November 7, 2002
USER project team working on Web-based record keeping
With a promising new Web-based record-keeping system nearing completion, some areas of the UW campus are planning to eighty-six the unwieldy form 220 in the near future.
The first phase of the Online Work Leave System, part of the USER project for streamlining the UW with Web-based applications, should be available for broad implementation at the beginning of the next fiscal year in August 2003. The system automates a record-keeping process that can be cumbersome, confusing, and has the potential for mistakes in the recording of employees’ annual leave and sick leave. In the process, it relieves a huge burden from the backs of record keepers around campus who currently need to keep track of the different rules and how they affect individual employees.
“I didn’t feel 100 percent confident that we were doing things right,” said longtime administrator Karen Low, in reference to the paper form 220. “There are so many rules and regulations for the different classifications of employees. It was hard to keep track of it all. Now it’s done magically for me on the computer.”
It might work like magic now, but there has been a fair amount of blood, sweat and tears expended to get to this point. The team, which includes eight volunteers, had to start by sorting out and inputting the 100 or so different business rules that apply to the various classifications of employees on campus.
“The team has done a really good job of sorting through all the leave plans and identifying which rules apply to which leave plan,” USER project manager Pat Bonner said. “It’s been a very complicated and detailed procedure and the team has done a great job.”
And an important part of that team has been the volunteers. Liz Coveney, a volunteer for the online record-keeping system and the director of human resources administration and information systems, said employees from all over campus have contributed to the project without any break from their normal duties. They do it “because they believe in the value of the product for the campus,” she said.
And that value is clear, according to record keepers on campus.
Consider, for example, that leave accrual differs in numerous ways depending on whether someone is classified staff, professional staff, a librarian, a Hall Health physician or an educator at the Experimental Education Unit. Some of those classifications have different subsets that factor into the equation. Together, it’s a lot for one person to track.
For example, can an employee with two months under his belt take annual leave? Yes and no. It depends on that employee’s classification. Some can. Others have to complete a probationary period. One thing is for sure, the computer will liberate beleaguered record keepers across campus from having to keep track of all the different rules that apply to all the different employees within a particular unit.
“The main thing is that it automates many of the business rules that record keepers need to apply in their heads — eligibility for accrual of leave depending on when someone started, the adjustment of accrual rates based on length of service, notices to employees to remind them to take their personal holiday,” said Coveney. “It doesn’t include every permutation, but we did our best to include most of the core, time-sensitive usage data so that employees can get those reminders.”
The system will benefit the average campus employee too. By visiting the Employee Self Service Web site, available through myUW, employees will be able to check their various leave balances, which should help with planning vacations and other absences.
Employees will fill out leave requests or turn in sick leave reports as they always have. Those source documents will go to the appropriate record keeper who will enter them into a Web application developed by a team at Computing and Communications. Once a month, when time keepers finalize a month’s records, the employee and her supervisor will get an e-mail notification — sent automatically by the OWLS product — that the record is available for review. Coveney calls it a “post-entry review message.”
The employee and supervisor are then expected to review the record, which will be available at the Employee Self Service Web site (another component of the USER project) through myUW. If adjustments to the information are needed, they can be forwarded back to the record keeper before the payroll for that month is finalized.
Gary Prohaska, who led the team of developers working on the project, said security was a high priority. Information can only be entered into an employee’s leave record with a SecurID card and a recognized user name and password. Likewise, the information can only be viewed with a recognized user name and password. And because user names and passwords are encrypted, Prohaska is confident there will be no security breeches.
“It’s a very robust system compared to most of the peer institutions we know about,” Prohaska said.
Low and volunteers in several other departments have been using a test version of the product along with the form 220 since this summer. She says she’s been impressed with the product and is confident the end result will be even better.
“I’m real pleased with what I’ve seen so far,” she said. “For 95 percent of the basic straight reporting it’s excellent. Of course there are always going to be those unusual circumstances that will challenge the system, but for 95 percent it looks good to me and I’m sure as the debugging goes on, they’ll get up to 100 percent.”
Support for the USER project comes from the University Initiatives Fund.
