You must create an Event Window for employees to access the Annual/Open Enrollment Event if your employees are to enroll in benefits through the Employee Portal. Annual enrollment events are typically open for 2 weeks or more, so employees can enroll and research their benefits. Before creating the annual enrollment event, be sure that the system has been configured appropriately so your employees can easily elect their benefits.

We offer a video training for this topic on Arcoro Learning.

Build Employee Groups

Before creating your annual enrollment window, we want to create employee groups to group employees with matching attributes or those with parameters that fall within the rules of the employee group.  

1. Expand Reports and click Employee Groups from the menu.

   

2. Click the name of the employee group if editing an existing employee group. Otherwise, use the Actions drop-down menu, click Add New Employee Group.

   

3. Enter the necessary information for the employee group:
   • Employee Group Name - Enter an employee group name, such as "2026 Enrollment".
   • Eligibility Rule - Use the drop-down menu to select the eligibility rule for the employee group. For our example, we will be using an eligibility rule called "Benefit Active".

   

4. The eligibility rule "Benefit Active" will look at any employee who has a benefit status of "Active". The eligibility rule can be further modified to look at other employees, such as their employment status.

   

5. Click Save and Populate. You should see a list of employees for the employee group.

   

6. Click Close when finished.

Creating Annual Enrollment Window

Now that our employee group is made, we will create an annual enrollment window which typically spans 2 weeks.

1. Expand Settings and click Benefit Management from the menu.

   

2. Click Create OE Window from the ribbon near the top of the page.

   

3. Set up your open enrollment window with:

   

   • Activation Date - The Activation Date is the day (at midnight) the Open Enrollment event will be available to employees in the dropdown Event box on the Employee Portal.
   • Deactivation Date - The Deactivation Date is the day (at 11:59 PM) the window will close, or no longer be available to employees in the Event dropdown box on the Employee Portal. 
   • Package - This will drive which benefit package employees are making elections for.
   • Employee Group - The Employee Group determines which employees should have open enrollment. If the window should be open for all employees select '- All Employees -'. 
     • Click Manage Groups to set up or edit an existing employee group. For more information about employee groups, you can refer to the previous step or this following article.
     • If you already have an Open Enrollment group from a previous year, you can edit the name and populate it for this year.
     • Verify that the Eligibility rule applied references the group of employees who should be eligible to see the OE window
4. Click Process and Create Windows when finished. This will create an Open Enrollment Window for each employee who passes the eligibility rule on the Employee Group for the selected benefit package. This can take some time for larger groups. Stay on this page until the word "Process Complete" appears.

Send Annual Enrollment Message to Employees

You may email an Annual Enrollment message to employees to notify them of the window for enrollment, so they are prepared to make their elections.

1. Expand Setup and click Setup Properties from the menu.

   

2. Hover over Employee Portal Setup and click Employee Management.

   

3. Click the Communications tab.

   

4. Use the same Employee Group that was used for the Open Enrollment window, enter a subject for the email, and your email text. Click Send Test Message to send a preview of the email to your work email address. Click Send Message when finished. You can use the option "Send an account verification email to users who have not signed in yet, or a password reset email to users who have already signed in" to include the employee's username format as well.
   • We also offer communication templates from our dedicated article here.