### Presentation on ERP Customization: Is it always a bed thing?

Dan McDevitt’s presentation on Indiana University’s Electronic Document (Workflow) engine that routes documents for HR. The engine is integrated with PeopleSoft’s HR suite.

Buy Build Borrow (Open Source) as choices. Buy and Customize seen as worst of both worlds (cost plus maintenance problems).

Workflow – does their system support differing workflows on campus or department level?

#### Why they did their customization:

1. P.S. 8.0 didn’t support “Pending” status for documents still in the workflow.
1. Delivering the P.S. “native” screens to 1200 users was too difficult. Issues with robustness, data integrity.

They have 22 different forms that they route in their workflow

#### Enterprise Workflow Engine:

– True workflow – routing e-docs from initiation to completion.
– What about role information?
– Supports digital signatures
– 1200 users with 3 levels of workflow routing:
– Fiscal Approver and Personnel Approver
– Level 1: Required Approvals
– Level 2: Discretionary Approvals based on the Org Chart Hierarchy
– Level 3: Campus Level “final” approval

– After level 3, data transferred into PeopleSoft

Electronic Document bridges multiple PeopleSoft components. Before, one paper document would cover all areas. Wanted to replicate that functionality.

Interfaces are based on direct database reads. Had problems using the PeopleSoft Component Interfaces.

#### Demo:

Interesting, the demo is flashed based. The cursor moves and things type automagically.
All information is handled inside of the workflow engine up until the final click. The data is then inserted into the PeopleSoft screens. The user clicks on “Save” in PeopleSoft and all of the PS business logic is applied.

#### Issues:

Subject and Document locking.

– Subject Locking is employee based locking. Once a document has been initiated for an employee, no other documents can be initiated for that employee.
– Document locking – straight for contention issues.

Open validation

– Checks document against the official PeopleSoft data each time the document is opened.
– Start an electronic document
– someone goes in a changes the PeopleSoft data for the person
– the form is marked as denied when opened the next time

Issues with PeopleSoft Component Interface

– Component Interfaces didn’t work with complex interactions (those with multiple tabs and/or multiple scroll areas).

Other issues:

– support and training
– different needs of power-users vs. novice users
– Disapprovals used as a training mechanism rather than Corrections
– Pairing electronic documents with supporting document
– use special envelopes
– print a routing sheet from electronic document

Future Enhancements

– Multiple employees on one document (pay change for all student workers)
– Improve usability – things like side-by-side view (old pay rate beside new pay rate)
– reporting (how long did it take, who is sitting on documents)

#### Usage Stats

11,000 per month on average
It takes about 3.5 days on average from initiation to approval
Average document has 3 routing stops

#### My Questions:

1. Workflow – does their system support differing workflows on campus or department level?
1. Where does their Role information live? How is it managed?

#### Other Questions

Tom Scott – Moving to PS 8.9 Student will mean moving to PS 8.9 HR. This will change the component interfaces.
– There will be lots of impact on our customizations. Will look at new Component Interfaces.

Jack – what did it cost you? About $11 Million for the total HR system. Could have done it cheaper but they had lots of starts-and-stops. Started with PeopleSoft 7.5.

Elizabeth Conklin – Why build workflow instead of buy one? Not positive (Barry Walsh at IU for Workflow).

Tell us more about the [Kuali project](http://kuali.org/) . In the development stage.

Why did you build your own time keeping system? That is a good one. Cost at the time. Some experience with Kronos. Very experience.

Is there a lot of maintenance on the Workflow rules themselves? The rules are fairly stagnant. Difficult to establish the early rules and routing paths.

The majority of the roles are maintained within the workflow engine. Roles for required approvals is determined from the HR Financial System department table. (Level 1 read from department table. All the rest are embedded within the workflow engine). There is a delegation function. Can delegate to a work group.

Is there a segregation of functions in financial data? You have to have a funding line filled out when you fill out the form.

Workflow can vary by department.

They encumber for salaries. They use the PS encumbrance process.

What are the Authentication requirements / system used for your digital signature? Token authentication along with Password. SAFEWORD – token authentication. 2000 tokens in use (Mark Bruin led the Token project).

Do you see an impact of PeopleSoft / Oracle migration to Web Services and SOA on your system? Make it easier / harder? Hopefully make their life easier.

System is developed in J2EE over an Oracle Database.

Which came first – Electronic Document System or PeopleSoft? Did you pick PeopleSoft and then go whoops doesn’t do the electronic PAF form? HR office wanted to have an electronic PAF.

How are doing the dump into PeopleSoft? One critical factor is the Single Sign-On between workflow and PeopleSoft. What you see when you save from the Workflow is what you would see if you went into PeopleSoft self service. They added their own IU tab.

Lots of questions about their business processes (are positions numbers tied to departments or to funding line etc …) and funding for positions data models.