FST Update

 

Want to listen to this update instead of reading it?  Tune into the latest WFST Radio Broadcast!

As October comes to a close, we’re not only transitioning from spooky season to the beginning of the holiday season, we are also formally ending the Architect phase of the project and transitioning to the Configuration and Prototype phase.

The project team is completing the Architect stage, in which they captured design input from across the university finance community and are building the first UVA instance of Workday Financials.  This instance will contain the new chart of accounts, known as the Foundation Data Model or FDM.

In December, the team will hold customer confirmation sessions where they walk finance representatives from across Grounds through various business processes in the new environment, capturing feedback on process and the system design.

There will be at least two iterations of review, feedback, and making tweaks to the future state design before moving on to a final build of Workday Financials.

Here's what's going on behind the scenes: 

• The functional team is resolving additional FDM design questions and tackling configuration build tasks and validation.
• The technical team is preparing to kick off the System Remediation Network this November.  They're also working on the conversion mapping sessions and have adjusted the schedule for the grants Management functional area.  They have identified 35 system integrations to be designed and developed as their first priority.
• The Reporting and Analytics team are working on initial drafts of report design documents for Core Financials, and are holding reporting requirements gathering sessions with Business Assets, Projects, Financial Accounting, Banking and Settlement, and Gifts and Endowments Functional areas.
• The Change Team is working with our Advisory Group Change Leaders to make sure we’re gathering the right feedback and sharing the right messages across UVA.

We truly appreciate your continued partnership as we move into configuration and prototype.  Thanks so much for sticking with us – we’re excited to see that first build of the UVA Workday Financials Tenant!

Change Leaders Say the Darnedest Things

In a recent meeting with the FST Advisory Committee, we asked them for some thoughts about change. Committee members are taking on more of their roles as change leaders as the project progresses. To learn more about that, read FST Change Management and Continuous Improvement Team Lead Angela Knobloch's post in the online Community. Here's some of what committee members had to say: 

• "Change is never a once and done event." 
• "Different people accept or adapt to change at different rates so from a group perspective it is definitely a process."
• "Organizations are groups of people and shifting the culture of an organization is a slower process than for an individual."
• "If the organization doesn't change and evolve it won't survive - Blockbuster"
• "If the people leading the organization don't support change, then people won't change.  And actions matter more than words."
• "I think people fear the unknown - we can make things known to them."

"Fear can be mitigated with communication of opportunities resulting from the change and from being involved 

in navigating to the changed way."

Celebrate Soup Season with Easy (and Healthy) Crockpot Chicken Soup with Barley and Mushrooms

 

Ingredients: 

• 10 c. chicken stock or broth (low sodium or regular based on your tastes/needs)
• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 8 oz. cremini or baby bella mushrooms, thickly sliced
• 2 lg. carrots, peeled and cut into rounds 
• 2 stalks celery, sliced 
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2/3 c. barley
• 4-6 sprigs fresh thyme
• 1 bay leaf
• 2-3 dried porcini mushrooms (optional)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation: 

Note: You can prep the crockpot with most ingredients the night before and refrigerate if you wish. Be sure to let the crockpot insert warm up a bit on the counter in the morning before you start cooking. 

1. Chop carrots, celery, onion, and garlic and place them in the crockpot. Mushrooms will be added later, but feel free to cut them ahead (or used pre-cut 'shrooms) and refrigerate them until needed.
2. Season the chicken breasts with salt and pepper and add them to the pot. 
3. Bundle the thyme, bay leaf, and dried mushrooms, if you're using them, in a bouquet garni using cheesecloth and kitchen twine (see the crockpot pot roast recipe for more about a bouquet garni). You can just toss these items in if you prefer, but then you'll have to find and fish them out individually later. 
4. Add the barley, unless you are refrigerating overnight. In that case, you'll add the barley in the morning before cooking. I like plump soft barley, but if you prefer yours firmer, hold off on adding it until you're about halfway into the cooking time. 
5. Add the chicken stock or broth.
6. Cook on low heat, with a total cooking time of 6-8 hours.
7. An hour before it's done, add the sliced mushrooms. 
8. When it's ready, remove the bouquet garni or individual thyme sprigs, bay leaf, and dried mushrooms. Add more salt and pepper to taste. Pull the chicken breasts out and shred them with two forks. Put the chicken back in the pot. 

Yields 6-8 entrée portions. My Italian family often likes a little parmesan in soups, so you can add some grated or finely shredded parm if you choose or add a parm rind whilst cooking. Some crusty bread and butter wouldn't be amiss either. Enjoy!

Cheffy Tips: 

• To make this even easier, you can use some frozen veggies in this instead. If you go that route, add them in the last hour when you put the mushrooms in. 
• When making soups and stews, particularly in the crockpot, try to cut items to roughly the same size. This helps with even cooking and also deliciousness, as the components' flavors all meld together into perfect lil bites. 
• You can freeze this, but the barley will absorb more of the liquid. You can cook/store barley separately to manage that or know that you'll have to add more stock/broth when you defrost and eat. I've got some of this in the freezer now, so check back with me (Kristie) if you want a report out on how it reheats or have any questions. 

Ready When Opportunity Knocks

In May of 2018, Student Financial Services went live with a new student payment platform, called UVAPay, to better serve the University’s ~24,000 students. The attraction of the new software, supported through a vendor named Flywire, was how easy it made self-service, its dynamic and intuitive interface, and its ability to flex to meet student needs.

Why is a software switch from over two years ago news today?   Because it’s a reminder of three?important ideas that build our culture of continuous improvement:

1.) Meaningful change takes strong collaboration;

2.) Sometimes opportunities for improvement appear when you don’t expect it, cultivating an open mind and sense of readiness enables clarity to realize and act on opportunities; and

3.) Change isn’t a “one and done” event; it requires continuous improvement.

The SFS team had been investigating new platforms since 2017; they were looking for something to display clear account information, provide ease of payments, and on-demand statements and reports for students and parents, things their current vendor was lacking and slow to update. They found the comprehensive payment solution they were looking for in Flywire in early 2018, but only had a two-month window in which to do the work. Such an implementation would normally have required a minimum of six months.

“We couldn’t have met such a compressed implementation deadline without the buy-in from other teams at UVA, especially Cheyrl Elzey and her team in ITS,” says Isaiah Behnke of SFS. Internal collaboration to get the new software working with SIS and to iron out many more technical details guided the project through its first goal: go-live.

Once implemented, Flywire delivered all that SFS had wanted for students and families: it was easy to view and understand account activity, seamlessly submit payments including an integrated international payment experience, enroll into and modify payment plans according to changing needs, , and easily access and generate reports and tax documents. But the team didn’t stop with one success (large though it was) – they have continued to collaborate with the Flywire team to anticipate and accommodate evolving needs.

Since go-live, SFS has worked with Flywire to modify and expand the semester payment plan to include an international payment method (live for spring 2021 – UVA is one of two large publics to offer this option), deliver a separate and tailored Health Insurance payment plan, and enhance rebalancing capabilities; display pertinent finance holds and messaging; and provide electronic 1098-T tax forms to student and authorized users (previously mailed forms).

Last year, SFS rolled out the IRS 1098-T form using Flywire, which had previously been sent by mail. The team went from physically mailing 20,000 forms each year to mailing only 4 thousand and providing on-demand, electronic access to the tax forms. These improvements resulted in significant efficiencies for students and their authorized users, staff, and financial savings (~$20k).

This year, the system will be enhanced yet again by the inclusion of historical 1098-T forms from previous years.

These continued enhancements are a result of the SFS team working with its customers and suggesting to the software development team at Flywire additional ways to fill needs. Behnke says the SFS team continually suggests modifications based on customer feedback and needs, and those modifications not only help UVA students and families but also other schools who use the software.

In addition to working closely with the Flywire product development team, Behnke serves on their advisory board with representatives from 12 other schools that use the software. His work has helped UVA stay in tune with trends in student financial matters and has allowed him to advocate for additional functionality, including a 1098-T solution (now in production) and a solution for 529 payments.

“It’s exciting because we’re always evolving, and it’s benefitting everyone – our students and families, our team, and even other higher ed institutions,” Behnke says.

This is an especially timely reminder as we head into the Configuration & Prototype phase of FST with our University partners. Working closely together, we can build a financial system that allows us to flex and adjust to changing requirements and situations and keeps us thinking strategically about how to do things better.

___________________________________________________________________________

The switch to Flywire had great results for SFS and UVA students. Want to read more? Visit https://assets.flywire.com/resources/Flywire_UniversityofVirginia_CaseStudy.pdf

Uncharted Territory: Sharing Resources During the Pandemic

EXPLORE INSIGHT TIMER

UVA now has access to the meditation app’s premium content

Insight Timer is an award-winning smartphone app and web portal featuring a meditation timer and the world’s largest free repository of guided meditations, music tracks, and other recorded and live events for relieving stress, improving sleep, coping with challenges, and addressing many other facets of well-being and flourishing. To date, more than 60,000 recordings have been uploaded to the site, and free yoga classes from leading instructors are available daily!

Thanks to a new partnership with Insight Timer, UVA students, faculty, and staff now have free access to the app’s premium (paid) Member Plus content and increased functionality, including the ability to fast-forward and rewind within a track, pause a track to return to it later, and download tracks for offline access.

Click here to register for Insight Timer, discover CSC’s curated playlists and original content, and learn more about getting started with this amazing resource.


FEAP TIP OF THE MONTH

How to Handle Election-Related Stress

More than 70% of Americans report being stressed about the political climate in the US, according to a 2020 report from the American Psychological Association. In response to this increased stress surrounding the election, we provide our top tips to handle pre- and post-election stress.  

FEAP EVENTS

21 Ways in 21 Days to Rest and Restore
FEAP invites you to take care of yourself using a series of effective strategies to restore your own energy tank. Using our interactive calendar, you'll have a choice of activities that will help you to attend to your own needs every day. It isn’t necessary to commit to a specific 21 days in succession; these activities are flexible and can be done as you choose.
Activities are available October 19 - November 30.
Register for 21 Ways

Providing Support to Someone Struggling with Substance Abuse
Live webinar, November 5
Learn strategies to support someone who may be struggling with substance use, while still maintaining your own emotional wellness. You will increase your knowledge and understanding of substance use as well as how to proactively support someone who may be struggling.
Register for Providing Support to Someone


Recovery Ally Training
Live webinar, November 18
A Recovery Ally is an individual who supports those in recovery, advocates for recovering individuals, and educates themselves about the disease of addiction, societal stigma, and resources available. This introductory-level Recovery Ally training is designed to begin to increase our community’s recovery capital on Grounds, decrease stigma, and grow intervention skills for staff members.
Register for Recovery Ally Training


Connect for Support for Employees
30-minute drop-in sessions discussing coping strategies and possible resources to help you during this challenging time.
Register for a session


Connect for Support for Managers
30-minute drop-in sessions providing leaders with emotional support, resources, and strategies to help yourself while supporting your team during this challenging time.
Register for a session

Webinars

On October 10, we honored World Mental Health Day, raising awareness of mental health issues around the world. Acknowledging that we are living in an anxiety-ridden time and the mental exhaustion that stress and anxiety can cause, FEAP offers a variety of resources for your support. We invite you to view our Strategies for Managing Stress and Decreasing Anxiety and watch the recording of our recent " How to Rest and Restore During Turbulent Times" webinar.

VIRTUAL MEDITATION ON THE LAWN

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2
7:50am (ET)
Free and open to the public. Registration required.

Together with our partners across Grounds, CSC is pleased to invite you to attend our ongoing series Virtual Meditation on the Lawn hosted live every Monday, for 7-8 minutes beginning at 7:50am ET.

Each week a different member of the UVA community leads these five-minute sessions designed to help UVA faculty, staff, students, parents, and friends cultivate mindfulness, compassion, resilience, and a sense of belonging together.

Coming up on November 2, our host will be David Germano, Executive Director, Contemplative Sciences Center.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to take a toll on the well-being of all members of the UVA community, it is even more crucial that we find regular moments of peace, reflection, and contemplative connection with each other.

REGISTER HERE

Continuous Improvement Bright Spot: UVA's Annual Financial Report

A key part of continuous improvement culture is "finding the bright spots" -- looking at who has had success making changes and operating differently. Small changes can make a big difference!

This bright spot illustrates a process of improvement that has spanned four years, changing a little bit more with every cycle, and a result of a partnership between Financial Reporting and Communications in UVAFinance.
____________________________________________________________________________


The Issue:

Dating back to its time as “the Comptroller’s office,” Financial Reporting & Operations has been committed to making UVA’s Annual Financial Report more useful and timelier. The Annual Financial Report is a massive undertaking, requiring collaboration between central finance, UVA partners across Grounds, and the Medical Center, and involving extensive review and auditing. The report was produced, edited, and printed by outside firms with University Communications handling the project.

From October through December, the Annual Financial Report process was often one of late nights, high stress, and looming deadlines.

The Improvements:

The first step in this ongoing process was instituting careful project management within the comptroller team and adjusting the timeline, which resulted in the production a finished report three months after the fiscal year close instead of six.

The next fiscal year brought another improvement: the design and printing of the report were moved in-house. UVAFinance Communication’s Matt Bonham recreated the report from scratch, working with Financial Reporting’s Thomas Schneeberger, and Printing & Copy Services printed and bound the report.

In subsequent years after moving the report’s production in-house, Communications and Financial Reporting collaborated to make other adjustments to the process, instituting version control, procuring Adobe InDesign for Financial Reporting so they could enter financial data into the report’s framework, adjusting the report’s narrative content and design to better suit UVA’s needs, and enlisting a whole host of in-house reviewers to double-check data, grammar, and style.

The Benefits:

With every move the UVAFinance team made to bring the production of the report closer to the source, efficiency and flexibility increased.

The institution of careful and streamlined project management meant that internally, the team had more time to review the report and anticipate auditors’ questions, and externally, the BOV could review complete financial statements in December instead of February.

Moving the report in-house presented an initial heavy lift, as Bonham had to build a new source file and the Coms team and PCS had to work through all the little details of moving the report from an electronic file to a sleek finished product. The first year of in-house production had its ups and downs as the team learned how to manage the initial level of data entry and many subsequent rounds of edits.

The addition of InDesign for the Financial Reporting team meant that the thousands upon thousands of numbers filling the report's tables and pages were more likely to be correct from the outset. Jacob Mair of Financial Reporting took on the task of putting each new year’s figures into the framework Bonham produced. Mair’s expertise ensured that the first layer of data in the report was correct, and the system of versioning control meant that the edits coming in from multiple sources were captured accurately. Mair and Bonham developed a system for editing, design, and assembly that streamlined the process further.

The addition of expert yet still “outside the project” reviewers from Financial Reporting gave another layer of quality control to the report. Using PCS to print the report meant that the team had a longer lead time before turning the report over for printing, and a safety net when last-minute changes inevitably occurred (PCS once reprinted and swapped out a page from the already-bound report!).

As the team had to worry less about completing the required pieces of the report, they found they had more time to refresh the design and think critically and creatively about the report. Having more wiggle room within the project cycle and more control over the project itself allowed the team to adjust some of the report narratives to be more meaningful and to experiment with new features, such as an online, interactive version of the report. The team was also able to provide more flexibility in the timeline for necessary higher-level review from UVAFinance leadership and the EVP-COO office.

The Bottom Line:

Producing UVA’s Annual Financial Report will never be a breeze. It is still a complex process with many moving parts, tight deadlines, and a lot at stake in terms of correctness and compliance. However, through the collaboration of departments within UVAFinance and partners across Grounds, the annual cycle is close to an automated process, and experts in each area of the team are now able to more meaningfully shape the report without as much sweating over process details.

__________________________________________________________

Got a bright spot to share?  Email the Continuous Improvement team at  uvafinance_ci@virginia.edu   

Next FST Stop: Configuration and Prototype

As October ends, the Finance Strategic Transformation (FST) project hits a major milestone as the Architect phase ends. Next we enter the Configuration and Prototype (C&P) phase, during which our first instance, or tenant, of Workday Financials will be built, shared, tested, and modified. 

This phase is exciting because we'll see UVA data in the system and gain a practical understanding of how our business processes function based on the initial Foundation Data Model (FDM) design. Stakeholders will also be engaged in this phase, specifically in Customer Confirmation Sessions (CCSs). While the FST team is still working out the details (approach, participants, etc.) of these sessions, we know they will occur starting in late November through December. More information about CCSs is coming soon. 

The good news about C&P is that there is still opportunity for changes to how our tenant is constructed, including the FDM design, based on stakeholder feedback and testing results. What we learn in this first tenant build will result in some iterative changes as we go, and it will inform choices in the second tenant build that happen in 2021.

Read more about what's coming in Functional Workstream Lead Nicole Ferretti's recent post in the online Community. 

Records & Information Management (RIM) on-demand training

Records & Information Management (RIM) has launched an on-demand training course through Workday. 

RIM Basics is designed to give staff and faculty an introduction to the basic concepts of records management. This 30-minute course reviews how to identify university records, manage them throughout their retention period, and dispose of them in compliance with the Virginia Public Records Act. Supervisors are encouraged to enroll their team, especially new employees or those who haven't previously attended an introductory records management class.

After completing RIM Basics, learners can also complete a 4-minute supplemental lesson addressing Managing Financial Records.

RIM continues to offer other popular classes, including Email Management, Paperless Office, Shared Drive Clean-Up, and Office 365: Automating Retention, as live webinars. The full schedule is available online.

Here are a few more upcoming classes: 

Shared Drive Clean-Up on Thursday, November 5 at 11 am.

Paperless Office: Scanning Guidelines on Tuesday, November 10 at 11 am.

If you haven’t previously attended an introductory course with RIM, you must complete the 30 minute Records & Information Management Basics before registering for any fall courses.

Check out the full fall schedule on our website and contact records@virginia.edu if you have questions.

New on the FST Webite: The FST Info Station!

We know you don't always have time in your busy schedule to keep up with the FST project via our regular communication channels, yet you still need to be able to find specific information when you need it. 

To help you navigate the plethora of FST information and get what you're looking for, we've organized this one-stop station for the info you need.  Take a look at the FST Info Station!

There's so much more to come! We'll be adding to these resources steadily as the project progresses, so if there's something you don't see here, please let us know so we can add it!

Reminder: Daylight Saving Time ends November 1

Daylight Saving Time ends on Sunday, November 1, 2020, at 2:00 A.M. On Saturday evening, our clocks need to “fall back” one hour.  We don't have as many places to be these days, but still . . . :)

Hoos Seen This: Facilities Management recognizes custodians

 Check out UVA Facilities Management's tribute to UVA Custodians:  https://uvafm.exposure.co/thank-you-uva-custodians 

My Pay Dashboard in Workday

My Pay Dashboard is now available for you in Workday! This new feature replaces the current “My Pay” app on your Workday home screen. The dashboard has been arranged to provide you with visibility into and more clarity around of all of your pay items. You’ll also benefit from insightful pay-related reports and simplified navigation for making updates on things like tax withholding and direct deposit information.


Watch this video tour of the new My Pay Dashboard to learn more about using these features.

From Coast to Coast: Angela Coleman joins Payroll as Assistant Director

Angela Coleman had been looking for an adventure when she noticed that UVA was in search of an Assistant Director of Payroll Services. 

Coleman had been serving as payroll manager at Willamette University in Oregon for over five years. She enjoyed working in higher education and had been an integral part of the university’s implementation of Workday in 2016. 

 At the top of her professional game and with her two sons grown and on their own, she was open to change.  The result is that she’s now a part of the UVAFinance Payroll Team!

Coleman joins the ranks of a handful of others who have joined the UVAFinance team during the pandemic. She has begun her role working remotely from Oregon, with plans to move to Virginia in the spring/early summer of next year, depending on the national situation. The difference in time zones means her workdays currently begin around 5:30 am since mornings are often the busiest for payroll professionals.

The delay in Coleman’s move to Virginia may postpone the exploration she’s excited to do, but one definite benefit is that she can spend more time before her departure with the newest addition to her family, her first grandchild!

An ocean lover, Coleman says she’s looking forward to getting acquainted with the Atlantic as well as visiting the wealth of historical spots in our area.

“This position had everything I was looking for: I love working in higher ed, I love Workday, and I just can’t wait to experience the East Coast,” she says.

Besides the ocean, Coleman’s other happy place is enjoying the beauty of the outdoors, so she is very much looking forward to exploring the Blue Ridge Mountains.

When we all return one day to the office environment, you’ll recognize Coleman’s space by the plethora of football memorabilia will contain. She’s an avid fan of the 49ers, Kansas City, and the Steelers.

Welcome to UVAFinance, Angela!

New on Finance Matters: Challenging the Status Quo Panel Series, FST edition!

UVAFinance's Continuous Improvement Committee recently hosted a webinar on Challenging the Status Quo, featuring members of the FST team. This webinar featured Lisa Shuler, Josh Breeden, and Phil Hamlett.

LISTEN HERE!

Access the Continuous Improvement space in the online community (behind NetBadge) to view the webinars: https://communityhub.virginia.edu/community/uva-finance-transformation/continuous-improvement

More CI Webinar content on Finance Matters:

• https://everydaygrace.podbean.com/e/challenging-the-status-quo-leadership-panel-2-finance-matters/
• https://everydaygrace.podbean.com/e/challenging-the-status-quo-managers-panel-finance-matters/
• https://everydaygrace.podbean.com/e/challenging-the-status-quo-webinar-finance-matters/

Coming up:  

UVAFinance Individual Contributor Panel
Thursday, October 29th – 10am
Panelists:
Amy Nolasco – Business System Analyst, Student Financial Services
Jonathan Agop – Supplier Management Specialist, Procurement Services and Supplier Diversity
Mara Hilliar - Executive Assistant for Melody Bianchetto
Register HERE

Community Engagement within UVA and UVAFinance: a Cornerstone project on growing volunteerism

 In 2019, UVA staff used only 9% of the volunteer/public service leave hours UVA provides.

Kristie Sojka and Shannon Wampler

This finding and others regarding volunteerism and community engagement were part of a capstone project presented at the September graduation of the latest cohort of UVA’s Cornerstone Program. This project was proposed by Carolyn Dillard, the University-Community liaison, Louis Nelson, Vice Provost for Academic Outreach, and Kevin McDonald, Vice President for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Community Partnerships, in response to President Ryan’s Strategic 2030 Plan.

The Cornerstone project team working on the project consisted of UVAFinance’s Kristie Sojka and Shannon Wampler, along with Cecil Banks of University Advancement and Cheryl Gearhart of ITS. The group also reported that so far in 2020, staff are on track to use less than half of the volunteer leave hours used in 2019 (4% vs. 9%), likely due to the pandemic.

More than just exploring current staff trends in volunteerism, the project team also made recommendations on how to facilitate and increase community engagement:

• Utilization of a registry where staff and non-profits can be matched based on skills and needs.
• Using that registry to empower volunteerism by showcasing the possibilities and celebrating staff volunteerism.
• Creating structured opportunities such as a service/engagement fair (either in person or virtual) for staff and working with schools and units to cultivate best practices for engagement and providing volunteer opportunities.

Click image for a larger view

Although the project is complete and in the hands of its sponsors, Sojka and Wampler are excited to share the findings with their UVAFinance colleagues. They’ll be working with the UVAFinance Culture Crew and VP for Finance Melody Bianchetto on increasing community engagement within our team.

Do you have ideas on how to increase volunteerism?  Comment below, or email your thoughts to culturecrew@virginia.edu

________________________________________

Read more about engagement and service goals in the 2030 Strategic Plan .

Download the “One Community Engaged: A study of UVA staff Volunteerism” white paper (LINK)

FST Update

Want to listen to this update instead of reading it?  Check out the latest WFST broadcast!

Configuration & Prototype is on the horizon!

As we move closer to configuration and prototype, everyone’s getting more excited – the team, because they’re building out something that we’ve all worked together on for so long, and the future users of Workday Financials all across UVA, because they will finally get to SEE something they’ve been looking forward to for years!

During configuration and prototype, stakeholders (that’s you if you’re reading this) will see how Workday Financials will work, with preliminary design decisions implemented.  The team has taken all your feedback throughout the planning and architect phases, and they’re building the tenant and loading UVA data into it.  Then, as James Gorman says, we’ll “roll back the curtain” and do some guided tours.

More on Configuration & Prototype here!

At the same time the guided tours are going on, the FDM team will be working on the FDM Mapping tool that they’ll then roll out to schools and units in the early spring.  This will allow users to make sure the mapping from the chart of accounts we have now to the new FDM is working correctly. That process will go on throughout the rest of the project.  Just a reminder, a preliminary FDM structure is complete, but this still needs to be tested.

Want more updates on FDM?  Click here!  And here!

We’re entering into a season of continual adjustment – building pieces, showing them to users and getting feedback, taking those suggestions and modifying the tenant, and so on.  Actual end to end testing will also be part of this process as we move closer to go live.

Advisory Group becomes Change Leaders

To support this phase of the project, the project team is leaning into the partnership we have with our Advisory Group in order to make sure all schools and units have the information they need and have a way to share their feedback.  In this new phase of the project, advisory group members are spinning up as change leaders to engage colleagues in their areas, with the support of an FST team change partner.  Your Advisory Group member slash change leader will be your go-to for all things FST in terms of getting information to you and sharing your feedback.

 The Advisory Group has been pivotal to the FST project since the beginning stages, and we’re really grateful for their partnership in this area.

Read more about our Change Leaders.

TSM & PaymentWorks

The FST team has recommended transitioning from Jaggaer Total Supplier Management to PaymentWorks, prior to Workday Financials going live.  Benefits of this switch include tailored user experience for individual payees, improved invite experience for departments, and much-needed fraud protection.  We’ll keep you updated on this decision as the team works out the kinks – we’re still sussing out all of the particulars before the decision is finalized.

More info now on the Decision Log!

Resources for You on the FST website

The FST website content continues to grow and be updated.  We’re keeping the Decision log updated, as well as listing out the upcoming decisions.  We’re also updating the Workday Wordsdictionary with new terms.

The team is also developing a resource page called the Information Station on the FST site that will allow our stakeholders to easily get up to date on the areas they’re concerned about.   For instance, if you wanted to know about the FDM because you’re thinking about those mapping sessions coming up in the spring, the Info Station lays out all the resources from our coms streams that will be most helpful to you:  the blog articles you should read, the community spaces you should follow, and the slides you should view, etc. etc.  This portion of the website will be continually updated, like all of our resources are, so check back frequently as new things are added.  And don’t be afraid to suggest topics or “learning paths” for us to map out.

 

 

Not All Change Leaders Wear Capes

Finance Strategic Transformation (FST) Advisory Group members are expanding their roles as Change Leaders as the project moves into Phase 3: Implementation. 

Learn more about the engagement strategy from FST's own Angela Knobloch, Team Lead for Change Management and Continuous Improvement, in her post on the CommunityHub. 

Upcoming Decisions for FST

Upcoming decisions are now on the FST Decision Log! 

Over the next few months, the team will follow the RAPID process to work through these decisions with project stakeholders. You can read more about that process here. 

If you'd like to take a look at these upcoming decisions, head over to this page on the FST website. The Decision Log is updated frequently, so don't forget to check back periodically to keep up with the latest decisions.

Participate in Rapidly Approaching "Shaping Our Spring Together" Sessions

Between now and October 23, plan to join one of several "Shaping Our Spring Together" sessions. Staff, faculty, and students have dedicated sessions for each group. The goal of these hour-long meetings, conducted via Zoom, is for members of the university community to participate in interactive sessions to share feedback about UVA's COVID-19 response so far that will inform how the university does things this spring. 

Go to Organizational Excellence's website to register. You'll receive an automated confirmation message if you register, with a calendar invite attached. You'll receive the Zoom link in another communication afterwards. 

These sessions are sponsored by the Office of the EVP/Provost and the Office of the EVP/COO (facilitated by UVA Organizational Excellence). 

New On Finance Matters: Brave Space in UVAFinance; Racial Equity Terminology

Brave Space in UVAFinance: Finance Matters

Patty and Brandi are joined by members of the Inclusive Excellence Advisory Group from UVAFinance, with a discussion of why fostering a brave space within the workplace is so important. Guests on the panel are Melody Bianchetto, Steve Kimata, LaVerne Harris Grant, and Jenn Bari. 

LISTEN HERE!  

Resources Mentioned:

Inclusive Excellence at UVA: https://vpdiversity.virginia.edu/inclusive-excellence

Inclusive Excellence work within UVAFinance: http://uvafinance.blogspot.com/search/label/Inclusive%20Excellence

Previous Brave Space Podcasts: https://everydaygrace.podbean.com/e/brave-space-part-one-finance-matters/ and https://everydaygrace.podbean.com/e/brave-space-part-two-finance-matters/ 

Terminology in Racial Equity: Finance Matters

This episode is a companion piece to our recent Brave Space discussion, found here: https://everydaygrace.podbean.com/e/brave-space-in-uvafinance-finance-matters/.

This pod contains a brief exploration of many terms we refer to in our Brave Space discussion, terms that are frequently used when racial equity is discussed. In this episode, LaVerne Harris Grant joins Patty and Brandi to go over the basics. 

LISTEN HERE!  

Resources Mentioned:

https://vpdiversity.virginia.edu/inclusive-excellence

Racial Equity Tools Glossary: https://www.racialequitytools.org/glossary

Implicit Bias test: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

LinkedIn Learning "Inclusive Mindset for Committed Allies" https://www.linkedin.com/learning/inclusive-mindset-for-committed-allies/becoming-a-true-ally?u=2203468

Articles on the effects of bias:

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/the-state-of-healthcare-in-the-united-states/racial-disparities-in-health-care/

http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/paying-price-human-cost-racial-profiling/effects-racial-profiling

https://www.centerforhealthjournalism.org/2017/11/08/how-racism-and-microaggressions-lead-worse-healt
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Challenging the Status Quo Webinar – NEW Upcoming Sessions!

The three panels in our Challenging the Status Quo Panel Series have been excellent. Thank you to all the participants help us better understand what Challenging the Status Quo means to them, and to all the attendee who asked great questions. If you couldn’t join us, you can find the recording on the Continuous Improvement Community.

The Challenging the Status Quo Panel Series was designed to show you different perspectives from UVAFinance employees who aren’t afraid to challenge the status quo and share their thoughts and ideas with you​.

We have two upcoming sessions:

UVAFinance FST Panel
Friday, October 23rd – 10am
Panelists:
Lisa Shuler – Revenue Lead
Josh Breeden – Business Analyst
Phil Hamlett – Project Manager
Register HERE

UVAFinance Individual Contributor Panel
Thursday, October 29th – 10am
Panelists:
Amy Nolasco – Business System Analyst, Student Financial Services
Jonathan Agop – Supplier Management Specialist, Procurement Services and Supplier Diversity
Mara Hilliar - Executive Assistant for Melody Bianchetto
Register HERE


If you can’t attend watch the webinar live, the recording will be available on the Continuous Improvement Community.

Keep an eye on the Blog and the Continuous Improvement Community to hear more about the panels and other resources to help you Challenge the Status Quo.

Listen to past webinars on Finance Matters!

• https://everydaygrace.podbean.com/e/challenging-the-status-quo-managers-panel-finance-matters/
• https://everydaygrace.podbean.com/e/challenging-the-status-quo-webinar-finance-matters/

ISP Functional Team demos Workday functionality

Internal Service Providers (ISP) - An internal service provider creates an internal service document to record the exchange of services between departments.

Josh Breeden and Lisa Shuler, as members of the ISP Functional team, have been hard at work, meeting with over 100 stakeholders across Grounds to ensure that the first tenant of Workday Financials at UVA is configured properly for ISP transactions and to streamline current-state processes.

To make sure they "got it right," Breeden and Shuler shared a demo of Workday's ISP functionality, and conducted Q & A and requirement gathering sessions with stakeholders currently accounting for ISP-related activity using revenue recovery expenditure types.  They also held deeper-dive sessions with units such as Facilities Management, Business Ops, VP for Research, and ITS, due to their high volume of ISP transactions.  

For their next steps, the team will be honing in on the business processes related to the internal service deliveries.  They plan on walking through proposals for these processes with stakeholders so that they can make sure the plans work with their operations. 

Sound Bite!

We connected with Josh Breeden over Zoom this week to talk about the team's sessions with stakeholders; click below to listen in -- you might just catch some of the excitement that the project team has for sharing their work and collaborating with stakeholders!

Upstairs Conference Rooms are now Zoom Rooms!

An update from your friendly UVAFinance LSPs

We are excited to announce that all the UVA Finance upstairs conference rooms have been updated and now work as Zoom Rooms. This includes: 1, 2, all three Collabs, 7, and 8.

We believe you will find their use easy and convenient. You can schedule the room with your Zoom Add-in on your Outlook Calendar and share your screen wirelessly with the click of a button on your Zoom app.

Here are the instructions you will now see on all the screens when you enter a conference room. In addition, the following link will aid you in obtaining the Zoom Add-In if you need it. 

https://uvafinance.blogspot.com/2020/03/installing-zoom-add-in-for-use-in-carr.html

Questions?  Concerns?  Email us at finhelp@virginia.edju

Uncharted Territory: Sharing Resources During the Pandemic

 

The pandemic continues to present many challenges to us all.  It's critical to take time for yourself mentally and physically.  There are resources available to help.  Please also see Melody's note from this week's digest. 

Contemplative Sciences Center

Virtual Weekly Meditation on the Lawn; Mondays, 7:50-7:55 am 

Free and open to the public; registration required.  Read more and Register here. 

Organizational Excellence Feedback Sessions

Share your thoughts on UVA's COVID response, processes, and services

Read more and register on their site. 

Common Grounds Healing Arts

Late Fall Virtual Class Series:  including many types of yoga, activating for anti-racist actions, foam rolling, and so much more.  Read more and register on their site.

IM-Rec Sports Outdoor Programs

Enjoy the beautiful autumn scenery by kayaking, paddleboarding, taking in a movie night, and much more (including a Zombie Run!).  See the details and register on their site.

From Melody's Desk

Dear UVAFinance Team,

I’m writing to check in with you all, to see how you are doing.  We are approaching 7 months of virtual work, school, and life. In some ways, this new way of living has been normalized, with weddings, the birth of children and grandchildren, and retirements moving forward. However, in many ways, the unique stresses imposed by the COVID-19 global pandemic are magnified with the virtual school, disrupted childcare, illness, and death of friends and family, financial uncertainties. These situations are only compounded by the isolation that comes from being confined to home… or the feeling of never getting away from them.

I want to remind each of you to remember to take care of your physical and emotional health. Take time in each day to walk away from zoom calls, to get outside for fresh air, to find a way to release stress. Recognize and honor the boundary between work and home, something that can be very difficult with remote work arrangements. If you need assistance or someone to talk to, reach out to your manager or to a trusted colleague. UVAFinance’s HR business partner, Gary Helmuth, and UVA employee relations contact, Cori Catto are available as well.

If you are a manager, I ask that you regularly check-in with each person on your team. Make sure that everyone is taking much-needed and well-earned time away from work. 

There are a number of UVA support services, virtual classes, and resources available at no cost to you. Check out these great offerings:

 

UVA Caregiving Support Services

FEAP Counseling Services

FEAP COVID-19 Support Services

FEAP Social Injustice Support Services

On Demand Fitness and Wellness Class - Wellbeats

UVA IM/Rec Hoo’s Well Health & Fitness Classes (barre, pilates, Zumba, yoga, other)

Mindfulness Resources, including eMLife online mindfulness platform

Contemplative Sciences Center classes (yoga, meditation, t’ai chi)

UVA School of Nursing Compassionate Care Initiative classes (yoga, meditation, t’ai chi)

I hope that you and your loved ones remain healthy and safe. Please reach out directly to me or your manager if there are ways that we can better support you during this continuing challenge.

Thank you for everything you are doing to continue to support the faculty, staff, and students of UVA. We could not be successful without your efforts.

My very highest regards,

Pumpkin spice and everything nice!

Join your colleagues in UVA Finance for our first (and hopefully only) 
VIRTUAL PUMPKIN CARVING/DECORATING CONTEST! 

Let’s celebrate this ghoulish month by participating in a photo contest of your best Halloween creations. Since we can’t all be together to share our favorite costumes and decorations, we thought it would be fun to share our home creations with everyone virtually. 

 If you have a pumpkin that you’ve carved and/or decorated this year, grab a photo of it and share it with your colleagues by posting it to the Community Hub.

Entries should be submitted no later than October 26th. You can post your photo in the Online Community here: https://communityhub.virginia.edu/community/uva-finance-transformation/blog/2020/10/15/pumpkin-carving-contest

If you don't feel comfortable posting in the Community, you can send your photo to culturecrew@virginia.edu

Everyone will have the opportunity to vote for their favorites, with voting closing on Thursday, October 29th at noon. Winners of perpetual virtual bragging rights will be announced Friday morning, October 30th.

 
You can also post any other Halloween pictures that you’d like to share in a separate spot for fun! 
  

Let's lift everyone's spirits by sharing your favorite Halloween/Fall photos!

You can post your photo in the Online Community here:  https://communityhub.virginia.edu/community/uva-finance-transformation/blog/2020/10/15/pumpkin-spice-and-everything-nice 

If you don't feel comfortable posting in the Community, you can send your photo to culturecrew@virginia.edu.

We hope you’ll all join in the fun!  Questions can be sent to culturecrew@virginia.edu ! 

If you don't have any Halloween/Fall photos to share, please join us in the Community by liking and commenting on the photos!

FDM Update: Gearing Up for FST Configure and Prototype Phase

Contributed by Nicole Ferretti, FST Functional Workstream Lead

As many of you know, we’ve determined the preliminary structure for the chart of accounts (COA), referred to as the Foundation Data Model (FDM) in Workday Financials. This is the first of many FDM milestones during the finance transformation. See this previous FDM blog post for more info about those milestones.

Next steps in the process are related to converting the current COA to the FDM. There will be general rules for conversion, a lot of collaboration and effort will go into the conversion, both from FST project team members and partners throughout schools and units. Since the current COA is quite flexible, we can’t convert fields one to one. We’ll have to look at each of our PTAEO strings and determine how that fits into the new FDM. 

The goal of the FDM is to create a chart that’s more consistent across Grounds, so everyone is using it the same way. 

Involved in this work, schools and units will be building their budgets in the old chart and then it will be converted to the new FDM. We’ll want to make sure to close out any old values that are no longer used in Oracle, such as old awards, projects, or even an org. Doing so will make converting much easier. 

While all this work is going on, mapping and collaborating with stakeholders, we’re also beginning to see how the FDM will work across various business processes in Workday Financials. The project team pulled in a data set from Oracle into our first tenant build (our tenant is UVA’s instance of Workday). The data represents diverse activities across Grounds, including the following: 

• School operations, including gifts, grants, and endowments
• Capital projects
• Auxiliary enterprise activity
• Central accounting data   

Including the central accounting data enables us to build our balance sheet in addition to our statement of activities. 

The goal of doing this is to use this activity in the tenant that we’re building now to test our assumptions. We want to ensure that the decisions we’ve made hold up and that things are set up to work properly. Over the last several months, we collected some user stories; we’ll test the build assumptions against those stories to ensure the FDM is working the way we anticipated. Again, this goes back to everything from how you’re recording a transaction to how we’re pulling that information together for our external financial statements as well as managerial reporting. We’ll continue to refine the structure as needed. For example, if we find that things may not work the way that we want, we can adjust that in the tenant and continue to test to make sure it works for our needs going forward. 

We’ll also be socializing this as we go through. For the initial build, it will be with the project team. Once we get the structure nailed down, we’ll begin to share more widely—not just the FDM itself but how things look in the system. For example, if you go in and put in an expense report, you’ll see that this is what you’ll be keying and this is how it will look. That sharing will be done through a couple of different avenues: FST governance group meetings and structured focus groups with other stakeholders specific to certain areas. We want to ensure there’s a clear understanding of the FDM and how it will be used. These demos will help people get a full understanding of how it works. For example, again, when you’re entering a transaction for an expense report, what are you keying, what are you not keying, what’s automatically filling in on those screens for you, and then does that make sense. Is it too many or not enough keystrokes for you to get the detail that you need? This work will continue throughout the Configure and Prototype phase. 

This process is definitely a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t be concerned if you’re not hearing a lot about the FDM or seeing it yet. We’ve got a long ways to go, and we want to go about it in a very organized way so that you understand it and we have clear definitions. 

________________________________________________________________

Read more about how the FDM team is working with departments right now:  Danielle Hancock has written this great update in CommunityHub about Worktag development!