New module in Student work stream

A new module has started in the Student work stream: Academic Advisement. Academic Advisement (within PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions) is used to track the requirements and policies that a student must satisfy in order to graduate. For ESUP, Academic Advisement will be implemented for graduate programs and evaluated for use for undergraduate programs. This work was part of the initial program plan and represents no change in scope, timeline, or budget.

The team for Academic Advisement is being formed right now and a kick-off is being planned for later this summer. More information can be found on the Academic Advisement webpage.

Consolidated Program Plan Presentation

ESUP thanks partners at Consolidated Program Plan event

On June 3rd, Rebecca Collings, program director from Cedar Crestone International (CCI), Kathy Brown, vice president for Human Resources, and Andy Hill, ESUP program director gave brief presentations on ESUP's Consolidated Program Plan and thanked the Program's partners at an event on the Twin Cities campus.

Over 100 people from all areas of ESUP came to the event to make connections, get reacquainted, and hear Collings' presentation which included more information on:

• What is a program plan?
• How did ESUP develop their program strategies?
• Where can people find information on the program strategy?
• What are some program deliverables?

Collings, Brown, and Hill each expressed their gratitude to ESUP's partners for their hard work, creativity, and perseverance on the Program. They encouraged everyone to continue their efforts to develop and implement an effective system for the entire University community.

"I'm relatively new to the Program so hearing more about the history and framework at this event was beneficial," said Patricia Samberg, instructional designer and system campus training lead, who attended the event from Duluth. "It was also a great opportunity to meet my colleagues from the other campuses and feel like a part of an enthusiastic and dedicated team."

The presentation is available to view here. Team members can get more information on the plan by navigating to the internal program site.

‘Huge Potential’: OHR Portal Steering Committee Kicks Off

The newly formed Office of Human Resources Portal Steering Committee held its first meeting on Friday, June 14, to help define, plan, and support the delivery of high-functioning, user-friendly HR functionality and content via the University’s new enterprise portal. Vice President for Human Resources Kathy Brown, who charged the committee, welcomed the group by outlining the “huge potential” of the new portal to transform how OHR provides tools, services, and content desired by and useful to the University community. Committee members then shared briefly their own excitement and aspirations for the new portal and reviewed the committee’s charter.

The bulk of the meeting was dedicated to an overview of the ESUP Portal Project and level-setting with regard to what the PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal delivers and how it works. Portal project director Susan Geller guided the committee through several HR and Student examples of delivered portal functionality that could enable University faculty and staff to better manage their employment and do their jobs. Geller spoke to the importance of developing functionality and content from the perspective of the user, and emphasized plans to test portal prototypes as early as this fall.

The OHR Portal Steering Committee includes the following members:

• Lori Lamb, co-chair
• Jim Thorp, co-chair
• Jennifer Reckner, project manager
• Susan Diekman, communications
• Kim Kopplin, HR consulting team
• Kelly Krattiger, technology and Portal Leadership Team
• Mike Overline, HR consulting team
• Chris Schanus, communications
• Brandon Sullivan, engagement

The committee will collaborate closely with the HRMS Upgrade Project leadership and team, the ESUP Portal Project leadership and team, and the other ESUP work streams, and will engage users and stakeholders from the broader HR community as needed.

Information about the OHR Portal Steering Committee’s work and progress will be shared on the HRMS work stream site, z.umn.edu/hrms. For more information on the ESUP Portal Project, as well as opportunities to take part in the process, visit the Portal work stream site at z.umn.edu/portal.

ESUP Update for June 17, 2013

ESUP at the Board of Regents
Dean Robert Elde, chair of the Executive Oversight Committee, presented an ESUP status report to the Board of Regents at their June 14th meeting. On June 13, Vice President for Human Resources Kathy Brown and Director of HR Operations Lori Lamb gave a more detailed update on the HRMS work stream to the Faculty and Staff Affairs Committee. Stay tuned to the blog--we’ll post a larger story with links to these presentations later this week.

Items from the blog
Check out two stories posted to upgrade.umn.edu last week!

• UPK town hall registration -- ESUP has a new training tool available called the UPK, or User Productivity Kit... Click here to read more. 
• Joint planning workshop illuminates challenges -- On June 5th, project directors representing each of the 12 different Enterprise Systems Upgrade Program (ESUP) work streams gathered for a day-long retreat to clarify where and how the projects are dependent upon each other over the next 18 months... Click here to read more.

Quick hits and reminders from across the work streams

• The Portal work stream analyzed the results from their Portal Priorities Survey. Results are an important input to the Portal Leadership Team decision making process. Click here to read the Portal Priorities Survey summary report.
• The Finance team continues to make steady, on-schedule progress through Phase 1: Plan & Discover tasks, including completing Phase 1 activities for the Expenses module. Accounting is our favorite action sport, what's yours? Tell us at esup-fin@umn.edu. 
• ESUP Assistant Director Santiago Fernandez-Gimenez presented to the Twin Cities Deans on ESUP engagement opportunities. Looking forward, ESUP’s Change Management, Communications, and Training team is busy scheduling system campus visits to continue conversations across the state.
• The Student work stream is gathering in person on the Twin Cities campus Monday and Tuesday this week. In addition to a business meeting, the team will have a chance to hold IDP sessions with team members from all campuses in the same room.
• The CCI Lab completed initial upgrades for Finance 9.2 and HR 9.2 and released development and test instances to ESUP.
• Reporting and Data Management team members have started developing reports within the Student work stream based on business processes approved by the Executive Oversight Committee.

Joint planning workshop illuminates challenges

Program Director Andy Hill addresses the
team during a morning break

On June 5th, project leaders representing each of the 12 different Enterprise Systems Upgrade Program (ESUP) work streams joined together for a day-long retreat to clarify where and how the projects are dependent upon each other over the next 18 months. Each project leader had time to trumpet team successes, identify key milestones, and then list expectations and dependencies. Much of the information was plotted into a giant timeline. The visual communications tool helped the leaders clarify scheduling and resource alignment, and it identified areas of conflicting assumptions. The team now has a stronger understanding of interdependencies, and is in a much better place to put effort into resolving divergent assumptions.  

Project director Tim Gagner places his
dependencies on the big plan.

The next steps for the program leaders include addressing the issues surfaced. Many of the dependencies identified can be solved through communications and cooperation, but some of them may require business-led prioritization. ESUP leadership will refer to the governance process for appropriate guidance any time the work streams demonstrate legitimate, and well-intentioned differences of interest.

ESUP’s leadership team will reconvene for a second joint planning workshop on June 26th to brainstorm creative solutions to the conflicting assumptions identified at the first event. In the meantime, everyone is invited to view the timeline, which is hanging in 150 Williamson Hall!

UPK Town hall registration

ESUP has a new tool available for training called the UPK or User Productivity Kit. The UPK is an Oracle tool that the University purchased to deliver training and "in application support" (the Help button on PeopleSoft pages).

There are a few different ways to use this tool and the Training team is looking for feedback from the learner. At this town hall, the Training team will introduce the tool and demo the learning methods and the "in application support" feature.

If you or your staff are interested in seeing this new tool and sharing your feedback, please register to attend one of the sessions below. Registration information can be found here (note: you may need to log in to access the ULearn interface; scroll down to request a seat on your preferred date.)

June 19, 2013          8:30 a.m. - 9:30 a.m. 210 Donhowe

June 19, 2013          3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. 142 WBOB

June 24, 2013          3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. 142 WBOB

June 27, 2013          8:30 a.m. - 9:30 a.m. 142 WBOB

ESUP Update, June 3 - 16, 2013

Murdoch, O’Connor complete Advanced Certificate in Equity and Diversity
Congratulations to Cynthia Murdoch and Bill O'Connor, both members of the Portal project team, who completed the Office for Equity and Diversity's Advanced Certificate in Equity and Diversity. The certificate included 10 workshops, a year-long dialogue circle, and an application project.

It is great for the Portal team and ESUP to have this strength. Thank you to Bill and Cynthia for dedicating the time and energy toward increasing your skills in these areas!
Pictured left to right: Bill O'Connor, Susan Geller, Anne Phibbs (OED certificate program director), and Cynthia Murdoch.

New servers in ESUP
ESUP Assistant Program Director Mark Powell was on hand last week to receive delivery of two new sets of servers: Exadata and Exalogic. The first set, Exadata, will house the Oracle databases. When OIT upgraded to the current version of Exadata servers, users experienced significant performance improvement.

The second set of servers, Exalogic, are new for ESUP. These servers will run PeopleSoft applications instead of the multiple servers currently used. The Exalogic and Exadata servers are designed to work together and Oracle will provide additional patching and upgrade services for these servers, which helps reduce system administration resources and costs to the University.

The servers being unwrapped.

The servers will be split into two combined sets, pairing one Exalogic with one Exadata. The set in the WBOB data center will support ESUP’s production systems, while the second set (located in the 90 Church St. data center), will support the Program’s development, testing, and disaster recovery.

Team continues to gather and analyze Portal opportunities
The Portal Project Team has completed a matrix of portal opportunities and information about each opportunity. This is the result of four months of engagement starting with the kickoff in February, including over 50 listening sessions, seven design thinking workshops, input forms and a survey. It is not the end of opportunity gathering - the portal is still listening and gathering input critical to the success of portal. The Portal leadership team will review the matrix over the next few weeks to determine priorities for phase one. More information about the opportunities and the process will be available on the Portal website soon.

Sessions scheduled for Finance
The Finance team continues to schedule sessions for Phase 1: Plan and Discover. Sessions for Expenses will begin June 3 and are scheduled to wrap-up by June 13. Some of the business processes to be covered include travel authorizations, cash advances, and expense reimbursements.

Treasury sessions also begin June 3 and are scheduled to end June 20. Some of the business processes to be covered on these sessions include bank administration, cash position/cash forecasting, bank reconciliation, settlements, financial gateway, managing and administering deals, and treasury batch processing/integration.

Development is underway
Now that some business process decisions have run through the ESUP governance process, leadership staff have approved functional specifications and technical staff have begun development. This means a big change for many of the developers on the program, who will no longer be attending as many Interactive Design and Prototyping (IDP) sessions. Instead they will write code. Developers are still available upon request to attend IDPs or to do technical research when needed, but developers are builders, and they are happy to move out of the consulting role. Let’s all join the developers to toast the beginning of Phase 3: Configure & Develop!

Quick hits and reminders from across the work streams

• The Executive Oversight Committee will present an update on the status of ESUP to the Board of Regents at their June meeting. The Board meeting begins at 9 a.m. on Friday, 6/14 and is open to the public. The full schedule is available on the Board of Regents website.
• The HRMS work stream has launched its project website at z.umn.edu/hrms. The site will grow and evolve in the coming weeks, so check back often for the latest information on the HRMS upgrade!
• The Student project has been working on team well-being, identifying ways in which team members can take care of themselves and prevent burnout. Kudos to the Student work stream for tackling such an important issue!
• The Finance work stream’s General Ledger module has completed their Phase 1: Plan and Discover sessions and are completing the required deliverables.