ERP Project Update As of November 5th, 2008
Summary
Overall ERP status remains Yellow primarily due to the need to move the HR/Payroll Go-Live back to our fall back date. A major issue affecting all modules is the request to come live with the Banner 8.1 system as opposed to Banner 7 as had been planned. This will be analyzed and a decision reached within the next week.
Primary issue for HR/Payroll is the staffing of the team (staff size and continuity). With the constraints on overtime the team must be adequately staffed.
Finance remains on track for an April 1, 2009 Go-Live. Key issues that could affect the Finance Go-Live are the availability of the ODS/EDW (Data Warehouse) environment and Self service functionality within Luminis. The Finance Go-Live activities will also need to be synchronized with the HR Go-Live. Additional issues include the completion of internal and external interfaces and the possibility of requirements gaps in the Non Tuition AR and Purchasing modules.
The Student team continues to refine their plan and timelines. Actual configuration work will begin this month with the availability of a Banner 8 instance. First Go-Live (there will be more than one) is tentatively scheduled for Fall
2009 but this could change. The development of the Colleague and Banner 3 Accounts Receivable interface to
Banner has been identified as a mission critical item.
Accomplishments During Reporting Period PMO
- Monitored budget improvement strategies and recommendations. Special attention needs to be paid
to several unplanned expenses and their budget impact.
- Continued Master Plan rollout (plan clean up and cross project task linkages)
- Continued work on the development of the Risk items.
- Coordinate HR Go-Live.
- Coordinated ODS installation.
- Scheduled remaining ODS and COGNOS training.
- Scheduled EDW installation.
- Monitored Go-Live progress.
Student
- Continued work on setup/testing of General Person in the BANTEST8 environment. The General
Person module is fairly close to signoff.
o Completed Configuration of Validation Tables
o Completed Holds and Internationalization
o Completed review of General Person in BANNER 8
o Completed Testing of the INB modules
o General Person ready for Signoff
o Worked on General Person Conversion with conversion team
- Began working in the BANNER 8 environment:
o Continued to review BANNER 8.0 documentation for new functionality to fill GAPs identified.
o Obtained access to a BANNER 8 SEED and TEST environment for setup and configuration for
the Student team.
o Migrated General Person configuration and Testing to BANTEST8 environment.
- Completed Student Project Plan including the cross links to other ERP projects. Two items
outstanding are the CAPP and Degree works planning. The reporting aspect of the plan has not been built into the Student plan as we anticipate this will be incorporated into the ODS/EDW plan.
Accomplishments During Reporting Period (Continued)
- Met with Enrollment Management and Recruitment groups on campus to:
o Presented a demo on INB Recruitment
o Presented a demo on Self Service
o Presented a demo on Robertson and Robertson recruitment
o Reviewed timeline and resource options with group
- Worked with Frank Pahlke to schedule SunGard training and consulting sessions for AR, CAPP,
Admissions, Course Catalog, Transfer Articulation and Academic History.
- Configuration of the Course Catalog module is well underway with the setup of the Validation and
Rules tables.
- Initial configuration of Admissions validation tables has started.
- Continued to work on a Unified Transcript format. Discussions on the impact of the merging of UCC
and BCOU on how items must be depicted on the transcript. An initial template of the transcript has been created. The team is recommending that transcript changes prior to April 2005 be grouped with UCC and BCOU separately and that all TRU courses thereafter are merged together.
- Core Group reviewed outstanding issues and loaded new issues into ERP database.
- Contacted SAIT and obtained authorization to use their solution for Materials Handling.
- Verified that the PASBC interface is offered free via BC Campus. The only cost is implementation and
customization of the product to accommodate site specific requirements.
- Identified three major issues that needed to be escalated to ERP steering committee:
o Catalog
o Luminis
o Recruitment
o Fees Timeline
- Core Team began reviewing Functional GAPs and associated recommendations for gap solutions.
Work is continuing on the gap analysis and associated recommendations and it is near completion.
- Met with BCIT to discuss their usage of BANNER, Luminis, WebCT and Grade book. The site visit
was very informative and we discovered:
o Course Studio can be consolidated together in but does not integrate well into Luminis and
Grade book. This would be a very useful enhancement to the SunGard product, and SunGard has shown interest in this RPE, but this has not been implemented in any current releases.
o WebCT and Grade book are independent, and it is up to their faculty on which ones they want to
use for grading. There is no integration between the two modules.
o TRU can consolidate courses in Luminis into either single semesters (cross-listing), or by a
custom mod that would make several semesters and courses look like a single term (200800).
o BCIT mentioned that they use open based registration, but not to the extent that TRU utilizes the
product.
- Met with UNBC to discuss possibility of having a demo of their solution on Shopping Cart and Course
Searches and the opportunity to play with it in their training environment. Demo is setup for November 7th.
- Work continued on the Student Accounts Receivables module:
o Fee matrix was stalled due to staffing challenges and shuffling of work within the Finance team.
Work on this task is progressing but more slowly than originally was planned.
o Continued training with Student Accounts Receivable staff on the Student AR module and
navigation.
o Worked on proposal for Paul Manhas regarding GL configuration options, setup and balancing
methods
o Worked with Frank Pahlke to setup AR training for end of November (now slated for the
beginning of January).
- Discussion regarding the need to have Luminis 8.x and Workflow in place before the end of this
Calendar year to facilitate full testing of possible gap solutions. The student team cannot fully configure or test Self Service until this is environment is configured and available.
- ERP Teams returned from CBUC 2008 (Canadian Banner Users Conference) in Toronto with a
Accomplishments During Reporting Period (Continued)
- Several meetings occurred:
o ERP Team Leads meeting
o Core Group Meetings
o Conversion Meetings
o Curriculum Meetings
o Transcript Design Meetings
Finance
- Conducted training and configuration sessions for Procurement, GSP Processing, Encumbrance processing, Accounts Payable, Cheque Processing
- Discussed and strategized on the timeline for the evaluation of the Budget Development module; discussed what aspects of the system we could enable to assist budget holders with budget management.
- Worked with Steve on Spreadsheet Budgeting Configuration
- Reviewed the Finance Plan and Project Resourcing with Paul; dedicated CORE team resources to the project 1/2 time to work on the implementation.
- Refined and reviewed Procurement, AP and Finance Operations work plans and adapted to meet the needs of the implementation team.
- Updated Finance Implementation Plan and circulated the initial draft of the plan for Student AR plan to the team.
- Continued work on gap analysis for Finance related bugs or deficiencies, such as Online Requisitioning functionality, Invoice Processing and Agreements Processing bugs
- Worked on converting Datatel data into FAST-Banner Balance Sheet
- Met with Mickey Hughes (Banner Finance Consultant) to discuss any enhancements in Banner 8 for Non Tuition AR, Online Requisitions, PCARD Reconciliation and Spreadsheet Budgeting – no significant changes in functionality were evident.
- Worked with Jola on set up, configuration for the GST Processing.
- Worked on setup of Banner User Classes and Security with Jola and Paul.
- Worked on mapping security rights within Datatel across to Banner.
- Worked with Jola and Brian on AR training, configuration and setup.
- Configuration testing and troubleshooting for team on Procurement, Accounts Payable, Vendor Setup
- Met and discussed the Student AR interface requirements
- Reviewed and finalization of the validation tables for Purchasing/AP
- Reviewed and revise the Banner User Classes and Access
- Met to discuss the JDE interface and specifications
- Worked with Karl and Anna to finalize access requirements and approach
- Migrated updated chart of accounts from BANTSTFN to BANTEST
- Worked with AR team on work plan, fee matrix and project plan HR
- Continued system testing with TRU data
- RE-PLAN for April 1, 2009
- Developed and Implemented Team Re-Structure
- Developed Draft Training Plan
- Completed Position Control SS for Data Entry of position into NBAPOSN & NBAPBUD
- Completed Specifications for OASolutions to pull Employee Data Detail Extract
- Completed Extracts & Conversion of General Person Data
- Colleague Data Cleansing for General Person Import
- HRPayroll Team Acceptance of General Person Import – data & forms
- Developed HR & Payroll End User Training Presentation(s)
- Complete End User Documentation
- Formal Training – Web Tailor Training
- System Validation BANTEST ready to move to BANPROD
Accomplishments During Reporting Period (Continued) Technical
- Finance Technical Training
- SSB Programming Training
- General Person and Employee records for terminated employees conversion completed
- Cognos licensing finalized
- Luminis mail server test re-installed and SSL certificate is functioning properly
- Presented a set of conversion related question to Student Team
- Received Banner – Colleague mapping documents for some Student tables from SunGard HE
consultant
- Worked with HR/Payroll team on specifications for employee data extracts for data entry
- Installed ODS test environment
- Working with Finance team on Banner – JDE interfaces specification
- Visit with BCIT clarifying some WebCT (Blackboard) – Banner Integration issues
- Work on more efficient conversion routine for migrating Colleague data to Oracle database
Activities for Next Reporting Period PMO
- Monitor budget improvement strategies and recommendations. Special attention needs to be paid to
several unplanned expenses and their budget impact.
- Continue Master Plan rollout (Complete cross project task linkages)
- Continue work on the development of the Risk items.
- Coordinate HR and associated Finance Go-Live activities.
- Schedule Workflow implementation.
- Monitor Go-Live progress.
Student
- Review and complete remaining modules of the Student Project plan with student team once we
receive required information from Sungard regarding the CAPP and Degreeworks configuration inter-dependency.
- Signoff of configuration, setup and testing of General Person.
- Work with Conversion team on General Person conversion. Other areas of review with the conversion
team include Catalog, Schedule, Registration, Accounts Receivable and Academic History. Student Conversion Technical training is scheduled for the first week in November.
- Complete initial setup of the Course Catalog Module configuration for OL, Campus, and NT courses.
Start data entry and testing to validate the initial configuration and setup of the module.
- Continue to review BANNER 8 documentation for new functionality and its potential usage within the
overall implementation.
- Review BANNER 8.1 documentation. Tech Team will need to upgrade to this environment to fix bugs
in current 8.0 environments (currently under review).
- Work with Student Receivables team in November and December on the Student and Non tuition AR
configuration and training. Continue work on Current Fees Matrix (attempt to complete by end of November).
- Complete justification document to outline the configuration approach and associated maintenance for
course budgeting to Faculties.
- Determine timeline and overall usage for the Recruitment Module.
- Complete Curriculum matrix for Catalog, Admissions and CAPP setup.
- Complete GAP Analysis and associated recommendations with student team. Forward initial recommendations, customizations requirements and required timelines to the PMO. - Continue work on creating a Unified TRU transcript and meet with IT group on possibility of
changes.
- Begin planning for coordinating tasks and activities in December. Marion Hannaford and Leena Niemela will be away for most of December.
Activities for Next Reporting Period (Continued)
- Work with HR, Technical Team, and SunGard on how to fulfill the tutor pay and tutor assignment requirements.
- There is Cognos training scheduled for November and December and the Student team will need to discuss who will need to be sent to this training.
HR/Payroll
- Tutor Testing – Bi-weekly
- Formal Training – Advanced Payroll
- Formal Training – Advanced HR Training
- Formal Training - COGNOS
- Tutor Pay Testing Interface
- Data Entry of Position Classes (NTRPCLS)
- Data Entry of Positions (NBAPOSN & NBAPBUD)
- End User Training – Eclass & Position Control
- End User Training – New Hire & Jobs
- Continue to Develop End User Training Materials & Presentations
- Employee Data Extract
- Template for Employee Data Entry
- Develop & test security HR roles
- Add New Tutors from 2008 into Colleague & BANNER
- Add Tutor Alternate ID’s into PEAEMPL
- Develop draft plan for Synchronizing Colleague & BANNER data entry & maintenance
Finance
- Complete testing, configuration and training for Procurement, Accounts Payable and Finance
Operations
- Training for the core team on setup and administration within WebTailor
- Discussion and firm up dates with Frank on Student and Non-tuition Accounts Receivable training
- Begin Training, configuration and testing for the Bank Reconcilliation and
- Complete the specifications and plan for design and deployment of the JDE interface
- Complete the specifications and plan for design and deployment of the Accounts Receivable bridging
interfaces for Colleague and Banner 3.
- Complete documentation of the agreement processing and invoicing bugs to forward to ITS for
resolution
- Determine timeline and amalgamation strategy for Finance to merge environments with HR/Payroll
- Complete initial design of security matrix for Finance users, begin working on user classes for
distributed users.
- Setup, testing and configuration of approval levels, security profiles and threshold levels
- Discuss and determine strategy for deployment of budget maintenance aspect of Finance, begin work
plan for this aspect of the Budget module.
- Begin testing and verification of Finance control reports within Banner and any custom control report
requirements
- Setup and testing of the Finance processes for Job Submission
- Begin work on processes and method for processing direct deposits for employee travel claims.
Technical
- Create a list of custom development required for Student System in cooperation with functional team
- Complete Tutor Pay – Banner 7+ HR interface
- 2nd Consulting session on data conversion (Nov 4-6)
- Develop preliminary conversion timeline for Student System conversion
- Continue to work on more efficient conversion routine for migrating Colleague data to Oracle database
- Create banconv8 environment (Nov 3-7)
- Upgrade/patch banconv8 to 8.1 (Nov 3-7)
- Install Cognos (Nov 3-7)
- Continue to work on completion of technical specifications for Banner – JDE set of interfaces with
Finance team
