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June 2010

The Administrative Systems eNews is a monthly electronic newsletter for users of Harvard's financial, human resources, and reporting systems.


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Contact us at: admin_systems_enews@harvard.edu or via the UIS Helpdesk at 6-2001

The Fiscal Year is About to End...Do You Know Your Deadlines?

The finish line is upon us! Be sure to check out the fiscal year-end 2010 e-News issue for your printable summary schedule of year-end deadlines, as well as a list of contacts to answer any of the FY2010 closing questions.

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FINDINI 3.2.11 Release: Oracle Financials System Availability

Due to FINDINI Release 3.2.11, Oracle Financials will be unavailable starting on Friday, June 18th at 6:00pm until Monday, Monday, June 21 at 6:00am.

File Feed Transmissions Outage

For those units that transmit Accounts Receivables, General Ledger and Accounts Payables files to the Oracle production server, please note that the production server will be unavailable on Sunday, June 20th from 5:00am to 9:00am due to system maintenance.

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CSMA Uploads Unavailable on Friday June 18, 2010

To Chart of Accounts Authorized Requestors / CSMA application users:

Please be aware that due to system maintenance taking place on Saturday and Sunday, June 19, 2010 - June 20, 2010, any requests entered into the CSMA application after 5pm on Thursday June 17th will not be uploaded to Oracle or routed for approval until 8am on Monday, June 21, 2010.

The CSMA application will be up and running and available for entering requests on Friday June 18th, but the usual uploads and routing processes will not be run on that day.

Please contact Mike Kiley in FSS Client Services at 6-8451 if you have any questions or concerns.

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CREW Outage Information for June 19-21, 2010

The CREW Reporting and Ad Hoc environments will be unavailable as follows during the CREW FIN 3.2.11 & APP 1.5.8 software releases:

  • CREW Financials reporting will be unavailable from 8:00pm, Friday, June 18 (the usual down time) to approximately 1:00pm, Monday, June 21. This includes:
    • Financials
    • Grants Management
    • Student Data Warehouse
    • CAPS
  • The DWCENPRD & HDWUTS databases for ad hoc & exporting will have the same outage as CREW Financials reporting above.
  • The CREW nightly data load for both Financials & HR is cancelled for Friday, June 18. A special load of financials data will run on Sunday night, June 20.
  • The DWHRPRD, IMSUTS & DWHRHST databases will become available for ad hoc reporting at ~11am on Saturday; otherwise CREW HR reporting will be available as it normally is during off-business hours.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the outage, please contact the UIS Help Desk at 496-2001 or via email.

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June 2010 CREW Financial, Sponsored, CAPS, and Student Release Items

Category Module Report, View or Object Description Release Actual or *Target Release Date
Capital Asset Management Data Model CP Data Model/Parameter Currently the Managed By parameter lookup used by the CAPS CREW reports is not working properly for Internal or External parties. The view used to populate the parameter needs to be modified so the reports can display correct data. CREW FIN 3.2.11 *6/19/2010
Capital Asset Management Data Model CP Data Model/Parameter This affects all CAPS users running the Building and Report. Currently the parameter looks to a view that is populated using Project Party data rather than Asset Party data. CREW FIN 3.2.11 *6/19/2010
Capital Asset Management Data Model CP: Data Model The text for the tub lookups in the Managed By filter should be changed to reflect the true business meaning of the search. CREW FIN 3.2.11 *6/19/2010
Capital Asset Management REPORT CPPRBUD159: Project Budget and Costs Summary Decommission report. Budget data stopped populating this report with the CAPS implementation in 2006 and therefore, is not displaying meaningful data. CREW RPT 6.6 *6/18/2010
Capital Asset Management REPORT CPPRJST160: Project Status Decommission report. A newer version of the Project Status report was released as part of the CAPS implementation in 2006 which can be used in place of this report. CREW RPT 6.6 *6/18/2010
Capital Asset Management REPORT CPPSPSR209: CAPS Project Status Report Order of section "Hard Cost" and "Soft Cost" is incorrect when multiple Activitiees are specified in parameter page. CREW RPT 6.6 *6/18/2010
Capital Asset Management REPORT CPRSPND212: CAPS Renewal Spending Some strange characters show up on several places where a number is expected.
Besides, text change is needed for Summary and Analysis report.
CREW RPT 6.6 *6/18/2010
Capital Asset Management REPORT CPBDLND205: CAPS Building and Land Report The Managed By parameter currently used in the report uses Project Manged By information. This report's parameter needs to use ASSET Manged By information. CREW FIN 3.2.11 *6/19/2010
Financial Data Model FN Data Model: OGL_COA_FLEX_VALUE_HIST_V POP-COA-HIST for final July close is not populating dwfnd_coa_period_flex_values table. Because of this view OGL_COA_FLEX_VALUE_HIST_V would not return right data for July final close. CREW FIN 3.2.11 *6/19/2010
General Ledger REPORT GLJRGEN182: Journals - General 1. Journal Category, Source, and Created By parameters from Single Value Lookups to Multi Value Lookups
2. Add Journal total Transaction Amount Search Parameters
CREW RPT 6.6 *6/18/2010
Oracle Security Data Model SC Data Model: OPS_DEPT_DESCENDANTS_CURR_V The view will primarily be used to support Authorized Security Requestors in selecting multiple departments in the CREW Oracle Departmental Security Report (OSUSRDP224). CREW FIN 3.2.11 *6/19/2010
Oracle Security REPORT OSUSRDP224: Departmental - Oracle User Security Update required to ease the dept. selection process for tub administrators who are (as of this year) required to run their own security reports during the annual security review. The current process requires selecting hundreds of departments one-by-one. CREW FIN 3.2.11 *6/19/2010

If you have any questions or concerns regarding these changes, please contact the UIS Help Desk at 496-2001 or via email.

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FY10 Reporting Year End Close Website

The FY10 Reporting Year End Close Website is now available at: http://vpf-web.harvard.edu/fss/applications/reporting/fyefr/.

Since 2004, the Year End Reporting website has been providing content to help streamline reporting and end-user communications throughout the close process.

The site includes:

  • Key dates including special nightly load schedules
  • Steps on how to create and schedule request groups to automatically run on the close events
  • Performance usage tips and tricks
  • Live queue updates to provide visibility into reporting activity and estimates on any pending wait-times that may result due to queue backlogs
  • Messages from the reporting team throughout the close on any fast breaking issues or alerts
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30-Minute Session Time Out to be Implemented in Ad Hoc Reporting

On June 21st, a 30-minute session timeout will be applied to the DWCENPRD and DWUTSPRD ad hoc reporting environment to conform to Harvard's Security and Privacy Policy 2.6. CREW, Oracle Financials and other of Harvard’s enterprise systems have session time-outs built in already. Implementing in the ad hoc reporting environments is an important step in further enhancing the security of Harvard’s information.

Impact on Users: After 30 minutes of idle time, a user’s database connection will be severed. The time while a query is actively processing is not considered idle time as the database is being actively engaged as the query runs.

Impact to Long Running Queries in TOAD: Results from queries using TOAD must be viewed and/or saved within 30 minutes of completion. The results of queries that complete but are left unattended beyond 30 minutes of their completion time will not be retrievable at that point. Brio queries are not affected in this way and results will remain on the desktop until the application is closed.

TOAD Long Running Query Workaround

To avoid losing query results (if you are IMSUTS/HDWUTS user) when unable to monitor the progress of the query follow these simple steps:

1. Log into your account in a UTS database – HDWUTS or IMSUTS.

2. Prefix the query with

CREATE TABLE AS
SELECT field1, field2, ...
From table1, table2
Where ...

When the query completes the results will be stored in the new table specified in the first line above. If your session times out 30 minutes after the query completes (or if it is shut down during the nightly HDW load process) the query results will still be available in the table that was created.

Where columns are constructed from expressions you will need to give them aliases that can be used by Oracle to set the column name. For example, the modified query with aliases for expressions is as follows:

CREATE TABLE MYTABLE
AS
SELECT field1, field2, sum(salary) total_salary, count(*) salary_count From table1, table2 Where ...
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Reminder about the PeopleSoft FY11 Costing Copy Process

This year's costing copy process was run on Sunday, June 6th with the new FY 2011 costing rows now available. The FY 2011 costing rows have been inserted with a 07/01/2010 effective date. For tubs/units, this means:

  • Existing Employees
    • Any changes to an employee's costing occurring between June 7th and June 30th will need to be updated to the employee's FY2010 costing row. Make sure to choose the Override Future Costing radio button in the Job Data Change form to ensure the FY 2011 row is updated. If you fail to update the employee’s FY 2011 costing it will reflect what was copied on June 6th.


    • costing

  • New Hires, Rehires & Transfers
    • For any new hires, rehires and transfers being processed with an effective date between June 7th and June 30th, you will need to add their FY2011 costing as only the FY 2010 row will be created via the hire process. Failing to add the FY 2011 costing will result in the employee’s costing getting charged to the department-level costing starting on 07/01/2010. To add the FY 2010 row, you can:
      • Use the Department Budget Table and Add a New Value for the employee - make sure to indicate 2011 for the Fiscal Year field value
      • Use the Costing Upload process - indicate FY 2011 in the Excel spreadsheet
      • Use the Job Data Change form with an effective date of 07/01/2010 - this will automatically create a costing row for FY 2011

For more information, please visit Eureka at: Personnel Actions>Update Costing.

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Absence Management Year-End Reminders

For all Absence Reporters:

All time off taken through June 26, 2010 should be reported in the Absence Management system by the end of day on Thursday, June 24. Please take a moment to make sure that your time-off has been accurately reported for the past year. Please see your local Absence Adjuster or Absence Administrator for any missing time-off outside the allowable reporting range.

For all Absence Approvers, Adjusters and Administrators:

All reported paid time off for FY 2010 through June 26, 2010 must be approved by 3:30 pm on Friday, June 25. This will ensure accurate reporting of the University's vacation liability as we close out the year. Please take a moment to review any new or outstanding requests and take the appropriate action. Your timely adherence to this request is very much appreciated.

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Sponsored Systems Updates

New screen in GMAS allows users to access project-related documents easily

The document repositories in GMAS are one of the most highly used areas of the system. Users can upload, download, view, scan, and email grant-related documents in GMAS. In the June GMAS release, a new screen will provide users the ability to navigate to a project's documents from a single location and avoid navigating deep into folders and sub-folders to retrieve documents.

Navigate to the segment homepage of a fund and select <Segment documents> from the right-hand side menu. The new Segment Documents screen lists and provides access to all segment documents embedded in each document repository.

Use the <Open all/Close all> link to open all components and view documents. An option is provided to hide empty folders and is the default when arriving on the screen.

gmas_doc_repository

Each folder lists documents by upload date in descending order. Folders can be expanded to view sub-folder contents. The folder/file structure within each repository is maintained on the new screen. Select the document title link to download/view the document.

segment_docs

Emails sent to GMAS appear on the Segment Documents screen and, if an attachment is included, a link to that attachment is also available.

segment_attachments

The new document repository screen and other enhancements are scheduled to be available at start of business on Monday, June 20. See the full release notes for additional details about this GMAS release.

HIRBERT/HETHR Release 1.0.11

HIRBERT/HETHR Release 1.0.11 is scheduled for the weekend of June 26 , 2010. Effective on this date, the Harvard University IRBs (Faculty of Medicine, School of Public Health, and the Harvard University Cambridge/Allston Area) are no longer offering HETHR (Harvard Ethics Training in Human Research), its online human subjects training program. Instead, Harvard investigators will be expected to complete the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) or an acceptable equivalent.

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HUBS Update

  • The next SmartView Analytics Office Hours will be held on Tuesday, June 22nd, 9-10:30am, at 8 Story St, Suite B2
  • Now that budgets have been submitted for FY11, HUBS users may be wondering which reports are best for monitoring their budgets over the next couple of months. The Budget Variance reports (FRBC039 Budget Variance, FRBC039b Budget Variance by Summary Act-Sub, FRBC039e Budget Variance Detail), CINA Flex reports (FRBC037 CINA Flex, FRBC037a CINA Flex Export, FRBC037b CINA Flex Highlight), and the Tub-Org Budget Comparison report (FRBC051) are all helpful during this point in the budget cycle. Check out the June HUBS Bulletin on the home page of the iSite for more information.
  • The HUBS team wishes to thank the users who participated in the HUBS focus groups in May. These focus groups were convened on topics of interest identified during the March user survey. The HUBS team is now consolidating the information gathered during the focus groups and is actively working on enhancement and change requests which arose during those meetings.
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Upcoming Releases

FY2010 FINDINI Release Schedule

A software release 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, 3.2.11, is scheduled for the weekend of June 18-20, 2010. See article 2 for details.

The Oracle Financial Applications are:

-General Ledger & ADI

-Sponsored Budget Tool

-Accounts Receivable

-Web Voucher

-Procurement Card (Pcard)

-Applications Administration

-Cash Management Reconcilation Application (CMRA)

-General Ledger (GL) Validator

-Electronic Shop and Pay (ESP)

-Harvard Crimson Online Marketplace (HCOM)

-Capital Project System (CAPS)

-Web Reimbursement

-Online Vendor Request Form

-Accounts Payables

-Chart Security Maintenance Application (CSMA)

-Chart of Accounts (CoA) Validator

CREW FIN Releases

The next CREW FIN release, 3.2.11, is scheduled for June 19-21, 2010. See article 4 for details.

HR (PeopleSoft) and CREW HR Release 27

The next PeopleSoft Release (HR 27) is scheduled for September 9-12, 2010.

The CREW HR 27.0 Release is scheduled for September 9-12, 2010.

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 6.6 Report Release is scheduled for June 18, 2010. See article 5 for details.

Sponsored Systems Releases

For GMAS 1_25, please see Sponsored Systems Updates above and Release Notes for additional details.
For HIRBERT/HETHR Release 1.0.11, please see Sponsored Systems Updates above and Release Notes for additional details.

HUBS Releases

HUBS Release 1.0.9 is scheduled for November 2010.

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About the e-News

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.

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