The Participation batch process uses your plan design to determine eligibility and enrollment information for the persons and benefit plans that you select. When you run the batch process, the system performs the following actions:
It determines how system-triggered life events impact a person's eligibility, electability, enrollment, de-enrollment, activity rates and coverage.
It creates related person life events based on these system-triggered life events.
It determines when automatic enrollment is appropriate for benefits, and then automatically enrolls those eligible persons.
It de-enrolls participants who lose their eligibility in programs, plans or options and cancels any of their related current enrollment events.
How often you run the Participation batch process depends on the size of your employee population and the timing of your payroll run. Typically, plan sponsors with large employee populations will run the Participation process daily. Because temporal life events (such as birthdays and length of service anniversaries) occur each day for employees of such large enterprises, these events impact employees' eligibility and electability on a daily basis.
On the other hand, a small employer using a single, biweekly payroll run for all of its employees might find running the Participation batch process before each payroll run sufficient.
When the system encounters multiple active life events, it processes the one with the earliest effective date first. A person can have more than one potential life event at a time, but only one active life event at any point in time.
The Participation process produces a user log file that details what operations took place and what database objects the system updated.
Note: You can process a potential life event for an individual employee using the Process Event button in the Person Life Events window, Potential Life Events tab. See: Viewing a Person's Life Event Information.
If the Benefits Service Center function is setup, then you can also process an individual's active life event from the Desktop Activities list in the Benefits Service Center window. See: Online Benefits Administration (Advanced Benefits).
After processing employee terminations, Advanced Benefits customers run the Participation Process in life event mode to de-enroll a person from any compensation objects.
Note: You should set up the application to detect a life event based on termination. Standard Benefits users can de-enroll a terminated employee by processing an unrestricted enrollment or by running the Maintain Participant Eligibility process.
Because you define all benefits elements with a termination of Final Close, the HR termination process end-dates the person's benefits element entries based on the Final Process Date. However, the Participation process recalculates the element entry end date based on the activity rate end date code for a compensation object according to the following rules.
If the Participation process derives an element entry end date that is earlier than the date derived by the termination process, the Participation process resets the element entry end date to the new date.
If the Participation process derives an element entry end date that is earlier than the date of an existing payroll run result, the Participation process sets the element entry end date to the run result date.
If the Participation process derives an element entry end date that is later than the date derived by the termination process, the Participation process errors for that person. In this instance, an HR professional must reverse the termination and set the Final Processed Date to a future date.
Note: The Participation process only updates the end dates of element entries for elements attached to standard activity rates.
You select a run mode for the Participation process based when you are determining eligibility for a scheduled enrollment or an enrollment based on a life event. You can run the process so that results are not saved or so that results are saved to the database.
The following table describes the different batch process modes.
| Batch Process Mode | Description |
| Selection | Determines eligibility for selected persons for selected compensation objects, but does not create electable choices. You can use Selection mode when determining how many persons are eligible for a compensation object. You can choose to commit the eligibility results to the database or rollback the results of the batch process and not update the database. |
| Scheduled | Determines eligibility, electable choices, and enrollment information for selected persons for selected compensation objects based on a scheduled enrollment event. This mode also determines eligibility for the dependents and beneficiaries of eligible participants. |
| Life Event | Determines eligibility, electable choices, and enrollment information for selected persons for selected compensation objects based on a life event. This mode also determines eligibility for the dependents and beneficiaries of eligible participants.
Note: The Date Earned context for the formula type, Rate Value Calculations has changed from life event occurred date to either the life event occurred date or effective date which ever is later. |
| Temporal | Determines temporal life events based on the derived factors of compensation level, percent of full-time employment, hours worked in period, age, length of service, and combination age and length of service. Note: Life events created by the temporal process must be processed in life event mode. |
Each time you run one of the following batch processes the system creates an audit log if you set the Audit Log parameter to Yes:
Close Action Items Process
Close Enrollments Process
Default Enrollment Process
Participation Process: Life Event
Participation Process: Scheduled
Participation Process: Selection
Participation Process: Temporal
Temporal Communications (Action Item Reminder)
Temporal Communications (Emerging Events)
Temporal Communications (Enrollment Reminder)
Temporal Communications (Mass Mailing)
Audit log files accumulate until you purge them. You should periodically purge batch related tables to help the system run more efficiently.
If the audit logs become full, the application prevents you from running any of the processes which create an Audit log. Run the purge process, then restart the process which was interrupted when the log became full.
Note: By default, the application sets the Audit Log parameter to No.
The Participation Audit Activity Purge process protects ongoing activities by purging data only from completed batch processes. Purging the audit logs does not affect life event or election information.
You can purge the log associated with a single concurrent request ID or purge all logs that were created for a Business Group on a date you select.
The process purges data from the following tables:
BEN_REPORTING
BEN_PERSON_ACTIONS
BEN_BENEFIT_ACTIONS
BEN_BATCH_RANGES
You run the Life Event Back-out process from the Concurrent Manager when a life event has been started for a group of persons in error. For example, you might run this process if a salary increase is incorrectly applied to a group of persons, or if a transfer has been incorrectly processed for an organization.
You can back-out all kinds of life events, including:
Temporal life events (such as number of hours worked)
Scheduled life events (such as an open enrollment period)
Explicit life events (such as an address change or assignment transfer)
When you back-out a life event, the system marks all electable choices and related information, such as payroll contributions, dependent designations, and communications, with a status of backed-out.
Life events can be backed out that have a status of started or processed; you can only back-out a person's most recent life event.
You select run-time criteria to control the persons for whom you are backing out a life event. If you use person selection criteria, such as organization, the person must meet all the criteria you specify.
If you do not select person criteria, the process backs out the life event for all persons who experience the event within the date range you specify.
Note: Enter the same date in the From Occurred Date and To Occurred Date fields to run the life event back-out process for a single date.
You can view the results of the Life Event Back-out process in the Process Report. The Summary Report identifies the run-time parameters you selected and provides the total number of persons for whom the selected life event was backed-out.
Note: Use the Person Life Event window to back-out a life event for a single person.
You can purge person data associated with backed-out and voided life events to reduce the volume of data that you store.
See: Purging Person Data for Backed-Out and Voided Life Events