December 2007 previous issue back issues index by topic e-News home Contact us at: admin_systems_enews@harvard.edu or via the UIS Helpdesk at 6-2001 The Administrative Systems e-News is a monthly electronic newsletter for users of Harvard's financial, human resources, and reporting systems. Click the links below to learn more about ... Financial Administration (FAD) Winter Release Schedule to be Published mid-December PeopleSoft Release; December 8-10 Outage HRMS Updates: Enhancements to CREW HRMS and Changes to Objects in the Harvard Data Warehouse (DWHRPRD) December 2007 Deadlines for Absence Approvals When and How to Report and Approve Time During the 2007/2008 Winter Recess GMAS Update New University Financial Policies Website Launched About the e-News

Financial Administration (FAD) Winter Release Schedule to be Published mid-December     top

A special issue of e-News will be published mid-December that will include the annual Financial Administration (FAD) 2007/2008 Winter Recess Schedule. The University will be in recess from end-of-day Friday, December 21, 2007 until Wednesday, January 2, 2008. The special issue will include information for special processing deadlines, cutoff dates, and system and support availability.

HRMS Release 19.0; December 8-10 Outage    top

Due to HR Release 19.0, PeopleSoft and HIRES transmissions to PeopleSoft will be unavailable starting on Friday, December 7th at 5:00pm until Monday, December 10th at 8:00am.

Release 19.0 Highlights for Payroll, T&L and Absence Management

Users can expect the following enhancements:

• Absence Management: Maximum Balance column (for Vacation and Sick) added to View Absence Balances page
• TL/PTO Possible Overpayment Report released
• Time & Labor Compensatory Time Balances Report released
• Process Status and Voided Indicator added to Absence Request History page
• Enhancements to Payline Transaction Form including:
• Search Page Changes
• “Payment Date” search field changed to “Paycheck Issue Date”
• “Through Date” search field changed to “Through Issue Date
• Cache issue resolved (users no longer need to navigate away from menu to perform a fresh search)
• Form Changes
• Hourly rate from Job Data, where the effective date is < or = SYSDATE (or current date), is defaulted into the form
• Hours/Units” field will only save to two decimal places

HRMS Updates: Enhancements to CREW HRMS and Changes to Objects in the Harvard Data Warehouse (DWHRPRD)     top

CREW HR 19.0 Release Notes

CREW HR Release 19 will be deployed into production on 12/10/2007.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the UIS Helpdesk at 496-2001 or dls.harvard.edu.

Thank you, The Harvard Data Warehouse and CREW Human Resources (IMS) Reporting teams.

December 2007 Deadlines for Absence Approvals    top

Due to the December holidays and Winter Recess, Absence Approval Deadlines for the month of December are as follows:

When and How to Report and Approve Time During the 2007 Winter Recess     top

Due to Harvard's winter recess, it is necessary to shift the deadlines for the submission of paperwork and the reporting and approving of time. Below is a highlight of important deadlines. For a full schedule, please see the Payroll and Time & Labor Closings Calendar (which includes closing deadlines for personnel actions).

Paydays for overtime-eligible staff will be adjusted as follows:

Many users have also asked which time types to use when reporting time over the winter recess. Here are some guidelines for clerical/technical workers.

Notes: The grid above refers to HUCTW and nonunion, overtime-eligible, clerical/technical employees only. For exempt employees, temps, or service/trades workers, please refer to the relevant personnel manual, union contract, or your local HR office.

• A "day's pay" means one-fifth of the employee's pay for the week.

Reminder: Extra hours for a holiday worked are not paid automatically. If an employee works a holiday, they should report HWK to be paid at a rate of 1.5 times their normal pay for the holiday hours worked. The employee is also entitled to their regular pay for the holiday, or they may take time off at a later date. If the employee wishes to receive pay for the time, they should report HOL for all hours not worked as well as FHP and HWK for all hours worked. If they wish to take the owed time at a later date, they should report HWK to receive pay for the hours worked. At a later date, when the time is taken, they should report HOL with a comment that it is time owed for working on the holiday.

Holiday Worked Time Reporting Scenarios

Things to remember:

HWK – Holiday Worked

• Paid at 1.5 x Hourly Rate
• Adds to Overtime Hours

HOL – Holiday

• Paid at Hourly Rate
• Adds to Overtime Hours

FHP – Floating Holiday Pay

• Paid at Hourly Rate
• Does not add to Overtime Hours

FHE – Floating Holiday Earned (Optional)

• Does not pay out, for tracking purposes only
• Does not add to Overtime Hours

FHT – Floating Holiday Taken

• Paid at Hourly Rate
• Adds to Overtime Hours

Note: All scenarios assume 7-hour scheduled workday

Scenario 1: Employee works 7 hours on Christmas (12/25), wants holiday paid out on the same day.

Scenario 2: Employee works 7 hours on Christmas (12/25), wants to take floating holiday on Jan. 2.

Scenario 3: Employee works 4 hours on Christmas (12/25), wants holiday paid out on the same day.

Scenario 4: Employee works 4 hours on Christmas (12/25), wants to take 4 hours of floating holiday on Jan. 2.

Scenario 5: Employee works 10 hours on Christmas (12/25), wants holiday paid out on the same day.

Scenario 6: Employee works 10 hours on Christmas (12/25), wants to take floating holiday on Jan. 2.

GMAS Update      top

On November 16th GMAS was updated to version 1_15.  Details of the changes are listed below.  Please direct any questions or comments to the GMAS Help Desk at 6-0800 or contactgmas@harvard.edu.

Reminder:  Per desktop standards, in order to open an action memo, or any PDF document in GMAS, you must use Adobe Reader version 7.0 or higher. 

Action Memo

• Improved formatting and layout
• Total carryforward amounts no longer appear doubled
• Subagreements with negative pending amounts appear correctly
• Fixed character display issues caused by smart quotes and HTML special characters
• Enhanced email notification as follows:
• Action memo content is no longer included in the body of the email; a PDF is attached instead
• Email shows who else received the action memo

Scheduled Reports

• Reminders, when scheduled, will be sent for financial and non-financial reports:
• On the create report screens, the option to send a reminder is changed from a checkbox to a radio button to increase clarity
• The reminder option is now editable in the report edit screens 
• As part of this enhancement, all existing non-financial reports were scheduled for a reminder 30 days before the due date; all existing financial reports have no reminder scheduled
• Added a person lookup to specify the "completed by" person for both financial and non-financial reports
• Fixed a spelling error on the word "occurrences" on all reports screens

Other Enhancements

• Comments can be added to receivables
• Moved the budget upload functionality from the dates and dollars screen to its own screen. This significantly improves performance on the dates and dollars screen for large projects
• Added closed accounts to the dates and dollars screen and now both active and closed accounts are listed in the account dollars summary section
• The school specific questions screen no longer appears in the request guided steps when there are no questions
• When an account value is re-enabled in the general ledger, a data change is no longer required to update the value's status in GMAS

Other Bug Fixes

• <Edit closed accounts> button appears in a segment revision when there is pending subagreement money  
• Subagreements created in any request default into continuation and supplement budgets
• Request and segment titles are limited to 200 characters to prevent problems with the account setup interface (CSMA)
• Additional notification comments entered on the notification screen when committing a segment revision and initiating review of a notice or subagreement can now contain quotation marks
• Preferred email defaults into above referenced notification screen for all recipients
• Fixed the display of HMTL special characters throughout GMAS
• Subagreement list screen displays dates correctly for all subagreement statuses

Technical Changes

• Secured direct URL links to action memos through PIN login
• Fixed a problem in the instructional copy content management regarding screens containing capital letters
• Switched to using mailhost instead of camail for sending email from GMAS
• Migrated service for receiving emailed documents to a different server
• Added a new web server to separate the database and application layers (per security best practices)

New University Financial Policies Website Launched   top

The new University Financial Policy website has been launched and can be found at:

http://vpf-web.harvard.edu/ofs/policies/policies.shtml

or by simply going to the Financial Administration (FAD) or Office of the Controller (OC) home pages and clicking on the policy links.

The new website is the definitive source for all FAD policies, and includes instructions on how to develop new policies, including an easy to use flowchart.  You can also find information about how to revise an existing policy, details about the University Financial Policy Office and there’s a helpful FAQ to quickly answer any other questions you may have related to financial policies. 

Check it out! To send a comment or question, click on the "Send Feedback" link at the site.

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.

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