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April 2019

FINDINI 4.0.15 Release - Upcoming April System Outages for Oracle Financials Systems

April 11, 2019

The Spring 2019 FINDINI 4.0.15 release will be available to users on Monday April 29, 2019.

Please continue to review updated release messages and outage information that will be posted in the March & April e-News articles, on the Oracle Financial splash pages, on https://oracle.fss.finance.harvard.edu/oracle-ebs-findini-4015-release-notes, and on the sites listed below.

Short Summary:

The focus of this release continues to be with our collaboration, development, testing, and rollout for two of our ITCRB projects, Buy-to-Pay and Revenue Management. We are also rolling out the new CAPs Builders Risk insurance function, a CPATH application upgrade, & the new Fixed Assets point in time Asset Workbench Report. In addition, we are addressing the standard security and compliance software and database patching to keep EBS and CPATH up to date with many industry security regulations and requirements. These will include updates for PSU, ATG, CPU, JDK, JRE, & Linux & WebLogic Operating System patching.

Beginning Monday, April 29, 2019, the B2P Supplier Portal goes live. In anticipation of this transition, the Oracle Vendor Request Form will sunset on Wednesday April 24th. All vendor adds, updates, and reactivations, along with all supporting documentation, must be received by the central Vendor Setup team by 4 p.m. on Wednesday April 24, 2019. After this date, vendor requests must be submitted via the B2P Supplier Portal beginning Monday April 29th. When logging into Oracle Financials, users with access to the Vendor Request Form will no longer see the Vendor Request Main Menu option. For those users who will be granted application permissions by their Authorized Requestors to request new Vendors and request maintenance for vendors, the new application link will be found on the HUIT Financials Systems Applications page: HUIT Financial Systems Applications under the Buy-to-Pay section called Supplier Portal (Jaggaer Total Supplier Management system).

Oracle Financials Outage - 6:00 p.m. on Friday, April 26th until 7:00 a.m. on Monday, April 29th to accommodate the installation of this release. CPATH (Capital Planning at Harvard), DMS Financial Data Warehouse, & HART Reporting will also be offline during this outage window. CPATH & DMS Financial Data Warehouse are also having a release during this weekend.... Read more about FINDINI 4.0.15 Release - Upcoming April System Outages for Oracle Financials Systems

PeopleSoft HR Spring Release: Enhancements and Outage Information

April 11, 2019

PeopleSoft and all external system transmissions to PeopleSoft will be unavailable starting on Friday, May 10th at 5:00 p.m. until Monday, May 13th at 8:00 a.m. (at the latest) due to the 2019 spring release.

Users will see changes in the following areas on Monday, May 13th:

  • New Mobile Time and Labor pages
  • PeopleSoft Day 1-30 Onboarding for Benefits Eligible New Hires
  • New Mobile Direct Deposit page
  • Absence Management Approval page
  • LHT Quick Hire Form
  • Preferred First Name Support in PeopleSoft
  • New “look and feel” for administrative pages

... Read more about PeopleSoft HR Spring Release: Enhancements and Outage Information

Position Tracking and Reporting Project

April 11, 2019

Position Tracking and Report Project Scheduled to Go-Live in October 2019

What is the Position Tracking and Reporting Project?

The Position Tracking and Reporting project is focused on solving a need expressed by both the Human Resource (HR) and Finance communities throughout the University, which is to be able to obtain meaningful information regarding the University's workforce today and over time.

The project will establish a University-wide approach to track positions in our HR and Financial systems. It will also enable administrators to conduct analysis in a much more seamless and consistent manner by tying the data across our many systems together.

How Will this Project Impact Me?

The level of impact will vary by school/unit as some organizations have local systems (Aurora, Wasabi, HireTouch etc..) that will capture this information.  You should check with your local implementation manager to fully understand what this means at your school/unit.  

What will be common is the introduction of a position number value in many of our core information systems and reporting tools (PeopleSoft, Harvard Careers, HUBS, QlikView, Oracle/HART and several others). In addition, new staff positions and changes to existing staff positions (reclassifications, reorgs) will require a local HR and Finance approval in PeopleSoft or approval in a local integrated system (Aurora, Wasabi). For example, this means that staff and union positions will not be able to be posted in Harvard Careers before they are formally approved in PeopleSoft, Aurora or Wasabi. ... Read more about Position Tracking and Reporting Project

Harvard Analytics and Reporting Tool (HART) Update

April 11, 2019

Harvard Analytics and Reporting Tool (HART) relates to the OBI environment that contains the non-student Accounts Receivables, CAPS, Cash Management, Chart of Accounts, CSMA, Financials, Grants Management, Procure to Pay, Travel & Expense, and User Security folders.

HART “By the Numbers” for March 2019

  • 99.5:                   % of queries that completed in 1 minute or under
  • 0.00007:             % of queries that completed in over 5 minutes
  • 1,417:                 # of distinct users in HART for ALL subject areas
  • 147,050:             # of distinct requests made in ALL subject areas

Monthly HART Release

Data Management Services (DMS) is not planning to implement a HART release in April.  Check out the OBI 3 Month Release Plan and Backlog wiki page for details of the May and June releases.... Read more about Harvard Analytics and Reporting Tool (HART) Update

Ad Hoc Reporting Project Update

April 11, 2019

The Ad Hoc Reporting Project (ARP)’s mission is to improve the ad-hoc reporting capabilities for Harvard data citizens, and provide a replacement and a migration strategy for the ~250 BRIO / Hyperion IR users.  Data Management Services is thrilled to announce that the Ad Hoc Reporting Project has been approved for ITCRB funds to implement Tableau as the Ad Hoc Reporting tool to replace Brio/IR.  The funding will cover this work during the next two fiscal years, FY20 and FY21.

Currently, DMS is actively working with Tableau to:

  • Identify consulting partners to assist Brio/IR users converting their queries to Tableau
    and
  • Identify training tracks for the Ad Hoc community

We will provide more information about these items and the project in the coming months.  For more information about the Ad Hoc Reporting Project, please check out the ARP wiki page.

ESTR Upgrade Scheduled for April 12-15

April 11, 2019

ESTR* will be unavailable during updates from Friday, April 12 at 4:00 pm ET until Monday, April 15 at 7:00 am ET. View the detailed release notes to preview many of the key changes expected with this upgrade.

For more information, please:

*What is ESTR? To learn more about ESTR and to access current training materials and resources, please visit our support site: estrsupport.fss.harvard.edu... Read more about ESTR Upgrade Scheduled for April 12-15

Agreements-DUA Upgrade Scheduled for April 12-15

April 11, 2019

The Agreements* system for Data Use Agreements (DUAs) will be unavailable during updates from Friday, April 12 at 4:00 pm ET until Monday, April 15 at 7:00 am ET. View the detailed release notes to preview many of the key changes expected with this upgrade.

For more information, please:

*What is the Agreements system? To learn more about Agreements-DUA and to access current training materials and resources, please visit our support site: ras.fss.harvard.edu/agreements... Read more about Agreements-DUA Upgrade Scheduled for April 12-15

Buy-to-Pay Supplier Portal Go-Live

April 11, 2019

Beginning Monday April 29, 2019 the B2P Supplier Portal goes live. In anticipation of this transition, the Oracle Vendor Request Form will sunset on Wednesday April 24th. All vendor adds, updates, and reactivations, along with all supporting documentation, must be received by the central Vendor Setup team by 4 p.m. on Wednesday April 24, 2019. After this date, vendor requests must be submitted via the B2P Supplier Portal beginning Monday April 29th. The new application link will be found on the HUIT Financials Systems Applications page: HUIT Financial Systems Applications under the Buy-to-Pay section called Supplier Portal (Jaggaer Total Supplier Management system).

 

For questions and further guidance, please visit the B2P page located here or contact the Vendor Set-Up team at vendorsetup_ufs@harvard.edu.

 

For more information on the Buy-to-Pay project (B2P) visit this eNews publication here.

GMAS April 2019 Release

April 11, 2019

GMAS release 1_49 went live on Monday, April 8th. This release included:

  • New proposal budget view and entry for Initial and Competing renewal proposals
  • An enhanced request research team screen
    • Added proposed effort to the researched team list screen and simplified adding and removing members
    • Effort entry is now required at request
  • Improvements to the request dashboard
  • Financial deliverable bug fixes and enhancements
    • Departments can now download the financial deliverables dashboard
  • Updates to external organization profiles

For the full details of this release, please visit the GMAS Release 1_49 page on the GMAS website. If you have any questions, please reach out to contactgmas@harvard.edu.

Processing Commencement Prizes, Grants, Awards Policy Review Session

April 11, 2019

Confused on what the differences are between prizes, grants, and awards?

Want to know how and when to process these types of payments, what object code to use, and when they may be reportable or taxable?

If you share these questions or have similar ones, please join us on Thursday, April 25 from 11:00-12:00 in the Lamont Library, Forum Room.

To attend, please register here or send an email to financialpolicy@harvard.edu with the word “4/25 Session” in the subject line.

The session is open to all; please feel free to forward this invitation to others who may be interested.