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ElevateR

The ElevateR | June 2022

Photo of Jack J. BlanchardMessage from Jack J. Blanchard, Associate Provost for Enterprise Resource Planning:

The Elevate Program is approaching a notable milestone - at the end of this month we will complete the “Configure and Prototype” Phase of the program.

During this phase, the team:

  • Held Customer Confirmation Sessions to finalize input from 300+ stakeholders across our campuses
  • Configured the Workday application
  • Built integrations and reports
  • Converted data from our legacy systems into Workday
  • Designed the end-user training plan
  • Began holding monthly Functional Overviews

The Elevate team is eager to start the next phase, “Test and Train,” with the newly created Workday Test Tenant. This tenant will be used for end-to-end testing, which validates the configuration, business processes, integrations, reports, and security for all start-to-finish functionality in Workday. The goal of this testing is to ensure the configured Workday system, integrations, and reports sufficiently meet our institutions’ defined needs. Elevate Project Implementation Teams (PIT Crews) had a large role in ensuring that this tenant would be ready for end-to-end testing by completing security role mapping for their units, and we are grateful for the support from the dedicated PIT Crew members! You can check in on the Elevate Program timeline here:

Elevate Timeline

To ensure campus readiness, Elevate is assessing the feedback received during the second Elevate Readiness Assessment. The survey was sent last month to all staff, faculty, student employees, and graduate assistants. We were pleased to receive over 2,000 responses to this survey, which will aid the team in identifying risk areas and developing plans to drive toward a successful adoption of the new Workday system. Thank you to all who participated by providing your valuable feedback!

This summer, Elevate is also engaging with students via a new student intern program. We are delighted to have five student interns from the University of Maryland join the program for the summer. These student interns will be assisting with readiness, communications, and various projects across Elevate workstreams, while also developing their professional skills.


Next Functional Overview: Empowering Employees through Workday Learning

July 28, 2022
11:00 a.m.


This 45-minute session will introduce Workday Learning, your future home for employee development and training course content. You will see a sneak preview of how to explore and enroll in training, as well as view your required learning and learning history. In addition, you will get a behind-the-scenes look at how managers can enroll their teams in content and view learning progress. 

Register Today!

As a reminder, if you are unable to attend any Functional Overviews, the recorded sessions are posted on the Elevate website on the Functional Overview page.


Workday Feature of the Month: Worktags

Worktags are identifiers used to describe and group transactions in Workday. Worktags support financial, managerial, and statutory reporting in Workday’s Foundation Data Model and is equivalent to a Chart of Accounts. KFS Accounts, Object Codes, and Org Codes will become worktags in Workday. Worktags can be assigned to be related to other worktags, meaning that when you select one worktag on a transaction, associated worktags will be automatically populated. 

  • Worktags and Workday’s Foundational Data Model (FDM) have many benefits, including:
  • Worktags can help you find information more easily.
  • The FDM will allow for flexible reporting.
  • Data integrity will be controlled through business process approvals and other validations.

Learn more by watching this demo, featured during last week’s Functional Overview!


Words of Workday

USource
A worktag that represents former KFS Accounts that are not Grants, Projects, or Gifts. This includes, but is not limited to, State, DRIF, Agencies, and Auxiliaries accounts. USource will be a "Driver" worktag and will have related worktags of Fund, Cost Center, Balancing Unit, and Higher Ed Function Code.

Company
A Company worktag is a fundamental Workday dimension that represents a single legal entity. In KFS, this is identified as Chart/Campus.

Cost Center
A Cost Center is a department, division, institute, or major program. It is identified as an Org Code in KFS. It’s a level at which budgets can be created and managed.

Cost Center Hierarchy
Divisions will become a Cost Center Hierarchy. Cost Center Managers will be assigned at the hierarchy or directly to the cost center.


Chrissy Wheeler Headshot

The Elevate Program is thrilled to have a team of 49 full-time employees that have a wide breadth of experience and institutional knowledge. In each issue of the ElevateR, we will shine the spotlight on a staff member who is working hard to make our project a success.

Chrissy Wheeler
Security Lead


The Elevate Program’s Security Lead, Chrissy Wheeler, came to Elevate from the University of Maryland’s Department of Transportation Services (DOTS), where she was the IT Assistant Director for the department. In her 22 years experience in higher education, she has worked on various system implementations including student, finance, human resources, payroll, and admissions systems. Chrissy enjoys working with a team of diverse strengths and varied institutional knowledge. “Getting exposed to a lot of different people across different units, departments and our partner entities is really cool,” she says. In her spare time, Chrissy enjoys traveling the world. Most recently, she went to England! She has her MBA, and is currently working on getting her masters degree in Applied IT from Towson University.


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Your Questions Answered

From big picture planning to the impact of daily routines, the Elevate team is available to answer your questions and address your concerns. 

Browse our list of FAQs or click the button below to ask our team a question.

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