August 2009 previous issue back issues index by topic e-News home About the e-News 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. Systems Updates & Enhancements Oracle Systems to Transition from J-Initiator Plug-In to the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) Plug-In in October CREW HR Release 24 Details Human Resource Reporting News: Enhancements and Changes to HR CREW Reports and HDW Database Objects August 2009 CREW Financial, Sponsored, CAPS, and Student Release Items Sponsored System Updates: GMAS and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) HUBS Update and Release Information Upcoming Releases Financial News and Updates Procurement Update: Bankruptcy Protection Notes

Oracle Systems to Transition from J-Initiator plug-in to the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) plug-in in October    top

University financial systems users currently use the J-Initiator plug-in that enables them to work with applications such as the General Ledger. In October, a change will be made to Oracle systems that will no longer require the J-Initiator plug-in. Users will use the Java Runtime Environment, or JRE plug-in, in place of the J-Initiator.

This change provides some positive impacts for the user:

• Many users may already have the JRE plug-in installed on their computer that works with other Java applications
• There have been reported conflicts between the J-initiator and the JRE in the past that will be resolved by migrating to a single java plug-in
• This change will facilitate future upgrades in Oracle applications

As mentioned above, it is possible that users may already have the JRE installed on their computers right now. There are two ways to check to see if the JRE is currently installed on your workstation:

Method 1: Go to this website: http://www.java.com/en/download/help/testvm.xml. If the JRE is already installed on your computer, you will see an image similar to this:

Please be aware of the following:

• Even if you do have the JRE installed, the site may indicate you do not have the latest version. While Oracle will work correctly with any Java 6 version of the JRE, it is recommended that users have the latest version of the JRE installed on their workstations.
• You can follow the instructions on the site to download the JRE or the latest version of the JRE, but be aware that because installation requires that you have administrative rights to your desktop, you may need to request help from your local desktop support to assist in installing the plug-in.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you decide to download the JRE, you may receive this dialog box asking if you would like to download the Bing Toolbar:

Central Administration users should NOT download the Bing Toolbar. Please uncheck the box before proceeding with the download.

Method 2: From your workstation, click on the Start menu, then choose Run. When the dialog box appears, type CMD and press Enter. Then type in “java –version” and it will give you the current version installed. The latest is 1.6.0_15. If you do not have the JRE installed, or would like to install the latest version, go to the URL above and follow the download instructions or contact your local desktop support department.

If you do have the JRE installed, you will not need to do anything when the change is made in October. If you do not have the JRE installed, you should download the plug-in or arrange to have it installed before the changover date in October, which is Monday, October 19.

Please note that if you do have the JRE installed today, you should not disable or uninstall the J-Initiator until users are officially notified that it is all right to do so after the October changeover.

Please send any questions regarding the JRE plug-in to the UIS Helpdesk at 617-496-2001 or via email at uis_helpdesk@harvard.edu.. Please watch future issues of e-News for further updates regarding the transition.

Procurement Update: Bankruptcy Protection Notes    top

The following webpage: http://vpf-web.harvard.edu/ofs/procurement/protected/bnk_not.shtml has been developed in collaboration with the Office of General Counsel to identify issues relating to current vendors filing for bankruptcy protection under the United States Bankruptcy Code (the “Bankruptcy Code”) and the proper procedure for Harvard departments, schools, units and affiliates upon receipt of a notice of bankruptcy (“Notice of Bankruptcy”) from a vendor providing services, goods and/or products to Harvard.

The web page was developed to address questions from tubs and local units regarding receipt of bankruptcy notices and to protect the University by demonstrating our intent to educate and inform our purchasing community.

If you have any questions or comments relating to the information presented at the site, please contact Ray Wise, Harvard Strategic Procurement at (617) 495-5401.

CREW HR Release 24 Details     top

The CREW HR 24.0 release has been scheduled for the weekend of September 11-14.

The main components of the release include:

• IPEDS - Enhancements to the HR database and reports to accommodate the new IPEDS requirements for race and ethnicity
• SSN Consolidation - Will consolidate SSN columns, replace them with primary key columns, and create one new table and view with SSN values
• ASO (Oracle Advanced Security Options) – This functionality encrypts confidential data while it is being transmitted from one place to another
• Database and server maintenance

Please send any questions concerning the CREW HR Release to the UIS Helpdesk at 617-496-2001 or via email to uis_helpdesk@harvard.edu.

Human Resource Reporting News: Enhancements and Changes to CREW HR Reports and HDW Database Objects    top

ENHANCEMENTS AND CHANGES TO CREW HR AND DATABASE OBJECTS

DID YOU KNOW...

Voluntary Early Retirement Incentive Program (VERIP)

End users can run the following HR report in CREW to find employees who have taken the VERIP (coded in PeopleSoft as RET-VER):

• HRTRMDP039 - Departmental-Job Level Termination Administration

If you have questions about CREW HRMS reports, please contact the Help Desk at 6-2001 and press 6. Ask the attendant to log a Remedy support ticket and assign it to the Assigned to Group = HHR Reporting. A member from the ISA Reporting team will get back to you to assist.

Thank you,
The Harvard Human Resources, Information Systems and Analytics Reporting team.

August 2009 CREW Financial, Sponsored, CAPS, and Student Release Items     top

FSS Reporting Release Items as of August 12, 2009

Sponsored System Updates  top

GMAS and Supplements received from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)

NIH is awarding a significant portion of ARRA funding in the form of supplements. In order to meet the government's reporting requirements for these supplements, they are re-created as competing renewal requests in GMAS when an award notice is received. This allows a supplement to have its own fund number, award number, and letter of credit number. When looking at ARRA supplements in GMAS note the following:

• When awarded, the supplement request in the original segment is changed to: Duplicate Request: ARRA Supplement
• The sponsor notice in the competing renewal segment is flagged as an amendment and the amendment name is: ARRA Supplement
• The segment home of the new competing renewal shows the sponsor award number and this typically tells you it is a supplement; for example, NIH supplement award numbers include "S1" at the end of the award number

Recent Releases

• ARRA award flag added to HDW on 8/10/2009

Future Releases

• The new Letter of Credit module for GMAS is scheduled for release on September 27
• Release date for system-to-system (S2S) submissions to support the “FFATA” versions of Grants.gov forms TBD

Questions

• For more information regarding above contact Andrew Malone
• For help using GMAS contact the help desk at contactgmas@harvard.edu
• See the GMAS Release Notes for details on releases to date.

HUBS Update and Release Information  top

On Tuesday, August 4th, the Project Team gave a demonstration of the standard webforms, reports, and business rules associated with the revised employee budgeting functionality. The demonstration will be available on the EBPS Project iSite on August 17 for all users to view and highlights increased functionality in the following key areas:

• A process for managing employees with distributions that cross orgs
• New reports which provide different ways of viewing and analyzing data
• New audit capabilities which ensure that all required data has been entered for each employee / position by tub-org within an application
• New streamlined navigation between forms, rules and reports that reduces data entry effort

On Friday, August 21, the team will implement Release 9.8, which will include the following artifact modification:

FRBC051 Tub-Org Budget Comparison Report: A modification is being made to allow this report to be used with applications that have developed an alternate Tub-Org hierarchy. The modification will result in displaying only Tub-Orgs that are descendants of the user-selected POV Tub-Org member thus allowing either the standard or alternate Tub-Org hierarchy to be selected when running the report.

To find out more, visit the EBPS Project iSite. If you are interested in looking at some of the user documentation and online simulations, visit Eureka, the Center for Workplace Development's Learning Management System.

Upcoming Releases     top

FY2010 FINDINI Releases

A significant upgrade to the Oracle Financial Applications, known as a "FINDINI release", is done every two to four months. Each upgrade introduces needed bug fixes, enhancements, and technical upgrades into Harvard's financial systems. Generally, releases are performed on weekends to assure maximum availability during the business week. Most outages occur from 6 pm Friday evening-6 am Monday morning.

The next FINDINI release, 3.2.9, is scheduled for October 19, 2009. Please see article 1 concerning the J-Initiator/JRE Plug-In transition and check future issues of e-News for more information.

The Oracle Financial Applications are:

CREW FIN Releases

The next CREW FIN release, 3.2.9, is scheduled for the weekend of October 16, 2009. A significant upgrade to the CREW financial reporting application or CREW application in general happens every two to four months and corresponds with FINDINI releases. Each upgrade accomplishes needed bug fixes, enhancements, and technical upgrades to the CREW environment. Most outages occur from 6 pm Friday evening - 6 am Tuesday morning. Please check future issues of e-News for more information.

HR and CREW HR Release 24

The next PeopleSoft and CREW HR releases are tentatively scheduled for the weekend of September 12-14, 2009. See future editions of e-News for more information. See the CREW HR article above for more details.

CREW Reports

In addition to the CREW Financial and CREW HR releases which correspond with the FINDINI and HR releases listed above, changes and enhancements to new and existing CREW reports are also released monthly.

• The CREW RPT 5.8 report release is scheduled for August 21

GMAS Releases

Please see the Future Releases section of the Sponsored Updates article for more information.

HUBS Releases

Release 9.8 is scheduled for August 21. Please see the HUBS article for more information.

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.

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