Flexfields in Oracle HRMS

What is Flex Field

Types of Flex Field
Key Flexfields
Descriptive Flexfields
Key Flexfields in Oracle HRMS
Job Key Flexfield
Grade Key Flexfield
Position Key Flexfield
Cost Allocation Key Flexfield
Competence Key Flexfield
Soft Coded Key Flex field
Bank Details Flex Field
Person Analysis Key Flex Field
Collective Agreement Grades key flexfield
Training Resources key flexfield
Key Flexfield and Their Tables
Protected Flex Fields in Oracle HRMS

What is Flex Field

Every organization has its business entities and they want to assign some unique numbers in order to identify the
business objects. for exmaple, In Accounting system, it may be account number. In vehicle system, it might be vehicle
number. Likewise in human resource system, it may be employee number.

So in order to store such key information Oracle has provided dynamic structures to capture the key information as well
as their related additional information. This dynamic structure is called flex field.

Types of Flex Fields

Oracle has provided following two types of flex fields
Key Flexfields
Descriptive Flexfields.

Key Flexfields

These flexfield contain unique information of your system. Some of Key flex fields are needed at the time of setups
while others are optional. They appear on Oracle forms as normal text fields for data entry.
Key flex fields can also be referred as unique combinations of codes that we use to identify the business entities.
Following is the navigation for defining the key flex fields
Responsibility: Application Developer
Navigation: Key->Segments
Following is the screen to define the flex fields

Descriptive Flexfields
Every enterprise has specific requirement to store some information which is specific to their business or environment.
Such requirement can be met by fields that is designed by yourself. Oracle HRMS provides a flexible mechanism called
descriptive flexfields to enable you to add fields to application windows.
All window blocks in which you can enter information contain a user definable descriptive flexfield. You decide in which
blocks you want to record additional information. Each such user definable descriptive flexfield has 20 segments that
you can define. After you define a descriptive flexfield, Oracle HRMS treats the segments as part of the window.
The following figure illustrates the distinctive appearance of descriptive flexfields. When users click in a flexfield that
you have set up, or choose Edit Field from the Edit menu, a window opens, displaying up to 20 segments that you have
defined.
The way in which descriptive flexfield windows open is controlled by the Flexfields:Open Descr Window profile option. If
this option is set to Yes, the flexfield window automatically pops open when the user navigates to the field. If it is set to
No, users can open the flexfield by choosing Edit Field from the Edit menu or pressing CTRL+L. The default is Yes.
DFF appears on your form as a two-character-wide text field with square brackets [ ] as its prompt. When we click on
these two lines, They appear as as a pop-up window that contains a separate text field and prompt for each segment.
Each segment in the descriptive flexfield has a name and a set of valid values.
Following is the navigation for defining the Descriptive flex fields
Responsibility: Application Developer
Navigation: Descriptive->Segments
Following screen opens

Types of Descriptive Flexfield Segments

There are two types of segments that we can define for DFF:

Global segments: If we define global segments they will always appear in the window.
Context-sensitive segments: These segments appear only when a defined context exists. If we define context-sensitive
segments, application prompts the user to provide the context or alternatively you can provide the context from a reference
field in the same block.
For example, a segment holding information about an employees disability might appear only when the Disabled field is
checked.

Tip: Some descriptive flexfields appear in more than one window. For example, the Additional Evaluation Details flexfield
appears in the Job Evaluation window and the Position Evaluation window.
Check all of the windows that use a descriptive flexfield before you define any of the segments. This is especially important if
you intend to make the flexfield context sensitive to another field. You must ensure that the reference field is present in all of
the windows that use the flexfield.

Famous descriptive flex fields are following

Additional Personal Details

Additional Position Details
Additional Job Details
Additional Element Entry Information
Additional Grade Details
Additional Position Details
Extra Person Information

For a full list of available descriptive flex fields you can click

Key Flexfields in Oracle HRMS

There are some mandatory flex fields and some optional key Flexfield Structures in oracle HRMS. Following is the list of
mandatory KFFs that you must define before you can define a Business Group in Oracle HRMS.
These are:

Job
Position
 Grade
People Group
Cost Allocation
Competence

There are other key flex fields which are optional and can be used as per business requirement. Names of those flexfield are

Soft Coded Key Flex field

Bank Details Flex Field
Person Analysis Key Flex Field
Collective Agreement Grades key flexfield
Training Resources key flexfield

In order to use the flexfield, you should carefully identify the requirement and need of each flex field and specify the following
details for each of the flexfield:

Structure Name
No of Segments in each flex field structure
Flexfield Qualifiers
The Flexfield Value Sets to be used for any of the segment

Note: All flex fields can have only one structure per business group except the Personal Analysis and Collective Agreement
Grades key flexfields. They can have an unlimited number of structures.

The protected key flexfields are the Soft Coded Legislation key flexfield and the Bank Details key flexfield

Job Key Flexfield

Job is a generic name of role that employees in your organization will be performing. Jobs vary depending on the nature of
business of your enterprise. You should decide whether you want to use simple names and codes, or multi-segment job and
position names to hold more information.

Simple Job Structure can be of one segment merely containing the name of job or we can add the job group segment or job
family family as part of job flex field.

simple example of job flex field could be Programmer, Clerk, Manager

Grade Key Flexfield

Grade flexfield allows to define grade structure in oracle hrms. It is important to define this flexfield before you define business
group. There is one Grade flex field per business group. You associate these structures with a Business Group in the Business
Group Information window, which opens from the Organization window.

Position Key Flexfield

Poisition is specific instance of a job. Like wise Job, there is one structure for position flexfield.
This structure can be used to configure position flexfield as per your enterprise requirement. You
define one position flexfield per business group and this can be associated with business group
when you go to business group form and click Others and select the business group information
window. It can have 30 segments
.
Cost Allocation Key Flexfield
Only 1structure per BG is defined for this flexfield its strcture can contain 30 segments.
Flexfield qualifiers are used to configure the level at which user can enter the costing information. There are 5 levels at which
costing can be configure.
These levels are following

Element Entry Level (Highest Priority)

Assignment Level
Organization Level
Payroll Level
Element Link Level (Lowest Priority)
Competence Key Flexfield

This flexfield is used to store the competencies of employees in your enterprise. You can create simple or complex
competency model depending on your need.

This flexfield is needed for performance management module and you define competencies for performance management and
records and manage appraisals of employees through oralce system.

Simple example of competency flex field is Competency category, competency name

Soft Coded Key Flex field

It holds the legislation specific information. Structure of this key flexfield depends on legislation of the BG for which it is being
defined. It is the role of Localization team to identify the segments that should be used for this flexfield.

Qualifiers are used to determine the level at which each segment is visible. Therefore, you may be able to enter information
specific to your legislation at one or more of the following levels:

Business Group Organization window

Payroll Payroll window
Employee Assignment Assignment window

Bank Details Flex Field

This flexfield holds legislation-specific bank account information. The legislation of your BG determines the flexfield structure
that you see. Each localization team defines a flexfield structure that allows you to record the bank account information
relevant to your legislation. You enter this information in following places

Organizational Payment Method window

Personal Payment Method window.

Person Analysis Key Flex Field

This is an optional key flex field structure in oracle hrms. It allows you to define number of Special Information Types (SITs) for
people.

Each SIT is defined as a separate flexfield structure for the Personal Analysis Flexfield. In every enterprise there are different
types of information that they would like to store in oracle so these structures can be used to capture such information.

Example of such cases could be to hold information like

Medical Details
Passport Details
Medical Insruance Details etc

Collective Agreement Grades key flexfield

Use this flexfield to record the grade factors which are defined within a collective agreement in Oracle HRMS. A Collective
Agreement Grade is defined by a combination of values that you enter using grade factors. A grade factor is a user-defined
field that you set up as part of the grade structure in the Collective Agreement Grades (CAGR) key flexfield.

N Number of grade structures can be created for the Collective Agreement Grades Rate (CAGR) key flexfield.

Grade structure must be created first before using it in collective agreements. Collective Agreements created in oracle hrms
can be linked with grade structure once it (Grade Structure) is created and later you can record the required factor values
against each reference grade. Each structure can have 20 segments and every segment refers to a grade factor available as
part of grade structure.
This is an optional structure. You can start using oracle HRMS even if this flexfield is not configured in your system.

Training Resources key flexfield

This flex field belongs to Oracle Learning Management (OLM) module and is configured if you want to define the object related
to OLM. Any resource that is needed for training is considered a resource in OLM. You can define different training resources
using this flexfield strcuture.

Example of some of the resources are

Venue
Trainer
Rooms
Laptops

Key Flexfield and Their Tables

Full details of KFF and their tables can be found from Oracle Link
Protected Descriptive Flex Fields in Oracle HRMS
Note: There are two Key Flex field and six descriptive flex fields which are protected by oracle. You cannot modify them. Your
localization team determines which of these flexfields are required for your legislation, and what segments they should
contain. Ensure that you select the appropriate legislation code when you define your Business Group so that you can see
these flexfields.

Following is the list of protected DFF in Oracle HRMS

Protected Key Flexfield are

Soft Coded Legislation Key Flexfield

Bank Details Key Flexfield

Warning: Do not attempt to alter the definitions of these protected flexfields. These definitions are a fundamental part of Oracle
HRMS. Any change to them may lead to errors in the operating of the system.

It is possible that Oracle HRMS will use other segments of these flexfields in the future. Therefore, do not add segments to
any protected flexfield. This can affect your ability to upgrade your system in the future.