HRMS - Phase II Announcements

Phase II HRMS News Flash

From: Cheryl Nunn
Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2009

Greetings HRMS Users,

The HRMS Project is heading full steam towards implementation, which is currently scheduled for  implementation in a little over a month - November 3rd, 2009. 

This project will impact everyone who currently enters, reviews or approves  HR appointments, e.g. hires, terminations, pay adjustments, etc. For all intent and purposes, HRMS replaces DEFINE for HR transaction processing.

This communication is divided into three segments. Section I describes some of the major functional changes that will take place. Section II addresses the training and Section III contains information on implementation, e.g. transaction deadlines, etc.

Section I. Major Functional Changes

• Phase I of HRMS,  (implemented in November of 2008), introduced the concept of Positions and required that all Classified and A&P employees have a position. This concept has now been expanded to Faculty and Student employees. So in Phase II, all employees will require a position.
• Appointment documents will no longer be created or maintained in *DEFINE.  All Appointments with effective dates that include any time period 11/1/2009 or after will be generated through HRMS documents.  This means that all staff who are used to processing appointments will need to be informed and trained on how to process payment transactions through HRMS.  If   department users are not prepared for this change, there is a risk of faculty, staff and student workers not being paid on time.
• The separation process has changed. Separation documents must be created and approved in order to end someone’s employment.  Today, appointments can simply expire and an individual will stop being paid.  This will no longer be true in HRMS.  When an individual’s employment relationship has ended, a separation document must be created and routed for approval or the individual will continue to be paid.
• Positions that do not have any funding or inadequate funding associated with them, but do have incumbents assigned to them, will still result in a payment to those individuals.  The charges will be placed on a “default account” in your department and will be transferred once an HRMS document is processed to place the appropriate funding into the system.
• The concept of Affiliated Workers (volunteers, contractors, visiting researching, anyone having an affiliation with UTSA that requires system or building access or any other type authorization/permissions ) is added. These folks will be assigned to an Affiliated Worker position, as applicable.
• Student and Work Study processing has been changed.
• Pooled positions for Students and Affiliated workers will be available.
• Partial Leave Without Pay can now be accommodated.

These are the major changes but certainly not an inclusive list of all changes. It’s critical that all who process HR transactions attend one of the training sessions.

Section II. Training

Training opportunities have been scheduled throughout the month of October.  For a listing of dates, times and to enroll access TX Class  at http://www.utsa.edu/hr/Training/index.cfm.  If you need assistance with registration call 458-4658.

• DE 681 - HRMS  - Phase II - Faculty Positions & Assignments (For those who currently appoint Faculty - Hands on Lab Environment)
• DE 680 - HRMS - Phase II - Staff and Student Positions & Assignments (For those who currently appoint Staff & Students - Hands on Lab Environment)

Section III. Implementation/Conversion Key Dates

The project team will convert/re-configure  our data bases as of 10/31/09, e.g. they will create new positions where applicable, e.g. for faculty and students. We anticipate some post conversion clean up efforts to correct conversion disconnects but these efforts should be minimal.

Key Phase 2 Transition Dates & Deadlines

To prepare for the deployment of HRMS Phase 2, certain processes and documents in HRMS and *DEFINE appointments (ANM & ACM) will be unavailable to users prior to the go-live date of November 3, 2009. Although we recognize that this unavailability will be an inconvenience, the transition of appointment data into HRMS Phase 2 will be a sizeable endeavor. Temporarily removing access to certain systems and documents will be necessary for deploying the more robust HRMS Phase 2 system. We appreciate your cooperation and hope that by informing you of key dates in advance, you will be able to adequately prepare for the HRMS Phase 2 transition.

Attached are two documents that will help keep you aware of key upcoming dates:

1. One attachment (MS Word document) is a schedule of HRMS Phase 2 deployment and informs you of deadline dates for document final approval and unavailability to certain documents and processes.
2. The other attachment (PDF) presents deadline information in a timeline format.

It is important that you consider these deadlines in your planning, in order for data to load properly into HRMS Phase 2 and to minimize data clean-up efforts at a later date. From now until the November 3, 2009 deployment, we will send reminders of approaching key dates.

Attention users who reclassify Classified and A&P positions:

Any reclassification with an effective date prior to 11/1/2009 that contains an increase in an employee’s salary needs to be approved and routed to HR by Thursday, October 8th to allow for processing.  After HRMS Phase 2 goes live, you will not be able to process a reclassification with an effective date prior to 11/1/2009. For a situation like this, please see the FAQ below regarding reclassifications.  

After HRMS Phase 2 goes live, how will I handle a reclassification in HRMS, that HR has already approved, if the effective date is prior to 11/1/2009?

Once HRMS Phase 2 goes live, users will need to work in both *DEFINE and HRMS to reclassify a position IF the reclassification is to take effect prior to 11/1/2009 (this is the date that appointment data will begin being managed through HRMS). For positions that need to be reclassified, with an effective date prior to 11/1/2009, users will need to process appointment changes IF the annual rate needs to be adjusted, using the employee’s previous job code in *DEFINE. Users will then need to complete a Reclassify document in HRMS with an effective date of 11/1/2009, and can include any information about the actual date of the reclassification taking effect prior to 11/1/2009 in the Reclassify document justification section or notes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Please visit the HRMS Web site for updated frequently asked questions on the HRMS Phase 2 transition.