UVAFinance

Wednesday, July 28, 2021

FST Updates

Want to listen to this update instead of reading it? Click here to tune into the WFST Broadcast!
No time to read paragraphs? Check out "Five Things to Know about WFST"

Project Timeline

Finance Strategic Transformation is nearing the end of the configure and prototype phase. We’re closing out a number of activities and getting ready to move forward with the testing phase. The key activity our team is focused on at this moment is getting the next tenant of Workday Financials built and ready for the end-to-end testing that will kick off in September. The end-to-end tenant, as we’re calling this latest build of Workday Financials, will incorporate changes based on insights gained from the second round of Customer Confirmation sessions and other work in the configuration tenant. End to end testing kicks off on September 1 and will continue through January 14 of 2022.

UVA has a new safety app

UVA recently announced its new mobile safety app, Guardian, which will replace LiveSafe after July 30, 2021.

Students, faculty, and staff can use Guardian to:

immediately locate and contact safety resources on and off Grounds
click on UVA’s online reporting system, Just Report It
text concerns and tips to UVA Police, even anonymously
receive urgent notifications based on their geographic location
invite friends to join a virtual walk, and more

Other ways to stay engaged with safety at UVA:

Receive UVA Text Alerts. Anyone who wishes to receive official UVA Alerts via text may now opt in by texting “UVA” to 226787. This free service is available to anyone, anywhere.
Submit Tips to UVA Police. TipSubmit is available to anyone who wants to send secure and anonymous tips to our police department. Tips can be sent either via the web or SMS texts. Send your text to 274637 (crimes). In the message type “UVATIPS” followed by the tip or information.
Follow Twitter accounts for UVA Police and the Department of Emergency Management .

Read more here: https://uvapolice.virginia.edu/safety-security-resources/report-tips-through-guardian-app-and-tipsubmit

Travel restrictions have been lifted but you probably have some questions about getting back to travel.

To assist you, the TravelUVA Team is hosting a webinar on Thursday, August 5, so that we can review booking travel for faculty and staff.

We will discuss how to save money with unused tickets and new actions the travel industry is taking to keep travelers safe. Other topics to be covered include:

What is TravelUVA?
Traveler Benefits
How to Book in Concur
Travel Assistants
Guest Bookings
Companion Taxes
UVA Travel Policy
International Travel Registry
Support

Register now at the link below and join us on August 5, from 2-3 pm. Everyone who attends is entered to win door prizes including three airline tickets and three hotel certificates for UVA business use!

Back to Travel Webinar Registration

Questions or concerns? Reach out to us at travel@virginia.edu

Reminder: Airbnb not allowed on T&E Cards

T&E cards may not be used to purchase accommodations with Airbnb and similar services such as VRBO or Homeaway, although travelers may personally pay for these reservations and be reimbursed by the University.

As you may know, hotels and other commercial properties carry insurance that covers their guests in case of injury or property loss. The type of properties offered via Airbnb and similar services vary widely in the type of coverage available for guests (if they offer any at all). Because of this, we do not recommend their use for University business.

We do understand, however, that this option might best suit your needs or the experience you want to have when you travel. There may be occasions where choosing Airbnb might be a less expensive option, or perhaps there are limited accommodations in the area. In those cases, you may pay for these accommodations and submit the cost through ExpenseUVA for reimbursement.

However, if you choose to utilize these services, please be aware that you are accepting personal responsibility for any incidents that may occur during your stay. The university is also not responsible for any fees associated with cancellation.

If you have any questions, please email travel@virginia.edu.

Salesforce Update

The Finance Engagement team has been busy implementing Salesforce. Here's a roundup of what they've been up to lately. Click the image for a larger view.

Student Financial Services exceeds 3,000 cases in first 5 weeks! Since launch, we have been working with SFS on refining process, automation, and increasing visibility via dashboards. Today, we turned on auto case responses to help reduce duplicate case creation. Supplier Diversity now in SF - we launched supplierdiversity@virginia.edu today in preparation for increased volume from Executive Order 77 and upcoming outreach work. Try out Salesforce keyboard shortcuts to save time - shortcuts such as SHIFT + W will allow you to close all SF tabs (cases, accounts, contacts, etc.) at one time, which can make cleaning up your view much faster. https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=sf.console_lex_keyboard_shortcuts.htm&type=5 Implementations underway: Data automation with ITS integrations team SFS phone integration Other Supplier Diversity functionality Payables team Financial Operations PCI Compliance ICQ transition to Financial Attestation and tracking in SF Budget request workflow/Commitment tracking

Click the image for a larger view

Time Saving Office Tips Series from the Countinuous Improvement Committee

CI Tips brought to you by the Continuous Improvement Committee and CI-minded UVAFinance FST Intern, Jack Sherwood.

Tip 1: Productive Breaks

from Jack Sherwood and Jack Jensen

As the fall semester nears and employees begin to resume in-person work, there is a lot of anxiety in the air about how the transition will fare. This series is designed to alleviate pains and provide time-saving tips and strategies that will make in-person work feel less overwhelming.

While it may seem counterintuitive, taking frequent breaks throughout your workday can drastically improve efficiency while also reducing stress. Breaks elevate energy levels and heighten focus on tasks at hand, though these aren’t just any breaks.

Consider an average day of work. You attend scheduled meetings and complete your work at your own pace. If a meeting ends 5 minutes early, you will probably go to the bathroom then head straight for your phone to check emails, texts, and social media. However, consider what would happen if instead of that routine you walked to the kitchen or breakroom, ate a piece of fruit, and stepped outside to grab a breath of fresh air? These breaks are known as productive breaks; they are both purposeful and recharging.

While it may feel satisfying to check up on last night’s sports scores, your favorite celebrity’s Instagram post about their new puppy, or tomorrow’s weather, you will find yourself more ready to complete what is next on your agenda if you take that free time to give your eyes a break from a screen and your mind a break from stress. These productive breaks are conducive to ideas, energy, and general happiness. Try inserting several 5-minute productive breaks throughout your day, spontaneous or planned, and take time to stretch, breathe, and ground yourself. This skill is impactful in both the virtual and in-person work world, as more and more of our time is spent sitting and looking at a screen.

Try this tip and reap the benefits of a clear mind, fresh thoughts, and increased stamina that will help you complete other tasks faster (and make you happier while doing them!)

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for more CI content, visit the Continuous Improvement space in the Online Community.

PaymentWorks goes live with Oracle in just a few months, so now is the perfect time for a glimpse at how the system will work.

Jonathan Agop, the Supplier Accounts Lead for FST, gave a demo of the supplier registration system during the second round of Customer Confirmation Sessions (CCS). In the demo, Jonathan compared PaymentWorks and Jaggaer Total Supplier Management, went over inviting a new vendor to the system, and discussed the process of vendor registration.

If you'd like to view the demo, you can find it here on the Community.

Not just a tech implementation: FST transformations in progress (Volume Three)

When you think about what Finance Strategic Transformation involves, you probably think about the Workday Financials implementation, and that makes sense! After all, it's the thing you probably hear about most often.

But it's not just our financial system that's transforming; in addition to the implementation of Workday Financials, the four parts of FST include adopting Adaptive Planning (Workday's budgeting and planning tool), enhanced reporting and analytics, and continuous improvement.

At a recent Steering Committee meeting, the project team highlighted some of the big transformations being driven by FST that highlight the innovation and continuous improvement sparked by the project. You can see those slides in the Community, but we'll also highlight those Transformations in Progress here in the blog, in a three-part series.

Here's our third and final round-up of examples of how changes are taking place surrounding FST:

Customer Portal: the ability for external customers to view receivables aging and account activity while enabling external customer's ability to pull down pdfs of outstanding invoices for reference.
Position Budgeting: UVA has a future-state reporting goal for monitoring personnel expense by position, employee, and/or vacancy. Reporting capabilities will give HR business partners ease of access to position information when requisitions are completed, as well as alleviating the finance organization's use of shadow systems to monitor requisitions and approved budgeted positions.
Automated Bank Statement Reconciliation: Reduction of manual reconciliation for bank statements through Workday matching rules.
Award/Grant reporting for stakeholders at the Department Level: Improving visibility into award/grant activities for grant managers and principal investigators through reporting and dashboards (grant budget vs. actuals, award tasks, etc.).
Multi-Year Financial Planning: Introducing a five-year multi-year financial planning process across the institution, shifting units from a "year-to-year" mindset to a longer-term, actionable, and strategic outlook.
Budget Guidelines: Creating budget guidelines to document all revenue and expense assumptions and owners, define budget philosophy, provide standard definitions, and reinforce policy. This will also improve financial acumen at UVA.
Simplifying UFM: Simplifying the budget model to make it less cumbersome and to increase transparency. Simplifying UFM will help make the budget model more sustainable and ultimately serve institutional goals.
Internal Vs. External Reporting: Analyzing how to transact UFM in the new FDM and the crosswalk between internal vs. external reporting. This will increase transparency and accuracy in the area of expendable fund balances.

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See Volume One of the FST Transformations in Progress here: http://uvafinance.blogspot.com/2021/06/not-just-tech-implementation-fst.html and Volume Two here: http://uvafinance.blogspot.com/2021/07/not-just-tech-implementation-fst.html

You can also see all of the transformations in progress in the steering slides in the Online Community!

FST Updates

Want to listen to this update instead of reading it? Click here to tune into the WFST Broadcast!
No time to read paragraphs? Check out "Five Things to Know about WFST"

Heading toward Testing

We’re wrapping up Configuration and Prototype, and soon the team will start building another instance of Workday Financials as we get prepared to move into a new phase: the testing phase. During that phase, the team will test all of the business processes we’ve been developing from end to end, making sure all the technology flows as we expect it to and making tweaks where we find issues. There will be more information coming soon on what the Test phase will be like, so stay tuned.

UVA FST Glossary

This is different than Workday Words! The glossary comes out of the need to have a consistent and shared vocabulary for the finance work done across UVA. While Workday Words is a dictionary of Workday financials terminology compared with our legacy terms, workday terms aren’t the only new words we’ll need to learn during Finance Transformation. The glossary is a compilation of terms that we’ll be vetting and adding to slowly, describing key components of UVA’s financial workings so we can all have a shared understanding of common terms. Access the glossary on the FST website.

FDM News: Mapping is coming

The team is taking a first stab at how PTAO’s will map to the FDM, and then those outputs will be put into UBI for the schools and units to review and update. It’ll be an iterative process as schools and units review and update mappings, and then the FDM team reviews and reloads. Schools and units will be assigned to a pod, where they’ll be able to collaborate with similar schools and units, there will be a kickoff workshop that gets individuals in the schools and units ready to do the mapping, and the FDM team will be checking in and helping out, too.

Training Update: Role Mapping

The training for Workday Financials will be role-based, which means it’s training that gives you what you need to perform your role within the system. The team will start mapping each role in Workday Financials to people doing the work here at UVA so we can make sure the right users get the right training. The mapping process will follow a cycle of review from lots of folks in governance and across grounds to make sure we get it right. Read more on the blog.

CCS2: Coming to a screen near you?

We recently finished the second round of customer confirmation sessions. We’re snipping the CCS2 recordings into bite-sized bits so that our Change Leaders can share with others as they see fit.

You can check out the slides and materials from the CCS2 sessions here in the Online Community:

https://communityhub.virginia.edu/community/uva-financetransformation/blog/2021/06/01/customer-confirmation-session-june-2021-materials

FST: More than just a tech implementation

Although Workday Financials and Adaptive Planning are obviously huge pieces of the project, FST is also an effort of ongoing and continuous improvement. As we implement these technologies, we’re trying to improve processes, too. Check out part two of a three-part series in the UVAFinance blog that shares some of the other transformations that are happening in FST. It’s always good to see the changes being made to improve how we do finance at UVA – good ideas from good people, lots of collaboration, thinking outside the box.

Want to listen to this update instead of reading it? Click here to tune into the WFST Broadcast!
No time to read paragraphs? Check out "Five Things to Know about WFST"

Heading toward Testing

UVA FST Glossary

FDM News: Mapping is coming

Training Update: Role Mapping

CCS2: Coming to a screen near you?

We recently finished the second round of customer confirmation sessions. We’re snipping the CCS2 recordings into bite-sized bits so that our Change Leaders can share with others as they see fit.

You can check out the slides and materials from the CCS2 sessions here in the Online Community:

https://communityhub.virginia.edu/community/uva-financetransformation/blog/2021/06/01/customer-confirmation-session-june-2021-materials

FST: More than just a tech implementation

1. FDM Mapping is imminent: early this August, FDM Mapping Exercise Leads will be ready to kick off the effort. See a timeline and read more details.

2. The UVA FST Glossary is online. This resource encompasses more than just our Workday Words, and will be continually added to over the course of the project so we're all speaking the same financial language. Read more and access the glossary.

3. CCS2 videos will be shared more widely soon. Bite-sized portions of the sessions held this June will be shared by our Change Leaders this summer. Watch for more info!

4. FST isn't just a tech implementation; there are many continuous improvement efforts occurring as a part of the project. Check out installment 2 of 3 detailing some of these.

5. We're getting ready to head into the Testing phase of FST. We're wrapping up Configuration & Prototype and moving into a time of end-to-end testing of the Workday Financials system. There will be lots more info on this soon, but you can read about our new Testing Lead here. Go Live is July 1, 2022!

Yes, it's true: PaymentWorks goes live in just a few months.

That means UVA will transition from using Jaegger’s Total Supplier Management, currently integrated with Oracle, to instead using PaymentWorks with Oracle. At the time of Workday go-live, PaymentWorks will then be connected with Workday to provide seamless supplier registration processing. While this may seem sudden, the PaymentWorks team has been working towards this goal for quite a while.

Here’s a list of just some of the things they accomplished earlier this year:

Initial data-mapping, sandbox configuration, and training completed in January
UVA-specific design, configuration, and testing of registration templates completed in February
Integration specifications completed in March
Integration development and testing currently underway

Of course, work doesn’t stop after PaymentWorks goes live with Oracle. There is still plenty to do to prepare before Workday goes live. Starting in September, the Supplier Management team in Procurement and Supplier Diversity Services will send out invitations to a pilot group of vendors, asking them to sign up through PaymentWorks. The team will then analyze the process and work with the PaymentWorks team to adjust it accordingly. This process of inviting suppliers to register will continue through May of 2022.

While the impact to departmental users who wish to invite a supplier to register will be relatively minimal, the benefits include the ability for end-users to track registration status and the opportunity to customize the email invitation sent to a supplier.

PaymentWorks has received a lot of positive feedback from our FST governance groups. For example, when Jonathan Agop demoed PaymentWorks during May’s Fiscal Administrators meeting, attendees were engaged and very enthusiastic about the platform’s implementation.

For more information or to view the demo, you can watch the Fiscal Administrators meeting here. And make sure to keep an eye on this space for future PaymentWorks updates.

Testing the Waters of Workday Implementation within Higher Education: Sunil Sah joins FST as Testing Lead

Now that the second round of Customer Confirmation Sessions is over, the FST team is working on the end-to-end tenant build. This build will be completed by the end of August, and then testing will start in September of this year and will last through April of next year.

With this new project stage almost upon us, the FST team wanted to hire a person with extensive experience in testing system builds to lead the team focusing on this aspect of the implementation. Sunil Sah turned out to be the best person for the job. His experience includes serving in similar roles to what he will have here at UVA as Testing Lead for the project.

Sunil was immediately enthusiastic about joining the UVA FST Team. "I’ve wanted to be a part of implementing Workday Financials at a place of higher education for a while!” He says. “And I was excited by the chance to do so at a reputable University like UVA." Though he knows he will have to hit the ground running with testing coming up so soon.

But what will Sunil do as Testing Lead?

"I will be overseeing test preparation and will facilitate/coordinate testing sessions,” he explains. “I am also in charge of building and leading the team that will work on these activities. I will be collaborating with them and with other workstream leads, other members of the project team, and of course, with testers.”

Outside of work, Sunil stays quite busy. He loves to spend time with his family, especially his three-year-old son. He is also an outdoor enthusiast and travels often. When he has the time, he participates in varied athletic activities like cricket, badminton, volleyball, and bicycling, but he also enjoys volunteering and giving back to his community.

UVA Chooses Workday's Customer Portal to Enhance Customer Service Experience

At this month's Fiscal Administrators Meeting, the FST team announced the decision to adopt Workday's Customer Portal. This platform is a restricted view of Workday that will allow self-service capabilities for the University's external customers.

Once a customer is added in Workday, they will be given access to the portal where they can do the following:

View invoices, statements, and payment information
Print and download their invoices and statements as PDFs
View delivered reports (e.g. open invoices, recent payments)
View Customer Portal Invoice Aging worklet
Access the "My Invoices and Payments" Dashboard

However, customers will not be able to make credit card or e-check payments through the portal, as UVA decided not to use a third-party payment processor.

The decision to use Workday's Customer Portal has been shared with billing specialists and units. Also, the security process has been analyzed by specialists in ITS. Documentation should be signed soon.

Make sure to check out the FST Decision Log for updates.

Testing the Waters of Workday Implementation within Higher Education: Sunil Sah joins FST as Testing Lead

But what will Sunil do as Testing Lead?

Whiteboard App Allows for Improved Collaboration in Virtual Meetings

Continuous Improvement is a big part of FST, something Jamie Wilson, as FST Project Administrator and Continuous Improvement Committee Member, knows very well.

In an effort to promote Continuous Improvement across the University, Jamie gave a wonderfully informative demo of the Whiteboard App at the most recent Fiscal Administrators Meeting.

The app gives you a virtual Whiteboard to use and share with others over Zoom. You can also invite others to edit the Whiteboard so you can collaborate with them in real-time.

Some of the functionalities and tools available include:

free-drawing
enhancement/correction
text boxes
templates for project management
stickers
annotations
exporting options--you can save your Whiteboard for future reference!

A few features stood out during Jamie's presentation. One was the ability to select part of your Whiteboard with the lasso tool, and then move the selected text or image around the board. This feature could really help when making lists and organizing notes.

Also, the templates include familiar options like kanban boards. As James Gorman commented, "it's a good way to approximate the conference room experience."

You can view Jamie's full Whiteboard demo here. The app is purchasable through the Microsoft store. To download it, follow the below steps.

On August 3, the FST team will host a session to kick off Foundation Data Model (FDM) mapping. FDM Mapping Exercise Leads and support teams will participate in the kickoff to gain a clearer understanding of the process. See the list of FDM Mapping Exercise Leads in the latest Advisory Group presentation (slides 21 and 22).

While the session only includes those participants, a larger group of contributors in schools and units will be key to successful FDM mapping as we determine how our current chart of accounts will transform into our new FDM in Workday Financials. FDM Mapping Exercise Leads and their teams will manage the process in their areas and coordinate with the FST team.

Part of the mapping process includes schools and units collaborating in pods with other areas that have similar operating styles. These pods will have a member of the FDM extended working group included in each one, and a representative of the FDM team will be available to them as well. The pods will come together to share progress, concerns, and tips among members as the iterative mapping process continues over time. See the current draft mapping exercise timeline below (click to enlarge).

For more detail, see the Advisory Group meeting presentation mentioned above. For an overview of the FDM worktags UVA will use, watch this 17-minute video on the Community. The Community also has a centralized FDM Resource Page with detailed information; the page will continue to be updated as additional resources become available for mapping.

UVAFinance Welcomes Ann Paxton

Many UVAFinance folks may already know Ann Paxton, since she came onboard to help out at the front desk in Carruthers Hall at the end of last September. As one of several of our colleagues to join the team during the pandemic, Paxton has had the odd experience of getting to know most of her teammates electronically before ever meeting them.

Hanging out with TJ, who came by his name
because Paxton found him on the 4th of July

We’re pleased to announce that starting this July, UVAFinance teammates will be interacting with Paxton in a different (now permanent!) role as an administrative assistant to Financial Planning & Analysis, Payroll, and the Business Services Group.

Paxton is well prepared for the mix of duties she’ll encounter working with these three groups, as her background includes what she calls a “mishmash” of experiences.

Before coming to UVA, Paxton, a Randolph-Macon Woman’s College alum, worked in law firms and in the newspaper industry, working at several publications in circulation and advertising. That would be a fun enough mix of career experiences, but Paxton also spent some time in the brewing industry.

Paxton began at Devils Backbone Brewing Company in the taproom, which she eventually managed, then moved up the ranks into a marketing position for the DC/Maryland/Northern Virginia territory. During her time at Devil’s Backbone, she also designed promotional products and developed her beer palate.

After the acquisition by Anheuser-Busch, Paxton saw a perfect opportunity to follow her family’s love of UVA.

“Everyone in my family went to UVA except me,” she says, adding “I was excited to finally get to be a Hoo by working here!”

Paxton says she looks forward to getting to work with more UVAFinance team members in her new role, as she has already found this community to be energizing and welcoming.

When she isn’t being a generally sunny presence at Carruthers Hall, Paxton loves swimming (both at the pool and in local swimming holes) and spending time with family, friends, and her cats TJ (short for Thomas Jefferson) and Kit.

Summer Book Club: Caste discussion continues (please join us!)

We're continuing our review and discussion of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson this afternoon (July 15). The section to focus on for this discussion is Part Two.

Visit the VP Finance site for the full schedule of our discussions and suggested questions: https://vpfinance.virginia.edu/resources-dei

If you are unable to read the book (or haven’t started), please still join us. You will still be able to contribute to and learn from the discussions without reading it. We really hope you will join us for this discussion, and please share the invitation with other UVA colleagues. These sessions are open to anyone who is interested!

The zoom link for all of the discussions is: https://virginia.zoom.us/j/95163051737?pwd=TlZ0WVF4VUl4cnpyZ3dTRVl6U2w3dz09. If you have any questions regarding the Sprint discussions, please contact Patty Marbury or ToShun Campbell.

See this afternoon's discussion questions after the jump!
Here are the discussion questions we'll tackle this afternoon:

1. There’s a lot of discussion in this book about the horrors of slavery and the history of lynchings in America. Were you aware of this history or was some of this new to you? How does it compare with what you were taught growing up? How does it relate to current discussions about the inclusion of this history in public schools?

2. What do you think of Wilkerson’s comment that slavery was “…not a chapter in its (America’s) history, but the basis of its economic and social order. For a quarter millennium, slavery was the country.” (pg. 43)

3. Race is a social construct, not based on biology and science. Wilkerson writes about the "construction of whiteness," describing the way immigrants went from being Czech or Hungarian or Polish to "white"—a political designation that only has meaning when set against something "not white." Irish, Italian … people weren’t "white" until they came to America. (pg. 49) What does this "construction of whiteness" tell us about the validity of racial designations and the structure of caste?

4. James Baldwin said: “No one was white before he/she came to America.” (pg. 49) Discuss what this quote means to your understanding of our current caste system.

5. Did you study Jim Crow laws or redlining in any American history class? If not, how does this information inform your perspective on current events around housing, evictions, mass incarceration, and police shootings?

6. Harold Hale, an African American man, helped his daughter defy the "rules" of their caste in 1970s Texas by naming her Miss. As Wilkerson illustrates throughout the book, the dangers of being seen as defying one’s caste can range from humiliation to death. What do you think of the lengths he felt he needed to go to assure dignity for his daughter? What are the risks he put her in by doing so? Should Miss have had a say in her father’s quietly revolutionary act? Explain. 7. Discuss the differences and similarities between how Miss was treated in the South, where racism and casteism have historically been more overt, and in the North, where they still exist, but can be more subtle. Do you think these various forms of racism and casteism must be fought in different ways?

8. On pages 59-61, Wilkerson tells a story about when she met with a Chicago retailer for a piece she was writing on when she was a reporter with the New York Times. What do you think
about her decision not to reveal the name of the retailer? Have you heard of similar experiences?

9. Wilkerson writes about the "construction of whiteness," describing the way immigrants went from being Czech or Hungarian or Polish to "white"—a political designation that only has meaning when set against something "not white." Irish, Italian … people weren’t "white" until they came to America. What does this "construction of whiteness" tell us about the validity of racial designations and the structure of caste?

10. Wilkerson discusses three major caste systems throughout the book: India, Nazi Germany, and America. What are some of the differences that stood out to you among these three systems? What are the similarities? How did learning about one help you understand the other? For instance, did the fact that the Nazis actually studied America’s segregation practices and Jim Crow laws help underscore the depth of our own system?

11. Did you know that Nazis developed their laws regarding Jewish people, gypsies, and other undesirables by observing and implementing American caste laws? When did you learn this?

12. What did the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer mean when he said, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

UFM 2.0: Changes on the Horizon

While news about the implementation of Workday Financials and Adaptive Insights has been at the forefront of our collective minds lately, work to revise the University Financial Model (UFM) has been chugging along in the background and is prospectively set to take off soon.

The UFM 2.0 Implementation Committee, chaired by Eduardo Lorente, Associate Vice Provost for Budget and Financial Planning, and Katie Walker, Executive Director in Financial Planning & Analysis, and a small group of representatives from across UVA, has been assembled and is charged with ensuring a smooth transition to UFM 2.0.

Revisions to UFM are focused on improving planning and reducing the administrative burden that comes from managing the current model. Although University executive leadership approval of proposed changes to UFM is pending, the committee recognizes that the FY23 budget development process is rapidly approaching and we need to prepare now for a fall launch.

Through July, August, and September, the committee will work to scope out implementation needs and partner with stakeholders across Grounds in order to make the revised UFM serviceable for all, both pre- and post-go-live of Workday Financials.

Watch the UVAFinance blog for more updates from this group as work ramps up!

New UVAFinance Website Presence: Phased Rollout

In our last blog update, we shared that UVAFinance is in the process of transforming the content of its 14 separate websites into one focused, cross-functional site (did you miss it? Here it is!) The driving force behind the redesign is making it easier for our stakeholders to find the information they need without hopping from site to site.

The Finance Engagement Team and CACS are working hard on the redesign, and if you're in central finance, you may be wondering when you're going to hear something about how this project impacts your content.

Here's what you can expect:

This is an agile rollout. We'll go live with a version of the new site in mid-to-late August and keep adding departmental content until we're done. Everything should be moved over the spring before we go live with Workday Financials.
We'll be starting with moving the content on the VP Finance site, Finance Outreach & Compliance, Finance Strategic Transformation, and even this blog.
We'll reach out to departments individually to work with your team on migrating and integrating your content. You can expect lots of support from the Engagement & CACS team as you move through the process. We're looking forward to showing you the site in development and working with you and your team!
We'll keep an integration timeline on the homepage of the new site so all will know what departments will come online next.

As always, if you have questions or concerns (whether you're in central finance or are one of our finance partners across Grounds), we're happy to hear from you. Reach out to Scott Adams or Brandi Van Ormer with questions.

Wednesday, July 28, 2021

FST Updates

FST Updates

Five Things to Know about FST: July 29, 2021

Cool Off: Understanding FDM Frost and Freeze Terminology

Getting Everything Just Right: FST Testing

You're Invited: August 5 discussion of Caste

UVA has a new safety app

Register for the Back to Travel Webinar (you could win prizes!)

Reminder: Airbnb not allowed on T&E Cards

Salesforce Update

Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Time Saving Office Tips Series from the Countinuous Improvement Committee

Tip 1: Productive Breaks

Demo of PaymentWorks now on the Community

Thursday, July 22, 2021

Not just a tech implementation: FST transformations in progress (Volume Three)

Thursday, July 15, 2021

FST Updates

FST Updates

Five Things to Know about FST: July 15, 2021

PaymentWorks: What have we accomplished and what's next?

Testing the Waters of Workday Implementation within Higher Education: Sunil Sah joins FST as Testing Lead

UVA Chooses Workday's Customer Portal to Enhance Customer Service Experience

Testing the Waters of Workday Implementation within Higher Education: Sunil Sah joins FST as Testing Lead

Whiteboard App Allows for Improved Collaboration in Virtual Meetings

Upcoming FDM Mapping Kickoff

Wednesday, July 14, 2021

UVAFinance Welcomes Ann Paxton

Summer Book Club: Caste discussion continues (please join us!)

UFM 2.0: Changes on the Horizon

New UVAFinance Website Presence: Phased Rollout