September Closes with Significant Progress
The way the Optimize teams are moving along, they might well be singing these lines from September Song by Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson: “Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December, but the days grow short when you reach September. When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame, one hasn’t got time for the waiting game.”
The Campus Solutions folks certainly aren’t playing the waiting game as they had several major accomplishments this week. They successfully created a budget for a student and loaded Profile and Institutional Student Information Record (ISIR) files in PeopleSoft. The Human Resources team completed the salary plans workbooks and are progressing at a rapid pace through other topics such as bio/demo data, student employment data, payroll design, and timekeeping.
The Financials team has been testing the new budget administration tools planned for roll out Monday, October 1. Included will be a new budget view very similar to what Cascade provided under Budget Administration.
Training sessions on budget and purchasing continue. See the full schedule at Optimize Puget Sound Training. Please send PeopleSoft questions to the Technology Service Desk at servicedesk@pugetsound.edu and any project-related questions or comments to optimize@pugetsound.edu. We welcome your feedback!
Gold Stars for the Optimize Team
Jessica Ewald, MIS consultant for the Campus Solutions module, has been handing out virtual gold stars to the Puget Sound team for their work this week. In an email on Thursday, she wrote, “I know, I know….I haven’t stopped talking about it, but it really is a big deal….the first pass of the course catalog conversion was spectacular! There were no errors between parent and child tables which isn’t very easy to do when there are many effective date rows, multiple course offerings, and multiple components. Way to Go!!!”
Also in Campus Solutions, Mattie Watts from Student Financial Services received a round of applause for writing her first PeopleSoft query. Meanwhile, a gold star goes to the Human Resources team for successfully loading the initial set of bio/demo data (e.g., name, address, residency) into PeopleSoft. HR continues to enter base information for payroll and benefits and is focusing now on building data conversion spreadsheets.
The Financials team is anticipating the roll out of new budget administration tools on October 1 that will provide better access to needed information. And discovery sessions continue for Identity Management!
A Familiar Face in a New Role
Garrett Dieckmann
Congratulations to Garrett Dieckmann ’12, who has been a positive, productive member of the Optimize team since the project launched in Fall 2011. As a Puget Sound student, Garrett spent his senior year working as a project assistant. After graduation, he became a full-time developer involved in the Financials implementation. Effective September 16, Garrett takes on an exciting new role as the university’s first PeopleSoft administrator. According to Steve Renker, director of Enterprise Information Systems, Garrett has impressed the Optimize and EIS teams with his “can-do attitude and talent for quickly picking up new technology.”
This week the Human Resources team signed off on their fit-gap documents, so let the design phase begin! The Financials team announced that Budget Administration trainings will occur the last Thursday of each month through November. To register for this or purchasing training sessions, visit the Optimize Training page.
Orientation Week Highlights
It’s Orientation week, and as the Class of 2016 roamed the campus learning about their new home for the next four years, they had no idea what amazing and important activities were taking place in the depths of Howarth Hall!
First, there were training sessions on budget administration 1 and 2 and on purchasing requisitions and approvals. Janet Hallman, associate vice president for accounting and budget services, had kind words for Peter Ho of MIS who led the budget training, saying, “We couldn’t have done it without him.”
The Financials team plans to offer monthly opportunities for budget administration training, and Procurement Director Ed Barber will schedule purchasing classes each week over the next few months. Contact optimizetraining@pugetsound.edu for more information on training.
The Human Resources team was also busy reviewing Fit-Gap documents, while the Campus Solutions team continued with their design work. And the Project Management Office finalized a contract with Integral Business Solutions to implement Oracle Identity Management, a platform to “effectively manage the end-to-end life cycle of user identities.”
The management of user identities, which includes roles and permissions, is key to the successful implementation of an enterprise resource planning system like PeopleSoft. Oracle Identity Management will replace similar functionality in Cascade but will also extend capabilities, allowing the audit of permissions across multiple systems to further ensure synchronization and security. It may not be glamorous, but implementing strong identity management is the kind of behind-the-scenes work needed to keep the whole system running smoothly!
A Busy Week in the Heat
As temperatures soared outside, the Optimize computer lab in Howarth 005 was literally the cool place to be this week. The technical team led by Stephen Phillips from MIS spent several days there in PeopleTools 2 training, gaining advanced knowledge on the creation of data conversions, interfaces, and add-ons. With this background, the team can now create views, write complex business logic, and add images and graphs.
The Human Resources team has been fully engaged in the Fit-Gap review process, starting with the HR section. Next they’ll cover Benefit and Payroll with a planned final review and sign-off by the end of next week. Time and Labor discovery is complete, and the review process for that will begin next week.
With the assistance of the Data Standards Committee, the Campus Solutions and HR teams have been reviewing common values and making decisions for standardization of values shared across the databases (examples include name type, address type, name prefixes, etc.). This will provide consistency for both data entry and reporting. Once these values are established, the technical team can finalize the specifications and requirements for conversion of person biographic and demographic (bio-demo) data.
Still basking in the glow of last week’s celebration, the Financials team had a four-hour internal training session on General Ledger reporting tools led remotely by Suresh Pandurangam from MIS.
Step-by-step handouts from this week’s purchasing training on submitting and approving requisitions are available on PSHelp or the Optimize Training Handouts page. Additionally, PSHelp now has purchasing videos and job aids!
A Time to Celebrate!
Jody Putman signs the Optimize wall.
Meanwhile, the Human Resources team participated in some final discovery sessions on core HR functionality, time and labor, benefits, and payroll. They are looking forward to their first Fit-Gap sessions next week.
Training on purchasing and budget administration continued this week as well. We greatly appreciate the good feedback we’ve gotten from participants in training sessions. Such comments and suggestions are very helpful as we plan and conduct future sessions.
The Financials celebration this week marked a significant milestone in this important project. We happily anticipate more celebrations as the Human Resources and Campus Solutions teams move forward with their work!
Optimize: In Full Swing
Financials presented another round of training to the campus community this week. Procurement Director Ed Barber taught classes on submitting and approving requisitions to staff members from across campus. Ed highlighted the university’s new policies around purchasing and approvals, showing classes common tasks, such as adding routinely ordered items to favorites lists and requesting new vendors.
Still need training? Classes are available for Budget Administration 2 training next week! If you participated in Budget Administration 1 and want to dive deeper into budget inquiry and learn about processing non-PO disbursements, please register for Budget Administration 2. There are other opportunities to take Budget Administration 1 and 2, Submitting Requisitions, and Approving Requisitions classes in August for anyone that was unable to attend July’s sessions. You may review the entire class schedule on the Optimize Training page and sign up today!
Then the Human Resources team is in the midst of numerous Discovery sessions regarding benefits and payroll. The team looks forward to even more sessions next week, as MIS consultants will be on campus to incorporate several design discussions into the discovery phase.
The Campus Solutions team is incredibly busy in one-on-one sessions with MIS consultants who are teaching staff members how to enter data into PeopleSoft. The team will go live with demographic data first, and each day the team gets one step closer to that goal. This data is the foundation for the way the university operates and will be shared between the Human Resources and Financial systems. Behind the scenes, the team is also building its calendar of “firsts” (the first time registration will happen in PeopleSoft, the first time financial aid will be incorporated into PeopleSoft, etc.), which helps ensure that all operational tasks get done on time in both the old and new systems.
PeopleSoft Financials Is Live!
PeopleSoft Financials went live today after six months of persistence and dedication. PeopleSoft is available for campus use through the Cascade menu. Accounts Payable is blazing the trail as the first team to use the system, and as the project progresses, training will be available for other departments. Visit the training page to learn more about upcoming classes.
The Financials team gathered in Howarth 005 to celebrate with party poppers this morning! From left to right: Mike Staton in green (MIS), Suresh Pandurangam (MIS), Jenifer Lambert, Tim Graham (MIS), Jody Putman, Kristen Spiese, Ed Barber, and Steve Renker. Not pictured: Janet Hallman, Angela Markos, John deGroot, Travis Nation, Nancy Nieraeth, Jessie Carter, and Emily Precht.
Financials: Going Live on Monday
This was a milestone week for Financials, Campus Solutions, and Human Resources! As the team leading the implementation process, Financials spent the week testing and training in preparation for go-live on Monday, July 2. Meanwhile Campus Solutions signed off on its Fit-Gap document, outlining each department’s operational requirements for the new system, and Human Resources kicked off its Discovery sessions to begin documenting operational requirements. Training sessions with the General Ledger and Accounts Payable teams went well, with team leaders guiding their staffs through PeopleSoft, and the purchasing department taught requesters and approvers—in seven departments!—how to order goods in the new system. But the accomplishment everyone is most excited about was getting checks to print correctly! (Woo hoo!)
The PeopleSoft Help system is now accessible with basic PeopleSoft navigation instruction videos. Budget administration and purchasing resources will be available shortly. Remember to check the Optimize Training page for updates on in-person and online training. Additionally all weekly campus communications about Optimize Puget Sound system changes and training opportunities are available on the Optimize communications page for your reference.
As the university transitions to PeopleSoft, please refer all questions or comments about system access and functionality to the Service Desk at 253.879.8585 or servicedesk@pugetsound.edu. It is important to document all the questions during the coming months. The Service Desk will then route your question to the appropriate party. Thank you for your patience and excitement as the university launches PeopleSoft Financials!
Preparing for Financials Go-Live
In addition to participating in all-day work sessions to prepare for go-live on July 2, this week the Financials leads provided an introductory training session on PeopleSoft for members of the Accounting and Budget Services (ABS) team. The ABS group was excited to log in to PeopleSoft, navigate through screens, enter journals, and process inquiries. In another session the leads demonstrated the grant process for the staff of the Associate Deans’ Office, and everyone was happy to see how the new system will support grant tracking. Grant tracking’s functionality will continue to be enhanced over the coming months. In two years, the options will be phenomenal.
Campus Solutions celebrated the completion of their Fit-Gap review sessions with cake and cookies! The Fit-Gap highlights how operations will be configured in the new system, and now they can begin the design phase!
To learn about upcoming training sessions and preregister, visit our Optimize Puget Sound Training page. Please check the website often as current session offerings will be updated regularly.