Employee/Human Resources Open Source Packages?

Linker3000 asks: "I'm a great fan of Open Source software (I just wish my programming skills allowed me to give something back) and I have already impressed my boss by implementing a company intranet based on eGroupware, our broadband connected servers are monitored by Nagios, staff can participate in online surveys using PHPSurveyor and they can also attend online learning using Moodle, but so far I have not found anything to take care of our Personnel/HR requirements - a simple tool that would keep employee details, allow the Web-based booking, signing off and tracking of holiday requests and act as a repository for personnel-level correspondence and activities between staff and Area Managers. I have had a look through Sourceforge, Freshmeat and Google without finding anything even near to ideal (there's a few things in various states of readiness and planning), so am I missing that 'one' Open Source HRMS (Human Resources Management System) that 'everyone talks about' or do I need to start looking at commercial apps? Either way, your advice and experiences would be appreciated."

Haven't seen any, but you could write your own

[Naikrovek]

If you have any SQL skills, and Perl or PHP, you could probably write your own in fairly short order.

at one of my previous employers, the new entry-level support guy wrote something just like this, just to teach himself Perl & SQL. His also included meeting room booking, and vacation autoresponders. It was his first foray into programming anything, and he did it in about two weeks.

Can't be that hard.

Web Calendar

[gavinjolly]

If you have put the total of your requirements in your post then your requirements are as follows:

• keep employee details
• allow the Web-based booking, signing off and tracking of holiday requests
• act as a repository for personnel-level correspondence and activities between staff and Area Managers

Think about using eGroupware. You already have it installed and know the application. Try to make it meet your requirements.

Can you add custom fields to eGroupware? If so you could store a lot of this information in there

eGroupware has a meeting request system. Could you use this as a leave request system. Employee enters in leave request, invites the approving manager, manager approves or rejects. From http://www.egroupware.org/?category_id=43 [egroupware.org]

* How can I allow my secretary to "manage" my calendar ? Manage means to eGW that the secretary has to be able to add appointments to your calendar and confirm them on your behalf. You have to grant the secretary read, edit and add access to your calendar. Go to your preferences and start Calendar / Grant access. Check read, edit and add for that user. Your secretary can then select your calendar in any view and add appointsments to it.* ...

Have a look at http://www.egroupware.org/acl [egroupware.org] as this would seem to allow you to meet the third requirement. You should be able to make this work.

If you could make eGroupware meet the HR requirements this would simplify things for you with less applications to run, less training required.

Gavin

Sysadmins should NOT be gods

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

And yes, I can get all of the information you list for anyone at any time. And change it. With almost no record that it was changed.

Then your system security and processes suck, you are incompetent, and your employer is probably being negligent in continuing to employ you.

There is a difference between

• being able to access and control all the systems
• being able to access and change all the confidential data without adequate checks and balances (such as knowing a separate password to access confidential employee information, or having proper, audited logs so someone will notice if you change anything in that category).

As a sysadmin, you only need one of these. As a responsible sysadmin, you should ensure that no-one can do the other.