Employee documents’ access based on country

Overview

In global organisations, employees sometimes see document types that are meant for another country (for example, Form 16 for non-India employees). This creates confusion in Employee Documents. 
With this update, admins can control Document Type visibility based on an employee’s country (work location), so employees only see relevant document types.

What’s new

A new setting is added in Manage document type to restrict access by country.

Path: Org → Documents → Employee documents → Settings → Document type → Edit document type 
In the Manage document type pop-up (above Form fields):

• Title: Allow access to employees based on country (work location)
• Sub-text: Select countries based on which employees could access this document type.

When this setting will appear

• This setting shows only if your tenant has 2 or more countries mapped in Work Locations.
• If your tenant has only 1 country, this setting will not be shown.

The dropdown will list countries based on the countries mapped to Work Locations in your system. 
Even if a country has no employees mapped, it will still appear in the dropdown if it exists in Work Locations.

Default setup (required)

• This is a required configuration.
• For all existing and new document types, the default is All countries (enabled).

How the setting works

Option 1: “Give access to employees of all countries” (default ON)

• Employees from all countries can access this document type (based on other folder permissions).
• If a new country is added later, it is automatically included.
• The country dropdown is disabled and shows: “All countries selected for document access”.
• Hover info: enabling this gives access to employees from all current and future countries.

Option 2: “Give access to employees of all countries” OFF

• The country dropdown becomes active with Select countries placeholder.
• Admins can select one or more countries using a multi-select dropdown.
• At least one country must be selected. If none are selected, show: 
  “Please select at least one country”
• If you manually select all countries and later add a new country, the new country will not be included automatically (use the checkbox for that behavior).

UI note: Country selection pills have a max length of 180px (truncate and show full value on hover).

What employees will see

Employee profile → Documents

• Employees can see only the Document Types allowed for their country (work location).
• If a folder has 0 document types relevant for an employee, the folder should not be shown to the employee.
• For admins, the folder should still be visible.
• The same rule applies to Pending documents in Employee profile → Documents.

Important exception (employee already has the document)

If a document was already added for an employee under a document type, the employee should still have access and visibility to that document even if country restrictions are changed later (or the employee’s country changes).

• Do not allow the employee to add new documents for that document type.
• Allow the employee to delete.

What admins will see (Org → Documents → Employee documents)

Document Types should not be visible even to admins for that employee if the employee’s country is not allowed, in these pages:

• Pending on employee
• Pending verification
• Verified documents
• Expiring documents

Also:

• Do not send expiry reminders for a document type if it is not accessible (not relevant) to the employee due to country restriction.

Task templates impact

If a Task template uses a Document Type that has country-based access restrictions:

Location criteria behaviour

• In task criteria, under Location, disable all locations that are not part of the allowed countries.
• Tooltip:
  • If the user has access to Employee document settings: 
    “Only locations of the countries allowed for the document type selected above are available for selection.”
  • If the user does not have access: 
    “Only locations of the countries allowed for the document type selected above are available for selection. Contact the admin with access to employee document settings for more help.”

Mandatory validation

• Location criteria becomes mandatory. If missing when creating the task, show: 
  “Location is required in criteria as the document type selected has country-based restrictions”.

Block saving when task templates don’t match the new scope

If a Document Type is already mapped to task templates whose criteria goes beyond the countries being added, block the update and show a pop-up:

• Title: Cannot save country-based access settings
• Message: Explain the mismatch and list all impacted task templates (only the ones beyond scope).
• If more than 5 tasks, show the list with scroll.

Bulk upload behavior

• Bulk upload should allow adding documents to employees irrespective of country restriction. Those documents should be visible to employees in their profile.
• In Imported documents, when moving documents to another folder from the employee profile, show only the document types that are allowed for that employee.

Migration and mobile

• Migration: After release, this setting will be added to all existing Document Types with All countries enabled by default.