In January and February, there will be many opportunities to prepare yourself for the PeopleSoft upgrade.
The Student, HR, and Finance systems are scheduled for Upgrade in mid-February. The most likely timing is for the systems to go down around 2/12, be down through the following week, and come back up on 2/23.
The changes in HR and Student will be substantial, while the EFS changes will be more limited. There will be improvements in specific areas, but the general look and feel of EFS will be stable.
To prepare for the upgrade, there will be numerous online trainings available, and many have already been released. You should receive a notification when a training of relevance to you is released. Since they are online, you can take them whenever you like, and for processes at the core of your responsibilities, you may want to take them more than once. Anyone can take them, so even if you do not have a specific role in the system, you still can take that training to improve your understanding of that process, you just won't process an ARF to be granted that system access role.
In addition to centrally delivered training and communications, the college will be holding informational and Q&A sessions on specific topics after the first of the year. Particularly around the HRMS changes, we'll need to discuss how the upgrade impacts our collegiate business processes. Some of these sessions will be just-in-time and delivered the week of and the week before the blackout period (i.e. early/mid-February). Others, such as online time reporting and online absences, will be held sooner than that to allow you time to further communicate within your units. The limitations is that, to be most effective, we cannot hold our collegiate sessions until the final central decisions are made and communicated on exactly how the new system will function at go-live.
There also is an FSUN-sponsored, all-day event planned on February 17th, which will provide a venue for you to learn about the significant changes, hear presentations, and ask questions. They are looking at options to make the experience more interactive and tailored to individuals rather than the usual format with presentations from a stage to a large group.
In addition, there will be job aids, process manuals, and the help line available to ease the transition. I can tell you with confidence that there will be a wealth of resources available for everyone to be prepared. You'll see these efforts ramp up considerably in January leading up to go-live in mid-February. There undoubtedly will be challenges when the new systems come up, but you will have ample opportunities to be as prepared as possible for whatever will come.
If you have any questions, please let someone in the Dean's Office know -- me, Cathy, or Jay -- depending on your specific question. DJP
