01/10/03

UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE - PEOPLESOFT TREES

Basic Guidelines for use of Trees in Financial System

(Note: this document is not intended to be a complete training guide)

No Trees should be created until the user has received basic training.

ALL CAPS should be used for naming of ChartFields, Trees, Nodes & Levels.

Central Trees, Nodes, & Levels names will begin with “GL”. Non-central Trees should be designed with Tree Name, Nodes & Levels starting with the creator’s department or initials. This will assist with sorting/grouping as well as to minimize the risk that another user will change one of your Tree attributes.

New trees, nodes & levels are added to tables as they are created. Even when nodes & levels are deleted from a tree, they still remain in the table. When adding nodes & levels to trees, if they populate with an existing description, that means the node/level has already been created by another user and any related information should NOT be changed. Caution should be used to not change or delete any other user info related to descriptions, individual leaves, leaf ranges, etc. WARNING - if a box opens offering you the opportunity to add a new ChartField value, please close and take no action to do so. (You should review the ChartField table to find an already existing value that meets your needs or use ranges to pick up desired values.)

When assigning leaf values to nodes, it is more efficient to use ranges as much as possible. If the ChartField value is alphanumeric, the range may be set as per the following example: Purpose ChartField value for Plant Science Department -

Range from “PLSC000000”, Range to “PLSCZZZZZZ”

(fill “range from” with zeros and fill “range to” with letter z in order to retrieve all alphanumeric values within that range).

Leaf range details can be seen by highlighting the desired leaf on the tree and clicking on icon for edit. Can display all the details currently defined within the range or can limit by clicking to see the values currently included based on tree effective date.

Tree Definition and Properties:

Use of Levels: may choose between Level Not Used, Loosely Enforced, or Strictly Enforced. Strictly Enforced must have a value(s) at all levels; must have at least one level; must have at least one node at every level; can report on any nodes; can report on any level; cannot be changed at later date to Loosely Enforced. Loosely Enforced can be designed to look like Strictly Enforced if desired; does not have same requirements for values, levels and nodes as stated above; may be changed to Strictly Enforced at a later date as long as it meets the requirements.

Category: sort variable that provides another way to group Trees; may use a previously defined category from drop down box or user may create a new category; central financial trees will be defined with category “CENTRAL”; other trees may be defined with a category indicating the department name (i.e. “BUDGET OFFICE”).

Structure ID - recommend use of existing Structure ID found in Maintain Tree Structure drop down box if at all possible. Once you’ve picked your structure, can use tabs at top to look up nodes and levels. In the lookup, the choices are sorted by numbers first, then capitals, then lower case letters.

Effective Dates: Node & Level effective dates need to be less than or equal to the Tree effective date. As ChartField effective dates also need to be less than or equal to the Tree effective date, central trees will be saved each year with a date of 07/01/YYYY and new ChartField values will be added with the same effective date of 07/01/YYYY throughout the coming fiscal year (i.e. New ChartField values added during FY 03-04 will have effective date of 07/01/2003). Can’t future date trees you want to use now, or you don’t get any data when you report. WARNING - effective date may have an impact on reporting depending on the report tool and how the tree is used.

(Note: The start and end dates on the Project ChartField can be independent of Effective date. So, even if you pick effective dates of 7/1 for projects added in February, you can report using start and end dates. If the effective date is prior to actual start date, charges could be processed against a Project. As this is only allowed with formally-approved pre-awards, the University should continue the current practice of activating new codes only when ready for actual transactions and do not activate in advance.)

Audits box options: tree will not require all values unless box is checked for All Detail Values in this Tree”.

Notes related to specific types of trees:

Winter Trees: winter trees require unique ChartField values to act as tree nodes and as a result, some new ChartField values may need to be created to facilitate the setup of winter trees. Please contact Marsha Lockard when new ChartField values are needed for this purpose. To isolate these values in drop down boxes, the standard for the value will be to start with “TR##etc” (where space permits will be expanded to “TREE##etc”) with a ChartField description of “TREE NODE ONLY”.