Weekly Update for the week of May 13, 2013

Finance work stream kicks off
The Finance work stream held their project kick off last Wednesday, May 8, at Coffman Union. About 175 invited attendees participated both online and in person. They heard from a number of project representatives, including the project sponsor, Mike Volna; project director, Dan Hemauer; and chair of the EFS Functional Steering Committee, Rob Super. The presentation is available on the Finance website.

Phase 1: Plan and Discover work begins today for Finance’s General Ledger module. Congratulations to the entire Finance team and good luck!

Emerging themes from system campuses
This spring, members of the ESUP leadership team travelled to the Morris and Crookston campuses to meet with Program participants and campus leadership. The discussions and listening sessions yielded helpful insights and some immediately actionable items to improve Program operations. Some of the commonly heard themes include:

• Employees: be sure to take care of our people; be careful with burnout.
• Training: don’t make formal training a barrier.
• Communications: focused, smaller topics that can be repurposed or easier to find.
• Repository: send out copies or file paths to meeting documents in advance.
• Kudos: the many people involved with ESUP have been doing a great job.

Portal launches new survey, Faculty Advisory Team
ESUP’s Portal team is gathering opportunities and needs for the new portal, and wants to hear from the University community about some of the ideas already collected. The team will use the survey responses to prioritize opportunities and begin design work. Please fill out the 10-15 minute survey by May 20th. A sneak peek of survey topics includes: mobile functionality, checklists, grants management, events calendars, drag and drop graphics.

The Portal Faculty Advisory Team met for the first time last week, with 7 faculty members on three campuses. Santiago Fernandez-Gimenez attended to help frame Portal in the context of ESUP, which faculty appreciated. The team created a strategy for engaging faculty around Portal in the fall.  They were also very pleased with the engagement approach of gathering extensive input into Portal opportunities, even if not all suggestions can be initially realized.

Quick hits and reminders from across the work streams

• The Executive Oversight Committee (EOC) approved two Student work stream change requests at today’s meeting, Scholarships and Application Processing. These requests are approved to begin work within the next phase of the project; Phase 3: Configure and Develop.
• Dean Robert Elde, chair of the Executive Oversight Committee, met with University Chancellors last week to discuss ESUP’s progress. The Chancellors were supportive of the Program and pleased with the campus-wide engagement efforts.
• Last week, the University’s Board of Regents approved ESUP’s equipment request to purchase new Exadata and Exalogic servers, which will be used to house a number of platforms, including: the new portal, the new identity management system, and upgraded PeopleSoft applications. The servers are expected to be delivered this month.  
• The Student FA module will be moving their summer operations from Fraser Hall over to 16 Johnston Hall, effective May 20th. 
• Members of the Integration project have been holding preliminary meetings with collegiate IT leads to discuss how changes to the PeopleSoft applications and data structures will impact their home grown applications and reports. 
• The HRMS work stream is beginning to plan their communication and stakeholder engagement efforts around the planned data conversion strategy and streamlined appointment structure. More information will be coming soon.