So, you’ve decided to implement Vista Onboarding! Congratulations! Your first step will be to enter a new Jira ticket requesting information about Vista Onboarding. From here, you’ll team up with one of our implementation specialists who will help guide you through this process.
Before diving in, your project team will discuss the project timeline and scope. This includes considerations such as: the basic onboarding workflow for your organization, the origin of onboarding employees (Vista Recruiting, Vista New Hire, etc.), the data you need to capture as part of the onboarding process, forms that should be filled out by new employees using Vista eForms, whether to leverage one of our Vista eSign integrations to collect electronic signatures on these forms, and more.
We’ve identified five onboarding project phases to guarantee a smooth rollout:
Onboarding Invitation Planning
This phase focuses on the invitation that kicks off the onboarding cycle for your new hire. First, you’ll discuss where the onboarding record originates. If you use Vista Recruiting and the external applicant Career Center, your new hire will already have an applicant record. Otherwise, you can begin by manually entering data into the Vista New Hire Wizard. Once the onboarding record is created, the new hire will be sent an email invitation to register for your onboarding portal. During this phase, you will compose the invitation email and decide whether the system should automatically send invitations. Identify the team member(s) who will be involved in kicking off this invitation and monitoring the new hire’s progress.
Onboarding Experience Configuration
During this phase, you will be primarily working within the Onboarding setup tables in HR Management. Vista Onboarding is delivered with a variety of predefined steps that can be modified to best fit the needs of your organization. Your project team will choose which of the delivered onboarding steps will be used and the order they will be presented. Once you decide what to include, you can modify the onscreen instructions within each step to fit your needs. Then, decide how each new hire will experience your onboarding portal by defining steps based on the their assigned company, department, work location, and more.
Onboarding eForms Setup
Next, you’ll identify the forms that new hires should complete during the onboarding process. Vista eForms allows you to collect data through fillable PDF forms. Clients using one of our eSign integrations can also configure any of these forms to be signed electronically. Vista eForms is included with the base system, and we offer eSign integrations you can use with your corporate Adobe Sign or DocuSign license.
This phase consists of three main steps:
- Design: First, you’ll define your forms so they’re ready for electronic data collection (and, if desired, signatures).
- Test: Once everything is configured, your project team will test each form to ensure that the data is captured appropriately and flows into Vista where applicable. If any data from the database is being used to populate a form or portions of it, this will also be tested.
- Integrate: Finally, these forms will be integrated directly into the onboarding steps that were established in phase 2.
Onboarding Portal Branding
Now that everything is configured, it’s time to add branding to your onboarding portal! In this phase, the onboarding portal will be styled for desktop and mobile users. These updates will reflect your corporate branding by incorporating your logo, color scheme, and other important information for your new hires (such as the FAQs section or an introductory video).
Onboarding Testing & Training
Finally, we’re ready to bring everything together! The project team will perform the final testing on your personalized onboarding portal. This involves walking through all of the onboarding steps you created (for desktop and mobile) to make sure the onboarding experience fits your vision. This project phase also includes training every member of your organization who will be involved in the onboarding process.
This article is part of our ongoing series on Vista Onboarding. If you missed the introductory article, click here to check it out.
Emily Harris
Documentation Specialist II | PDS
Andrew Bieler
HCM Implementation Specialist | PDS
TeddiAnne Krehbiel
HCM QA Specialist | PDS