2. Grace Periods

At times, you may want to introduce a grace period into the automated processing of Offboarding. Grace periods enable a “pause” in the processing, which can be helpful to catch errors or inadvertent Offboarding. As noted earlier, three of the Offboarding patterns allow for a grace period: Expiration, Resignation, and Retirement.

Grace periods are optional. The duration of grace periods can vary according the many factors, including the affiliation of the individual, the termination type, and the service to which the grace period is applied (email, wikis, etc). As far as COmanage is concerned, the Grace Period status must be the longest of an individual’s eligible grace periods.

Implementing a Grace Period

The recommended way to implement Grace Periods is with two Expiration Policies (should this be “Offboarding Policies”? There is a particular pattern (policy?) for Expiration-style Offboarding, but Grace periods seem to apply also to Resignation- and Retirement-style Offboarding Policies):

1. First Expiration Policy: Before the Grace Period - This policy would include Conditions (steps?) that would occur prior to the start of the Grace Period. These steps would generally involve Days Before Expiration being blank and Status being Active, with optional filters for COU and Affiliation. The key Action would be to set Status to ‘Grace Period’.

2. Second Expiration Policy: After the Grace Period - This policy would include the steps that would occur after the Grace Period. This policy would execute on items that have a Status of ‘Grace Period’ as the key Condition (thus effectively chaining to the first [Expiration] Policy), along with Days After Expiration set to the number of days in the Grace Period. The Actions would then be set appropriately, such as setting Status to Expired.