NATCA Grievance Tracking System - Oracle APEX



NATCA Grievance Tracking System

FacRep Level User’s Guide

A Fully Functional Prototype by Bill Holtzman, ZDC Area 1

November 9, 2004

The NATCA Grievance Tracking System is an automated, Internet-based, and complete solution for storing, printing, and tracking of all NATCA grievances as well as providing automatic e-mail notifications and comprehensive but secure search capability of the entire grievance database.

Using the existing Internet demo

To try out the system, go to and click on Get a Demo Account. Here you can create a demonstration account. You will see this screen:

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Choose your access level and region and click the SUBMIT button. You will then see this screen:

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Fill out the information requested. You will need at minimum a last name, username (your choice), e-mail address, and facility. You will get an e-mail at the address entered, usually within five minutes, with your password and a link to the program. Use this link to get you to the login screen at the right.

Now you can login to the system. You will see the Summary screen below, showing the status of all active facility grievances facility. They are one of three categories:

1. Facility Level – this includes both informal and formal, although these may be separated in a later version.

2. Third Level – the grievance has been elevated or originated at the regional level.

3. Fourth Level – the grievance has been elevated or originated at the national level.

From this screen you can use either the tabs or the navigation links (upper right in red) to get around in the program.

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Entering a Grievance

To enter a new grievance, click the UNION button. You’ll see this.

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The fields that are required for a Union grievance are marked with a red star. The remaining fields are optional. Date Submitted can be entered later since many grievances may not be submitted right away. Since FAA Number, Received By, and Date Received will be filled in later, these don’t appear.

If the Employee Grievance button is selected, the following form appears.

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The required fields for an employee grievance are also marked with a red star. For either grievance, you have the option of specifying Censor Words that will be concealed when anyone outside of your facility views the grievance. Names and other information that you do not want made public should be entered in this field, separated by a comma. Once the grievance is entered, you can view the censoring by clicking on the View XXX button in either the Informal or the Facility Level grievance page (below).

Updating and Tracking Grievances

Click the Informal tab to see employee grievances that have not been made formal.

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Each grievance occupies one row of this table. From left to right, the first button you see is the EDIT button. You can use this button to retrieve a grievance in the format it was entered in and you can then edit it. You might correct an error, assign it to a new Rep, or change any other field. The top portion of the edit screen will look like this:

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In this example, the FAA response to the informal grievance has already been received (21-SEP-04), but the grievance has not been made formal. The Reply By date (11-OCT-04) is auto-generated by the program by adding 20 days to the Date Submitted, but it can be edited as well should you agree to an extension.

The grievance has not been made formal or it would not appear on the Informal screen. To make it formal, simply put a date in the Date Made Formal field on the edit page. The grievance will move from the Informal screen to the Facility Level screen.

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From either the Informal or the Facility Level page you can do just about anything you want with the grievance record. Red and yellow coloring shows you when deadlines are approaching or have been missed. Several text items are clickable to maximize functionality.

When the Agency replies, you can record that event using the EDIT button. This will show you the current grievance data fields. You can change these. Notification of any change you make will be e-mailed to anyone in the system having this grievance in their watch list or is watching all grievances at your facility.

You can also upload the Agency response. To do this you will need to first scan the Agency response, typically into a PDF file. Then click the number link in the “Attach” column associated with the grievance. This link tells you how many attachments there are in the database for that grievance. You will get the following window.

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This shows you the current attachments for this grievance. You can download them by clicking on the buttons. To upload your document, click UPLOAD and you’ll see this:

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Use the BROWSE button to select your attachment from your hard drive. Once you click SUBMIT your document will be accessible to credentialed users. You’ll then see your document and entry posted for downloading.

There are other actions you can take from these screens. If the grievance is to be elevated to third level, click the ELEVATE button. You will see this confirmation screen.

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The Facility Level and Informal screens also provide a means for printing out the pre-formatted grievance for paper submission to the Agency. Click the hypertext under Topic for this. You can then print out the grievance using the print function in Internet Explorer. There is one caveat, however. The default print settings show the web address in the page footer, as well as some other information in the header. You can eliminate or alter these settings very easily as described on the READ ME link on the SUMMARY page of this program.

Here is an example of the auto-generated Grievance Form.

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Before you elevate the grievance, the program requests that you print out the elevation letter, mail it, and upload an image of the letter to the online case file. Fortunately, this is a fairly simple matter because the program auto-generates the elevation letter. You can print it by clicking the VIEW button under “L3 Letter” in the Facility page. It looks like this.

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Once you confirm, the grievance will move to the 3rd Level page. An e-mail notification will be sent out. Now your RVP can get the entire case history and documents via the Internet. The addresses and other specific info that appear in this letter are facility-specific and can be changed via the red “Facility” link in the upper right corner of the screens. There is more on this towards the end of this guide.

If you click on the NOTES button associated with a grievance, you will see the following screen.

This screen is a basic log of activity on the grievance. Reps can record references or any other comments related to the case. The date and name stamps are added automatically.

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The final option from this page is the CLOSE button. This button enables you to close out the grievance via one of three ways.

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The grievance can be withdrawn, settled, or deleted. In any of the three, you would simply make a note explaining the action and then click the appropriate button. The delete option is for grievances that are entered incorrectly or do not make the grade for submission. In all cases, the data is archived.

The other pages that list grievances are 3rd Level and 4th Level. The 3rd Level page is very similar to the Facility page.

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In this case, the user SUPERREP has facility level rights. If the user had RVP level rights, there would be an EDIT and an ELEVATE button on each grievance. The 4th Level page is similar to the 3rd level, but only the National Office (NO) access level can edit grievances. The RVP level cannot access facility level grievances, and the NO level cannot access facility or regional grievances.

Searching the Database

Since the grievance text is stored in a database, it is completely searchable. Click on the SEARCH tab to see the following.

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In this screen you can enter phrases, words, or names and the results will show all grievances in which that exact text appears in the grievant, nature of grievance, or the corrective action fields. This does not work exactly like Google. Do not use double quotes or any other punctuation to specify an exact string of text, unless you are looking for that punctuation.

The system will only look for the exact series of characters you specify, but it is indifferent to letter case. The options enable you to limit the search to either current or archived grievances, as well as to limit the search to inside your facility or the entire national database. A local, current search will look like this.

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To see the details of the grievance, click VIEW. To see the comments on the case, click NOTES. The attachments page can be accessed by clicking on the number in the “Attach #” column. A local, archive search will look like this.

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In this case, there are a number of columns related to the circumstances the grievance was closed under and the DETAILS button replaces the NOTES button. Click the DETAILS button to see this.

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This includes both the notes page and the closing comments and outcome.

A current, national search will look like this.

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With any national search, sensitive information must be censored to protect individual privacy. There is no capability to view attachments, notes, or the grievant name. In addition, if you view the grievance the censor words will be enforced as shown.

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Where the censor words appear in the actual grievance they are replaced by XXXX.

The final option is an archived, national search.

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This is very much like the current, national search but with a few result fields. In all cases of national searches, the intent is for the user to identify relevant cases through the database and then contact the FacRep for more information about a particular grievance.

Watching Grievances

The final tab in the program is the “Watch List”. You can use this screen to get e-mail alerts on any record changes for a particular grievance at your facility.

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To add a grievance to your watch list, simply select it from the pull down list and hit SUBMIT. To remove it, click on the DELETE button next to the grievance. You can also get e-mail notifications on all grievances at your facility using the “Preferences” page.

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If you click “Yes” for “Send e-mail…”, you’ll get an e-mail for every change in every grievance at your facility. You can also use this screen to change your personal settings. The “Facility” screen lets you alter the facility data for the grievance and the third level.

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The final screen in the program is for feedback. Click on the “Feedback” link.

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This simply allows you to enter in feedback such as feature requests or performance issues.

© 2004 Bill Holtzman

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