FEATURE SPEC¶

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New Hire Preboarding Console¶

Novaworks AI | Novaworks portal — gated Guest Console (candidate-facing)

Parent Feature Set: ../concept.md.

Major Change History¶

Version	Date	Author / Notes
1	2026-08-12	Ravi Buddharaju — Initial draft, derived from the Preboarding Guest Console PRD v0.5 and GitHub issue #322. Split from the PRD's HR-Ops-facing capabilities, which live in the sibling `hr-admin-deterministic-transactions` Feature.

Problem Statement¶

New hires, contractors, and contingent workers today receive generic document packs by email with no single place to view, sign, or upload pre-boarding documents, and no visibility into what remains before Day 1 or their project start date. They can't confirm HR actually received a signed offer, and the relationship with their eventual team starts cold. Contractors specifically go through a fully manual process today — BambooHR access, a hand-sent welcome email, a contract sent via BambooHR — with no lifecycle support, and contract renewals are tracked by the Account Manager with no system reminder, so an engagement can lapse before a new contract is signed.

Use Cases¶

Use Case 1: A new employee is hired and Novaworks creates their pre-boarding record. Today they'd receive a generic document pack by email with no way to track progress; here they receive a gated Guest Console invitation, meet the HR Concierge agent, see a sequenced task list, read and sign the four required policies in policy-determined order, sign the offer, and bulk-upload supporting documents that the system classifies into their personal EDM — all before Day 1.

Use Case 2: A contractor (contingent worker) on an Ateko-led project is set up in the console scoped to contractor policy. Today this is handled manually (BambooHR access, hand-sent welcome email, contract sent via BambooHR, no HRSD lifecycle); here they sign internal policies, complete onboarding tasks, and store documents in their EDM through the same gated console experience, before the project start date.

Use Case 3: During a merger or acquisition, a batch of employees is bulk-uploaded into the console at once. Today each person is manually entered into BambooHR and HRSD one at a time — the strain the source PRD names as Ateko's single largest recurring pre-boarding pain; here each receives a personalized gated experience to complete policies, documents, and transactions before their effective start.

Use Case 4: A contractor's contract nears its end date. Today the Account Manager tracks this by hand with no system reminder and an engagement can lapse; here the contractor receives an expiry notification and re-enters the console through a fresh, time-bound gated invitation to review and sign the renewed contract, which is auto-stored in the EDM and supersedes the prior version.

Use Case 5: A new hire has only a temporary version of a required document (e.g. a temporary license) and is waiting on the original. Today there's no way to flag this without it looking silently incomplete; here they upload the temporary document, attach a message explaining the original will follow, and the system files it in the EDM flagged as pending replacement and notifies HR Ops.

Scope¶

Gated Guest Console on the Novaworks portal. A secure, time-bound, external-facing console (not ServiceNow) — access expires after a configurable window. Single destination for new hires, contractors, contingent workers, and bulk-uploaded acquisition employees to complete policies, documents, and HR transactions before Day 1.
Candidate task list with sequenced read-and-sign. Each candidate sees what's left to complete, with documents ordered by policy or deterministic task rules (e.g. Security Policy and handbook before the employment contract). Progress and next steps are always visible.
Bulk document upload with automatic classification into the EDM. Candidates bulk-upload documents; the system classifies and files each into their personal Electronic Document Management profile (built on the worker-document-management Feature Set's EDM foundation) rather than requiring one-by-one manual labelling. Anything the system can't validate or classify is flagged for re-upload, never silently accepted.
HR Concierge agent. The conversational front door of the console: greets the candidate, explains what to do next, answers pre-boarding questions, and guides them through the sequenced task list. Per the Figma flow (design/figma-export.md), this is not a Q&A-only concierge but an always-on chat panel that drives step advancement alongside canvas buttons — this depends on a new shared "canvas-mode shell" component, not yet built; see ../software-design/adr-canvas-mode-shell.md. UI work on this Feature's flows can't start until that component (or at least its canvas-slot contract) exists in nova-frontend-litjs.
Notifications and communications (candidate-initiated). A candidate can attach a message to a task, document, or record (e.g. the pending-replacement flow in Use Case 5); it routes to HR Ops, the HRBP, or the manager for response, so context travels with the work instead of scattering across email.
Contract renewal re-entry (contingent workers) — candidate-facing half. When a contract nears expiry, the contractor receives a notification and re-enters the console through a fresh, time-bound gated invitation to review and sign the renewed contract, replacing persistent access. The signed renewal is auto-stored in the EDM and supersedes the prior version; the EDM shows a status label (active, expiring, renewal in progress, superseded) using the same document-status mechanism as the pending-replacement flag in Use Case 5.

Out of Scope¶

HR Admin workspace, deterministic task engine, recruiter hand-off/ATS readiness, the orchestration layer, and the HR-Ops-facing half of contract renewal (expiry tracking, renewal-workflow generation, payroll-data visibility) — see ../hr-admin-deterministic-transactions/spec.md.
The actual ATS integration (SmartRecruiters) — this Feature only receives whatever the special-instructions field/REST API endpoint (built in the sibling Feature) delivers; it doesn't build the integration itself.
Manager and HRBP readiness views, proactive nudges, and any dashboard/insight capability from the Manager Workspace and HRBP Workspace PRDs — deferred, not in scope this quarter, per parent concept.md's Related PRDs.
EDM document classification/extraction internals, categories, and taxonomy configuration — owned by worker-document-management; this Feature only consumes that capability.

Value¶

Closes the pre-boarding-to-team gap named across the source research: a candidate who today "feels disconnected before starting" instead has one place to track exactly what's left, gets confirmation HR received what they signed or uploaded, and moves through Day 1 with compliance-critical tasks already tracked rather than chased by hand.

Delivery¶

UX Description¶

A gated, conversational, mobile-friendly console. The candidate is met by the HR Concierge agent on entry, works through a sequenced task list (read, sign, upload), and gets in-console confirmation on every submission — no separate email chase.

Key User Flows¶

Candidate entry → gated invitation link with a time-bound key → HR Concierge agent greets the candidate and frames what's left before Day 1 → console renders the sequenced task list → exit: candidate is oriented and has started their first task.
Task completion (read/sign) → candidate opens the next required document in sequence → reads or e-signs → console confirms receipt inline → exit: task list updates, next task surfaces.
Bulk upload → candidate drops multiple documents at once → system classifies each and shows its guess → candidate confirms or is asked to re-upload anything unvalidated → exit: documents filed into the candidate's EDM.
Contract renewal re-entry (contingent worker) → contractor receives an expiry notification → re-enters via a fresh, time-bound gated invitation (not persistent access) → reviews and signs the renewed contract → exit: EDM status label moves from expiring to active, prior contract marked superseded.
Pending-replacement flag → candidate uploads a temporary document with an attached message → system files it flagged as pending replacement and notifies HR Ops → exit: gap is visible and tracked, not silently incomplete.

Human Override & Fallback Strategy¶

Document classification uncertainty: a bulk-uploaded document the system can't confidently classify or validate is flagged to both the candidate and HR Ops for re-upload — never filed silently.
Concierge escalation: when the HR Concierge agent is uncertain or the question is sensitive, it hands off to a named HR Ops contact rather than guessing.
Contract renewal edge case: if a contractor's contract end date is missing or ambiguous, the system alerts HR Ops rather than generating a renewal re-entry on incorrect dates.
Task rule gaps: if business rules (owned by the sibling Feature) don't cover a worker-type/jurisdiction combination, the candidate sees universal tasks only, with HR Ops notified to assign the rest — the candidate is never shown an incomplete list without explanation.

AI Feedback Loop¶

Candidate can flag a misclassified document for HR Ops to correct or re-file; corrections feed classifier refinement (owned jointly with worker-document-management).
Candidate/HRBP/manager can flag readiness data shown in the console as inaccurate.
Implicit signals: Guest Console engagement (views, upload completion, time-to-sign), classification confirmation rate, and frequency of candidate re-uploads after a flagged classification.

Acceptance Criteria¶

A new hire invited to the Guest Console can complete all four required policy signatures, sign the offer, and bulk-upload supporting documents entirely within the console before their Day 1 date, with each document auto-classified into their personal EDM.
A contingent worker invited to the console completes contractor-scoped policy signatures and onboarding tasks before their project start date, without any BambooHR access being provisioned.
The HR Concierge agent answers a candidate's pre-boarding question or, when uncertain or the topic is sensitive, hands off to a named HR Ops contact rather than guessing.
A bulk-uploaded document the system cannot confidently classify is flagged for re-upload to both the candidate and HR Ops, and is never filed into the EDM without confirmation.
A contingent worker whose contract is approaching expiry receives a notification and a fresh, time-bound gated invitation to sign the renewal; on signing, the EDM status label updates from expiring to active and the prior contract is marked superseded.
A candidate who uploads a temporary document with an explanatory message has that document filed and flagged as pending replacement in the EDM, and HR Ops is notified of the gap.
Guest Console access expires after its configured time-bound window and cannot be used to view or modify records outside that candidate's own pre-boarding record.

hr-admin-deterministic-transactions (sibling Feature): supplies the deterministic/non-deterministic task rules this Feature's task list renders, the pre-boarding record creation for manually-entered candidates, and the HR-Ops-facing contract-renewal workflow this Feature's re-entry flow is triggered by.
worker-document-management (Feature Set): the EDM foundation this Feature's document upload, classification, and status-label mechanism depend on.
nova-frontend-litjs canvas-mode shell (not yet built — adr-canvas-mode-shell.md): the persistent chat + canvas UI this Feature's flows require. Also requires a new SSE directive in nova-superagent-agent for the chat-driven advancement path — real backend work, not yet scoped in any implementation-plan.md.

Risks¶

Risk	Severity	Mitigation
Flat MVP Figma screens haven't been reconciled against this spec's agentic flows	Medium	Design team reconciliation is Open Question 1; don't build UI against this spec alone until that's resolved.
Contract-renewal payroll-data visibility depends on an open Ateko architecture review of contractor sub-types	Medium	Ship the renewal re-entry/signing flow without exposing payroll data until the sub-type policy is confirmed.
Candidate-facing console is external-facing (not behind normal ServiceNow auth) — access-window and data-scoping bugs are higher-consequence here than on internal tools	High	Time-bound gated keys per invitation, scoped strictly to that candidate's own record; no persistent access even for contract renewal.

Open Questions¶

Figma reconciliation: the flat MVP screens (Nova Design WIP, Q3 exploration) haven't been mapped against the agentic flows above — design team to reconcile before UI build.
Which surface hosts the time-bound gated key/session mechanism — a Novaworks-portal-native auth flow, or something layered on ServiceNow's guest-access pattern? Not yet decided.
design/figma-export.md's 25-screen flow (node 576:13854) shows meaningfully more scope than this spec currently covers: an always-on conversational "Nova" agent shell (not just a Q&A concierge — it drives every step), an agent-personalization sub-flow (name/look/voice), equipment/swag/accommodation selection tasks, a Checkr background-check hand-off, an ID-badge live preview, and an explicit guest→employee account-state conversion on the start date. Needs a product decision on whether these are in scope for this Feature or a later phase before the Scope/Acceptance Criteria sections above are revised to match — not yet reconciled.

For internal engineering review only.

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