The very first ADA Assist was released on 11/1/2022 and undergoes regular updates to improve functionality and release new features based on customer feedback. If you have feedback or a feature request, please email us at ADAAssistSupport@unum.com and we'll share your suggestions with the ADA Assist Product Team.

We have a new update to the Decision Guide for RI Pregnancy. The decision guide is updated in real time as Updates to the ADA Statute updates either nationally or by state. This RI Pregnancy update shows that ADA Accommodations need to be considered for an employees condition related to menopause or a related medical condition.

Starting with this update, any future updates will show a pop up to each Admin when the first log in post update. Employees will see the following:

By Clicking on View now, the user is taken directly to the changed topic, for them to review. Clicking on OK, will just close out the pop-up window and the user will continue to stay on the landing page.

This is a great way to ensure that our Admin Teams are up to date on the latest statute updates in ADA.

We now have added a feature where up to 5 Employer Admin emails addresses can receive their companies consolidated report, every Monday.

Previously, the reports in ADA Assist can be downloaded on a company level, from within the ADA Assist and can be filtered on any location and department criteria. These reports need to be pulled on a needed ad-hoc basis. There was no timed report generation. This update allows us to send a set of email addresses specified by the Admin team, to receive weekly consolidated reports for their company (all locations and all department details included).

If you are interested in having this report sent to your company weekly, please reach out to adaassist@unum.com.

We now have an Admin Resources Tab that will house tools that the Employer can use to help review their Employees' ADA Accommodations. The new tab is located in the 'Forms' Tab, with a new header named, 'Admin Resources'. The downloadable forms will be added there for Admin teams to review and use. With this update, we have added an Undue Hardship Worksheet and the Employer Decision Templates. More Resources will be added here as they are developed.

ADA Assist Admins can now see the Inactive User's requests in the ADA Assist. Previously, when an employee was terminated, their request would not be visible. With this update, Admins can now see all users request who have been deactivated in the system. The admin will be able to close out the request and add notes before closing the request. These inactive users will be seen under a new Inactive User Tab on the Records by Employee page.

This is also seen under the new Inactive Users tab on the Pending Decisions page and each of the tasks pages.

The Registration Page has been rearranged for new users to show the SSN and DOB options first for log in options. When employees are creating their User profile, many employees will register using their SSN and DOB, so, this option will be show first. If an Employer does not have File feed Integration, the employee will use the Email and Employee ID option, this is unchanged.

This will help employees to log in easier. Once the user begins to type the SSN or DOB fields, the email and Employee ID fields are hidden from view and vice versa. This will remove any confusion from the user's mind about what fields need to be completed in order to complete the registration process.

Previously Admins and SuperAdmins needed an One Time Password (OTP) once per calendar day to gain access to their ADA Assist. Employees would only need their OTP for their initial log into the tool, but, would not have any OTP needed for subsequent log ins.

With this release, all users now need to have an OTP once per calendar day for access to their ADA Assist tool. This ensures additional security in the ADA Assist platform.

Admins can now send additional, off cycle reminder emails to their employees to get their medical certification submitted. Admins can customize the frequency of sending out reminder emails to their employees from 1 to any number of days. They can also send them out directly from the tool on a one time basis.

The Certification Reminder emails will be send out every 7 days as a default from the date of an accommodation submission. Admins can change this frequency. Feel free to reach out to adaassistsupport@unum.com to have your custom frequency setting updated.

When sending a message to your employees, you can now expand the message box to full screen size to type and review the messages. This is visible in the upper right hand corner of the message window. This will allow the Admin team ample viewing of the messages in the tool. The box can be returned to the normal size after viewing by selecting the X at the top right hand corner.

When an Admin sends a message to an employee, it would previously show which admin had sent the message from the Employer team. This update now allows the Admin team to have a customizable Email sender. For example, the Admin team could choose to have "Human Resources Team" or some other custom name. If no name is requested by the Admin team, the solution will default to the Company Name and then 'Team'. For example, the sender text will be HR Admin Team, as seen below.

The ADA Assist Decision Guide is a live document that is regularly updated with any Federal or State Variations. We have added the 'Last Updated' date details and as there are updates made, this date detail will be updated as well.

The Employees User Cards under the Manage Employees tab has switched from a Card View to a List View with Alphabetical Sorting. Employees can now be sorted alphabetically based on the first letter of their first name. New A-D E-H I-L M-P Q-T U-W X-Z sorting options allow quick navigation through the list. This allows faster navigation and improved usability, making it easier for Admins to find Employees quickly. Employees can still be searched individually under the Search bar.

Each column also has sorting functionality so the columns can be sorted in ascending or descending order.

The Reporting page has been updated and improved to enhance usability, streamline report selection and provide a more intuitive experience for Admin users.

The Dashboard has been updated to provide interactive information to the Admin team. The Task menu has been moved to the top left-hand corner with links to each task. The Top Middle and Right pie charts are now clickable links to each accommodation status and accommodation type.

The bottom left tile shows pending decisions and links back to the same pending decisions page, but, will allow the admin to choose Initial, extensions or Return to work options to view. The bottom right tile shows the upcoming follow up actions that have been set by the Admin team. The timeframe can be selected from a calendar view and all activities will show in this tile. Each task is a clickable link to that direct activity.

Employees are now able to select withdraw as an option from their Review/Update menu. Employees can withdraw their request directly vs. the Admin cancelling the request.

Once a request is withdrawn, it will automatically be removed from the pending decisions section. Admins can also search the status of 'Withdrawn' as a sortable option in the Employer view.

A new button will be added, labeled "Certification Forms", located in the employee's requests within the pending decision tab. This button will give Super Admins/Admins the option to turn on/off the requirement of the applicable certification form. If a certification form is required, Super Admins/Admins can also customize a due date.

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (“PWFA”) is a new federal accommodation law that requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified workers for a known physical or mental condition related to, affected by, or arising out of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, regardless of whether the condition meets the definition of disability under the ADA. As of 8/1/24 the certification form will not be provided to the employee after they submit a pregnancy request in ADA Assist.
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A new button will be added, labeled "Certification Forms", located within each request in the pending decision tab, which will give Super Admins/Admins the option to require a certification form and determine a due date if needed. The Decision Guide within your ADA Assist Solution will also accurately reflect the new federal accommodation law.

Click on this article to see how the PWFA will impact your ADA Assist for Pregnancy Requests.

We have some great format updates to the solution! See some of our new updates below:

Before making a decision on an ADA accommodation request, Admins can now select the status, “In review”. The “In review” status has two major benefits.

First, it indicates to other company Admins that this specific request is already under review thereby eliminating duplicative efforts. Marking a request to “In review” can be particularly helpful when there are multiple Admins responsible for making ADA accommodation decisions. Second, a notification email can be sent to the employee advising that their request is currently under review by their HR team.

Employee User Cards now have new permission control features. With these new features, SuperAdmins can assign locations and/or departments so that their Admins will only see the requests that fall under their assigned filters. These new assignments permit Admins to only process accommodation requests within their location and department restriction and not requests of other admins.

Visit our article HERE for feature step by step instructions and feature guidance!

A great existing function of the ADA Assist solution is the daily notification email (only sent if there is any activity from the previous calendar day). With the new feature to assign locations and/or departments to Admins, a SuperAdmins can now select if they want Admins to receive notifications emails based on their assigned employee location and/or department.

A SuperAdmin can check the ‘Send Employer Update Email’ box and then select the applicable locations and/or departments to restrict Admins to only receive notification emails pertaining to activities within their assigned filters.

Admins and Super Admins will now be able to create and use custom messages in the Approval/Denial, Messages to Employees, setting Activities and Employer Notes.

To create a template in any section, select the template button:

Employer can create multiple, custom, templatized messages. An admin can also choose the pencil icon to edit the template name or template content once they are created. Admins can also click on the trash icon to delete an existing template.

This will save so much time in duplicating common messages to your employees!

All emails were previously from notifications@unumadaassist.com. The emails from ADAAssist are now going out from adaassist@solutions.unum.com.

To ensure that you do not miss any emails from us, you will need to whitelist the solutions.unum.com domain overall and specifically, adaassist@solutions.unum.com and adaassistreligious@solutions.unum.com.

Previously, there was a 20 minute timeout set for the solution to automatically log the user out of the system. They would be expected to log back into the system. Each time they log back in, they would have to enter their OTP sent to their email. This 2-step authentication, has been updated to allow the user to only enter their OTP to log in to ADA Assist only once every day.

Now, for the first time logging in each day, users will be asked to enter their OTP and then enter the solution. Once this step is done, each time the solution times-out on the user or they logout themselves, the next time that day they log in, they would only need to enter their login credentials and they would be brought to the landing page directly, skipping the OTP page entirely. There will be no OTP required for subsequent logins on the same day by the user.

Employers will now be able to edit the Employees email address in the Employee's User Card under the Manage Employees tab. As an employees email is updated, the System Admin can now go in and edit the employees email without having to upload it to a roster.

Super Admins can go into the Employees User card and directly update the employees email address:

We have now added a new record by request option in the left-hand side menu on the Dashboard view. There are 2 review buttons added to the landing page; Review by employee or Review by request. This will allow Employers to view the list of requests by an individual employee:
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The 'Review by Employee' will allow Employers to view the list of requests by an individual employee. It will show the list of requests submitted by that user or your can search for an employee by name, email or Employee ID.

Or to view the requests by Request Type:
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With the Request Type, employers will have the option to see all the request submitted by different users for that request type. These requests can be sorted by submission date, status or type. They can also be searched by name, request type and status.

Employers will now have the ability to export an employees full file at any point in the lifecycle of their Accommodation request. Many employers are exporting the employee request data upon completion of the request; when the accommodation is closed.

To download the request details, employers would select the 'download' from the dropdown actions in the employees request. When the employer has selected the download option, for a particular request, they can choose to download the request details, download the EE uploaded documents or ER uploaded documents.

The employee’s request details get downloaded in an excel file along with any employee or Employer documents that they have uploaded as part of this request. The documents are downloaded in the format they are submitted, could be images, doc files, pdfs etc. If there is no document added for this request, the appropriate pop up is shown indicating that there are no documents to download.

If there are no documents associated with this request, the pop up seen is as below.
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Employers will now be able to customize the pop up message at the bottom of the left-hand corner of the Employee Landing Page and the pop up message when registering a new Accommodation Request.

System Admins can enable this new customization in the Configurations Toggle located in their Main Menu. Employers can add a custom email and/or phone number to this pop up message. Our support team can also help enable this option, so, feel free to reach out to adaassistsupport@unum.com for further assistance.

Once the message is added to the Configuration Tab, the custom message will then show on the Employee Landing Page and the Accommodation Request pop-up.

Employers now have the ability to see whether the employee has viewed a decision message or Employer Message with a read receipt time stamp. If the employee has not opened and seen the message, no timestamp will be displayed. Once the employee has viewed the employer message, the time that the message was opened will be displayed on the Employer Side under the message that was sent. Note: This is only for Employer message read by the Employee, the employee will not be able to see when the Employer have read any messages sent by the Employee to the HR team.

Employers will continue to have the company-wide employer update email that will be sent every morning at 8am EST. This company-wide update email may be sent to up to 5 email addresses with all activity that occurs in their ADA Assist tool.

Our new enhanced, Location Specific email will now allow the Employer to also have the ability to decide if they want their Super Admins in the solution to have the option to receive location specific updates to their email. This update can be enabled on the Company Configuration page by the Employer Super Admin. Our support team can also help enable this option, so, feel free to reach out to adaassistsupport@unum.com for further assistance.

After this feature is enabled, Super Admins can go into their User Card and customize which locations each Super Admin will receive the daily update email.

Our Decision Guide now has a drop down menu for each state that has a variation for each topic listed in the Guide. When the topic is selected from the Decision Guide, if there is state specific content on this topic, at the top right-hand corner you can select the state which content you would like to view.

Once a state is selected, the state specific details of the topic are displayed. The state code is seen on the page to clarify which state information is being detailed.

An Employer can choose to upload details of the employees job description to take to their physician. The Job Description can help detail the physical requirements of the employees job and better help understand how the employees physical limitations will impact the employees ability to perform their job.

Super Admins can now upload a job description document to the ADA Assist Solution for all job titles within their organization. When the matching job title is assigned to the employees User card or uploaded onto the roster file, the job description will load to the employees Accommodation Request documents. When the employee downloads their certification forms for their physician, they can now also select their job description to present to their physician for their assessment of their accommodation request.

Super Admins can add Job description details by navigating to the left-side menu and add, download, edit or delete Job descriptions previously loaded into the tool.

This added feature will help the employees physician evaluate the employees accommodation by better understanding the employees job while completing the Medical Certification needed for the support of the ADA Accommodation Request.