As we have written to you in past publications and other communications, the HUIT Oracle Financials team has been working on the Oracle Financial Platform Improvement (OFPI) project. This phased project is helping us prepare and execute HUIT and the University to meet the goals of moving towards virtual servers on cloud based technologies for our Oracle Financial software. Some of the benefits we will gain will be cost savings to support and run our financial systems, stronger business continuity and disaster recovery, and enhanced performance and reliability as we move off of our current aging hardware. One of the first phases of this project that we have focused on is to update several of our custom applications such as PCARD and Web Reimbursement, as the outdated server technologies they run on are expiring very soon. The current language that these functions are written in is also no longer viable or supportable. HUIT has been in the process of rewriting and testing these functions to accommodate these needed changes in a supportable language (APEX) that would result in the least amount of invasive changes to the end users, and allow us to move forward to having these custom applications run on our future cloud based virtual servers.
Some of these changes will be rolled out in our August Monthly Release and we wanted to bring this to your attention as you will see some noticeable visual differences within the Web Reimbursement responsibilities and menus. This August Monthly release will be available to users on Wednesday August 24, 2016 and there will be no outages to the community. The following items will be updated in the WV Reimbursement and WV User Preferences responsibilities:
WV Reimbursement
- Requisition History
- Reprint Web Reimbursement
- User Search
- Open Requisitions
- Invoice Search
WV User Preferences
- Account Code List
- Reimbursement Email Maintenance
- Harvard Preferences
Please note that the rest of the Web Reimbursement functions (such as Create Reimbursement) will be completed in the March 2017 FINDINI release. For those of you who use PCard, it is expected for you to see those changes completed in the October 2016 FINDINI release.
Training Tips:
Below are screenshots illustrating the current look and feel to the new look and feel, and some notes of changes you will see delivered in this August monthly release.
WV Reimbursement Menu
Invoice Search - Current
New Look
Changes:
- Addition of Creation Date Search using pop-up calendars
- Ability to Export information on the Results screen using the new ‘Actions’ button
- Printable screens when drilling down to additional data
- Ability to sort results at Header level
Open Requisitions - Current
New Look
Changes:
- Addition of Creation Date Search using pop-up calendars
- Smart search of Preparer name
- Ability to Export information on the Results screen using the new ‘Actions’ button
- Ability to sort results at Header level
Requisition History – Current
New Look
Changes:
- Creation Date Search using pop-up calendars
- Smart search of Preparer name
- Smart search of Approver Name
- Ability to Export information on the Results screen using the new ‘Actions’ button
- Printable screens when drilling down to additional data
- Ability to sort results at Header level
Reprint Web Reimbursement - Current
New Look
User Search – Current
New Look
Changes
- Printable screens when drilling down to additional data
WV User Preferences
Web Reimbursement Preferences – Current
New Look
Changes:
- Absence Date Search using pop-up calendars
Reimbursement Email Maintenance - Current
New Look
Reimbursement Email Maintenance - Current
New Look
Changes:
- Clear buttons and ESP fields have been removed
- Ability to add additional rows
- Ability to Select lines and Delete rows
- Ability to Select All and Delete all rows
- Save/Delete functions will provide message to show action completed
For questions please contact the HUIT Service Desk at ithelp@harvard.edu or call them at 5-7777. Further helpful tips & release information can be found on site http://oracle.fss.finance.harvard.edu/releases.