Administrative Systems Integration (ASI)

On Saturday, June 26^th from 8am until 4pm a number of campus business applications will be unavailable due to planned network changes occurring at the Shrewsbury Data Center.  The following production and test applications will not be accessible during this timeframe:

Student Applications:

·         iSiS (Including Student & Faculty Self-Service)

·         Cognos / iSiS reporting

·         Resource 25 (room scheduling)

·         RMS (housing)

·         Web Application for Admissions

·         Contributor Relations (Advancement / Alumni)

Finance Applications:

·         E*mpac Financials (Production & Reporting)

·         Effort Certification (Grants)

Human Resource Applications:

·         Report Distribution Tool / Mobius

·         CAAMS (Affirmative Action)

If there are questions please contact Richard Conley at x4794 or Richard_Conley@uml.edu .

As part of ongoing efforts to best utilize resources, we have reorganized and are now rolling up to the Information Technology office.   ASI is now part of the IT Projects group and we have expanded our scope of services beyond PeopleSoft and are actively involved with a couple exciting new projects -- document imaging, campus room & facility scheduling, and international student process improvements.

While we have expanded some aspects of the areas we support, we have also contracted a bit on some other areas.  In particular, Jose Guerrero who had been providing PeopleSoft training to the campus has moved into the Help Center area to improve the level of service the staff there can provide to users.    Most of the training for our Human Resource and Student Systems can be obtained via new online tools such as video and UPK (a web based training tool).   We still need to develop similar online tools for the Finance area, but there are some job aids available.

We have also moved David Mann into the Budget Operations area within Administration and Finance.  He will continue to support important financial reporting tools such as FAIR and nVision.  

There is an open search in process to recruit a new staff member to help support the rollout of the document imaging application.   UMass has purchased a product called ImageNow which will be used across campus to implement electronic record retention and workflow to support campus operations.   The Graduate Admissions office is the pilot department and should be in production later this year.

In addition to the staffing and organizational changes, we are also moving physical space.   Norma Clark and Doreen Bray have already moved from Dugan Hall over to Olsen Hall.  Richard Conley will be moving there later this year.

UMass Information Techology Services (UITS) is in the process of moving servers from the Worcester Campus Data Center to the new state of the art data center in Shrewsbury. 

All migrations are planned to occur on Saturday's (May 8 & 22; June 12⁾

Using a Proof of Concept methodology, pre-testing of the server relocation, network connectivity, performance and overall timing will be successfully completed prior to the migrations.  UITS has worked closely with the businesses to coordinate the dates and have taken the necessary steps to ensure the migrations go smoothly.

Less critical servers will move first with more critical servers moving later.  Each move will cause down time for certain applications, though not all applications will be impacted due to the redundancy of many environments.  The list of impacted applications, associated downtimes and any specific application procedural instructions will be provided for each migration weekend. 

Saturday, May 8th Impacted Systems - COMPLETE

The following Production applications or application components will be unavailable from 8am until 8pm on Saturday, May 8, 2010:

·         nVision 3-Tier Finance Component

o   Will not be able to create or edit reports

·         RMS Crystal Report Server Component

o   Will not be able to create or edit reports

·         SA Components:

o   Ability for UITS to perform code changes during outage window will be suspended

The following Test and Development applications will be unavailable from 8am until 8pm on Saturday, May 8, 2010:

·         R25

·         RMS Test

Saturday, May 22nd Impacted Systems - COMPLETE

The following Production applications or application components will be unavailable from 8:00 am until 8:00 pm on Saturday, May 22, 2010:

• HR Mobius Report Distribution Tool
• Finance Mobius Report Distribution Tool

·         nVision 3-Tier Finance Component

·         Effort Certification

• Physical Inventory Scanning Server

The following Test and Development applications will be unavailable from 5:00 pm Friday, May 21 until 8:00 pm on Saturday, May 22, 2010:

• RMS
• R25

Saturday, June 12th Impacted Systems

The following Production applications or application components will be unavailable from 8:00 am until 8:00 pm on Saturday, June 12, 2010:

·                     Darwin (Boston Only)

·                     U-Select

·                     Batch Scheduling Server (Control-M)

·                     Mobius

·                     Cognos

·                     R25

·                     RMS

The following will not be available from the Inside site (https://inside.umassadmin.net/support/):

·         Under the Finance Tab:        ChartField Lookup & Finance Fund

·         Under the Support Tab:        CSR Lookup & Stat Reports

·         Under the SA Tab:                   Open CSR Summary Report

This week, there are three people from campus attending the Alliance conference.  This is an annual gathering of higher eduction and governement users of Oracle's PeopleSoft applications.   This is the 13th year of this event and it is clearly the best opportunity for us to expand our knowledge of the PeopleSoft application through:

• Networking with colleagues from accross higher education
• Meeting with vendors who have products and services that can add greater value and functionality to our exisiting applications
• Attending workshops that deal with issues we face as a campus
• Seeing demonstrations of the latest versions of PeopleSoft and meeting with Oracle staff members to share our feedback on applicaiton functionality and usability

Last night was just the kickoff, but we already had some great conversations with vendors on reporting and human resource self-service.    As campus representatives, we plan to attend a broad range of sessions with a heavy focus on training, HR and Time Reporting Self-Service, OBIEEE (Oracle's data mart which UMass is implementing),  Constituent Relation Management (CRM), and a few student focused topics.

We will bring back to campus new ideas and solutions to existing issues.  

Vice Chancellor Joanne Yestramski held a meeting today with a number of staff members who work in the Administration & Finance area.   The purpose was to review projects that are ongoing or planned in the near future.   After sitting through a few hours of presenations from human resources, finance, and information technology it is clear this are lots of great projects in the works.   While each one appeals to different audiences, there really is something for everyone and overall they will collectively improve campus operations and services.

While my office doesn't work with all projects, we do have involvement with a number of them.  Attached are two presentations related to HR Direct and iSiS as those have the greatest tie to our office.

ISIS Project Update 022310.pdf

HR Direct Project Update 022310.pdf

As some of the other projects are still being communicated and vetted around campus, I'll refrain from speaking about them.    

If you look at the attached presentations and have any questions, comments, or feedback please let us know.   You can post a reply to this blog, email our department at asi@uml.edu or even contact me directly at 978-934-4794 or richard_conley@uml.edu .

I can't promise we can address every concern or request you have, but we will certainly listen and try to assist.

Richard Conley, Director of ASI

The ASI team was heavily involved with 2 major ERP upgrades this year.   Our involvement is primarily around project and change management (training & communications), but occationally we also get involved in functional reviews and testing.   In all cases, we work with business owners and subject matter experts (SME's) who lead the campus decison making on design and system functionality. 

Human Resources (HR Direct)

We started 2009 with the upgrade of PeopleSoft Human Resources and did a major leap from version 7.6 to version 9.0.  This new system has self-service functionality and some of that was introduced to campus during 2009.   All employees now have access to view basic HR data and their pay advices online.   Additionally, many employees are now reporting their time via self-service and managers have the access to do the approvals online.

In 2010, we expeect to expand self-service time reporting to student employees, but this requires a lot of planning and process revision.  There is also other self-service features such as updating address and direct deposit data that we expect to roll out.    New functionality to track and manage training will be explored and hopefully added by the end of the year.   

Student Administration (iSiS) 

 In December the campus rolled out a new version of the iSiS system which is used extensively for faculty and student self-service.  Our office was deeply involved with readiness planning and providing transitional support.   The application is still in the process of being stabilized and our office continues to provide project support. 

In 2010 we will be seeking out greater input from users to understand their satisfaction levels.  We understand that many people have suggestions on how to improve the system and we plan to capture those and present to the campus for prioritization.   We also want to explore new opportuntiies to get data recorded within iSiS and find better ways to maximize our campus utilization of this tool. 

As we head into 2010, we are planning to develop and publish more information on the all of the PeopleSoft Admnistrative Systems.   We want to improve the user experience with an improved and cleaner overall web presence.    As an overall goal, we hope to improve all our training documentation both online and in-print; additionally we will be re-establishing committees or workgroups that better tie us to all end users.  We need to be in touch with our users so that we can best understand how systems can be improved to meet user needs.

Please contact us with any of your thoughts or concerns.   Our team email account is asi@uml.edu or you can contact me directly at richard_conley@uml.edu or via phone at 978-934-4794.

I am very excited to announce that Jose Guerrero has joined the Administrative Systems Integration (ASI) department.   Jose has been a valuable member of the Information Technology (IT) Training Department for the last four years.   During that time he spent considerable time supporting PeopleSoft upgrades by providing training and end user support for Finance (v8.9) and Human Resources (v.9.0). 

Jose has great knowledge of the ISIS application and has provided training and orientation to hundreds of students, faculty, and staff on the ISIS functionality.  Jose’s skills in various training development tools and a strong background in web page maintenance will be of additional benefit to our office. In addition to providing end users support during the upcoming ISIS upgrade, we will utilize Jose’s skills to improve all the training tools available to users across the entire suites of applications supported by our office.  

One of our department goals is to improve utilization of the campus investment in administrative technologies and Jose’s talents are a nice addition to our team.   With the addition of Jose, ASI responsibilities are being extended beyond project management and implementations into new areas including training delivery and more comprehensive production support.   

We are greatly interested in feedback from end users on their ideas to improve administrative applications and the support UML provides not only from ASI, but from across the campus.  Please contact Richard Conley, Director of Administrative Systems Integration with any of your thoughts or suggestions.

Regards,

Rich

We now have an ISIS blog that will be used to communicate project activities associated with the ISIS upgrade.  After we go into production with version 9.0 of the ISIS solution we will use the ISIS blog to keep users updates on major issues, enhancements, and any system alerts.

The new ISIS blog -- http://blog.uml.edu/isis/  -- will also be posted on a revamped ISIS web page which will be launched in early November.

Here are a few key projects that are ongoing that will have direct impact on our campus employees and students.

• ISIS System Upgrade is in process and is targeted to go-live by the end of the year.  Look for more details later this fall.   Overall this primarily a software upgrade with more functional enhancements planned for next year.
• HR Direct has been in place for a few months and we now have over 500 employees who have logged onto self-service.  Additionally, we are continuing to push out online time reporting to more and more departments and have a goal to complete this rollout by the end of the year.
• Employee Travel Expenses are being added into the HR Pay Check starting in October.   Therefore, if you get a direct deposit of your payroll you will now also get your travel advance or reimbursement in that same direct deposit.  This was a requirement of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and our team has been actively testing to make sure this will work correctly.  Employees will be impacted with a change from a 2x per week check run, to a once every 2 week pay check cycle.   
• Finance integration with the HR system has been difficult, so much energy has been spent over the last few months trying to fix and test all the issues.   Payrolll Encumbrance issues have mostly been fixed.  
• New finance reporting tools are being introduced on campus.  This new Finance Data Mart will provide offices with another tool to use.
• Document Imaging solutions to support business offices (student, finance, and human resources) continue to be explored as ways to reduce storage requirements, improve document security, and add new automated workflows.

If you have any questions please let me know.

Regards,

Rich
richard_conley@uml.edu 

Greetings from the new office of Administrative Systems Integration (ASI).  While this is a new name and new organizational unit, we have been around for almost 10 years as the "PeopleSoft Project" and later the "IT Project Management" office.   During the spring reorganization, our office shifted from Information Technology over to Administration and Finance.   Physically we moved from Wannalancit over to Dugan Hall where we work along side with many of the central business office PeopleSoft users.  As a staff we lost Jeannie Tremblay to the Access Services office, but added David Mann from Research Administration to go along with Rich Conley, Doreen Bray, and Norma Clark.  See staff profiles here. 

While we are still defining our overall scope of responsibilities, the most significant role we serve is related to project management support of the PeopleSoft applications for Human Resources, Finance, and Student Administration.    Please see those respective application web pages for any news and updates. 

We have started to meet as a team to develop our new organizational mission and goals.  A major focus will be on reconnecting with end users as we drifted away from that in recent years.  It is necessary to engage end users from both central and decentral offices to assure that investments in our integrated administrative systems are properly aligned with business requirements.

Your thoughts and opinions are very important to us, so please get in touch if you have issues or suggestions to discuss.