What is a Touchpoint in Oracle Cloud HCM
Touchpoints is a new self-service module by Oracle, designed to create a consistent channel of interaction between managers and employees. Oracle Touchpoints empowers employees to express their opinions and ensures that their voices are heard. Managers use this platform to regularly connect with their team members, understand their feelings through surveys, and establish check-ins for ongoing discussions.
Oracle Fusion Cloud Touchpoints is a separate product that can be purchased individually, and it’s considered a part of the Oracle Talent Management family. In this article, we will provide you with a comprehensive understanding of this new product, including detailed steps to set up the following features:
1. Configuring & Scheduling Recurring Check-ins – Discussed in this article
2. Requesting and Providing Feedback
3. Configuring and Using Pulse Surveys
4. Configuring and Using Nudges
Roles You Need For Touchpoints
If you are using seeded roles like Employee, Line Manager and Human Resource Specialist, you dont need to worry much about the roles/privileges you need for touchpoints, however, if you are using custom roles or the copy of seeded roles, ensure that following duty roles are added to respective roles
| Roles | Duty Role Name | Duty Role Code | Duty Roles Description |
| Employee | Access Touchpoints by Worker | ORA_HRE_ACCESS_TOUCHPOINTS_BY_WORKER | Allows workers to access their own touchpoints. |
| Line Manager | Access Touchpoints by Manager | ORA_HRE_ACCESS_TOUCHPOINTS_BY_MANAGER | Allows managers to access touchpoints for the workers who report to them. |
| Human Resource Specialist | Nudge Configuration | ORA_PER_NUDGE_CONFIGURATION_DUTY | Allows the user to configure nudges. |
You can go through following articles if you are new to role concepts in oracle cloud HCM
- How to Create a Custom Role and Assign a Data Role?
- Learn Oracle Fusion role concept with examples
- Oracle Fusion Role Based Security Demystified
Profile Options For Touchpoints
If you have got newly provisioned environments you may not need to enable any profile options. To check if touchpoints are already enabled you can follow any of the navigation below to confirm it.
- Employee Navigation : Me » Touchpoints
- Manager Navigation : My Team » Touchpoints
- HR Navigation : My Client Groups » Quick Actions » Nudge Configuration
If you dont see Touchpoints app, you need to enable profile option – ORA_HRE_ENABLE_TOUCHPOINTS. To enable profile option, follow below navigation.
- Search for the task Manage Administrator Profile Values.
- Search for the profile option code : ORA_HRE_ENABLE_TOUCHPOINTS
- Change profile option value to Yes
- Click on Save and Close button.
Please note that Touchpoints is built on the new Redwood page design, which functions exclusively on mobile-responsive pages. As of today, most customers have already transitioned to responsive mobile pages. However, if you haven’t, you will also need to activate this one more profile option: HCM_RESPONSIVE_PAGES_ENABLED.
Once you have taken care of required profile options, log out and login back, you should be seeing Touchpoints app.
Configure Touchpoints Check-In
We are done with prerequisite setups required to enable touchpoints features. Next, we will explore touchpoints functionality one by one. The first thing we are going to cover is Check-in templates for touchpoints.
Check-in template is not a new concept in oracle talent management suits, we have already covered this in detail in this article » How to Configure and Use Check-In Performance Document? concept remains same, the only difference is adoptability and use case. If you are new to check-in concept, we suggest to go through that article as well.
To configure Check-in template for touchpoints, follow below navigation
Navigation : My Client Groups » Performance » Check-In Templates
Before we create any new template, let’s check if we already have any touchpoint template already configured. This is important because, you can only have one template active at the time.
On the Check-In Templates page, in the Search section change the value for the filed Template Type to Touchpoints and click on the Search button. If you see any result in the Search Result section, template for touchpoint is already configured, you can click on that template name to open it and verify the setup.
For this article, we assume that no template is configured and to create a new one, please follow below steps
- Click on Create button in the search result section
- Change Template Type to Touchpoints
- Enter name as AP Touchpoint Check-In
- Enter comments as to demonstrate check-in functionality for touchpoints
- From Date would default to todays date
- To Date defaults to 31st December 4712
- Review Periods is set to All Review Periods
- Change the Status to Active
- In the Check-In Content section General Discussion Topics is already enabled. If you wish to, you can also enable following options, for this exercise, enable all options.
- Performance Goals
- Development Goals
- Anytime Feedback
- Requested Feedback
Once you are done, click on Save and Close button and template ready to use.
Please note, as stated earlier, you can only have a single check-in template active at any point of time. If there is one already active, you will encounter following error
Experience Touchpoints
We have successfully configured check-in template for touchpoints, we will now go through the touchpoints steps that employee and manager can go though to experience check-in template that we just created.
As soon as template is created, it is available to all employees and managers immediately as there is no concept of associating eligibility profile with the template and also we dont need to run any process to make it available for employees or managers. The template we have configured can be used by both employee and manager.
Manager Exploring Touchpoint
First we will login as a manager and see what touchpoint has to offer in terms of check-in functionality. At this point of time we assume you have already gone though check-in document article we discussed earlier so that you understand why do we use check-ins.
Navigation : My Team » Touchpoints
Here is the description of the touchpoint page you see
- Scroll down of the page and you will see two tabs Summary and Employees. Click on Summary tab if its not already clicked. This tab provides a quick summary to the line manager about all touchpoint functionality and progress he is making.
- On the top you see a header – Touchpoints Summary, beneath that it shows whose team’s summary you are viewing. By default it shows summary of your own team but you can change it by clicking Switch Team and and view summary of any other managers down in your reporting hierarchy. In the summary section you get details about following things
- Team – Average interaction
- Organization – Average interaction
- Team – Average Check-ins
- Organization – Average Check-ins
- This summary helps to understand how are you doing in comparison with organization.
- As the touchpoint is all about interaction with you team, it shows that in the summary section.
- Down you see another header Pulse score comparison, where you get pulse score from your team. Pulse is another great functionality of touchpoints, which is discussed in this article » Learn to Configure and Use Touchpoints Pulse Survey
- Right side you also see another header – Check-Ins, there you see any check-ins you have to complete in the current month.
- Scroll down further and you will see these headings as well
- Team Pulse Score
- Upcoming Check-Ins
- Overdue Check-ins
- Click on Employee Tab to explore what all actions you can perform on employees using touchpoint module.
Schedule Check-In For an Employee
Once you click on Employee tab, you can see all your team members. For each employee, you can also see if there is any check-ins already scheduled for them.
To schedule a new check-in you can either click on the employee name or click on the Action menu (three dots) against employee name as shown in the above image and you will see following options
- Schedule Check-In
- Send Feedback
- Request Feedback
- Celebrate Events
First options that is to Schedule Check-in we are going to cover in this article, but other three options, read this article » Learn to Request And Provide Feedback Using Oracle Touchpoint
To schedule a check-in, click on the first option Schedule Check-In, which will take you to Check-in schedule page. On this page enter details as follows
- Date : Leave the date to current date or change it to any future date, you want to start scheduling check-ins
- Frequency : default value is Never, which means you want to create an ad-hoc check-ins. But if you want to schedule a recurring check-ins, click on this filed and you get following option.
- Day
- Week
- Calendar Month
- Year
- Frequency : Let’s say we want to schedule a weekly check-in. Select value Week and you will notice a side panel “Check-In Recurrence” popping out. Enter details as follows in that side panel window
- Start on Date : Todays date
- Repeat : Week
- Day of Week : Monday (or select today’s day)
- End Recurrence : Number of occurrences
- After this many recurrence : 4
- Click on Save
Scroll down further to Build your agenda section. In this section you add discussion topics for your recurring check-ins. Enter details as follows in this section
- Enter a discussion topic : Discuss weekly progress and area of improvements
- Click on Add button
You can repeat above steps to add any more discussion topics. You can also add Performance Goal, Development Goals and Feedback as review topic for check-in discussions. To add them, click on View Recommended Topics button and a new side panel will open, which will have following three tabs
- Insights : Here you will see some system generated insights which comes Nudge, which is another Touchpoint functionality and explained in this article » Learn to Configure And Use Oracle Touchpoint Nudge
- Goals : Through this tab you can add your current active performance and development goals as your discussion topics. Click on this tab and see if there are any current active goals for the employee you have selected, if there are any, click on the + icon to add them.
- Feedback : You can add any feedback you have received in the past. Click on this tab and see if there are any feedbacks available for the employee you have selected, if there are any, click on the + icon to add them. To see how feedback is requested read this article » Learn to Request And Provide Feedback Using Oracle Touchpoint
Once you enter details from the side panel, click on the x button to close it and you will be back to Check-in schedule page.
Scroll up and click on Schedule button to schedule check-in, and you will get a confirmation message Recurring check-in scheduled. You can now see the Next check-in date against that employee.
Employee Exploring Touchpoint
We have seen what Touchpoint has to offer to managers, now it’s time to explore from employees prospective. Log out and login as an employee for whom you have scheduled check-in and follow below navigation
Navigation : Me » Touchpoints
You will notice that employee has received a bello notification for the recurring check-in, which reads like “Abc scheduled a recurring check-in with you.” You can click on that link to open it and see more details. For now, you close that notification and come back to Touchpoints page.
This is what you will notice on this page
- Unlike managers there are no tabs like Summary and Employees
- On the top you will see following two buttons
- Actions
- Schedule Check-in
- If you click on Actions button you will see following three options
- If you click on Schedule Check-in, you can schedule an ad-hoc or recurring check-in same way what we have just seen through manager login. If you don’t believe, click on that button to review the page and then click on Cancel button to come back.
- You will notice following sections on Touchpoints page for employees
- Pulse score for : You will see your pulse score. Read this article to understand how pulse survey is created and used in oracle Touchpoint » Learn to Configure and Use Touchpoints Pulse Survey
- Recommendations for you : Any check-in you have to complete
- Events and interactions : Here you see all events (scheduled check-ins) and any events planned in the timeline manner.
Explore Events and interactions section
Scroll down to this section and you will notice a timeline for recurring check-ins we had just scheduled from manager login. Click on that first first occurrence which will have entries like “0 of 4 topics discussed”
Once you click on that, it will take you to Recurring Check-in page. If you want, you can add new discussion topics. Enter details as follows in the Agenda section
- Enter discussion topic : Challenges with return to office call
- Click on Add button to add discussion topic.
You can repeat above steps to add few more discussion topics.
You will notice that Delete icon is only available for the discussion topic that you have added. You cant delete any topic added by your manager.
Click on the expand button available next to Delete icon for the discussion topic added by your line manager “Discuss weekly progress and areas of improvement”
In the employees note section enter following comments : Thank you for the in-depth discussion; it was incredibly insightful. I will definitely take into consideration the improvement suggestions we talked about today and work on implementing them.
Toggle the button “Mark as discussed” for this discussion topic.
Likewise you can update other discussion topics and finally scroll up and click on update button. With this we have seen how touchpoints check-in works.
Touchpoints Questions and Clarifications
And that concludes our configuration and demonstration of Oracle Cloud HCM Touchpoints functionality. We trust that you found it valuable and enjoyable. If you have any questions or need further clarification, please don’t hesitate to post your queries on our partner site, hcmfolks.com. We’re here to help!
What to read next?
To have a holistic view of oracle Touchpoint functionality we recommend to read following articles next
