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February 2018

Analytics and Reporting (Human Resources) News and Highlights!

February 15, 2018

Here are the new enhancements that have been implemented in January’s QlikView release!  Please continue to let us know what is working well and what needs improvement!  Simply contact the team at hrar-notify@calists.harvard.edu. 

Access QlikView

Need Help? Contact the team at hrar-notify@calists.harvard.edu

Highlights

New

My Person Profile - The My Person Profile Application displays information about employees that have flexible work arrangements (FWA) that are tracked in PeopleSoft. Employees with multiple jobs appear once in the Person Profile data

University Workforce

  • Added a new User Summary - Roles  Report in User Security that includes DPL, Depts and Roles

... Read more about Analytics and Reporting (Human Resources) News and Highlights!

Upcoming Oracle Financials Outages

February 15, 2018

Oracle Financials will be unavailable due to Harvard IT systems maintenance on:

  • Saturday, March 10th
  • Saturday/Sunday, June 9-10th

Oracle Financials will be unavailable due to the implementation of our Spring FINDINI 4.0.13 Release on:

  • Friday, May 18 at 6:00 p.m. until Monday, May 21 at 9:00 a.m.

This May 2018 FINDINI 4.0.13 release should be available to users on Monday May 21, 2018. Oracle Financial systems that will be offline during these times include:

  • Accounts Payable
  • Accounts Payable Adjustment Form for Assets
  • Accounts Receivable
  • Bottomline
  • CAPS
  • Cash Management (CMRA)
  • Chart Security Maintenance Application (CSMA)
  • CoA Validator
  • Collections
  • FedEx
  • General Ledger
  • GL Validator
  • Harvard Oracle Assets
  • HCOM
  • iProcurement
  • iReceivables
  • PCard
  • Vendor Request
  • Web ADI
  • Web Reimbursement

Also, CPATH (Capital Planning at Harvard), DMS Financial Data Warehouse, & OBI environments will also be offline at times during these outages.

Please continue to review updated release messages and outage information in the next three Monthly eNews articles as we continue to finalize our details. Also, please be aware that outage information is subject to change.

my.harvard Monthly System Maintenance

February 15, 2018

On the weekend of February 24th-25th, my.harvard will undergo mandatory system maintenance. The maintenance window is determined by the vendor who hosts our servers. Each maintenance period is quoted for 7 p.m. Saturday - 7 p.m. Sunday, though most times the system is available much sooner.

If you have any questions, please contact myharvard_support@harvard.edu.

DMS Cloud Migration Project

February 15, 2018

As many of you are aware, The Harvard Cloud Program is a critical initiative for HUIT in FY18 and beyond. An important component of this initiative is the DMS Cloud Migration project.  This project is well underway and includes the migration of HUIT DMS applications and platforms such as the Harvard Data Warehouse, and Oracle BI, and Informatica.

It is our hope to maintain and perhaps, in some cases, improve service levels as a part of this migration. In order to achieve this, we will be reaching out to impacted stakeholders throughout Harvard University that leverage these systems to ensure they are aware of the DMS Cloud Migration project, its change impacts, and how they can assist to ensure a successful migration; i.e. testing their connections to our migrated applications.

Be sure to stay connected to this project and the Harvard Cloud Program initiative by visiting the program and project web page.  If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to one of the key project contacts noted below:

 

NAME

PROJECT ROLE

EMAIL ADDRESS

Mitch Rogers

Managing Director, Data Management Services

mitchel_rogers@harvard.edu

Teresa Schreitmueller

Associate Director, DMS Service Delivery Management

teresa_schreitmueller@harvard.edu

Matt Mazer

Transition Manager, Cloud & DevOps,

matthew_mazer@harvard.edu

Maria Ferrante

Project / Change Manager for Harvard Data Warehouse and Informatica

maria_ferrante@harvard.edu

Raj Mariadoss

Project / Change Manager for OBI

sahaya_mariadoss@harvard.edu

HUBS: Plan-Working in the Reporting Applications and Vacation Expenses

February 15, 2018

A couple of questions that typically arise this time of year are listed below along with links to various pages in the HUBS Wiki that may be helpful as well. As always, users should send an email to hubs@harvard.edu for additional information when needed.

When is the data in Plan-Working in the Reporting Applications Updated?

The data in Plan-Working in the Reporting Applications is updated with the latest data from the CINA cube in the Planning/Budgeting Applications every workday between noon and 1 p.m. and every Monday-Friday night during the HUBS Overnight Processes, excluding holidays. For example:

  • Changes made to CINA Plan-Working during a workday morning will be in your Reporting Application that afternoon.
  • Changes made to CINA Plan-Working during a workday afternoon or night (up to 11 p.m.) will be in your Reporting Application the next morning.
  • Changes made to CINA in Plan-Working during the weekend will be in your Reporting Application the next workday afternoon. In most cases this will be Monday afternoon but when there is a Monday holiday it will be Tuesday afternoon. An exception to this logic would be when a special run of the Overnight Processes occurs during the weekend - the changes would be available in Reporting earlier than usual, and this is the case over the next few weeks.

The HUBS Team has scheduled special runs of the Overnight Processes over the next four weeks as listed below. These special runs will make the weekend changes available at the start of Monday, except it will be Tuesday for the first week in the list since that Monday is a holiday:

  • Monday night, February 19
  • Sunday night, February 25
  • Sunday night, March 4
  • Sunday night, March 11
... Read more about HUBS: Plan-Working in the Reporting Applications and Vacation Expenses

OBIEE Updates

February 15, 2018

OBI “By the Numbers” – January 2018

  • 1,391: Number of distinct users that ran financial dashboards in OBI (Up 300 from November!)
  • 173,848: Number of distinct requests made using the financial dashboards, about half of which were from the “Transaction Listing All” dashboard (99,839 requests)
  • 1,442: Number of people trained on the OBI Financial dashboards to date

Completion of the Modernization of Financial Reporting Project

After six years, the Modernization of Financial Reporting Project (MFR) has come to an end on January 31, 2018.  This project was dedicated to migrating the 105 reports in the old Common Reporting Environment for the Warehouse (CREW) reporting platform to Oracle Business Intelligence.  The reports included such subject areas as finance, grants management, cash management, capital planning and student financials among others.

Data Management Services (DMS) worked with individuals from Central Administration and the schools through the established Working Groups and Engagement Councils.  DMS would like to extend its gratitude to the many people who have contributed to this project.   

Data Management Services will continue to support the Oracle Business Intelligence platform after the completion of the MFR project with dedicated staff through the monthly release process and support of the Help Desk.

... Read more about OBIEE Updates

Common API Platform Project (CAPP) Update

February 15, 2018

On Wed, Jan 24th, twenty individuals from across Harvard attended an API workshop to build a deeper understanding of API development and to experiment with the Mulesoft platform.  The all-day, hands-on event was organized by the Common API Platform Project (CAPP) as an important component of a broader community outreach and enablement effort.  This introductory session presented an overview of Mulesoft’s AnyPoint platform and provided attendees with an opportunity to design, develop and deploy APIs in a temporary environment. 

We expect that as workshop attendees continue to explore the new data exchange technology and share their knowledge within their schools and organizations, the development and re-use of APIs will improve. Initial survey results from workshop attendees indicate the event was well-received. 

Here are a few highlights from the survey:

  • More than 70% rated the event overall as Good or Very Good
  • 85% of attendees are likely to recommend this event to another colleague
  • More than 70% indicated that they are Highly Likely or Likely to seek out additional information or attend additional training about API Development or the Mulesoft platform

Survey respondents also shared suggestions about how to make future workshops more successful, including scheduling the workshop as two half-day sessions and incorporating more interaction among participants.  The CAPP team will leverage this valuable feedback to plan additional events to enhance knowledge and skills among the developer community, and ultimately increase use of new data exchange technology.

Further information about CAPP is available on the project wiki.

Processing Taxable Reimbursements Policy Information Session

February 15, 2018

Confused on when you need to process reimbursements as taxable income? Wondering how taxable reimbursements, such as moving expenses, should now be processed?

The February Policy Information Session will review how to process taxable expenses with a focus on processing moving expenses which are now taxable income to the employee.

The session will be held on Thursday, February 22 from 11:00-12:00 in the Lamont Library Forum Room.

To attend, please send an email to financialpolicy@harvard.edu with the word “registration” in the subject line. The session is open to all; please feel free to forward this invitation to others who may be interested.

2017 Tax Documentation Contact Grid

February 15, 2018

A contact list for questions regarding tax-reporting documents issued by Harvard may be found here.

See here for additional details regarding copies of W-2 forms.

New Guidance Regarding Gifts to Donors

February 15, 2018

From time to time, a school or unit may want to give a “thank you” gift to a donor to recognize their generosity to Harvard.

When giving gifts to a donor, Harvard must avoid creating a quid pro quo (this for that) or the appearance of a quid prop quo with the donor.

Internal guidance regarding gifts to donors and tax implications may be found here or may be found at the Gifts and Celebratory Events for Employees and Nonemployees Related Resources section of the Financial Policy Office website.