FIS BULLETIN Number 19

Announcements | Calendar | Status | T&T-Q&A | Training | Inside Peek | Odds & Ends

April 13, 1998

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS

GENERAL: SCHEDULED FIS BANNER DOWNTIMES

Banner FIS will be unavailable ALL DAY on Saturday, April 18 for system maintenance.

ACQUISITIONS:

Distributed Office of Record (DOOR) training is currently underway! See FIS Status for more information.

BANNER REPORTS: None.

OTHER FIS/BANNER ITEMS:

We need your feedback! See Odds and Ends.

CALENDAR OF FIS / BANNER EVENTS

MONTHLY INTERFACE SCHEDULE (Financial data from other admin systems)
All interfaces begin running at 5:00pm; dates subject to change

FIS STATUS

DISTRIBUTED OFFICE OF RECORD (DOOR): Campuswide training for the DOOR project began on May 6. Remember that all staff who input OR approve Direct Pays (via FAADPAY or FYADPAY) MUST complete DOOR training in order to retain that access. Contact Nancy Miller (njmiller@cats) to sign up for DOOR training.

PROCUREMENT CARD (PROCARD): The Procard project is rolling along, with much work being done by the Procard Advisory Group, Purchasing and FIS staff, and the Procard vendor on the many functional and technical details.

CONTRACT & GRANT INCEPTION-TO-DATE (ITD) REPORT ENHANCEMENTS: Fine-tuning is wrapping up on this report, which many users of the Contract & Grants variety have found to be very helpful.

FISCAL CLOSE: Hard to believe it's almost that time again! FIS and Accounting Office staff have begun the Fiscal Close process in our test environment. Having a "dress rehearsal" for close allows us to identify any necessary data cleanup well in advance, as well as providing us with transaction counts and process runtimes that we can use when planning the production Fiscal Close processes. Our plan is to finish the test the week of April 20.

TIPS & TRICKS / QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

TIPS & TRICKS: None submitted this month.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS: None submitted this month.

FIS TRAINING SCHEDULE

FIS BANNER TRAINING SCHEDULE. To register for a course, please send e-mail to njmiller@ucsc.edu and
include:
the class name and date
the attendee's name, phone number, e-mail address and unit.
Class confirmation will be sent to each attendee.

Location: 247B Kerr Hall

A separate class listing for the Distributed Office of Record Training was posted to fis_user on March 13.. The eight hour certification training will be offered in two four-hour sections from April 6th through 30th. If you need more info about DOOR training, please contact Nancy Miller (njmiller@cats)

________________________
Questions or problems regarding Banner FIS can be directed to:
Acquisitions, Accounts Payable - Karsen Jones kjones@cats
Ledger Reports, Fiscal Closing - Vicki Gutzwiller vickig@cats
Banner Security, Access, Other - Monique Leduc mleduc@cats
FIS Training Content, Schedule - Nancy Miller njmiller@cats

INSIDER'S PEEK AT FIS

ON THE ROAD AGAIN WITH BANNERSLUG: MUSINGS ON THE 1998 SCT SUMMIT

A few weeks ago, thousands of SCT-Banner users made the annual pilgrimage to SCT Summit held in Sunny San Diego (formerly known as TCP Conference). Among the Banner-Finance clientele (of which we are a part, for better or worse), the atmosphere was a bit less tense than last year. Perhaps, it was the laid-back California setting. Or, maybe because, this year, they didn't give away as token gifts magnetic sculpture toys (as you probably know, magnets are a computer's worst friend).

Didn't have to use my finely honed skills of Bannerthink as much this year probably because the current version of Banner seems to have addressed the causes behind having to use Bannerthink. (For the uninitiated, Bannerthink involves listening to something said by an SCT type and using reverse deductive logic or something like that to figure out what it really means.)

Using my time-tested method of "sliming" (crawling around from presentation to presentation), I was able to pick up on these juicy tidbits of information:

On the Acquisitions front: several fixes have been made to the Banner Finance version 3.1. The real action will be in version 4.0 (SCT must be hearing the fast approaching footsteps of the competition). Many functionality improvements are being made to it. SCT sponsored a user forum at SCT Headquarters in Malvern, PA to discuss improvements that could be made to the purchasing module about six months ago (FIS User Analyst Karsen Jones attended and was supplied with a megaphone to ensure that she was very vocal in representing our interests). Comments from users attending presentations on the version 4.0 expressed optimism. (Don't ask me when we're going to upgrade to 4.0, which isn't expected to be available until December 1998. We're having enough "fun" trying to upgrade to version 3.1. We'll get to 4.0 eventually.)

On the Fixed Assets front: here some not so great news came out. All our work to convert our old data to the format (2.1.x to be exact) that we hoped to use in version 3.1 may have been for naught. SCT revised the structure of the data in version 3.1 to combat bugs that exist in the version 2.1.x. This may pose some unexpected technical challenges for us.

On the Graphical User Interface: In a nutshell - pretty, but slow. In testing the interface in the demo room, we found the response time to be a bit slow. Difficult to conclude anything though, because we don't know what the computing architecture that was used with the demonstration. We'll know a lot more when we start testing the upgrade using our campus' computing infrastructure. Perhaps it will be faster. If not, we might have to look a the faster character-based interface for the power users (i.e. inputters).

On my favorite Banner (mal)function – Available Balance (FGIBAVL): Hurray, at last, it appears to really work in Version 3.1. Gasps could be heard throughout the meeting room. Apparently, the programming behind this very complex function was drastically modified and it appears to work properly at last.

On things only a techie could love: Citrix-Winframe technology should be a viable alternative to the campus to provide FIS Banner services to Macintosh and "thin" PC clients. Though recent developments, such as Microsoft's development of its competing Terminal Server technology, may impact how the technology will be employed (read: "we know where you're going today"). Our timing on the upgrade is such that we should be in a good position no matter what occurs.

On the "more interesting to me but not necessarily to you" level: automatic JV's appear to work well in version 3.1. This feature may allow us to develop FIS Distributed Memo Lien functionality more easily (and, perhaps, with greater flexibility for the user). And so it goes, another SCT Users Conference over. Ah, hope springs eternal. Though we must reluctantly admit that we are a bit more optimistic than before.

ODDS AND ENDS

REQUEST FOR FEEDBACK ISSUES:

We are planning to hold an FIS User's Meeting on Friday, May 1, 1998 from 10:00 – noon at the Cowell Health Center Conference room. The format of the meeting will be similar to that of the last one held many, many months ago – a demo of the new DOOR functionality and breakout sessions to discuss issues of particular interest. We would appreciate receiving suggestions for FIS discussion topics at the breakout session.

Contributors: Nancy Miller, Kirk Lew, Monique Leduc
Your comments and suggestions are always welcome. Please direct them to the Editors, Monique Leduc mleduc@cats or Kirk Lew kllew@cats

Financial Affairs | Accounting Offices | Campus Controller | FIS

Comments to: controller@ucsc.edu - Maintained by FIS, Updated