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[Worker Activation] Guest Console Preboarding

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Novaworks AI | Novaworks portal (not ServiceNow) — Guest Console, HR Admin workspace, Core HR schema extensions

Major Change History

Version Date Author / Notes
1 2026-08-12 Ravi Buddharaju — Feature Set created from GitHub issue #317 and the Preboarding Guest Console PRD v0.5, fanning out into the two Features named on issues #322 (New Hire Persona) and #321 (HR Ops and Admin). Manager- and HRBP-facing readiness/insight capabilities from the two related PRDs excluded per PM direction — not in scope this quarter.

Business case

  1. What's broken, inefficient, or missing today? Pre-boarding at Ateko runs across disconnected systems with no unified workflow: recruiters fill ServiceNow HRSD forms manually, generate contracts outside the system, chase signatures by email, then re-key accepted-offer data into BambooHR. Contractors working on Ateko-led projects receive an Ateko identity and must complete onboarding, but today that's fully manual (BambooHR access, a hand-sent welcome email, a manually tracked contract) with no lifecycle support. Compliance-critical tasks — work authorization, tax withholding, background checks, benefits enrollment, direct-deposit setup, the four required policy signatures — are tracked in spreadsheets with no ownership clarity across HR, Payroll, IT, and Benefits. Acquisition integration is the single largest recurring strain: people from a prior acquisition were reportedly still not in Ateko's systems six months later.
  2. Who has the problem? New hires and candidates (the moment of failure: no single place to view, sign, or upload pre-boarding documents, no visibility into what remains before Day 1); Contingent Workers/contractors on Ateko-led projects (no HRSD lifecycle, no system reminder before a contract lapses); Recruiters (special-instructions context about a candidate is lost after the offer, with no structured hand-off); HR Ops/Admin (20+ pre-boarding tasks tracked by hand across four owners, no proactive signal when a task stalls, manual re-entry across BambooHR and HRSD).
  3. What's the measurable cost of not solving it? Compliance exposure on regulated pre-boarding tasks that go untracked; slow time-to-readiness for new hires and contractors; HR Ops burnout from manual re-entry across two disconnected systems; a poor first impression for new joiners who receive generic document packs with no way to confirm HR received what they sent; contract engagements that lapse because renewal has no system reminder.
  4. Value to customers. A single gated, external-facing console where every worker type (new hire, contractor, contingent worker, bulk-uploaded acquisition employee) completes policy signatures, document upload, and pre-boarding HR transactions before Day 1 — with automatic document classification, a sequenced task list, and an HR Concierge agent guiding them through it. HR Ops gets one dedicated workspace with a candidate-by-candidate view of readiness, deterministic tasks auto-created by configurable business rules, and non-deterministic tasks surfaced for assignment instead of tracked in spreadsheets.
  5. Value to Novaworks. Pre-boarding/onboarding is a recurring, high-friction moment named across every workforce type Ateko manages, and acquisition integration specifically is described as Ateko's single largest recurring operational strain — solving it durably is a concrete, demonstrable win for a fast-scaling, acquisition-heavy customer profile that Novaworks is targeting more broadly. It also gives the Core HR schema its first real external-facing (candidate, not just employee) surface, which the recruiter hand-off and REST API groundwork below is deliberately preparing for.
  6. Novaworks lens. A gated candidate portal with document upload and e-signature is table-stakes across HCM vendors. Novaworks' differentiation is: (a) an HR Concierge agent as the conversational front door over the task engine, rather than a static checklist; (b) automatic document classification into a personalized EDM instead of one-by-one manual labelling, sharing the same Nova Worker Document Management foundation (worker-document-management Feature Set) used elsewhere in Core HR rather than a bolt-on for this one console; (c) a deterministic/non-deterministic task split that lets HR Ops configure business rules per worker type instead of hand-customizing tasks every time.

Goal

Every new hire, contractor, contingent worker, and bulk-uploaded acquisition employee completes all pre-boarding policies, document uploads, and HR transactions in one gated Guest Console on the Novaworks portal before their Day 1 or project start — with HR Ops running the deterministic parts of that process from one dedicated workspace instead of spreadsheets.

Scope

The Novaworks portal (not the ServiceNow platform) hosts the gated Guest Console; the HR Admin workspace, deterministic task engine, and orchestration layer sit behind it. Extends the Core HR schema (worker/person pre-boarding record, a new structured special-instructions field for the future ATS hand-off) and depends on the Nova Worker Document Management (EDM) foundation from the worker-document-management Feature Set for document storage and classification. No new ServiceNow scoped-app table prefix is introduced by this Feature Set — see Open Question 1 on whether any of this belongs in a Core HR-scoped app at all.

Sources

  • Preboarding Guest Console PRD v0.5 (June 17, 2026) — primary source for this Feature Set's business case, personas, use cases, and all Feature content below.
  • HRBP Persona Canvas Experience PRD v0.4 and Manager Workspace PRD v0.2 — read for the connected-workspace context (both name the Guest Console as a data source) but not incorporated as Features here; see Related PRDs.
  • HRBP Persona Canvas Experience PRD v0.4 and Manager Workspace PRD v0.2 — both are separate, persona-specific agentic workspaces that consume Guest Console readiness data (HRBP's proactive nudges, Manager's live new-hire readiness view) rather than producing it. Both PRDs are heavily weighted toward conversational reporting/insight capabilities (vibe-coded views, proactive pattern-based insights, pinned dashboards) that are explicitly not in scope this quarter per PM direction. Nothing from either PRD is fanned into a Feature here; the Guest Console PRD's own Feature 9 (HRBP readiness involvement) and Feature 10 (readiness visibility) are excluded from this Feature Set for the same reason — see Open Question 1.
  • worker-document-management (this repo) — the EDM this Feature Set's document upload/classification and contract-renewal document-status-label capabilities depend on.

Who this is for

Persona / Role Friction today Value gained
New Hire / Candidate Receives generic document packs by email; no single place to view, upload, or e-sign pre-boarding documents; no visibility into what remains before Day 1; can't confirm HR received a signed offer. A gated Guest Console with an HR Concierge agent, a sequenced task list, and bulk document upload with automatic classification into a personal EDM.
Contingent Worker Onboarding is fully manual (BambooHR access, hand-sent welcome email, contract sent via BambooHR); contract renewals are tracked manually by the Account Manager with no system reminder, so an engagement can lapse. The same gated Guest Console experience, scoped to contractor policy; a time-bound re-entry invitation to sign a renewed contract before it lapses, with a clear status label distinguishing active from expired.
Recruiter Fills HRSD forms manually, generates contracts outside the system, and has no structured way to pass candidate-specific context (accommodation needs, unique offer terms, sensitivities) downstream. A one-step hand-off from the ATS into Novaworks carrying a structured special-instructions field, ready the moment the ATS integration (SmartRecruiters, expected end of Q3) lands.
HR Operations / HR Ops Tracks 20+ pre-boarding tasks in spreadsheets across HR, IT, Payroll, and Benefits owners by hand; no proactive signal when a task stalls; must customize tasks per worker type manually. A dedicated HR Admin workspace: deterministic tasks auto-created from configurable business rules by worker type, non-deterministic tasks flagged for assignment, and a clean candidate-by-candidate readiness view.
Manager No visibility into new-hire readiness until Day 1; relies on the HRBP or Account Manager informally. Phase 2 — out of MVP scope. The Guest Console PRD notes this cycle's behavior (readiness visibility, a notification when a hire is ready) is "sufficient for this cycle," with the full Manager workspace scoped in its own PRD — excluded here per PM direction.
HRBP Roughly a week's notice of incoming hires; onboarding/integration coordination is manual. Phase 2 — out of MVP scope. The HRBP Workspace PRD's readiness/proactive-nudge capabilities are excluded from this Feature Set — see Related PRDs.

What we are building

# Feature Folder
1 New Hire Preboarding Console new-hire-preboarding-console/spec.md
2 HR Admin & Deterministic Transactions hr-admin-deterministic-transactions/spec.md

Phasing, effort, and sprint/month targets are planning decisions — they live on the GitHub issues (#317, #322, #321), not here.

Table-Stakes & Differentiation

Table-stakes capability Bar set by Where we cover it
A gated candidate portal for document upload and e-signature before Day 1 Workday, BambooHR, Rippling — every HCM vendor in the reference competitor set ships some form of this Feature 1
Configurable, worker-type-specific onboarding task checklists BambooHR, Rippling, Gusto Feature 2
A single admin view of onboarding progress across candidates Workday, HiBob Feature 2

Differentiation. - An HR Concierge conversational agent is the candidate's front door into the task list, not a static checklist UI (Feature 1). - Document upload classifies and files into a personalized EDM automatically, sharing the same governed document foundation (worker-document-management) used elsewhere in Core HR rather than a console-specific bolt-on (Feature 1). - HR Ops configures deterministic task rules by worker type/jurisdiction once; non-deterministic gaps are surfaced for assignment instead of silently dropped or hand-built each time (Feature 2).

UX & Interaction Design

Not yet available. The Guest Console PRD references a flat MVP exploration in Figma (Nova Design WIP, Q3 exploration) that the PRD itself could not read directly; reconciling it against the agentic flows described in each Feature's spec.md is Open Question 1 on both Feature specs below.

Open Questions

# Question Blocks
1 This Feature Set is pre-boarding/onboarding work, which skills-product/naming-and-references.md's Core HR domain reference explicitly excludes from Core HR scope ("Core HR scope excludes: onboarding, offboarding, leave management, performance reviews"). It's being carried in specs-corehr anyway per explicit PM direction (2026-08-12) rather than waiting on a dedicated specs-worker-activation repo. Whether this Feature Set should later move to a dedicated repo if/when one exists; whether naming-and-references.md's stated Core HR scope needs updating to reflect this.
2 Which ServiceNow scoped app (if any) hosts the HR Admin workspace and deterministic task engine described in Feature 2 — is it x_novaw_corehcm, a new app, or does it stay entirely on the Novaworks portal alongside the Guest Console? Feature 2's Scope and schema-changes.md.
3 The ATS integration (SmartRecruiters) is not built this cycle — Feature 2 only stands up the special-instructions field and REST API endpoint. What's the actual trigger/timeline for the integration itself? Feature 2's Dependencies.
4 Contingent-worker contract-renewal payroll-data visibility depends on an open Ateko architecture review of contractor sub-types (per the source PRD). Feature 1 and Feature 2's contract-renewal acceptance criteria.

For internal engineering review only. Not for external distribution.

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