses a different payslip template to allowing all Payments/Deductions to be displayed separately, instead of a predefined list of fields to include/exclude. This will not affect IRIS Payroll Professional which will still use the original payslip template for imported data.

We’ve added Faster Payments as a Pay Method on the Payroll tab as part of integration with payroll (only applies to IRIS Earnie users).