Before You Begin: This topic describes how data mapping works when the Apply Data Mapping Historically checkbox is selected in HR Admin > Employee Data Mapping Rules. For information about how data mapping works when this checkbox is cleared, see Example: Apply Data Mapping Historically.
With data mapping rules, you can automatically assign specific values to qualifying employees when they’re hired or when someone updates employee records.
Legacy data mapping applied values as of the current date whatever the effective date of the qualifying record. In contrast, Data Mapping 2.0 uses the effective dates of the qualifying records to determine the effective dates of the mapping values.
In addition, legacy data mapping could trigger data mapping for only a single date while Data Mapping 2.0 can apply data mapping to multiple dates, as appropriate.
When data mapping is triggered, Dayforce calculates a list of dates based on the data entered by the user and the data in the database for all of the qualifiers. For each date, Dayforce evaluates the employee against the mapping rules to see if the employee qualifies for the rule. Then, Dayforce creates the results for qualified mapping rules as of the specific date.
To determine the dates for the date list, Dayforce does the following:
- Calculates a minimum date based on user-provided data for all of the qualifiers (for example, employment status, work assignment, address, union membership).
- Past end-dated records provided by users aren’t used for the minimum date when the only record that exists in the database is a past end-dated record or if there are no effective dates found at all. In this case, the current date is taken as the minimum date.
- Finally, all of the effective start dates from the qualifiers provided by the user or in the existing database records that are greater than or equal to the minimum date are added to the list.
Consider the following example:
User provided data
- Status 1: 04/01/2024 (update of current status record in the database)
- Status 2: 05/01/2026 (the new record to be added in the future, assuming today is 05/12/2025)
- Work Assignment 1: 04/15/2026 (new record to be added in future, assuming today is 05/12/2025)
Database data for the employee
- Current status: 04/01/2024
- Current work assignment: 01/01/2024
- Current address: 04/10/2024
In this scenario, the minimum date calculated for all of the user-provided data from status and work assignment records is 04/01/2024 and any date from all of the qualifiers provided by the user or existing in the database are collected in the date list as follows:
- 04/01/2024
- 04/10/2024
- 04/15/2026
- 05/01/2026
Dayforce evaluates all of the mapping rules for the employee for each of these dates. If the employee qualifies on one of those days, Dayforce creates the corresponding results as of that day.