WEEKLY UPDATES




MAY 19 22, 1998

• Highlights:
  
  
• Concordia and SCT held a meeting at Concordia to discuss what SCT resources would be allocated to Concordia during the implementation of Banner and to develop an implementation time line. The second purpose of the meeting was to create a clear picture of what activity would take place over the next two months. Several important issues concerning the implementation process were highlighted during the two-day meeting.
  
  
• Concordia was also introduced to the consultants who will be working on the project. Debra Ciccolo is the Project Manager. She will be working to prepare all the plans for the implementation, look at conversion issues and act as a link between Financial Services and ITTS. She will also deal with all change management issues. She will be devoted full-time to the project for the first two months. Afterwards, she will be on site two weeks per month until the end of March 1999. Following June 1999, she may return to implement other modules which will not be implemented initially. Melissa Akerley Meadows is the Financial Consultant who will be responsible for helping Concordia set up the rules and tables for the new FIS. From June 1998 to January 1999, Melissa will be working on site full time. During this June-January period, the business processes for new system will be developed and set up. From January to April, the following activities will take place: Validation of processes, testing of interfaces, information exchanges to sub-systems, end user documentation, loading of initial budgets, external reporting processes (SIFU, etc). Melissa's involvement and attendance duringthis phase is still to be determined.
  


• On May 19, there was also a conference call between Concordia and SCT to review the technical side of the implementation. During the conference call, the technical training schedule, the Database Administrator's schedule and Database Administrator's services were reviewed. The DBA assigned to the project by SCT is Paul Clancy.
  
  
• The training room for the project was set up. Eight workstations were set up for training as well as three cubicles. All Equipment (PC's, etc) was purchased and installed, as was the Banner software.
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MAY 25 29, 1998

• Highlights:
  
  
• The Training room was officially opened with the PC's operational.
  
  
• From May 26 to May 28, initial training on Banner was conducted for steering committee members and all others devoted full time to the implementation project. In all, 18 people received training. Topics covered included an overview of the chart of accounts, chart set up procedures, navigation, ledger posting and viewing reports. Training was provided by James Keches of SCT.
  
• Oracle DBA training was held for members of the technical team at Oracle Canada.
  
• The reporting structure for SCT consultants was established. Each consultant will submit a report at the beginning of each week for the previous week.

JUNE 1-5, 1998

• Highlights:
  
  
• The Implementation Management Team weekly meetings will now be held every Friday at 10:00am. Debra and Melissa from SCT will attend and the meetings will serve to recap what took place during the week, raise issues and plan the coming week.
  
  
• On Tuesday June 2, a preliminary meeting was held between General Accounting and Melissa from SCT to discuss the Chart of Accounts. This was followed by a formal COA Process Team meeting on Thursday June 4 with Melissa in attendance. The Banner forms that need to be entered first were reviewed and some preliminary decisions were taken. It was underlined that the Chart of Accounts is a crucial step in the implementation and requires the input of each functional area as represented on the Process Team. Weekly Process Team meetings with Melissa will be held on Tuesday at 9:30.
  


• On Thursday June 4, Debra met with IITS to discuss technical issues. Topics discussed included programming (Micro Focus Cobal), GURJOB & GURFEED, sleep-wake posting and printing.
  


• Pc's are being ordered for staff devoted full time to the project.
  


• The training session from May 26-28 was reviewed and recommendations were underlined. Also, staff are continuing to learn the system in the training room outside of the formal training sessions.

JUNE 8 12, 1998

• Highlights:
  
  


• The Chart of Accounts Process Team held meetings on Monday June 8 and Tuesday June 9. Banner forms were reviewed in the order they are to be entered. Based on the discussions, a list of questions was prepared and forwarded to SCT. A preliminary Chart of Accounts is being developed and entered into Banner in Training mode.
  


• Regarding technical issues, Micro Focus Cobol was ordered and a printer was set up for Banner.
  


• The Phase 1 document prepared by the Budget Process Team was completed and presented to the Implementation Management Team on June 12. The document outlined general budget and planning practices at Concordia, presented a detailed description of budget procedures both within Financial Services and in outside departments, and highlighted issues and problems to be addressed during the implementation of SCT Banner.
  


• On June 10 , a lunch was held to celebrate the realization of the initial project milestones. Members of the Implementation Management Team, staff devoted full time to the project and the SCT consultants were invited.

JUNE 15-19, 1998

• Highlights:
  


• The Chart of Accounts Process Team met on June 15 to discuss the answers to the previous week's questions which had been received from SCT. Discussions on account codes were held and the preliminary forms that have been entered into Banner were reviewed. Based on the meeting a series of new questions and follow-up questions were sent to SCT via e-mail. Meanwhile, data entry into Banner is proceeding. It was noted that target dates for completion of certain COA tasks must be identified to coordinate the work between Financial Services and Computing Services.
  


• Technical training on SQL and Oracle was held on June 16-18. The course was titled "ORACLE TOOLKIT" and topics included SQL concepts, SQL loader, SQL reports and PSL/SQL.
  
• An initial meeting was held to discuss implementation of various interfaces.
  


• A preliminary list of other schools who are currently live with Banner Finance 3.0 was forwarded from SCT. They include Bentley College, the University of Hartford, Line Benton College and the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. Additional information on platforms, operating budgets, and research and endowment activity will be obtained.

JUNE 29-JULY 3, 1998

• Highlights:


• The Chart of Accounts Process Team met on June 29, June 30 and July 2. The focus of the meeting was account codes (which will replace the current object codes). A great deal of work has been completed but some questions remain.
  


• Another print queue has been set up and the sleep/wake process is to be tested.
  

JULY 6-10, 1998

• On July 7-9, the second formal functional training session was held. The course was titled GL/COA - Reports and topics included Chart of Accounts structure and Banner reports.
  


• The Chart of Accounts team continuing their work on account codes with particular attention on non-salary expenses.
  

JULY 13-17, 1998

• Due to year-end duties relating to the financial statements, it was announced that several members of the Chart of Accounts team would not be available to meet over the next several weeks. In their absence, work would still continue.
  


• A draft copy of the Project Planning document was tabled at the IMT meeting, as was an updated implementation time line.
  


• It was announced that Ki Cheng from SCT would be the trainer for the next technical training session at the end of the month.


• The Technical Data Dictionary which breaks down the various Banner Forms is available on-line and can be printed directly from Banner

JULY 20-24, 1998

• Preliminary Fund, Organization and Program codes were created.
  


• The SCT finance consultant met with the Research Grants team to discuss grants. It was noted that for Grants, Banner 3.0 and 3.1 are very different. The consultant also met the Accounts Payable team leader to discuss invoicing, check payment and the creation of vendors.
  


• Topics to dicuss with the SCT technical consultant during his visit next week include dial-in access, directories and the development database..
  


• There were problems during the week with the Aries machine due to a hardware component. The problem has been fixed.

JULY 27-31, 1998

• General Technical Finance training was given on July 28-29 by Ki Cheng from SCT. All agreed that the session was fantastic.
  


• The Chart of Accounts team met to discuss salary account codes. Originally, it had been proposed that the salary accounts match governement reporting requirements. However, this is creating a very cumbersome chart. As such the salary accounts will be simplified and new interfaces with ROSS will be explored to capture the required reporting information. It was noted that the next step is to get community feedback and enter data into Banner so that testing can begin.
  


• A new functional training schedule was presented. The major change is the separation of the Accounts Payable and Purchasing sessions.
  


• It was announced that the SCT financial consultant will not be retained. SCT will work on a contingency plan.

AUGUST 3-7, 1998

• A new process team was proposed to look at reports and determine which reports will be essential for June 1, 1999. Other issues would include Data Standards, Monthly reports, Datawarehouse and web reports. It was suggested that team leaders from the other groups be on the team as well as representatives from the university community at large.
  


• It had previously been decided that the Purchasing/Accounts Payable training should be held prior to the training on transaction processing and rules. While the Purchasing/AP training will still be held in September, the training on Transaction Processing will be pushed back to a later month. As a result, there will probably be no training during the month of August.
  


• The procurement team, which had lost several members, has been reformed at work has begun in light of the upcoming training sessions.
  


• A user guide for the Banner Action Web was made available. The Action Web offers up to date information on issues, problems, news, etc.

AUGUST 10-14, 1998

• In terms of the Chart of Accounts, draft documents have been produced outlining Research Funds, Research Organizations and Agency Organizations. Also, comments received from budget officers from other departments were summerized
  


• A new time line document was tabled. The tasks remain the same but the dates have been updated.
  


• Discussions on the replacement of the Financial consultant continued.
  


• It has also been decided that data entry into the Training instance will be stopped. Once the COA has been properly mapped out, everything will be entered directly into Pre-production mode. This will signify a cleaner chart and better security.

AUGUST 17-21, 1998
AUGUST 24 - 28, 1998

While work during these weeks was on-going, the high number of absences due to vacation led to no important developments

AUGUST 31 - SEPTEMBER 4, 1998

• Highlights:
  


• It was announced that Claire Winstead from SCT has been assigned to Concordia's implementation as Financial Consultant. Claire will work off-site; contact will be made via e-mail and a weekly 3 hour conference call.
  


• The Phase 1 document for the Procurement team was tabled and distributed
  


• The Project Manager from SCT distributed a document aimed at focusing the work of the process teams and work groups.

SEPTEMBER 7-11, 1998

• Highlights:
  


• A list of CUFS reports for which similar reports will be required in Banner is being compiled. The issue of ad-hoc query tools to replace Dataprism was also discussed.
  


• Functional training for the Procurement module took place.
  


• Banner 3.1 was received from SCT and the upgrades would be taking place soon.

SEPTEMBER 14-18, 1998

• Highlights:
  


• Technical training on Security was held as well as a general system overview for the functional staff.
  


• Work was ongoing on vendor conversion, purchasing forms, interfaces and the upgrade to 3.1.



• Coding of the Chart of Accounts was continuing
  

SEPTEMBER 21-25, 1998

• Highlights:
  


• Joan Soares and Nick Doulas were added to the Implementation Management Team
  


• The Procurement Team tabled a document outlining the work to be done in Phase 2 and Phase 3.
  


• The Phase 1 document for the Research Grants team was tabled.
  


• Three programmers from IITS relocated to Financial Services in order to devote all of their time to the implementation


• Richard London, who had been at Concordia for over for months returned to McGill as they are beginning their implementation.


• PC training was given during the week. The course was developed in the Faculty of Arts of Science and is available at http://132.205.57.9/treasury.



• There was a meeting between Larry Tansey, SCT and McGill to discuss Best Practices. The finding is that there are no set Best Practices for SCT and that Concordia will have to develop its own.

SEPTEMBER 28 - OCTOBER 2, 1998

• Highlights:
  


• Claire Winstead from SCT visited Concordia to meet members of the project team, review the Chart of Accounts and to better understand our current procedures.
  


• The Funds, Organizations, Accounts and Program codes were entered into Banner through Excel Spreadsheets.
  


• There was a demonstration of Microsoft Access as a possible replacement for Dataprism.
  


• Discussions took place on acceptable downtime for the system and it was underlined that extra hardware would need to be purchased as disk space is running low.


• Debra and Larry gave a presentation to the CUBA group.
  

OCTOBER 12-16, 1998

• Highlights:
  


• Documents outlining the draft Banner organization codes were sent out to the University community.
  


• The General Accounting Team prepared a list of tasks and processed to be worked on over the coming months.


• The upgrade to Banner 3.1 was completed.


• A new Implementation Time Line document was distributed
  

OCTOBER 19-23, 1998

• Highlights:
  


• Functional training on Accounts payable, Rules, Security and Approvals was held on October 20-22, 1998.
  


• Thin Client for Banner was functional.


• Decentralization was studied by the Procurement team


• The Reporting Process Team held its first meeting.

OCTOBER 26-30, 1998

• Highlights:
  


• Feedback on the new Banner Organization codes was received from over half the areas contacted. Also, the Funds and Organizations for FCAR grants were entered into Banner
  


• A new database named "User Testing" will be set up which will be strictly used for functional user testing.


• The Procurement team met with the CUBA group which opened the door to future discussions.


• It was decided that the team leaders would meet to created a deatailed testing plan.

NOVEMBER 2-13, 1998

• Highlights:
  


• Functional training on Grants was held on November 3-4-5, 1998.
  


• The Grants process team added members from the Faculties involved in the administation of grants. The scope of the team was also widened to include all Multi-Year funds.


• The interface team met twice with one meeting devoted entirely to Student Accounts.


• The Technical team advanced on a large number of issues including interfaces, table loads, data extracts, and began looking at reports.


• The Report Team met to do a preliminary overview of Banner reports and to discuss data standards.

NOVEMBER 16-20, 1998

• Highlights:
  


• The Budget Process Team met to give all members an update
  


• Larry, Wendy and Joan attended the SCT Conference in Halifax. The first day was acorporate presentation followed by a small group discussuions. The second day consisted mainly of a discussion on "best practices"


• Ki Cheng from SCT visited Concordia and met with the following areas: Technical team, Grants Team, Chart Team, and Accounts Payable.

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This page last updated on December 17, 1998