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July 2018

August Upcoming Oracle Financials Outages

July 12, 2018

Oracle Financials will be unavailable on Saturday, August 4 from 8 a.m. to Noon for the Balance Forward Year End Allocation execution.

Financial systems that will be unavailable during this time 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
  • Oracle Assets
  • HCOM
  • iProcurement
  • iReceivables
  • PCard
  • Vendor Request
  • Web ADI
  • Web Reimbursement

There is no impact to CPATH, HDW, or OBI during this time.

OBIEE Updates

July 12, 2018

This update relates to the non-student Accounts Receivables, CAPS, Cash Management, Chart of Accounts, CSMA, Financials, Grants Management, Procure to Pay, Travel & Expense, and User Security folders.

OBI “By the Numbers” for June 2018

  • 99.2%: Percentage of queries that completed in 1 minute or under (up 0.1% since May!!!)
  • 1,501: Number of distinct users in OBI for ALL subject areas
  • 207,382: Number of distinct requests made in ALL subject areas (up by ~25,000 queries since May!)
    • The “Transaction Listing All” dashboard alone continues to make up almost half of all the requests at the university (94,517 requests). 

Monthly OBI Release

During this critical Fiscal Year End reporting period, there will be no OBI release in July.

The next OBI release will begin on Thursday, August 23rd at 6 p.m.  All changes will be implemented and the release complete by 9 a.m. on Friday, August 24th.  Check out the newly updated OBI 3 Month Release Plan and Backlog wiki page for details of the dashboard changes in this release.... Read more about OBIEE Updates

DMS Cloud Migration Project

July 12, 2018

The Harvard Data Warehouse is migrating to Amazon Web Services (otherwise known as AWS or the Cloud) during the month of September 2018.

 

As part of this effort, we have asked our impacted stakeholders to participate in our testing cycles now that the HDW databases on AWS are ready to validate and transition from the On Premises databases. Participation in the testing cycles is critical to ensure that there will be no service interruptions after the migration. The testing and migration schedule is posted here. 

 

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or concerns.  DMS appreciates your help with this effort.

Nonresident Alien Tax Compliance - Administrators Session for Onboarding Foreign Payees

July 12, 2018

The Nonresident Alien Tax Compliance Office will host an information session for Harvard Administrators on Tuesday, August 21 from 10:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m., Room B-30 (Level B), at Lamont Library.

Suggested for administrators who onboard and make payments to foreign individuals. This session will include an overview of the onboarding processes in PeopleSoft and Oracle, review of the “BER- Foreign Individual” Vendor Type, a brief overview of the GLACIER online tax compliance system, federal compliance considerations, helpful tips, and Q&A.

To attend, please send an email to natasha_rivera@harvard.edu with the words “registration 8/21” in the subject line. This session is open to all; please feel free to forward this invitation to others who may be interested.

Nonresident Alien Tax Compliance - Glacier Information Session for Foreign Individuals

July 12, 2018

Nonresident Alien Tax Compliance (“NRA Tax”) will host a GLACIER information session for foreign individuals on Wednesday, August 22 from 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m., Forum Room at Lamont Library.

Suggested for foreign individuals who receive payments from Harvard and are required to complete GLACIER (an online tax compliance system). This session will include an overview of GLACIER, tips and tricks available on NRA Tax website https://nratax.oc.finance.harvard.edu/Glacier, and Q&A.

To attend, please send an email to natasha_rivera@harvard.edu with the words “registration 8/22” in the subject line. This session is open to all; please feel free to forward this invitation to others who may be interested.

Policy Update - Financial Management of Property, Plan and Equipment (PPE Policy)

July 12, 2018

This update to the 2014 PPE policy focuses on clarifying processes and procedures around the capitalization of property, plant and equipment. Updates to the policy include increasing the minimum threshold for upgrades and betterments for capitalized equipment to $5,000, clarifying when to capitalize or expense a fabrication, and allowing fixed pieces of equipment over $100,000 that are not linked to capital projects be capitalized. New sample forms around disposition of equipment, tracking untaggable equipment, and tracking equipment off-site have also been designed to aid the Oracle assets inventory process.

New Policy - Procurement Policy

July 12, 2018

Effective 7/1/18, a new Procurement Policy goes into effect. This policy details requirements and best practices for all funding sources, and includes specific requirements that comply with Federal Uniform Guidance (UG) requirements.

 

UG is a set of regulations that consolidate several federal guidelines related to purchases made with federal or cost-share funds or expenses transferred onto federal funds.

 

The policy and related materials can be found on the Financial Policy Office website (https://policies.fad.harvard.edu/procurement).

Preferred Vendor List

July 12, 2018

A list of preferred vendors meeting the Uniform Guidance requirements for purchases between $10,000 and $250,000 with federal or cost-share funds can be found on the Harvard Strategic Procurement Website under the Goods & Services tab.

The HCOMarketplace has been updated with new vendor icons to reflect which vendors are:
Preferred Vendors: gold star “P” Preferred Vendor Icon
Contract Vendor: silver star “C”  Contract Vendor Icon