November Colleague Updates

19th November | No Comments | posted by Kaitlin | in Outages and Maintenance

As fall is starting to transition into winter, here are a few updates and changes to Colleague for the month. The user-impacting updates  are scheduled for installation in Production Colleague on Nov 21^st.

Emergency Information Foundational Release

This release provides enhanced functionality to staff that work with emergency and missing-person contact information, as the foundation for upcoming self-service features for all students and employees. This release focuses on Colleague form updates that will grant greater flexibility to keep information secure in alignment with institution practices while also providing enhanced automation with compliance efforts related to the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) regarding missing-person contacts.

The key enhancements listed below are important to understand from the context of HEOA. HEOA guidelines afford the individual a higher level of confidentiality in who can view the missing-person contact designated by the individual (greater confidentiality than what is provided by the federal Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA alone). It also states that missing-person contact information may only be shared with authorized campus officials or law enforcement personnel in furtherance of a missing person investigation, which may be different than personnel authorized to view general emergency contacts. Because of the flexibility needed to comply with this regulation, Ellucian has made the following Colleague form enhancements.

New Colleague forms added to ST/AC/STR and to CORE/DM menus.

• Missing-Person Contacts (MISS) form: Staff with access to this form will be able to view missing-person contact information. Data that currently resides on the Missing Student Emergency Contact (MSEC) form will be moved to the new MISS form as part of a post-install utility. Ellucian is providing this new form in order for clients to be in compliance with HEOA guidelines since individuals who view missing-person contact information may not be the same individuals who have access to the overall emergency contact information.
• Emergency/Missing-Person Contacts (EMPC) form. Staff with access to this form will be able to view and enter/update emergency contact information and missing-person contact information, including a new address free form field. They can enter a date that the emergency contact information was confirmed. They can also detail to view additional emergency information as on the revised EMER form. Data that currently resides on the MSEC form will be moved to the new EMPC form as part of the post-install utility.

There are changes to existing EMER and MSEC forms.

• Staff with access to EMER will be able to view emergency contacts but not modify the contact information. Other data on the EMER form can be updated. Additionally, there is a new field indicating whether there is additional emergency information that the person self-disclosed. The upcoming self-service functionality will provide the ability for individuals to add comments containing additional emergency information when entering or updating their own emergency information.
• The MSEC form is now inquiry-only and should only be used to research questions about the post-install utility that moved the data to its new location. The information reflected on the MSEC form may soon be out of date after installing this software update, and Ellucian plans to quickly obsolete the MSEC form.

A Post-Install Utility is provided to copy the data that currently resides on the MSEC form into the PERSON.EMER file. The new MISS form will let users view that data from the PERSON.EMER file and the new EMPC form will let users view and change the data. The data will reside in one place –and users will be able to view the same data from the two new forms (EMPC and MISS), depending on if they have access to one or both of the forms. Access to each form will be determined based on individual roles.

Have a great rest of November!

October IT Systems Updates

6th October | No Comments | posted by Kaitlin | in Outages and Maintenance

Fall is here and it’s time for system updates.

Colleague Financials – 2014 Approvals Enhancements

This Colleague Financials – 2014 Approvals Enhancements software update contains changes to several approvals processes in Colleague.

– APRN has been modified to present users with a more accurate error or warning message and give the user the opportunity to provide an override on APRN, instead of detailing to the source document. Previously, these errors generated an error message that read: “Transaction date is not in an open fiscal month. Detail to maintain.”

– APRN has been modified to include the fiscal year in the error message when notifying users that they have no documents to approve. The error message now reads: “There are no documents in the 2014 fiscal year that require this person’s approval.”

– Colleague has been updated to evaluate include and exclude approval GL classes correctly.

– APGL and APCM have been modified so that the data in the GL Component field is validated, and only valid values are accepted.

– A new field, Requisition Re-Approval Required, has been added to PUPD to govern requisition re-approvals. Additionally, the Requisition Maintenance (REQM) and the Web Requisition forms now retain and clear approvals as appropriate according to the new Requisition Re-Approval Required flag.

– APPM has been modified so that when a user enters and re-enters an operator ID that is not valid, the resulting OPERS record will not be created. APPM will now issue the error message: “Operator ID that was entered is not on file” every time an operator ID that is not valid is entered to avoid creating non-valid OPERS records in the system.

– AR and AP vouchers can now be evaluated separately during the approvals process. A new field, AR Voucher Approval Needed, has been added to APDE to govern AR voucher approvals. Additionally, the AR Refund (RFND), Deposit Refund (DPRF), Deposit Refund Register (DRRG), Cash Advance (CADV), and Sponsor Billing Refund (SBRF) forms now take this new flag into account when considering whether or not approvals are required. If the new AR Voucher Approvals Needed flag is not set, then Colleague will use the Voucher Approval Needed flag on APDE for evaluation.

Have a wonderful month!