|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Volume and Composition of Year-End Reporting top
Year-End Report Volume
Second close results are in. With two closes down and three to go, the volume of financial reports being run is consistent with prior year-end closes. For July 2005, 55,495 reports were run. As of July 17, 2006, 31,351 reports have been run. Based on the reports scheduled for the remaining two weeks of July, 2006, and the day-to-day reporting activity taking place, an additional 25,000 reports are expected to be run by the end of the month.
Composition of Report Submissions
Of the seventy-two different CREW financial reports, the Detail Listings comprise 71% of all report submissions during year-end.
Report Queue Backlogs and Scheduling Reports top
Occasionally, the high volume of reports run at year-end will cause backlogs in the queues that service report execution. To visualize this, think of report submissions as traffic on the Mass Pike and queues as the finite number of Allston/Brighton toll booths through which all Cambridge/Harvard Square bound traffic must exit. Likewise, designated report queues allow only a certain number of reports to be processed concurrently. This limit is to ensure that the database from which reports retrieve data does not get overburdened and begin to slow down.
The volume of report submissions at year-end is such that on Thursday, July 13, between the hours of 7:15 am and 11:00 am, 1,032 reports were submitted by end users. Since only 30 financial reports can run concurrently, a backlog formed whereby later reports had to wait for earlier reports to finish before being able to run. Some reports waited up to one hour in "Pending" status before beginning to execute.
Of the 300 reports scheduled for Thursday, July 13 all were finished and available by 9:00 am, with the exception of a few long running reports.
Detail Listing reports are more immune than other financial reports to backlogs and can accommodate a large volume of scheduled and non-scheduled reports submissions, since like the I-90 Fast Lane, they have their own designated queue. Since Detail Listings comprise the overwhelming majority of reports submitted and are the fastest running reports, siphoning them off to their own queue assures that they won't end up queued behind several long running reports, such as the CINA Flex, where longer "pending wait times" would begin to accrue.
What financial report users can do to avoid reporting "rush hour delays" is to schedule their reports to run overnight, especially longer running reports. In particular, scheduling the Budget Variance report, which is the second most frequently run report and which can take 20 to 40 minutes to complete, will alleviate congestion in the queue that services these reports.
Even with scheduled reports, volume can still, at times, be high enough that reports will continue to run through mid-morning. For reports other than the Detail Listing, some may even still be listed as "pending". However, scheduled reports will always run before any later submissions.
For the period of July 1 through July 17, 21% of total submissions were scheduled reports.
Nightly Loads and System Performance top
When does CREW come up in the morning?
CREW comes down in the evenings at 9:30 pm to start the load process whereby transactions processed during the day are copied into the data warehouse. Since CREW services financial, sponsored, and human resource reports, data from multiple source systems is processed into the database nightly. This load process can take up to several hours each night. Typically, the nightly data refresh finishes between 7:00 am and 8:00 am, at which point the CREW application is brought up and is ready for end-users.
Periodically, the nightly refresh will take longer, due to either technical problems or to cyclical business processes whereby more data needs to be calculated, recalculated and stored (e.g., opening or closing an accounting period or opening a new budget year). Whenever longer nightly loads are anticipated, messages are posted to the CREW Gateway Page.
Nightly Loads and Scheduled Reports
Longer nightly loads have an impact on scheduled reports. Scheduled reports begin to execute when all loads are complete and CREW financial data zones are brought up. When CREW comes up at 7:00 am, most financial reports, and practically all Detail Listings, will complete by 9:00 am or 10:00 am. An extended nightly load causes a delay in scheduled report execution, which will mean later completion times, and will clog the reports queues for new "on-demand" requests being made by users as they start their reporting activity for the day.
Analyzing the nightly load process to find ways to streamline the various tasks, so that scheduled financial reports can begin to execute and complete earlier, is underway. Reducing the nightly load schedules will contribute to reducing the queue backlogs that occur when scheduled reports do not complete before the influx of new "on-demand" report requests are submitted.
CREW Application Server Upgrade
Over the July 4 weekend, the CREW Application server was replaced with higher performing hardware. As a result, CREW year-end users are seeing improved response time on picklists, navigation between pages, and viewing report output, as well as improved communication between the application server and the server that stores the report data.
Final JUN-06 Close: August 2nd Traffic and Scheduled Reports top
Report submission volume is expected to be very high on Wednesday, August 2 as the fifth and final JUN-06 close will occur on Tuesday, August 1. In addition to final JUN-06 reports, Current Fiscal Year reports will be run and are being scheduled for that day. As of July 17, 1,157 reports are scheduled to run the morning of August 2.
In the event of queue backlogs on this day due to the high volume of report submissions, updated messages will be posted to the CREW Gateway Page. Report usage and system performance will be monitored closely.
Remember, scheduled reports will always begin to execute before reports submitted "on-demand" at the start of the business day. Schedule your reports to reduce pending wait times for yourself and for others.
Detail Listing First and Second Closing Periods top
An issue was identified on Tuesday, July 11 whereby the first and second close date periods were returning transactions outside of the close period date ranges. This problem affected 145 end-users. The users were identified by analyzing report request submissions and an e-mail describing the issue was sent to those affected. On Thursday, July 13 the issue was fixed in CREW.
"Current Fiscal Year through Last Closed Period" Date Period at Year End top
Using "CFY through Last Closed Period" during the year-end close will not return expected data. Since most financial reports are fiscal year based, when both July of the new fiscal year and June of the prior fiscal year periods are open, the last closed period is MAY-06, which falls into the prior fiscal year. Until JUN-06 is closed in early August, there is no last closed period in the current fiscal year. Therefore, the results returned will not be an accurate reflection of JUL-06. For current fiscal year reporting while both JUN-06 and JUL-06 are open, run reports using "Current Fiscal Year to Date" or "Other Specified" period.
Additional Year-End Reporting Resources top
Follow the links below to view:
About the e-News top
The Center for Workplace Development publishes this electronic newsletter for users of Harvard University's financial, HR, and reporting systems, policies, and procedures. The e-News is generally published on or around the 15th of each month.
It contains:
- updates on projects underway to build or improve University administrative systems;
- information about new University policies, procedures, and forms;
- reminders about upcoming deadlines and cut-over dates;
- tips and tricks for working more easily or productively.
We welcome questions and suggestions for improvement from readers. If your questions are of general interest, we will answer them in future issues.
Please send comments, questions, or suggestions for improvement by email to us at: admin_systems_enews@harvard.edu.
For information about subscribing or unsubscribing to the eNews notifications, visit our who gets the eNews page.