ESR Road Map Update
Release 33 was successfully deployed into ESR at the end of December 2016. With an improved design and user interface of ESR Self-Service and OLM functionality, Release 33 was the second stage of our ambitious Road Map plan to improve your ESR solution.
New branding and revised forms have given ESR a different look and feel, and whilst the fundamental processes and functions remain the same, some forms have significantly changed with new features added.
We are now working towards the next stage of the plan, with Release 34 scheduled for deployment at the end of March 2017. As with all releases into the ESR solution, Release 34 will be subject to successful testing and deployment.
ESR Portal is launched to our Beta Sites
On January 16th we began deploying the new ESR Portal to our Beta sites. This has been a very successful deployment across the eight sites with over 11,000 individual users accessing the Portal to date. This progress has enabled us to take on an additional three sites, from within our original Pilot cohort, in the last few days and they are also now progressing with their roll-out.
Our Functional Advisors are working closely with the sites, providing support and gathering their feedback on the new functionality and their experiences of interacting with the new Portal. This will enable us to ensure that all users will have the best possible experience of interacting with your new look ESR when we have completed the Beta phase of deployment.
“We are pleased to be going live with the new ESR Portal and confident that this will greatly enhance the user experience. Being involved in the development programme has been a great opportunity to help shape improvements to the system from a user’s perspective. We are an organisation that embraces the use of ESR for Employee, Supervisor and Manager Self Service and e-Learning and we welcome the developments. We are particularly looking forward to the simplification of eLearning to help increase our training compliance and the flexibility that the improved access will bring”. Amanda Rawlings, Director of People and Organisational Effectiveness, Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS Foundation Trust
Provisioning and Roll-out
Following the beta phase we will begin a controlled roll-out to provision all user organisations with access to the new Portal. This will commence in May and will be complete by the autumn of 2017.
As part of our planning, we have assessed individual organisations against a number of criteria:
- IT compliance against our MM-0100 standard – currently Internet Explorer 11 and Java 1.8.0_74 for full support;
- Employee Self Service Usage;
- Evidence collected from our user facing teams through tools such as the ESR Assessments and other interactions.
We will be writing to NHS HR and Workforce Directors to advise which roll-out Wave their organisation has been allocated to. However, if in meantime your HR Director feels that your organisation is in a position to roll-out the new functionality without needing on-site support, and they are confident that your organisation can meet our IT standards, then please encourage your HR Director to register this interest with us, by emailing esr.communications@nhs.net as it may facilitate an earlier provisioning date for you. To date, twelve HR Directors have requested an early provisioning date on this basis and we will manage future requests on a first-come-first-served basis.
Whether you request an early provisioning date, or accept the scheduled date, we will be providing support materials to support you and your teams, including set-up checklists and example communications from our Beta sites. However, in advance we encourage you to read the recently published I.T. guidance – this is particularly important for I.T. Departments and Providers. You can access the I.T. guidance on our website
Education and User Readiness
During February and early March the NHS ESR Team ran a series of Road Map Release 34 webinars. Webinar 1 focused on further user interface (UI) optimisations that will be delivered in release 34 and Webinar 2 focused on the new ESR Portal, providing information on how the portal can be personalised for an organisation or an individual. With representatives from Beta pilot sites sharing their first hand feedback on their experiences, the webinars were very popular with 638 participants.
As with Release 33, the ESR Education Team published the following HTML captivate lessons and User Guide on ESR Infopoint.
Education Materials
- Auto Enrol process User Guide
- Employee & Manager e-Learning lessons
- Administrator Self Service lessons
Portal education material is being developed to help users familiarise with the new portal functionality. We will be making this material available in advance of organisations going live with the portal, and further communications about this will be shared in due course.
If you have any questions about the Road Map please contact your NHS ESR Functional Advisor or Account Manager.