ARCHIVED: Completed project: HRMS eDocs usability upgrade

Primary UITS contact: Aaron Neal

Completed: March 26, 2009

Description: Upgrade the current HRMS eDocs application to provide improved usability. The key usability enhancement provides a side-by-side view identifying the before and after images of each document processed. Additional goals include adopting Indiana University standard development frameworks to allow for improved maintenance and support. Development for the HRMS eDocs application was completed nearly five years ago; it was one of the first enterprise level Java applications developed at IU. Since that time, IU has adopted user interface standards and development frameworks to simplify and standardize Java development. This project seeks to take advantage of these improvements while significantly improving the end user experience when processing HRMS electronic documents.

For more,see the HRMS eDocs project page in Confluence.

Outcome: With the completion of this project, HRMS eDoc users will experience a significantly improved user interface that adheres to recently developed IU enterprise systems standards. Additionally, future maintenance and enhancements will be simplified by the adoption of current technologies that are supported throughout IU's enterprise systems.

Milestones and status:

• 2006: Functional specifications completed.
• Early 2007: Technical design and development began
• Late June 2007: Development team agreed to adopt the Rice development framework used by the Kuali project
• Remainder 2007: Development continued with periodic releases of limited functionality to functional users for testing
• Early 2008: Development work for the new HRMS eDocs system has continued. Selected HRMS eDocs have been developed and turned over to functional users for review; user feedback is being incorporated.
• September 2008: Development and unit testing complete
• December 2008: Application released to IUPUI and IU East
• January 2009: Application released to Bloomington and all other regional campuses

Comment process: Send comments to bl-uits-hrms-java-team@exchange.indiana.edu.

Benefits: This project will:

• Provide for easier viewing of all HRMS eDoc information while processing a document.
• Provide approvers the ability to see a comparison of the data contained in the eDoc as it relates to the corresponding data in the PeopleSoft system.
• Fix existing system bugs and address system enhancements that have accumulated over the past years but were not prioritized high enough to be completed.
• Replace aging technologies such as JRF with IU standard frameworks such as OJB, Struts, Spring, and the new IU developed Rice framework, extending the life of our application while improving its maintainability through standard technologies.

Risks: The HRMS eDocs application is tightly coupled with the HRMS PeopleSoft system, which has a major upgrade planned for February 2008. The implementation of the new HRMS eDocs system is being developed based on the new release of PeopleSoft and is therefore dependent on this successful upgrade.

The HRMS eDocs system is being developed using the Rice framework which was created for the Kuali project. Adopting this framework provides advantages by allowing for development efficiencies and standardization across development teams. However, this framework is new and was developed for Kuali which means that it may not easily fit the way that HRMS eDocs/PeopleSoft applications function. Adjustments to the framework models may be necessary to fit with this project.

Primary client: HRMS electronic document users. Administrative users include Academic and Staff Human Resources departments. End users include HRMS eDoc Initiators present in each department on all campuses. Additional users include employees responsible for approving HRMS electronic documents.

Client impact: Implementation of the new system will require training of some 400 existing HRMS eDoc users, given the primary user interface will change considerably.

Project team: The development team is made up of developers from the HRMS Java team as well as functional analysts from Academic Human Resources and Staff Human Resources. There is also functional representation from Payroll.

Governance: Functional representation is directed by the HRMS eDocs systems manager. The HRMS systems development manager is responsible for the technical implementation.