Business Systems

Because you asked...

During the summer, IT-WD completed updates to several University forms; most of the updates were in direct response to campus client requests.

• Cash Transmittal Web Form—Added the ability to include attachments (Cashier)
• Employee Demographic Data Web Form—The form was cut in half. The way some of the data is collected has changed, enabling us to shorten this form. (Research and HR)
• Request for Service (RFS) - Campus Delivery Web Form—A new form moves this business online. (Campus Delivery)
• RFS - Facilities Web Form—Added "copy now" functionality to this form, enabling college financial staff to track in-progress purchases as they are made (Facilities)
• Graduate Student Contractual Responsibility Form—Customized contractual options for professional students (Graduate Studies and Student Financial Services)
• UDataGlance single sign-on with My UD Business and Web Forms (General Accounting)

The IT-WD team worked with the business owner for each form to authorize and implement these changes.

CFS rollout continues

Several updated Web Forms have been released as the result of the collaboration between General Accounting, the business owner for each form, and IT-WD. The new forms use responsive design, allowing them to be used effectively on any device, including smartphones and tablets. The forms also incorporate a new method of gathering chartfield information, dubbed the "CFS Component,” which was rolled out last quarter on the Journal Voucher and continues to be implemented widely throughout UD forms and applications. These changes were implemented in the following forms:

• RFS - IT Software Licenses
• RFS - Bus Service
• RFS - Review Advertisement
• RFS - IT Large Format Print (Posters).

Mailto program migrates to udapps

The mailto program used in many UD forms is now available on the new, more secure udapps server. By the end of October, IT-WD will be retiring the chico and primus servers that had housed the mailto program. Once the two older servers are retired, forms that use the mailto program will work only if the forms are updated to use the new server’s URL.

Form owners must take one of three actions by the end of October to ensure their forms that use UD’s mailto program continue working when the old servers are retired:

• Update the action attribute in the <form> tag to https://udapps.nss.udel.edu/mailto/mailto.
• Retire old, unused forms by deleting the forms and removing any links to them.
• Convert the mailto forms to Google Forms.

For additional information on these three options, the mailto program, and how to find forms affected by the mailto migration, visit the IT mailto help page.

ACA Views

New Web Views have been made available in order to help University departments navigate the complexities of the "Employer Mandate" requirements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA View collects the latest data from various systems and presents the results in a concise report to allow quick determination of an employee's ACA Status. A Department ACA View is also available. This view allows browsing a summary of all department members’ ACA status and features a "Download to spreadsheet" function to aid in the creation of custom reports. departmental HR managers, business/financial administrators, and administrative assistants can use these views to monitor the employment of and hours worked by variable hour (non-benefited) employees and ensure the University is compliant with ACA regulations. Human Resources and IT-WD will continue to work to refine these views. Questions may be sent to aca-help@udel.edu, and more information is available at http://www.udel.edu/hr/ACA.html.

UD Financials

Financial business systems saw several improvements in the last couple of months.

• The Research Office and IT-MIS staff implemented a new keyword-based search of Research Abstracts.
• The Year End turnover processes for General Accounting were improved. The accrual of salaries process was modified to accommodate old and new benefits rates for a new year. The online balances used in UDataGlance were updated to give more accurate beginning balances throughout the close period. And the research support percentages were modified for one college, saving more year-end manual keying.

In addition, Vasu Garlapati and Jim Green, IT Management Information Services (IT-MIS), and Procurement's Abbi Narayan presented at the June Mid-Atlantic HEUG users group conference in Baltimore, sharing an enhancement of Oracle PeopleSoft reporting of 1099s. They discussed a method of consolidating 1099 reporting that saves several days of manual adjustments.

UDSIS (Student Information Systems)

• Security overhaul in UDSIS: IT-MIS staff worked with the Registrar's Office and an external consultant to completely overhaul the security configuration within UDSIS. User accounts were transitioned to new security groups in phases over a period of several weeks. All accounts accessing Self Service, Campus Community, Student Records, and Academic Advising data in UDSIS have been given new roles in the system. Student Financials and Admissions data security access will be changed in the next phases of this project.
• Batch load advisor information: IT-MIS staff worked with the Registrar's Office to automate assignment of advisor information to individual students. This process will save several hours of manual work for users in various departments and the Registrar's Office.
• SEVIS critical patch: A critical patch was applied to UDSIS to handle the latest changes in Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) processing. This patch enables continued automated processing of SEVIS data in order to process visa information that enables international students to attend the university.

Database (DBA) management

• Oracle Database Security
• Software Patches: Working with IT-NSS, members of the IT-MIS DBA team applied the latest security software patches to the Oracle databases as well as the operating system software for all of the production and test database servers (both PeopleSoft and Web Forms). The quarterly update from Oracle has been applied to our test and production Web Forms platforms, with plans to apply it to the PeopleSoft environment in the fourth quarter of 2015.
• The DBA team has completed the implementation of encrypted weekly offline backups for both the PeopleSoft and Web Forms production environments. The team continues to assess database-level encryption methods in pursuit of the goal of optimizing strong encryption and acceptable database performance.
• The DBA team has worked with IT-NSS to purge or secure files that contain personally identifiable information such as SSNs from University database servers.
• Disaster recovery
  • The DBA team, other members of IT-MIS, and staff from IT-NSS participated in a day-long mock disaster recovery exercise. Several procedures were modified as a result of what the team learned during the dry run of recovering the University’s business information and networks in the event of a disaster.

Web application upgrades

IT-WD has rewritten existing applications with both security and modernization in mind. For the applications listed below, the code has been migrated to a sophisticated and mature infrastructure and the user experience updated to reflect a more modern and responsive design. IT-WD and the business owner for each application worked to define and implement these changes:

• Course Inventory: Course revision and proposals (Registrar's Office)
• HR Employee Merit (Human Resources)
• Dining: Meal plans and administration (Facilities Auxiliary Services).