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Bridges Advisory #35 - Nov 10, 2004

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The University of Florida is committed to keeping you informed as we continue our transition to the new myUFL systems. To help you with the transition, each week you will receive a Bridges Advisory.

NEW BRIDGES CAMPUS OUTREACH TEAM. In an effort to better serve the campus community, UF Bridges has formed a new team called Campus Outreach. This program will be staffed with several full-time Bridges team members who have a wealth of technical and functional knowledge about the myUFL systems. The Campus Outreach team will oversee the Bridges Liaison/College Experts program, the Bridges Open Labs, and other campus outreach initiatives.

Specifically, the Campus Outreach program will initially focus on three major areas:

  1. Manage and promote the Bridges Open Labs. These unstructured sessions offer users the opportunity to meet with experts to help them get their work done and problems resolved. No registration is required. Attendance has been extremely low and these may be discontinued if it continues to be underutilized.
  2. Train the College Experts. Two training sessions have been offered to date for the college experts but we recognize that much more training and knowledge transfer is necessary for the college contacts to perform as an “expert” for their unit. In addition to more training, college experts and the deans or directors (who appointed them) will be provided more detailed information about the role and responsibilities of college experts and Bridges liaisons.
  3. Department-level assistance upon request. If you have a large number of people in your unit that need assistance, Bridges will come to you. The Campus Outreach team will meet with your faculty and/or staff in an Open Lab-Open House setting (i.e., an unstructured session that will cover any topic and resolve problems). It is strongly recommended that all end users attend the appropriate certified training classes delivered by Training and Development. Please contact Training and Development at training@ufl.edu to request a formal training session for your department or unit.

We are committed to helping the campus community adapt to the new myUFL systems – please let us know how we can help you. Send your ideas, opinions, and concerns to the myUFL Suggestion Box located in the upper right-hand corner of the portal.

HOW TO PRINT YOUR ON-LINE EARNINGS STATEMENT (VIEW PAYCHECK). When printing your on-line earnings statement (Portal navigation: My Self Service > Payroll and Compensation > View Paycheck), please note that Internet Explorer users will need to either print it in landscape mode or reduce the size of the document as follows:

  1. Click anywhere on the ‘View Paycheck’ frame (or page).
  2. In the browser window, select File > Print Preview.
  3. In the Print Preview window, select 75% of page from the drop down window.
  4. Select 'Only the Selected Frame' from the drop down window.
  5. If the far-right numbers are still truncated, adjust your left and right margins to .5 using File > Page Setup.
  6. Click ‘Print’ in the upper left-hand corner.

Netscape and Mozilla users should be able to print the “View Paycheck” document without any adjustments.

PURCHASING – PLEASE USE ‘COPY PO’ FEATURE IN myUFL. Purchasing and Disbursement Services has found many encumbered voucher requests are overpaying vendors because departments are filling out the first regular entry screen before using the "Copy PO" function. If an amount is input on the voucher entry screen, this causes the voucher to create an unencumbered line once the voucher is opened. Then when the Copy PO functionality is employed, a second encumbered line is added to the voucher. This will result in an overpayment to a vendor if not caught during input. It is also causing confusion for our vendors when attempting to allocate money to the appropriate accounts. Vendors are being forced to return credits/checks to the university.

To eliminate this issue, do not put any information in the Add a New Value screen; just click the Add button. Then once you are in the voucher and have copied in the PO information, please make sure you view all lines in the dark blue invoice lines and the light blue distribution lines. Before saving the voucher, ensure that the total invoice amount in the invoice information screen matches the invoice amount issued by the vendor.

Please review the Encumbered Vouchers instruction guide.

CLOSING SCHEDULES FOR myUFL FINANCIALS. The university will close several periods this month in order to get back on a regular monthly close schedule.

In October we closed out the July and August subsidiary ledgers (i.e., Accounts Receivable, Billing, Purchase Order, Accounts Payable, and Expense). This week we will close the July and August General Ledger. We are now ready to move forward with other closings as follows:

Please note: We will effectively make this closing immediately after the nightly batch so the following day is when the closing will impact your transactions (i.e., users will not be able to use the periods for those systems the day after the dates on the schedule). The only exception to this relates to asset depreciation (i.e., Asset Management or AM), which will occur the week of November 22-27 for all months through October.

Going forward you should expect all months to close at the end of the nightly batch schedule after the last day of the month for all subsidiary ledgers followed five (5) business days later with the General Ledger (GL) closing.

WEEKEND PROCESSING AND BUDGET CHECKING.The F&A calculation that we run every weekend during the Friday night batch is running for more than 24 hours. Since this process includes budget checking, you will not be able to execute any budget checks while this is running (or whenever we are running any nightly batch). Remote call budget checks occur when you approve a requisition, budget check a travel authorization, or click any on-line button that kicks off the budget checking process. Batch budget checks occur when you run a process via the Process Scheduler. If you attempt to run budget checking while we are running the nightly batch, you will receive an error. This is a valid error, and you should not attempt to run any budget checking process when you receive this message. We normally complete the nightly batch by 7:00 a.m. each morning and the weekend batch early Sunday morning.

HOLIDAY BATCH PROCESSING. UF will process the normal nightly batch process Wednesday, November 10, and include the weekend batch processes like the F&A calculation for grants. We will not run any processes the remainder of the weekend. This will be the same schedule we run Wednesday, November 24, for the Thanksgiving holiday as well. We hope you enjoy your time away from the office for these well-deserved holidays!

ASSET MANAGEMENT REPORTING. A new resource is available for those who need to produce a list of assets and associated information by Department ID or search for a specific asset. The Asset Management Reporting handout describes various options

Asset Management information is available in three locations:

Please review the complete document for information about these resources and the roles required to access them.

A NOTE ABOUT ENTERING TEAMS AND USPS POSITION DESCRIPTIONS IN myUFL. TEAMS and USPS position descriptions likely do not exist in myUFL for positions that were transferred from the legacy system. In order to begin a recruitment or perform other actions, such as reclassifications, departments must add a position description, using the unified position description form <www.hr.ufl.edu/departmental/forms/unifiedposition.rtf> into eRecruit for TEAMS and USPS positions.

There are no space restrictions with regard to the length of position descriptions that may be entered into PeopleSoft as long as the descriptions contain text only. Special characters should not be used because they may create errors and prevent the entire position description from appearing in PeopleSoft. Special characters include: *, @, !, $, %, ^, & #.

Position descriptions for TEAMS and USPS positions are located in myUFL under Organizational Development > Position Management > Maintain Positions/Budgets > Add/Update Position Info. Enter the 8-digit Position Number. On the Description tab, click on the blue Detailed Position Description link located on the right-hand side of the page.

Position descriptions should exist in myUFL for positions that were established, reclassified, or recruited after June 18.

Please be sure to include a summary of the position in "SUMMARY OF POSITION ROLE/RESPONSIBILITIES" as this will appear in eRecruit to provide prospective applicants with a job summary. Leaving this blank gives applicants only the job title.

Detailed information for writing position descriptions is available on the Web at: www.hr.ufl.edu/departmental/classcomp/establishing.htm.Staff in Employment and Classification are also available to answer questions and may be reached at 392-4621 (SC 622-4621) or employment@ufl.edu.

HOW TO VIEW JOB VACANCY ANNOUNCEMENTS IN eRECRUIT. Faculty and staff listed as originators or authorizers of a requisition or who are members of an interview team are unable to view the job vacancy announcement via myUFL because eRecruit is designed to prevent these individuals from viewing and applying for positions for which they may have a decision-making role. What can you do? These individuals may view the job announcement by logging out of myUFL and checking the job listings as if they were an external applicant at http://jobs.ufl.edu/.

HOW TO APPLY FOR JOBS IF CURRENT UF EMPLOYEE. Current employees who wish to move to other TEAMS or USPS positions should apply for positions by signing onto myUFL and clicking on My Self Service > Jobs at UF. Be sure to read the detailed application instructions <www.hr.ufl.edu/job/ instructions.htm> prior to filling out your on-line resume.

Before applying for a specific position, please be sure to read the job vacancy announcement. This announcement contains important information regarding the requirements of the position, job duties, salary, and location. It also is a good idea to print a copy of the job vacancy announcements of positions for which you apply since announcements are removed from the web on the application deadline date.

Please carefully review the information contained on your on-line resume prior to submitting it. On-line resumes that are incomplete will not be processed.

Frequently Asked Questions for applicants are also now available at: www.hr.ufl.edu/job/faq.htm.

Applicants for exempt positions--Applicants who apply for exempt (salaried) positions must attach (upload) a personal resume and answer all questions on the questionnaire.

Applicants for non-exempt positions--Applicants who apply for non-exempt (hourly) positions may choose to attach a personal resume but still must complete all sections and all pages of the on-line resume. Writing "see attached resume" is NOT sufficient. Applicants also must list each position they have held along with accurate dates and job titles. Your ability to accurately list your job duties, employment, and education histories can impact your ability to be forwarded to a hiring department.

To check your application status: My Self Service > Jobs at UF > Application Status.

If you need help applying for a job, computers are available in the Employment and Classification lobby located on the 4th Floor of the Stadium, and staff members are available to assist applicants with completing an on-line resume and applying for jobs. Employment and Classification staff may be reached at 392-4621 (SC 622-4621) or employment@ufl.edu.

NEW RESOURCE

NEW INSTRUCTION GUIDES. Some new or updated Instruction Guides are available:

* * *

For frequent updates about the project, subscribe to the UF Bridges pagelet on the myUFL portal. For a quick tutorial on how to use myUFL, visit: http://wla.erp.ufl.edu/media/PersonalizeContentLayout.html.

For more information about the transition, visit the Bridges Web site.

For help or support in using the new systems, including the portal, contact the UF Help Desk at 392-HELP or helpdesk@ufl.edu.

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