Business Systems

MyUD is Getting Personal...

If you logged in to My UD recently, you may have noticed some tiles displaying personalized or scrolling text. This is a new feature called "active content" and was introduced in early November. Currently, active content displays real-time information on the following tiles:

• Classifieds – scrolls the five most recent items posted on UD Classifieds
• IT Support Center – scrolls the five latest IT status tweets
• Web Forms – shows a fixed display of the number of forms (if any) needing your approval.

In addition, if you use My UD’s Favorites, you can now organize your favorites into folders, or "collections," and you can even add your own bookmarks as favorites.

Love a particular task? Feel free to rate it 5 stars and provide a review.

These new features are a direct result of user feedback. Try it at www.udel.edu/myud, or under the Quick Links dropdown on the UD Home page.

Have other ideas for enhancing your My UD experience? Let us know via the My UD Feedback Form.

Mail and FedEx webviews go live in UDATAGLANCE

IT-Web Development (IT-WD) and Facilities Auxiliary Services collaborated to develop and implement new views in UDataGlance for Mail and FedEx charges. By clicking on the journal ID, units can view the details of their monthly Mail and FedEx charges. The FedEx view includes FedEx account, shipping date, invoice and tracking numbers, sender, recipient, and charge, while the Mail view includes carrier name, date mailed, transaction type, number of pieces, and charge.

In addition, a credit view for Auxiliary Services allows them to view all credits received with a single click. In addition to enhancing the timeliness of information available to units, the new views increase the efficiency of the Facilities Auxiliary Services department by allowing users to answer questions regarding charges themselves, rather than by contacting Auxiliary Services.

Procurement Web Forms improvements

IT-WD partnered with Procurement Services to upgrade the Purchase Order Requisition and Purchase Order Amendment Web Forms. Several new features were added based on user feedback:

• improved vendor search tool
• updated Funding section with the ability to add up to six SpeedTypes
• enhanced functionality to include capital (tagged) equipment trades
• modernized web-design that facilitates work on tablet devices.

More information, including documentation on the revised forms, can be found on the Procurement website.

Form Data Processor Improvements

IT-WD revamped the Forms Data Processor, a home-grown application that collects form submission data from University forms and can send a customized email to specified recipients. The application’s user interface was upgraded to be more mobile-friendly, and functionality was enhanced to improve users’ workflows. Some new features and enhancements include the ability to

• quickly search forms, users, groups, and form results
• resend email receipts
• download form data as a PDF, CSV, or Excel file
• disable forms from sending an email.

MIS-SIS Activity Highlights, September 2017 - January 2018

• Over the past several months, the IT Management and Information Services (IT-MIS) student information team (MIS-SIS) has helped the Office of the Dean of Students complete a huge migration project from one vendor, Symplicity, to another, Maxient. All historical student data and documentation was successfully transferred to the new vendor’s system.
• MIS-SIS staff successfully implemented both Phase II (September) and Phase III (December) of the Blue Hen Success Collaborative (BHSC) interfaces. The BHSC initiative will impact academic departments, faculty--especially advisors, and students as it is rolled out to the University community.
• In order to keep the UDSIS PeopleSoft system current, patches and fixes from Oracle are applied on a quarterly basis. The most recent round of patches was applied on January 13, 2018. The next round of patches is scheduled for June 2018. There will be a system outage for this purpose, and announcements will be made as the date draws closer.
• In collaboration with user groups from Enrollment Services (Registrar’s Office, Admissions Office, and Student Financial Services) the MIS-SIS team has begun working on a system upgrade to the UDSIS system. The goal is to upgrade the student information instance of PeopleSoft from version 9.0 to version 9.2 in March or April of 2019.
• MIS-SIS and the English Language Institute (ELI) have been working on several initiatives to bring ELI student processing into UDSIS. ELI Student enrollment is now being done in UDSIS, and work is progressing on other aspects such as grading, transcript production, and billing.
• The Division of Professional and Continuing Studies recently went live with Destiny, a product that supports UDOnline student registration. Enrollment interfaces with UDSIS are sent to Destiny on a daily basis.
• MIS-SIS is continuing work with the Office of the University Registrar on developing interfaces to Curriculog, software that enables faculty to work on new course catalog entries and approve them before they are brought into UDSIS.
• The Office of the University Registrar and MIS-SIS are also working on allowing students to specify a "chosen name" in the system. This project is currently being tested and is expected to be implemented soon.
• The Office of the University Registrar, Student Financial Services, and MIS-SIS collaborated to deploy "Work Center/Dashboard Functionality" in UDSIS. These changes enhance productivity by enabling users to gather relevant data in one dashboard.
• MIS-SIS worked with Student Financial Services to implement third party billing within UDSIS. This feature enables the University to bill non-student third party sponsors.
• In November, MIS-SIS participated in UDSIS disaster recovery testing. The objective was to simulate a disaster by bringing up an instance of the system from backups to determine which features would be available in the event of a disaster. The DBA team and several other groups were involved in this testing, and the testing was deemed to have met its objectives.

MIS-FIS Activity Highlights, September 2017 - January 2018

• PeopleSoft Financials upgrade: IT-MIS is in the process of upgrading PeopleSoft Financials from version 9.1 to version 9.2. To prepare for the upgrade, the team upgraded the PeopleSoft Financials test instance by retrofitting the UD customizations and bolt-on applications. This upgrade is scheduled for April 2018. There will be a system outage for this purpose, and announcements will be made as the date draws closer.
• Procurement Office: In December 2017, the IT-MIS financials team (MIS-FIS) applied Oracle updates for Accounts Payable 1099 reporting for the year 2017. The Procurement office processed and sent 1099 forms to vendors in January 2018.
• Controller’s office:
• IT-MIS has modified how the Controller’s Office handles future bills for students. Future bills will not appear in the Controller’s "book" until the semester the bills are due. Until a bill becomes current, it will be booked as a "pending receivable."
• IT-MIS has developed an interface from the Delaware Biotechnology Institute’s (DBI) iLAB system to PeopleSoft General Ledger.
• The team developed an interface from Vehicle Maintenance Auxiliary service system to PeopleSoft General Ledger.
• The Voyager Auxiliary Services interface was modified to pull the product description from a newly created table provided by US Bank. Existing programs were changed to query the product code table and to add product description to the accounting line.
• Asset Management: IT-MIS changed the Space Allocation Survey interface to allow a comma delimited file to make it easier for a user to generate the file. The team also modified the process to restore leading zeros to room numbers as needed.
• Research Office: IT-MIS has modified the Grants current and pending award data interface for Interfolio (Faculty 180). The changes add an index to improve the process performance, include a project in the file even if there are no locations attached to a project, and add additional fields to identify the award status.

DBA Activity Highlights, September 2017 - January 2018

• The IT-MIS database administration (DBA) team supported the testing of the recently completed TIAA-CREF retirement program changes.
• The DBA team completed a hardware upgrade for the Ellucian Advance application used by Development and Alumni Relations. The upgrade included moving the production and test databases to new, more powerful servers that provide faster response times and hardware stability. This effort also included a transition to Oracle’s Recovery Manager (RMAN) software for database backups. The backups are used for restore and recovery purposes and to build and refresh the data in the reporting, QA, development, and test instances of the databases. In addition, the team established a Disaster Recovery (DR) environment for the Advance database, including a production mirror database.
• The DBA team completed a similar upgrade for the UD Time application, with similar hardware improvements, RMAN software, and improved response times. A DR environment has also been set up for the production UD Time database, including a production mirror database.
• The DBA team completed the transition of the Peoplesoft Financial Accounting database to the new Supercluster, which joined the Peoplesoft Student Administration database in this new, more powerful environment. The Web Forms application database was moved to this environment during January 2018.
• The DBA team participated in a simulated Disaster Recovery scenario for a variety of applications. Application software, database availability, and production activity were maintained through the exercise.