FINDINI 3.2.12 Release: Oracle Financials System Availability, Changes to Invoice Import and PCard

Due to FINDINI Release 3.2.12, Oracle Financials will be unavailable starting on Friday, October 22nd at 6:00pm until Monday, October 25th at 6:00am.

This release includes the following changes:

Invoice Import Change

The following modification will be made for Invoice Imports as of October 25, 2010:

Invoice Date

Beginning on October 25th, any Invoice Date within your invoice import file MUST have a date less than or equal to the date in which you are uploading the file. For example, if the date you are importing your file is September 30th, the invoice dates on your file must be on or before 09/30/2010.

If any Invoice Date on your file is GREATER than the date of your import file, the batch will be rejected and you will receive the following error on your 'Pre Invoice Import Report':

This change is necessary as a result of files being imported into Oracle containing invoices with future invoice dates. There should never be any future dated invoices entered into the A/P system.

This modification will ensure that the issue is addressed prior to it passing into the A/P system so that payment to the vendor will not be delayed.

PCard Enhancements

Lock Record for Reviewed PCard Transactions

The system now allows a reviewer to lock or unlock a transaction record after it has been reviewed. In most tubs, a business process is in place where card holders may not be shown as the 'Reviewer' of their own card transactions. This new function prevents card holders from making changes to their records after their designated reviewer completes a review of the transaction.

For example, a card holder enters a business purpose and saves the transaction. His supervisor/designated Reviewer will then review the transaction and make additional changes (coding, etc.) where necessary. The Reviewer may then check the 'Lock Transaction' box below the Business Purpose field and save the record. Once this has been done, only the individual who locked the record may unlock the record if additional changes must be made. If an attempt is made by someone to make changes on a locked record, an error message will appear with instructions.

Please note that this function is not required but it is highly recommended.

Locking a transaction record:

Review Screen - Addition of Business Purpose

The Business Purpose has been added to the PCard Review screen within the 'HRVD^PCard^Reviewer' responsibility. After making your edits to a transaction and adding the Business Purpose, click on 'Mark as Reviewed, Save and Return to List'. The system will populate the Business Purpose below the Date/Vendor Name column.

Object Code Restrictions

Please note that the PCard system will now only allow object codes that are approved for use for purchases. These restrictions are the aligned with the Web Voucher COA validation. If an unauthorized Object Code is used, the following error message will appear:

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CREW Outage Information for October 22-25, 2010

The CREW Reporting and Ad Hoc environments will be unavailable as follows during the CREW FIN 3.2.12 & APP 1.5.9 software releases:

• All CREW Financials reporting will be unavailable from 8:00pm, Friday, October 22 (our usual down time) to approx. 1:00pm, Monday, October 25. 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.
• Both CREW nightly Financials & HR data loads will be cancelled for Friday, October 22nd. A special data load will run on Sunday night, October 24th.
• The DWHRPRD, DWHRHST and IMSUTS databases will become available for ad hoc reporting around 10am on Saturday, October 23rd.
• CREW will be in validation mode through Saturday afternoon; once it is out of validation mode, CEN zones will still be down, but HR zones will be up. HR users will be able to login once CREW comes out of validation mode, which should be approximately around 1pm
• The following weekend, on Sunday, October 31st, all CREW reporting will be unavailable from 5:00am, to approx. 9:00am (regular outage window). HDW will use this time to do performance testing on select reports as a follow-up to CREW FIN 3.2.12/1.5.9 release.

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

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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Sponsored Systems Releases

GMAS

There was a GMAS release (1_26) in September that included several new enhancements:

• Streamlined GMAS homepage design:
• Elimination of redundant links
• Allow users to select up to last 20 projects viewed
• Moved the S2S submissions dashboard to the homepage
• Provide system to system (S2S) users the ability to specify the order of key personnel on their applications (S2S describes GMAS' ability to deliver information to grants.gov)
• Various S2S fixes:
• Support new version (1.3) of Other Project Info form
• Support new version (1.3) of Project/Performance Site form
• Addressed previous issue with including more than 8 performance sites in an application
• Fixed budget auto-calculation issue in Firefox and Safari

The upcoming GMAS release (1_27) is slated for mid-December. Highlights include:

• Support of NIH K awards for S2S submission
• Support of 2 NSF forms--Deviation Authorization Form and Suggested Reviewers
• Ability to generate Harvard standard invoices for year logic projects
• Continuing focus on S2S fixes

Priorities for the March 2011 release (1_28) are currently being vetted and finalized. More details to come in the next eNews.

HIRBERT

There was a HIRBERT Release 1.0.12 on October 3rd that included OS upgrades and no changes to functionality or data. The FSS Sponsored Systems team is actively working with the IRB Systems Group to prioritize future enhancements.

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HUBS Updates

Here are the latest updates concerning the Harvard University Budgeting System (HUBS):

CCID Validation Utility Unavailable Oct. 23rd - Oct. 24th

Due to the FINDINI 3.2.12 release for the Oracle Financials system, the CCID Validation utility in HUBS will not be available from Saturday, October 23rd - Sunday, October 24th. All other features of HUBS will be fully available during this period including reporting, data entry forms and calculations.

Weekend System Maintenance Oct. 30th - Oct. 31st

In order to perform required maintenance on the HUBS servers, HUBS will not be available from Saturday, October 30th - Sunday, October 31st. This outage to HUBS will affect all features including reporting, data entry and calculations.

HUBS September Monthly Release

The HUBS monthly artifact release for September, HUBS 10.9, occurred on September 23rd and involved updates to the following reports:

• FRBC027f Budget Analysis by Object and Root - Expanded range of roots included in the report from only including building roots to including faculty roots and the unspecified root
• FRBE035c FAS Monthly Salary Expense, FRBE122b FAS Employee Data Audit, FRBE124 FAS Salary Expense Data Audit - Formatting updates to each report to allow the report to properly display the expanded employee alias enacted in the FAS employee application at the end of August

Full release notes are available on the main page of the HUBS iSite.

HUBS 1.0.9 (November) Release

Significant updates to HUBS will be available to users on November 15th. In order to incorporate these enhancements in the system, HUBS will be unavailable from Thursday, November 11th (Veterans Day) - Sunday, November 14th.

Highlights of this release include:

• Utility for Tub Financial Office users to upload data files
• Utility for Tub Financial Office users to upload employee and position dimension members
• Automatic generation of data extract files for Tub Financial Office users
• Utility for HUBS administrators to upload security files
• Capability for SmartView users to submit data updates to the database in Excel
• Series of non-employee budgeting web forms that allow planners to zoom to their detailed budget and make updates
• Right-click menu option to budget a new Object from within a suppressed webform
• Right-click menu option to seed the expenses of a new Act-Sub with budgets from an existing Act-Sub
• Streamlined display of right-click menus used for employee budgeting
• Business rules to replace budgeted salary expenses with actual amounts for closed months of the forecast year
• Business rule available to Tub Financial Office users to adjust annual salary amounts for sets of employees at any point in time
• Inclusion of the remaining Objects in the T901 and T951 ranges
• Back-end enhancements to reduce the time to execute nightly processes in HUBS

The full set of release notes will be available in early November on the HUBS iSite.

SmartView Office Hours

The following walk-in office hour sessions are available for users with SmartView questions. Each session is held in the B2 suite at 8 Story Street.

• October 22nd 9:00am - 10:30am
• November 16th 9:00am - 10:30am

HUBS Training Sessions

There are several opportunities to attend HUBS and SmartView trainings in time for the FY12 budget cycle. Please review the offerings and sign-up on PeopleSoft to reserve your seat in one of these classes.

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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, 3.2.12, is scheduled for the weekend of October 22-25, 2010. Please see article 1 for outage and enhancement details.

The Oracle Financial Applications are:

CREW FIN Releases

The Common Reporting Environment for the Warehouse (CREW) is a reporting system that draws data from a variety of sources which are updated on a nightly basis. Users can submit report requests for immediate processing or schedule reports to automatically run on a recurring basis. Types of CREW reports include financial, budget, receivables, HR management, benefits, costing, payroll, pension, security, grants management, and sponsored reports.

The next CREW FIN release, 3.2.12, is scheduled for October 22-25, 2010. Please see article 2 for outage information, and article 3 for data model and report changes.

HR (PeopleSoft) and CREW HR Release 28

The next PeopleSoft Release (HR 28) is scheduled for December 2010. Details will be available in an upcoming e-News.

The CREW HR 27.0 Release is scheduled for December 2010. Details will be available in an upcoming e-News.

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 the 3rd weekend of each month.

Sponsored Systems Releases

For GMAS Release 1_26, please see article 4 and Release Notes for details.
Stay tuned for details on the next HIRBERT release. As usual, please see the Release Notes for details about releases to date.

HUBS Releases

The Harvard University Budgeting Sytems (HUBS) is a set of web-based Oracle Hyperion Planning applications used for budget data entry, estimates, annotations, reporting, and submission associated with the annual budget and planning cycles.

HUBS Release 1.0.9 is scheduled for November 11-14, 2010. Please see article 5 for outage information and enhancements details.

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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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