FINDINI Release 2.0.1 Planned
for December 18   back to top

As described in previous issues, the University introduces upgrades, modifications, and enhancements to its enterprise financial and reporting systems in a series of software "releases."

The releases, which provide a way to batch changes to the applications, are called FINDINI (Financials + HUDINI). The FINDINI 2.0.1 release will be in production on Monday, December 18. Here is a summary of changes that will affect users:

• All users of the Oracle Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) applications, the Budget Tool, and HUDINI will need to upgrade to J-initiator 1.1.7.27 to use the applications beginning on December 18;
• Fiscal Budget Tool users will see that several high priority enhancements have been implemented;
• Accounts Receivable reports have been added to AWS2 and HUDINI. AWS2's Create Reports screen has been reformatted to make reports easier to find.

Also in this release, WebEx direct pay and travel advances functionality is being implemented "behind the scenes" to enable testing by pilot users in December and January. If all goes well, a school-by-school rollout should start with the Kennedy School in mid-February.

Installing J-initiator 1.1.7.27    back to top

Harvard uses version 1.1.5.21.1 of the J-initiator in conjunction with the Oracle financial applications, the Budget Tool and HUDINI. To connect to the applications, this software "plug-in" must be installed on each user's desktop. Many local desktop organizations installed version 1.1.5.21.1 on users' desktops for the go-live in July of 1999, or end users themselves installed it by following a series of prompts when they first logged on to one of the applications.

Concurrent with the implementation of FINDINI 2.0.1 on December 18, we are upgrading to J-initiator version 1.1.7.27 for three reasons:

• Oracle has recommended that we use a more current version;
• increasingly, Oracle's technical support suggests upgrading J-initiator as the first step in troubleshooting a problem, particularly when it has solved a similar problem for other customers;
• its use may result in modest improvements in performance for Harvard's users.

There are three ways to upgrade the J-initiator on your desktop:

1. Your local desktop support organization may do it for you and other users in your area;

2. You can do it in advance of using the applications by downloading the plug-in from the Financial Applications main page (http://vpf-web.harvard.edu/applications/) where a hotlink will be provided as of December 18;

3. You can wait until the first time you log into one of the applications that requires J-initiator and the system will prompt you to install the new version. If you choose this method, remember to "just say yes" to the system prompts and follow the installation instructions beginning at Step 2 below. Plan to spend at least a few minutes completing the upgrade. Deferring the upgrade to another time, or stopping in the middle of the upgrade, is likely to have an adverse impact on your desktop.

Special Note: HURIS 2.5 users should keep J-initiator version 1.1.7.18 on their desktops as it will continue to be used for the time being. HURIS 2.5 users who are not also users of the Oracle Financial applications should download and install version 1.1.7.27 to avoid any problems when the HURIS application also upgrades from 1.1.7.18 to 1.1.7.27.

Here are detailed instructions for upgrading J-initiator yourself:

1. Go to the Financial Applications main page: http://vpf-web.harvard.edu/ applications/ and click on the Download Oracle J-Initiator ver. 1.1.7.27 link. (Note: You can also attempt to launch one of the Oracle financial applications directly and let the system check to see if you have the current version of J-initiator already installed. If you don’t, the system will ask you if you want to download it. You should say yes to this prompt, as it will only appear the first time you do this.)

2. Save the installation file (oajinit.exe) to your desktop.

3. Once the file has been downloaded, quit Netscape.

4. Double-click on the oajinit.exe file on your desktop to run the installer.

5. Accept the default answers to all of the installer’s prompts and let it run (this can take a few minutes).

6. After the installer is finished, relaunch Netscape.

You can check to see if J-initiator is correctly installed on your computer by launching Netscape and choosing Help > About Plug-Ins from the menu. If J-initiator 1.1.7.27 is there, you will find the following message on the Installed Plug-ins screen:

Oracle JInitiator 1.1.7.27 for Netscape Navigator

File name: C:PROGRAMFILES\ NETSCAPE\ COMMUNICATOR\ PROGRAM\ plugins\ NPJinit-11727.dll

Oracle JInitiator 1.1.7.27 for Netscape Navigator with OJDK/JRE 1.1.7.27

Upgrade problems or questions?

Please call the Helpdesk at 6-2001 if you have any questions or problems.

Fiscal and Sponsored
Budget Tool Changes back to top

You will see several significant enhancements to the Fiscal and Sponsored Budget Tool beginning on December 18. These enhancements, described in the table below, allow you to:

• save account selections you create on the Account Selection screen as "account sets" and then use them again;
• view the individual account values you selected;
• preview and delete saved templates.

These enhancements can significantly reduce the amount of time you spend selecting budget types and choosing account values. Detailed instructions on how the new features work will be available in the work instruction "Create a Detailed Budget," which you can access from the ABLE "What's New?" area after December 18.

For further details on new Sponsored Budget Tool enhancements, please call Mike Laskofski of Sponsored Research at 5-3796.

New AWS2 and HUDINI Reports  back to top

Six accounts receivable reports are being added to AWS2 and HUDINI to help AR managers get up-to-date information on the status of their customers and outgoing invoices. These reports, which can only be run by users who have the "V" flag at the end of their HDW reporting responsibility, are:

• Account Status Summary
• Billing History and Payment
• Billing Summary
• Past Due Invoices Summary
• Print Invoice Copy
• 7 Bucket Aging Report

The AWS2 Create Reports screen is being reformatted to make specific reports easier to find. All of the reports will now be arranged alphabetically within certain categories. The categories are Financial, Sponsored, Budget, Procurement, and Receivable. Click here for a preview of the new screen.

Holiday Hours of Operation   back to top

All Financial Administration offices and the UIS Helpdesk will be closed from Friday, December 22, 2000 at 5 p.m. until Tuesday, January 2, 2001 at 9 a.m. Unlike last year, skeleton staffing and limited services will not be provided.

Especially important: the deadline for all approved vendor invoices to reach Accounts Payable in Holyoke Center will be 12 noon on Friday, December 22. All invoices received after this time will be paid in January.

Accounts Receivable Training
Registration Now Open   back to top

As planned, the balance of the AR training to support the January 2 go-live has been scheduled and registration is open. Key information:

• click here for course descriptions
• click here for information on how to register

Please Unsubscribe Me back to top

When we publish each issue of the e-News, we send out a notification email to all users of Oracle financials, STAR, the Budget Tools, and the Data Warehouse. To do this, we use a "listproc" or email list that is compiled and maintained in an automated way by the Helpdesk.

To construct the listproc, the Harvard Data Warehouse and the STAR security module are queried for all registered users. Twice a month, the queries are re-run to pick up new users. Disabled or terminated users automatically drop off. Duplicates between systems are eliminated. Email addresses are pulled from the HUID system.

Why are we telling you this? After each issue, a small number of users write to us saying:

• please unsubscribe me from your listproc, or
• please add me or someone in my department to your listproc, or
• please write to me at a different email address

Given that the list contains about 5,000 names and we have no practical way to manage these exceptions, we cannot accommodate these special requests. If you do not actively use financial systems and find the extra email bothersome, you should ask your local security administrator or financial office to disable your access. This is the only way to get off the listproc.

To change or correct your email address in central systems, Kate Reulet from the UIS Directory Project recommends the following:

Our current method of e-mail, phone number, and address maintenance relies on a departmental directory contact. This contact -- often the department administrator, but not always -- is responsible for updating directory information throughout the year, whenever staff contact information changes. This info is fed into the online directory and to the telephone operators the next business day. Alternatively, individuals may update their information through our website at http://www.uis.harvard.edu/telecom/harvard_directory. FAS faculty and staff should update their records via the FAS Portal.

Data from the online directory then makes its way into the HUID system, where it is retrieved by our listproc query.

Project Underway to Find Better
Password and Sign-on Solutions  back to top

How many system passwords do you have? How many systems do you sign-on to daily? For many of us, the number is at least a half dozen. Many end users will find it encouraging to know that a project is underway to explore unification of the multiple sign-ons and passwords that we must enter today.

A small team including representatives of the FAS, the Medical School, the Graduate School of Design, Risk Management and Audit Services, the Server Operations Center, Applications Administration, and the Assistant Provosts' Office has been investigating single sign-on products since late spring. Vendor sessions were opened to IT managers across the campus, who were thus made aware of the project. Here are some helpful definitions, provided by Marilyn Shesko, Senior Project Manager in the Assistant Provosts' Office:

Password Synchronization ensures that a person has the same password in all applications. People must still login separately to every application and may have different login IDs for different applications. It is not very useful in our current environment because we can neither set the passwords in Oracle Applications nor export the Oracle Applications passwords for use in other applications.

Single Sign-on (SSO) allows a person to login once and have access to all applications. The applications may have different passwords for better security, since some applications send passwords in the clear over the network while others are able to encrypt passwords. The person does not need to remember either the login ID or the password for any application except the single sign-on product. The product fills in the login screen for any application it is configured to support.

SSO products vary in many dimensions:

• the range of applications they support
• their ability to recognize various applications
• where they store the logins and passwords
• how the workload is distributed between the (desktop) client and the SSO server
• whether they can manage situations in which people have multiple logins to a single application for different roles (for example, two email accounts, both user and administrator roles for an application)
• whether they are accessible from off campus
• support for high availability

All products have a desktop component. Deployment therefore will require acceptance by local units and support from local technical staff.

Marilyn reports that the team is currently at the stage of evaluating products, working down the list of finalists beginning with the most promising products. When product evaluation is complete (no earlier than January) and assuming that an acceptable product is found, the site licensing group will be asked to negotiate with the selected vendor. At that time, local units will be apprised of the selection and asked to provide approximate license quantities for their areas.

Stay tuned for further developments in this area….

About the e-News back to top

Note: Due to the upcoming holiday break, the FAD e-News will not be published on December 26. We'll be back on January 12.

The Financial Administration publishes this semi-monthly electronic newsletter for users of Harvard University's financial systems, policies, and procedures. Generally, the e-News is published on or around the 12th and 26th of each month.

It contains:

• updates on projects underway to build or improve University financial systems;
• information about new University financial 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: fad_communications@harvard.edu