Of the 1,550 readiness survey responses from 46 different campus, college and university units, 69 percent agree or somewhat agree that they are ready for the Upgrade. Other highlights:
Please be patient with all ASR staff involved in the upgrade activities next week. Stay tuned to the Upgrade website for daily updates. And be sure to visit the Upgrade Blog’s “Prepare for Cutover” post.
The final step of the Upgrade is making all upgraded systems available to the public. This will be done with the switch to the new MyU in the early morning of April 20. At that time, the information on One Stop will also be updated. For several months, One Stop and the ASR communications team have been working together to make the necessary changes to the current One Stop website. If you are interested in seeing what changes will be made, you can check it out at onestop-test.umn.edu.
Watch the “New MyU for Students” video to learn how students will register, view financial aid, pay bills and more in the new MyU after the Upgrade. The faculty and employee versions of these videos are coming soon!
The University of Minnesota is moving away from paper time sheets and vacation slips. Staff are encouraged to complete the “Time Reporting” and “Absence Reporting” online trainings before Go Live to learn more about the new online processes. These trainings can be found under the Human Resource Systems tab of the Upgrade Training and Education website.
After the Upgrade, your PeopleSoft 8.9 favorites won’t transfer into PeopleSoft 9.0, nor will your UM Reports favorites transfer into the new MyU Reporting Center. Staff are advised to document their current favorites to make finding them after the Upgrade easier. Find more information and advice about transitioning to the new Reporting Center. The ASR Student Records Training and Support team created a PeopleSoft 9.0 Reference Guide to help users find PeopleSoft pages after the Upgrade.
Changes to key student records reports, including click-by-click directions to access them in the new MyU Reporting Center, are now on the Upgrade Blog.
Please share these resources with anyone they could be of assistance to.
The poster campaign will help build awareness of the systems interruption time and the new MyU. Posters will start appearing on classroom doors during spring break and digital signs will be displayed starting March 23. Copies of these posters will be available at upgrade.umn.edu/specialfor/communicators/posters.html before then if you would like to print any for your work area.
Next week the Upgrade undergoes Test Move 6. This activity is the ‘dress rehearsal’ for when the Upgrade activities occur in April; this means all the data, connections, retrofitted modifications and applications, batch processes, etc. will be tested and validated to ensure they are working correctly. Many ASR staff will participate in this activity and may take a bit longer to respond to inquiries. Additionally, there is a very strong chance that the work will take place overnight, so staff will be in and out of our buildings at odd hours.
The event will be held in the Great Hall (Coffman) from 10 a.m. -3 p.m. on April 15, 2015. Event details will be updated on the Upgrade website, here.
Faculty, staff and students who currently submit paper timesheets or absence forms will have to do so electronically after The Upgrade. Paper timesheets and absence forms are being eliminated to bring the University up-to-date with other large organizations and peers. We encourage ASR staff to visit the Upgrade Blog and make sure they are prepared for this change.
The User Access Review provides you an opportunity to try out the new system by completing daily tasks in a test environment, and to check your access to the new MyU and PeopleSoft Campus Solutions. The review will take approximately 15-30 minutes. Please complete the Student Systems Upgrade Training prior to the User Access Review. If you supervise student workers who have PeopleSoft access, please share this message with them. Start the User Access Review.
Estimated 2015-2016 Financial Aid Award Notices (FAANs) will be sent to prospective incoming freshman beginning late February. Financial aid packages for students are being processed earlier than usual this year in order to accommodate the April go-live date for the PeopleSoft Upgrade.
The Student Systems Upgrade Overview is an online training course that is required for all staff with access to student data in PeopleSoft. It may be completed at your own pace and on your own schedule between now and when the Upgrade goes live. Most people complete this course in 30 minutes or less.
After the Upgrade, staff will submit absence requests electronically via the new MyU. To learn what the new process will look like, take a short online Submitting Absences course. It contains a 2-minute video as well as links to "Frequently Asked Questions," resources, and job aides. Please refer your student employees to this information as well.
The Upgrade’s Executive Oversight Committee will make a Go Live decision the first week of February. This new decision deadline gives the committee additional time and flexibility to compile more detailed HR Payroll test data, develop a full go-no-go dashboard, follow standard review processes, and gain a more concrete status view. Find additional Upgrade updates and news »
In preparation for the Upgrade, the Registrar’s Advisory Committee (RAC) meetings for January and February will have a different format. For most of the scheduled RAC meeting time, members of the RAC group will be able to participate in hands-on sessions where they will have the opportunity to try out the new PeopleSoft system. Several computer labs have been reserved to accommodate users during each RAC meeting at locations across the UMNTC campus. We expect several other groups to be offered a similar opportunity in January and February, including the Faculty Go-To members.
