PS Financials Communication/Training

Core Team Meeting

October 6, 2003: 10:30-12:00 noon

Hullihen Hall Board Room

Minutes

 

In Attendance: Amy Taylor, Tim Miller, Chris Cook, Dee Smith, Michelle Broadway, Ellen Lepine, Lisa Huber, Ginger Knutsen, Linda Somers, Peggy Bottorff, Bill Fitzpatrick, Dave McCarren, Steve Grasson, Paul Anderson, Chris Murphy, Al Fanjoy, Linda Crisco

 

Logistics

  • Next Meeting:  October 20, Hullihen 130
  • Minutes Next time: Chris Murphy
  • Minutes this time: Amy Taylor

 

Basic II Status Report and Evolving Issues

            Of the 15 team members present, at least 10 had offered Basic II training, or had it scheduled within a few days. As the statements were now available, there was general discussion about how that process was going. Issues and comments that were coming up in the training sessions:

·         Delay in processing at certain times of the day

·         A few people are not fully aware of the change to PeopleSoft

·         Ag is filing their reports electronically; Ginger will check with Katie Hutton and share her process with the team.

·         Some LAM issues were occurring, apparently related to people not picking up the info from LAM training

·         Good discussion about the functional use of printed statements

·         Use of scopes to support smaller groupings of reports that an administrative assistant could pull independent of the centrally designated ‘pull person’

·         Limited turnout for training if it was offered to a large group

·         People struggle to simply log on (high level people)

·         Downloads to excel vary depending on the operating system:  Ellen will send MAC set-up instructions

·         Data questions – requests for fields to go into the transaction table:  Journal status, employee name.  Any other specific questions can be sent to Peggy or Ellen

·         Ellen will send the list of things being investigated for inclusion

 

Report downloading tip:  from the Report Manager link to the spreadsheet, right click, than ‘save target as’, which allows you to download file directly without opening it first – saves clicks on the save to disk process.

 

Question arose – will the transaction table be expanded or will other tables be made available?  There is strong resistance to adding tables to the Report Instance.

 

 

Monthly Statement Update (Pull & Push)

            Statements for August should be ready by the middle/end of next week

 

 

Open Forum

  • Draft invitation was reviewed and updated. 
  • Session is on October 30, 9-10:30 in Trabant Center theater
  • All PS Financial users will be invited, but thrust is for those who have not received any training yet. 
  • Action:  Send a list to Peggy of the # of people who have been trained, which may give an indication of how many people to expect.

 

PTD data

The PTD Balance available field in the balances table will be eliminated; the available EZQ calculates the number, so this is not likely to have a large impact

 

User Services offer Query by December/January

IT-User services follow-up:  Query class is on the schedule for January.  They plan to offer it one month into every semester.  They are currently writing up sample word problems to use as exercises in the Query class.

 

Query Booster: next class

Interested Comm team members will have a Query Booster planning session first – scheduled for Monday October 27 in the Ecalc room.  Team felt that this class would be more helpful in the spring.

 

Future of the Comm Team

Team responsibilities are changing as Phase II gears up and campus training needs settle.  Some aspects and decisions are still being considered by the Executive Committee. This will be a main agenda item at a future meeting.