Message from Chris

I would like to take this opportunity to invite the campus community to attend the CMS update presentations being held on February 16th, 2006, Pollak Library North, room 130. Please join me and the key project presenters, John Lynn and Burt Casey (Human Resources), Brian Jenkins and Allyson Bates (Finance), and Nancy Dority and Susan Kachner (Student) to review where we are on each project. We will cover answers to common questions and preview a roadmap of where the project is going. In addition, Kim Kee (CMS Documentation/ Training) will conduct an HR Employee Self Service Overview. Please visit one or all four sessions:

9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. CMS Human Resources System Update
10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. CMS Finance System Update
11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. CMS Student System Update
1:15 p.m. - 2:15 p.m. CMS HR Employee Self Service Overview

The recruitment for a permanent CMS Project Director closed on January 19th. The search committee, chaired by Dick Bednar, is comprised of Barry Pasternak, David Fromson, Heather Williams, Bill Barrett, Dorota Huizinga, and Peggy Atwell. The committee is currently reviewing the applicant resumes for interview consideration.

A new CMS project timeline has been created to reflect the most recent updates to the project. You can find this project plan in the Timelines section of the CMS web site, or by selecting this link.

A. February Project Watch and Web Site

Human Resources
Human Resources recently completed the initial release of three distributed applications. The release of Leave Accounting and Positive Pay, Student Worker Hiring, and Part Time Faculty Hiring involved the collaborative work of numerous campus staff and management. We thank everyone who was part of the deployment, particularly those who offered suggestions for enhancements and improvements. Training for Student Worker Hire is now wrapping up, while training for the delivered Roster, CWID Search, and Query continues this month

Initial planning has begun for the campuses first CMS upgrade to HR 8.9 (now called Human Capital Management or HCM 8.9). As part of this planning, comments and suggestions regarding the current HR 8.4 software are being reviewed.

Finance
Since our last Project Watch, the campus submitted a recommendation to move from the planned implementation of FIS 8.4 in July 2006 to implementing FIS 8.9 in July 2007. This recommendation was approved by the CSU CMS Executive Committee in January and will provide us with the necessary time to fill key vacancies and backfill positions. This will also allow us more time to expand the process mapping and fit gap periods. For more on this please see the Feature story.

Student Administration
The CMS Student Administration has undergone renaming with the 8.9 release. It is now called Campus Solutions version 8.9.
The campus has recently completed the Campus Solutions (Student Administration) Readiness Assessment. The Readiness Report prepared by CedarCrestone found that our campus has met all the "Minimum" and “Ideal" criteria in all ten readiness categories. These categories are listed below.

The next step in this process requires our campus to submit this document to the Chancellors Office for review and to schedule a date for the installation of our software instances. Additionally, a Request for Proposal (RFP) for selecting the student project implementation partner was released on February 10th.

The readiness process, which produced the assessment report, was truly a campus wide process involving the CMS Steering Committee, the Student Administration Project Management team, Module Work teams, Academic Senate representatives, the ASI President, and the CMS Project Office.

Space has been secured in the University Plaza (Pennysaver) building to house the project. Improvements are being made to the space for a projected March occupancy.

B. Additional CMS Deliverables and Committee Work

There are a number of other teams working on supporting services to CMS.

Data Warehouse Project
As part of the CMS implementation, a data warehouse is delivered for records archive and reports from CMS Central. Planning for this implementation has begun with the examination of technical specifications for campus hardware support for the data warehouse.

Reporting Committee
Susan Kachner chairs this committee which is looking at a campus solution for providing reports from CMS to campus users. This committee will wrap up their discussion and provide a recommendation to the CMS Steering Committee by mid-March. Considered in this recommendation will be the reporting needs, reporting delivery organization and structure, and software solutions for many types of campus users including: technical, central users, end users, and power users.

Forms Committee
Welson Badal chairs this committee which is looking at a campus solution for form development and delivery, developing initial standards for form development, and reviewing current forms to assure they are timely and accurate. This committee begins meeting in February and looks to have an initial recommendation on the toolsets to the CMS Steering Committee by early April.