Subject Access Requests (SAR)

Subject access requests (SAR) allow individuals to request a copy of their personal data from a data controller. Learn more about employee rights of access (external link).

You can create and run your own reports to request this data, using the suggested steps on this page.

Add a new catalogue section (Optional)

Add a new section to the catalogue for SAR queries.

Admin > System Lists > System Catalogue.

Add a new item called Subject Access Requests.

You can adjust the Display Order to change where the new section appears in the catalogue if needed.

Create queries

  1. In Query Builder, create a new query with the three default fields (Employee Number, Firstname, Surname).

  2. Select a screen that holds the personal information you want to request. (In this example we'll use the MAIN screen.)

  3. Add any fields that hold data related to the employee.

  4. Select Add criteria for Employee Number, and then Prompt.

    This will allow an Employee Number to be entered when the query is run. This should be done for all queries in this report.

  5. If you want to use this report for leavers, select Inc Leavers in the top right hand corner. This should be selected for all queries in this report.

  6. Save the query in the new catalogue section, if created.

Query builder with three default fields

Repeat these steps to create a query for each screen that holds personal data. (Bank, Home Address, Next of Kin etc.)

Each screen must be have its own query.

Do not mix fields from different screens, as this may impact the way the data is displayed.

Create an enhanced office report

This section presumes a good working knowledge of enhanced office reports. This report needs to be run by HR admins as they have full access to the required data.

Once you have created all of the required queries, you need to gather them into one enhanced office report.

Create a new enhanced office report.

Select Produce a Cover Sheet?, this will add the date, time, and person who ran the report.

Fields

On the Fields tab, select Add Data Source, and select your queries. They will then be visible in theData Source list.

Select the fields you want to Show on Report for each data source.

All fields will be selected by default.

Layout

On the Layout tab, Add New sheet for each query and rename it to the screen or query name.

Each tab can be left as a Table of Data. You do not need to set groups.

Advanced

On the Advanced tab, you can map all the Employee Number fields, into a single Employee Number prompt, making it easier to run the report.

In the example below, all the fields have been mapped to the MAIN screen.

The Prompt Text can be edited if needed. The Order of the fields has no impact if all fields are mapped to a single one.

The report can now be saved and run.

When it runs you'll be prompted to enter an Employee Number. This number is then used for all your queries.

In the resulting report, each query will have it's own worksheet.

Publish

When the report is built, it can be published to other admin/HR roles if needed.

Admin

In Admin there's several additional places you might find personal information.

  • The employee Username.

  • Any Profile/Role assigned to the employee.

  • Any Working Calendar, current and historical, assigned to an employee.

Employee Subject Access Requests

You can set up a process to allow employees to request access to their data, using the suggested steps in this section.

Screen

Create a new list screen where employees can add a request for their data. This will store a history of requests and record when the request was dealt with.

Learn more about screen designer.

Workflow

Create a workflow that is triggered when a new record is added to the screen above. Add any required tasks.

Some suggestions for these tasks would be:

  • A confirmation email to the employee submitting the request.

  • An email to HR informing a request has been submitted.

  • A Data Entry task to help complete the record once the SAR report has been run.

Enhanced dashboard chart

To track SAR requests, a query can be used to create an enhanced dashboard chart.

This query calculates how many days the request has taken to be processed, using the formula below. This helps to ensure requests are dealt with efficiently.

DATEDIFF(Day, GETDATE(), [Date of request])

Once the query is saved, mark it for use on the enhanced dashboard, it will then be available when editing your dashboard.

Create a new enhanced dashboard table and select the saved query.

Employee documents

If employees have documents stored against their record, then these files will need to be manually located and downloaded.

Most merged documents are stored on the DOCUMENT screen, but document controls can also be added to any other screen.

If using Networx (Recruitment+) then these documents may be on the Recruitment Documents screen by default, but also stored on any screen with document control.