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AIS Newsletter

Issue: May 2008

Feature Story

EASY Re-engineering Project:  Transforming the Way We Do Business

What is EASY re-engineering?
EASY re-engineering is an initiative to improve the management of business processes by replacing the current EASY forms and approval paths with Web-based forms and streamlined role management.   This multi-year effort will move Penn State from the current EASY Forms (that utilize a user based routing mechanism and a mainframe 3270 screen for collecting business information for processing) toWeb Based Workflow Business Processes (role based routing mechanism and web based interface for collecting business information for processing).

The scope of the project includes:

·         Transforming 70+ EASY Forms to:

o        Seven OHR Business Processes.

o        Thirteen Central/Financial Business Process.

·         Applying new technologies from the Penn State Modernization Program, including the Penn State Workflow system, to EASY re-engineering.

·         Streamlining and improving the existing EASY Forms.

EASY re-engineering will transform the way we do business by matching new technologies with re-engineered business processes.  The ultimate goal is increased efficiency and effectiveness in the processing of financial and human resource information.

How do we get there?
Following the methodologies established by the AIS Project Management Office, a project management plan was established for the EASY re-engineering project, prior to the projects May 15, 2007 kick off.

A project schedule model, with high level work packages, was established for each process to be re-engineered. The project schedule is patterned after the AIS Software Application Development Lifecycle model, which is an evolving process.  Click here for the software Application Development Lifecycle roadmap of the processes currently under re-engineering.

Where are we today?
Completion of Workflow Release 1 was a pre-requirement before any EASY form could be deployed.  This high level milestone was reached March 24th with the release of the Undergraduate Education Travel Request online workflow form.

There are three EASY processes actively undergoing re-engineering:

·         Termination Process

·         Budget Amendment for the Office of Human Resource (OHR) Forms

·         FANS (Financial Accounting Numbering System)

·         Termination Process

o        The newly re-engineered Termination process will incorporate all of the functions (not defined elsewhere in the EASY project) required by the termination process into a simple intuitive web interface which is supported by the workflow system.  This includes the current functionality of the EASY TRMN and TERM (Release 1) forms.

o        A Process Design Team, led by AIS Business Process Analyst, Marylou Houck, and the OHR Process Steward, Bob Fantaske, has been established. 

o        The Process Design team is actively engaged in the requirements gathering phase of the project.

·         Budget Amendment (OHR)

o        This newly developed form will provide the ability to do budget amendments for Human Resource forms, generate budget amendments for position adjustments, and allow the University Financial Officers to change salary distributions.

o        A Process Design Team, led by AIS Business Process Analyst, Judy Everly, and the University Budget Office Process Steward, Ann Gray and Tim Whitehill, has been established.

o        The Process Design team is actively engaged in the requirements gathering phase of the project.

·         FANS

o        FANS (Financial Account Number System) is the Business Information System feature that allows the management of accounts at the departmental level.  The charter for the re-engineering of FANS is to achieve Business Information System integration within web-based financial forms by providing a web-based FANS resolution interface which will create all pertinent records, then properly feed and post these records into the university’s Business Information Systems.  The project will address FANS for these major areas: University, OPP (Office of Physical Plant), ARL (Applied Research Lab), Auxiliary and Business Services.

o        As FANS is a requirement for the majority of the EASY re-engineering financial forms, it was established as one of the initial project milestones.

o        A Process Design Team, led by AIS Business Process Analyst, Marylou Houck, and the Controller Office Process Steward, Debbie Meder, has been established.

o        The Process Design team is actively engaged in the requirements gathering phase of the project.

·         Technical implementation teams (led by the AIS Open Standards Development group) are being engaged in the preliminary review of the requirements.  As part of our iterative software application development lifecycle model, this will provide technical teams the opportunity to review and provide feedback on the requirements directly to the Process Design team.

Who is involved in the project?
EASY re-engineering is a collaborative effort within the Penn State community.  EASY re-engineering will require input, feedback and support from staff in the areas of IT, administration, usability, web design, communications, subject matter experts, systems analysis and design, infrastructure, and application development.

A project management team, named the EASY Working Group, was established to provide oversight over all aspects of the re-engineering project. This team includes representation from the University Budget Office, Controller’s office, Auxiliary and Business Services, Payroll, Outreach and ITS.  Click here for more information on the role and membership of the EASY Working group.

There are over 50 people actively engaged in the collection of requirements for the Termination, Budget Amendment (OHR) and FANS processes.  This includes representation from the Controllers Office, Applied Research Labs, University Budget Office, Office of Physical Plant, Business Services, Financial Officers, ITS, Colleges, and the Office of Human Resources.

Where do I obtain more information?
The EASY Re-engineering home page provides additional information about the project; you may also contact the Project Manager, RichardDumm@psu.edu.

Feature Story

MidTier Infrastructure (MTI)
It has been an extremely busy year with developments in several of our major application areas:

ANGEL – The course management system underwent its annual version upgrade (version 7.1) in time for the start of fall semester.  In August, we made a return trip to the Dell testing facility in Austin, Texas, to examine VM web server architectures for possible use with ANGEL.

Following a stressful Fall Finals week in December, we moved to a new SQL platform for the application, a Dell R900 with 16 processor cores and 128GB of memory.  We’ve made improvements to our monitoring of the ANGEL database functions and efficiency and participated in an engagement with ANGEL Learning, Inc. (the application vendor) during the spring in anticipation of Spring Finals week in May.

The Web Load testing system, used to stress the application under load and to expose application problems, has been redesigned and refurbished with upgraded hardware.  We are planning a return to the Dell labs in June for another round of testing for the next version of ANGEL (version 7.2), as well as planning an upgrade to the ANGEL-dedicated SAN; all in anticipation of larger loads in the fall.

Advance ACS system (Alumni Development) - The new system in use by the Alumni Development folks for the past year has undergone two application upgrades and a database upgrade from Oracle 9i to Oracle 10g.  We’re currently testing Oracle 10g for a move to a 64bit OS platform.

eLion and Generalized Interface - OS upgrades to Windows 2003 for stability of the applications and better support.

VM Project – The migration of selective applications from physical hardware to virtual server platforms is progressing while conserving both our A/C and physical space resources.

Storage – The task of migrating all data to the new DS8300 storage was accomplished in record time (with plenty of overtime).  The 8300 is expected to deliver much better performance in disk operations and that should result in better application performance.

A significant effort was made in redesigning our current Midtier storage architecture, involving hundreds of hours that culminated in an RFP going out to our two principal storage vendors.

A new project ‘Storage as a Utility’ is formally getting underway.  Discussions have been ongoing with our colleagues in Shields Building from the offices of the Registrar, Admissions, and Student Aid as well as the Bursar for access to utilitarian storage that is centrally managed by AIS.

ANGEL ‘archived’ data has now surpassed 0.5 PB (500 GB).

Disaster Recovery Planning – Continuity planning, always ongoing, progressed this year to include a failover exercise for the eDDS service to the Computer Building.  Other systems whose operations have been successfully moved to the Computer Building from their primary site in Shields include the ANGEL SQL server and the ACS (Alumni Development) service.

The Data Warehouse in Altoona – As part of catastrophe planning, an Emergency Information Repository (EIR) is now sited at Altoona; it houses information that would be vital in accounting for students and staff at the University as well as for immediate operational needs in the first few hours of a catastrophe at University Park.  Working with the Network Infrastructure group, a new VPN tunnel has been put into place and plans are moving forward for a new web server to be co-located with the EIR server for ease of access to standard reports.

Systems Programming – Many new developments and enhancements to existing utilities:

Standing Committee Membership and Consulting
MTI staff members are always busy contributing to a number of local and ITS committees and in providing consulting on a wide array of topics.  A few of those endeavors include:

MTI is committed to providing professional services and welcomes your feedback.  Let us know how we are doing!  (pdawson@psu.edu).