Staffing Industry Data Exchange Standards (SIDES)
Recommendation, 2006 Feb 28
Editors:
Kim Bartkus, HR-XML Consortium
Kathi Dolan, Manpower
Gail Bubsey, Kelly Services
Tara Ryan, Adecco
Barbara Johnson, Adecco
Contributors:
Bruno Alcotte (Manpower), Ian Anson (Vedior), Rémy Bailly (Randstad), Kim Bartkus (HR-XML Consortium), Yves Berdah (VidiorBis), PJ Brunyks (Randstadt), Gail Bubsey (Kelly Services ), Georges Chaboud (Adia), John DeRoche (Manpower), Kathi Dolan (Manpower), Serguei Dounaevetski (Manpower), Keith Ensroth (Kelly Services), Anne-Cécile Fénech (Adecco), Barbara Johnson (Adecco), Paul Kiel (HR-XML Consortium), Ronald Kruegel (Adecco), Jonathon Mack (Adecco), Magali Munoz (Manpower), Doug Prittie (Manpower), Nicolas Poujols (Kelly Services), Tara Ryan (Adecco), Don Simonson (Robert Half International), Steven Huang (Staffing Industry Sponsors), Barbara Theissen (Manpower), Jean-Philippe Umber (Adecco), Morgan Vernoux (Adecco)
Copyright statement
©2006 HR-XML. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Abstract
The HR-XML SIDES Workgroup has produced 7 major schemas and several reusable modules to allow for transmission of Staffing Industry information between trading partners. This document describes the Human Resource schema, its expected usage, and the business processes meant to be supported.
Status of this Document
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.
Table of Contents
1.2.1 Business Process Terminology
1.3 SIDES Schema Cross-reference
2 SIDES Business Process Overview
3 Implementation Considerations
4 Appendix A - Document Version History
5 Appendix B – Related Documents
1 Overview
1.1 Objective
The staffing industry (staffing companies) requires a compendium of XML schemas to enable the exchange of data between its staffing customers (hiring companies), intermediaries (vendor management services) and its own members. The Staffing Industry Data Exchange Standards (SIDES) comprises this compendium of relevant XML schemas, some already approved, some of which are cross process objects, and some newly created.
SIDES 1.1 reflects modifications to each of the individual schemas comprising the standard. The details surrounding those modifications can be found in the individual schema documents:
· Assignment
· Extended Time Card
· Human Resource
· SIDES Reusable Modules
· Staffing Action
· Staffing Invoice
· Staffing Order
· Staffing Organization (new)
· Staffing Worksite
· Education History (CPO)
· Job and Position Header (CPO)
Note that the Staffing Customer and Staffing Supplier schemas have been replaced by Staffing Organization. Although they are included in this release for backwards compatibility, they are deprecated and should not be used for new development.
1.1.1 Domain Issues
The cost of exchanging data between staffing suppliers (companies), staffing customers and intermediaries due to the diversity of existing front and back-office systems, and the need for many-to-many connections, is proving to be extremely high. SIDES offers a cost effective means of exchanging data over the Internet using XML, by standardizing data elements and attributes and the way they are exchanged. SIDES will assist in eliminating duplicate effort and streamlining processes and cross-company data exchanges. Through standardized XML data exchanges, staffing suppliers, staffing customers and third party vendor managers may share orders, assignments, resumes, etc.
It enables a common standard to be applied by large and small companies alike, yet does not impact upon the competitive differences between staffing suppliers.
1.2 Terminology
1.2.1 Business Process Terminology
The SIDES document describes the business processes involved in typical staffing transactions in general terms. Those reading this section are not necessarily interested in the technical aspects of SIDES or XML, but are more interested in the functionality that SIDES is intended to support. For this section, a language explanation is needed. XML schema and element names are used throughout the document. In cases where more than one noun word forms the title, each noun is joined, with each word starting with a capital (i.e. CamelCase).
· Staffing Supplier - This is the entity that provides a staffing resource, that is a suitable person, to fill a service need expressed by the customer or in some cases on behalf of the customer by the intermediary.
· Staffing Customer - This is the entity that has a servicing need, and is looking to use a person sent from the staffing supplier.
· Intermediary – Any business or product between the staffing supplier and a staffing customer, e.g. a vendor management service.
· Human Resource – The staffing resource employed or retained by the staffing supplier, who is sent to work at a staffing customer site.
1.2.2 Schema Terminology
XML schemas express shared vocabularies and allow machines to carry out rules made by people. They provide a means for defining the structure, content and semantics of the SIDES XML documents. The documents are the payloads that travel back and forth between trading partners.
This section describes the SIDES schemas. The eight major SIDES schemas include:
· StaffingOrder – information describing a staffing customer’s servicing need, e.g. position description, start and end dates, estimated bill rate. The StaffingOrder XML document moves from the staffing customer to the staffing supplier and this transmission marks the beginning of the business process addressed by SIDES.
· HumanResource – information describing a staffing resource employed by a staffing supplier e.g. their skills, experiences, cost. The HumanResource XML document moves from the staffing supplier to the staffing customer, usually in response to a StaffingOrder XML document.
· Assignment – information confirming the actual work agreed upon to be done, e.g. the agreed upon staffing resource to perform the work, and the agreed upon bill rate. This XML document marks the end of the order/selection section of the process, and the beginning of the actual work-performed section.
· Staffing Organization – information describing a staffing company, customer, or intermediary, e.g. government corporate identifier, billing or branch addresses and contacts, specific facility addresses, remit to data, and work environments.
· Staffing Action – request and response schema, e.g. interview request and response. The StaffingAction XML document moves in either direction between the staffing customer or intermediary and staffing supplier as required to provide a communication mechanism between these trading partners.
· Extended TimeCard – information showing the actual amount of time spent by the staffing resource performing work on the assignment over a particular time period. It also captures expenses. SIDES uses an extended form of the HR-XML schema TimeCard.
· Invoice – information associating the actual time expended as shown via the Timecard, with the bill rate, as confirmed in the Assignment.
Two types of reusable schemas are also identified within The SIDES reusable modules are specific to the SIDES domain. The non-SIDES reusable schemas are either cross-process objects, meaning they span all HR domains, or they are from another specific HR domain, such as recruiting.
· CustomerReportingRequirements – contains a list of items to allow for specialized reporting and data tracking, such as purchase order numbers, supervisor names, and department numbers. This list can be expanded as needed.
· Rates - defines pay rates, bill rates and expenses, based on the enumerations.
· ContactInfo – contains contact information such as the person name, postal address, contact method, and organization name.
· ResourceScreening - describes pre or post-hire screening data for a staffing resource. This reusable module allows the staffing company to report basic information about screenings or evaluations completed pertaining to the staffing resource. Privacy requires that only the fact that a screen or check was done, when it was done, and the generic result (requirement met or not met) is passed to the customer. Examples are credit checks, education verification, reference checks.
· StaffingShift – provides a mechanism for exchanging shift information between trading partners and within internal applications.
· DateTimeDataTypes – contains a variety of date and time data types, to allow for consistent use of date and times.
· EntityIdType – provides a method for uniquely identifying an entity, such as a person, position, organization, etc.
· PersonName – contains the formatted and non-formatted version of a person’s name.
· PostalAddress – contains the postal address.
· ContactMethod – provides the methods contacting an organization or person, such as phone number, e-mail, and postal address.
· WorkSite – contains common work site information, such as the work site name, parking instruction, and travel directions.
· WorkSiteEnvironment – contains common work environment information, such as physical considerations, safety equipment, and dress code.
· PositionHeader – contains common position information, such as the position title and description.
· Competencies – provides a mechanism to express skills, experience and/or training.
· Resume – allows for a structured or text resume, or a URL to a resume.
· ReferenceInformation - the Id's necessary to precisely identify schema components relevant to the content of the document containing the reference information. e.g. the StaffingOrder, Assignment, or HumanResource.
1.3 SIDES Schema Cross-reference
The matrix below shows the relationships of the schemas described in section 1.2. These are color coded as follows:
- Green: SIDES reusable modules
- Blue: CPO reusable modules
- Yellow: Non-SIDES, Non-CPO reusable modules (developed by other HR-XML domain workgroups). Details for these modules are not included in the SIDES 1.1 specification. However, a link to each specification may be found in Appendix B Related Documents.
1.4 Design Requirements
1.4.1 Vocabulary
The vocabulary developed for SIDES to describe stakeholders, business processes, and information modules has two goals:
· To ensure terms are generic enough to accommodate the variety of staffing models and scenarios that exist today as well as new scenarios that may exist in the future.
· To avoid name collisions with future data models that may better support specific types of staffing or recruiting scenarios.
Language used in the staffing industry is not standardized and may vary from company to company and industry category. For instance, while the terms “assignment” and “order” may be used interchangeably in a colloquial conversation, the two terms have separate and distinct meanings within the human resource management profession. SIDES utilizes clear and understandable terminology in all possible cases to minimize vocabulary misinterpretations.
1.4.2 Activity Diagrams
The activity diagrams show the actors, actions and schemas. The vertical swim lanes depict the boundaries across which XML transports data.
The activity diagrams are a summary of staffing processes. They do not include all of the actions or schemas but only those central to understanding the process.
1.5 Scope
SIDES supports seven independent payloads, plus the reusable modules described in section 1.2. It provides a full set of specifications for each payload, summarizes its purpose and dependencies, and indicates where each payload fits into the overall business process.
1.5.1 Major Components
Major components of the SIDES specification include:
· Models of supported staffing processes - By modeling supported business processes, the intent is to present an easy to understand context for implementing how data is likely to be exchanged. There is no intent to impose any particular recruiting and staffing model or process on those who implement SIDES whether in part or in full.
· Data dictionary - The data dictionary provide highlights of the schema specification including the element or attribute name, description, content model, and the restricted value list. The content model describes whether the entity is optional or required, as well as whether multiple elements with the identical name may exist. The restricted value list specifies what values are acceptable in the XML file for a specific attribute. The list enables the schema to restrict certain data to a single, clearly agreed upon contextual value.
· Schema diagrams – Shows a high level graphical view of the schema structure.
· Schemas - Schemas set constraints on the structure and content of the messages exchanged between stakeholders. The schemas define message payloads.
· Reference examples.
1.5.2 Items Within Scope
Business processes supported in SIDES include the ability to exchange:
· Order information between a staffing supplier and a staffing customer or their intermediary (StaffingOrder).
· Information describing a human resource between a staffing supplier and a staffing customer or their intermediary (HumanResource).
· Other basic request/response communication between a staffing supplier and a staffing customer or their intermediary (StaffingAction).
· Assignment information between a staffing supplier and a staffing customer or their intermediary. (Assignment).
· Timecard and expense information between a staffing supplier and a staffing customer or their intermediary. (Extended TimeCard)
· An Invoice between a staffing supplier and a staffing customer or their intermediary. (Invoice).
1.5.3 Items Outside of Scope
· Implementation guidelines for message delivery. See Implementation Considerations section within this document.
· Skills taxonomy.
· Selection and matching methodologies. (Performed by the staffing supplier(s) prior to the submission of a HumanResource XML document to a staffing customer or intermediary).
· Security - This responsibility resides with system integrators during implementation of data exchange systems.
· Post-assignment evaluation process. This may be a future SIDES consideration.
· Reporting. This may be a future SIDES consideration.
· Accounting and payment processes. This may be a future SIDES consideration.
· Background checks, drug screening, reference checks, etc. This is being developed by a separate HR-XML workgroup. SIDES provides for linkage.
· Payroll processing.
· Sub-contractor or Affiliate Vendor contracts. This may be a future SIDES consideration.
2 SIDES Business Process Overview
This overview of the staffing process is to clarify the main processes occurring between the staffing supplier, the staffing customer and the intermediary. Often the services of an intermediary (which may be part of a vendor management service) are not required, as the staffing supplier will deal directly with the staffing customer.
The staffing action consists of six main processes:
1. Quote and Order (StaffingOrder).
2. Submission and Selection. (HumanResource and StaffingAction).
3. Fulfillment. (Assignment).
4. Time and Expense capture. (Extended TimeCard).
5. Invoicing (Invoice).
6. Reporting (Currently outside scope of SIDES).
Within these processes there are additional sub-processes, described in later sections. Detailed UML activity diagrams are provided to chart these processes and sub-processes.
3 Implementation Considerations
3.1 ISO Standards
Country codes must conform to ISO 3166 Representation of Countries, which is a 2-character (A-Z) code. Use of currency must conform to ISO 4217 - Representation of Currency and Funds, which is a 3-character (A-Z) code. Days of the week must conform to ISO 8601; 2000(E), which is a numeric value starting with “1“ as Monday.
3.2 Entity Identifier
The SIDES version 1.1 specification employs the Entity Identifier convention defined by the HR-XML consortium. Identifiers are a convention borrowed from the database management system (DBMS) domain. The identifier concept provides a concise form of reference to a specific collection of data related to the identifier.
The identifier concept provides a meaningful reference only within a well-defined context. Database management systems commonly use an identifier as a primary key or as a unique identifier for a table. The DBMS ensures that an identifier is assigned only once within the table. Any reference to the table using a valid identifier value is assured to correlate to exactly one row in the table.
The SIDES 1.1 use of the entity identifier concept does not directly specify the context for the identifiers used beyond the XML schema in which they are defined. The specification does not directly specify a method to ensure that an identifier is used only once within that context. The specification does include an explicit assertion that the identifiers included in the specification rely on referential integrity between the XML schemata defined in the specification. For example, the HumanResource entity identifier defined in the Assignment schema is intended to reference a single HumanResource schema instance.
SIDES 1.1 relies on the Trading Partner Agreement (TPA) between two parties implementing the SIDES version 1.1 specification to define context and the referential integrity for the identifiers included in the specification. It is noteworthy that the SIDES version 1.1 specification sets the maximum cardinality for each identifier to many (max occurs = unbounded). This allows, but does not require, each trading partner to include their own identifier values for the entities defined in the specification.
3.3 Messaging
The SIDES 1.1 specification defines message content or payload. This version does not explicitly address implementation-specific issues for the exchange of these messages. One implementation-specific issue not directly addressed by the current specification is the message envelope mechanism. There are many message envelope mechanism options currently available. These include, but are not limited to the following:
· email attachments (no envelope)
· HTTP with SSL (no envelope)
· Open Applications Group Integration Standard (OAGIS) Business Object Document (BOD)
· Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)
· Rosetta Net
· Web Services
The specific intent of the SIDES 1.1 is, as much as possible, to facilitate implementation using any envelope mechanism, without dictating a specific implementation.
3.4 Enumeration Extensions
The attributes used within SIDES may contain a list of allowed values (enumerations) or allow any value as a string. In most cases, the enumerations are incomplete and require a method to extend the list. The following methods describe the purpose and extension for each attribute type. Additional details on extending schema are available in the TSC Extension document (see Appendix B – Related Documents).
Method 1: No Enumeration
Purpose: The value list for a specific attribute cannot be well defined.
Extension: None. The attribute will be defined as a string.
Method 2: Closed Enumeration
Purpose: The value list is complete and does not need extensions.
Extension: None.
Method 3: String Extension
Purpose: The value list is mostly complete but requires an extension.
Extension: The extension provides a standard list of values but doesn’t validate against the list.
Method 4: Pattern Extension
Purpose: The value list is mostly complete but requires an extension.
Extension: The extension provides a standard list of values, which is validated. Additional values must be prefixed with a “x:”.
4 Appendix A - Document Version History
|
Date |
Description |
|
2004-03-01 |
Initial Draft |
|
2004-04-19 |
Updated overview, implementation guidelines. |
|
2004-06-09 |
Added note about deprecation of staffing customer and staffing supplier. |
|
2004-06-16 |
Updated dependencies table. |
|
2004-Aug-02 |
Approved by membership. |
|
2006-Feb-28 |
Approved by Consortium |