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!
Identity and Scheduling Kick Off
Football season is underway, and while we cheer the Loggers on, we’re happy to report not all the great plays are on the field. This week, two new and exciting Optimize initiatives also kicked off!
First, discovery sessions commenced in order to lay the groundwork for implementing Oracle Identity Management, the platform that will allow us to manage user identities, including roles and permissions, across multiple systems.
Second, the Scheduling System Advisory Group held its inaugural meeting. This committee will help guide the implementation of a new, much-needed system to manage room and event scheduling for campus classrooms and non-academic spaces.
Work continued for the Human Resources, Campus Solutions, and technical teams this week. We appreciate the great effort and dedication everyone is putting into this important project. Go, Loggers! Go, Optimize Puget Sound!
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!