Support Available for HRPWS v2 to v3 Transition

We’re making some big changes to how Human Resource/Payroll (HRP) data is modeled in HRPWS. Current users must take action before HRPWS v2 retires—scheduled for the end of 2022.

The purpose of these changes is to better reflect the Workday data structure and create better parity between HRPWS and the EDW. This allows us to more quickly adapt to future changes in Workday and provides more clarity and consistency for users who leverage this data.

At a high level, these changes include the following:

New Resources – Data that was under a single resource is now spread across several new resources that better represent the data.
Deprecated Objects – Some key objects that were originally created to model legacy HR concepts have been removed. These objects were not compatible with the Workday model.

Watch this short video to learn more about what’s new in HRPWS v3.

Transition Support is Available!

Documentation is available to support this transition work. Refer to the following pages to get started:

Transitioning from HRPWS v2 to v3 – This resource guides users through the transition from v2 to v3, which includes:
- Updating field mapping
- Addressing deprecated fields
- Considering the context of compensation and organization assignment data
- Reevaluating HRPWS data usage, when necessary, to account for deprecations and context changes.
HRPWS for Finance Transformation – This page provides information on the different environments available, including the recommended environment for transitioning users.

We want to hear your questions, comments, and solutions! Please engage with us via the following channels:

HRPWS Customer Portal – We’re always looking to improve our documentation. Please use the page comment feature to provide feedback on any page within this space.
Support | HRPWS – Refer to this page for guidance on who to contact for various support scenarios.

EWS EVAL Release 12 is now available

Enterprise Web Services (EWS) has just released an update in EVAL for multiple web services in support of UW Finance Transformation (UWFT). For an overview of how EWS is adapting to support UWFT, refer to EWS for Finance Transformation.

Monthly Scheduled Releases

Updates to EVAL for all EWS services are released on the same monthly schedule. This allows us to better synchronize with Enterprise Data Platform’s release schedule for Finance Transformation. For more information, refer to the Data Availability Timeline.

What’s New in EWS Release 12

Web Service	Overview of Release
FWS v2 (Outbound)	This is a very large release with MANY changes, including SEVERAL breaking changes! Breaking Changes were made to the Contact Data collection under several resources. Breaking Changes were introduced to the /Supplier, /Gift, /LedgerAccount, /Award, and /BillingSchedule resources New Resources /Manufacturer and /Appropriation were added. New hierarchy support was added for /Location and /Appropriation resources. Data was added or updated to /Location, /LedgerAccountSummary, /SupplierContract, /LedgerAccountSummary, /Award, /Plan, /RelatedWorktags, /Reference, /Journal, and /PayrollJournal resources. For more information, refer to FWS Reference Data (Outbound) – Release 12. For support, refer to Support \| FWS.
FWS v2 (Inbound)	Instructions on how to verify transactions in FWS Inbound and Workday are now published on the FWS Common Transactions (Inbound) \| FWS support page System Contacts now include one and only one Technical System Owner, one and only one Business Owner and zero to many System Contacts. The DocumentId is now included in Context when Platform Validation errors, such as CSV parsing, occur. Required Worktag Type validation has been added to the Validate Worktags resource. For more information, refer to FWS Common Transactions (Inbound) – Release 12. For support, refer to Support \| FWS.
HRPWS v3	New security role ‘Legal Name Reader’ was created to grant access to legal name fields. For more information, refer to /Worker (v2) to /Person (v3) Mapping. Search parameters were updated for /Person and AcademicAppointment resources. Data was added or updated to /WorkerPayrollCostingAllocation resource. For more information, refer to HRPWS v3 – Release 12. For support, refer to Support \| HRPWS. Reminder for HRPWS v2 users: HRPWS v2 is scheduled to retire end of 2022. For more information, refer to our newly published guide for Transitioning from HRPWS v2 to v3.

Web Service

Overview of Release

FWS v2 (Outbound)

This is a very large release with MANY changes, including SEVERAL breaking changes!

Breaking Changes were made to the Contact Data collection under several resources.
Breaking Changes were introduced to the /Supplier, /Gift, /LedgerAccount, /Award, and /BillingSchedule resources
New Resources /Manufacturer and /Appropriation were added.
New hierarchy support was added for /Location and /Appropriation resources.
Data was added or updated to /Location, /LedgerAccountSummary, /SupplierContract, /LedgerAccountSummary, /Award, /Plan, /RelatedWorktags, /Reference, /Journal, and /PayrollJournal resources.

For more information, refer to FWS Reference Data (Outbound) – Release 12. For support, refer to Support | FWS.

FWS v2 (Inbound)

Instructions on how to verify transactions in FWS Inbound and Workday are now published on the FWS Common Transactions (Inbound) | FWS support page
System Contacts now include one and only one Technical System Owner, one and only one Business Owner and zero to many System Contacts.
The DocumentId is now included in Context when Platform Validation errors, such as CSV parsing, occur.
Required Worktag Type validation has been added to the Validate Worktags resource.

For more information, refer to FWS Common Transactions (Inbound) – Release 12. For support, refer to Support | FWS.

HRPWS v3

New security role ‘Legal Name Reader’ was created to grant access to legal name fields. For more information, refer to /Worker (v2) to /Person (v3) Mapping.
Search parameters were updated for /Person and AcademicAppointment resources.
Data was added or updated to /WorkerPayrollCostingAllocation resource.

For more information, refer to HRPWS v3 – Release 12. For support, refer to Support | HRPWS.

Reminder for HRPWS v2 users: HRPWS v2 is scheduled to retire end of 2022. For more information, refer to our newly published guide for Transitioning from HRPWS v2 to v3.

Storage quotas coming to UW Google June 2024

Users whose UW Google storage currently exceeds 80GB received a version of the following on Tuesday, July 26.

What is happening?
As initially announced in June 2021, Google is implementing major changes to their Google Workspace for Education product.

Among other changes, Google is moving to a shared storage pool. We are sharing this information now so that you may prepare and find alternative solutions for data storage. Learn more about Google’s new storage policy.

Google’s shift to shared storage for Google Workspace for Education means that every UW Google account will be subject to a 100GB storage quota, effective June 11, 2024.

As a step toward establishing the 100GB quota, UW-IT will implement tiered storage quotas that are greater than users’ existing data storage usage, effective August 23, 2022.

When is it happening?

August 23, 2022

Free and unlimited storage in UW Google ends; temporary tiered quotas implemented

Maximum quota of 100GB is established for any users whose current total utilization is less than 80GB. This applies to most UW Google accounts.
For users whose current storage exceeds 80GB, quotas will be established in tiers greater than their current total storage utilization.
No user accounts or data will be deleted due to tiered quota implementation.
Owners of accounts that exceed the storage quota for 14 days or by 25% (whichever comes first) will be unable to edit existing or save additional content until storage is below quota again. Email will continue to be available. Learn about managing files in Google Drive.

June 11, 2024

100GB quota implemented for all UW Google accounts

All user accounts must be below 100GB in total storage utilization before this date.
User accounts that exceed 100GB and all associated data will be permanently deleted in order to comply with the terms of Google’s new storage policy.

What steps can I take to prepare for the storage limit?

See how much UW Google storage you are currently using.
Learn how to manage data stored in your UW Google account.
Create a migration plan for email, files and business processes that must be retained.
Review alternatives to UW Google, such as:
- UW-IT’s online storage options or
- UW Office 365. This productivity platform offers collaboration services such as Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft 365 Groups that may offer a similar experience.

Where can I go for help?

UW-IT’s service technicians stand ready to answer any questions you may have about this change, and about the different storage options available. Please contact the UW-IT Technology Service Center at help@uw.edu or 206-221-5000. You can also visit IT Connect to learn more about migrating your own data.

Users can also work directly with their department’s IT support group for specific recommendations and more individualized help.

UW-IT is currently working with vendors to determine the feasibility of providing a tool to migrate data from UW Google to an alternative repository. We will communicate about available solutions as soon as possible.

The UW Google Changes Project Team

UW Finance Cube undergoes redesign

We’re happy to announce the release of the newly redesigned UW Finance Cube, formerly known as the Financial Activity Cube. Kicked off in August 2021, the project is now completed and ready for use. Developers and testers across UWFT (UW Finance Transformation) and UW-IT ERA (Enterprise Reporting and Analytics) collaborated closely with users to update the schema, making it easier to maintain, and making it more intuitive for finance users at all levels.

The current Financial Activity Cube will no longer be available after October 30th.

Please read on to learn:

What is the UW Finance Cube?
Why was it redesigned?
What will it take to switch from the old cube to the new?

What is the UW Finance Cube?

The UW Finance Cube is a database which contains University of Washington financial data. It is configured in a way that makes the retrieval of any data point easy. Do you want actuals vs. budget by organization or by account code? The new UW Finance Cube makes this kind of data filtering effortless. The built-in flexibility of the cube allows users to see complex data in new and different ways allowing for robust financial reporting and analysis. To access the cube, all you need is an application such as Microsoft Excel or Tableau.

Why was the UW Finance Cube redesigned?

The initial finance cube, Financial Activity Cube, through changes and with time, had become unwieldy and lacked needed flexibility. There were several attempts made to redesign the cube in a way that would not affect users, but finally a decision was made to drastically change the cube to make maintenance easier and to improve the process and flexibility for adding new attributes.

This enhanced cube will be especially important with UWFT (UW Finance Transformation) going live in July 2023. To preserve data currently available for static reporting, we don’t want to build more reports but rather, we want to use the cube. A good example of the need for this strategy is the multitude of reports we currently have in MyFD, the application for UW’s financial accounting system that will soon be retired. How can we retain the rich data in those reports? The best answer is the new UW Finance Cube, which can be easily changed to satisfy varied reporting and analysis needs.

The redesigned UW Finance Cube for biennia 2019 and 2021 are now in production. Users can expect the redesigned finance cube and its predecessor to run in parallel until October 30th, at which point we’ll retire the older cube. Users can expect to find the same data elements and have the same levels of access as in the previous version, but will need to rebuild their existing workbooks using new dimensions and renamed attributes.

What will it take to switch from the old cube to the new?

To support flexibility and ease of maintenance, we’ve worked very hard with users to update the schema making it more intuitive for finance users of all levels. In the updated schema, some attributes that were in one dimension are now in a different dimension which will make the switch from the old cube to the new a bit more challenging.

But you’re not on your own. We have support documentation, and we held a webinar in June led by Karen Goetz, UWFT: Software Engineer, which resulted in helpful resources listed below. In addition, every Friday morning the BI team hosts BI Office Hours where you can ask questions and get answers.

To connect to the new UW Finance Cube, please refer to the Finance Data Cube Resources wiki page.

Currently, the following cubes are available:

UW Finance Cube 2021
UW Finance Cube 2019

The redesigned finance cubes for biennia 2007-2017 have been added as well.

The Financial Activity Cube and the redesigned UW Finance Cube are running in parallel. Please remember, the Financial Activity Cube will no longer be available after October 30th.

Additional resources

To learn more about the new design, how to connect to the cube, and what changed and how, please visit our Finance Data Cube Resources wiki page.

To learn more about the new schema and attributes, please visit Knowledge Navigator: UW Finance Cube.

UW-IT’s Enterprise Reporting and Analytics (ERA) will continue supporting users as needed. We’re here to help:

Join us for BI Office Hours every Friday from 9am – 10am via zoom link https://washington.zoom.us/my/busintel, or
Email us at help@uw.edu with “reports, cubes and dashboards” in the subject line, or
We’re available to meet one-on-one if you’re having problems switching to the new cube.

EWS EVAL Release 11 is now available

Monthly Scheduled Releases

What’s New in EWS Release 11

Web Service	Overview of Release
FWS v2 (Outbound)	Breaking Changes were made to the /Customer and /Sponsor resources New data was introduced to the /PurchaseItem resource For more information, refer to FWS Reference Data (Outbound) – Release 11. For support, refer to Support \| FWS.
FWS v2 (Inbound)	A new version of the FWS Access Request form has been published and can be accessed from Step 6 of the FWS Getting Started guide. In order to ensure we have ALL of the information we need to get you started with FWS v2 Inbound, we are asking all existing users and those who have outstanding requests to resubmit using the form. Improvements were made for error messaging For more information, refer to FWS Common Transactions (Inbound) – Release 11. For support, refer to Support \| FWS.
HRPWS v3	No customer-facing changes were introduced in this release. Note: If you are a current user of HRPWS v2, we ask that you transition to HRPWS v3 by end of 2022. If you are a new user, your HRPWS integration does not need to be ready until UWFT Go Live. For support, refer to Support \| HRPWS. For an introduction to HRPWS and Finance Transformation, including information on the transition from v2 to v3, refer to HRPWS for Finance Transformation.

Web Service

Overview of Release

FWS v2 (Outbound)

Breaking Changes were made to the /Customer and /Sponsor resources
New data was introduced to the /PurchaseItem resource

For more information, refer to FWS Reference Data (Outbound) – Release 11. For support, refer to Support | FWS.

FWS v2 (Inbound)

A new version of the FWS Access Request form has been published and can be accessed from Step 6 of the FWS Getting Started guide. In order to ensure we have ALL of the information we need to get you started with FWS v2 Inbound, we are asking all existing users and those who have outstanding requests to resubmit using the form.
Improvements were made for error messaging

For more information, refer to FWS Common Transactions (Inbound) – Release 11. For support, refer to Support | FWS.

HRPWS v3

No customer-facing changes were introduced in this release.

Note: If you are a current user of HRPWS v2, we ask that you transition to HRPWS v3 by end of 2022. If you are a new user, your HRPWS integration does not need to be ready until UWFT Go Live.

For support, refer to Support | HRPWS. For an introduction to HRPWS and Finance Transformation, including information on the transition from v2 to v3, refer to HRPWS for Finance Transformation.

Summer 2022 Content Manager Update

Hello IT Connect Content Managers,

This is the Summer 2022 edition of the quarterly IT Connect Content Manager Update.

In This Issue

Reminder: IT Connect content freeze Aug 8-Sept 7
Attend IT Connect orientation, check site content after launch
Web Content Best Practices: Summarize in the intro

WHAT’S NEW?

Reminder: IT Connect content freeze Aug 8-Sept 7

As part of the IT Connect User Enhancements project, implementation of a new IT Connect content organization will require a four-week freeze on content edits on the live site starting August 8. This will allow the live site content to be duplicated on a staging server, so that it can be reorganized into the new information architecture (how the site is organized) before the new site goes live.

During this content freeze, you won’t be able to add, edit and remove content on IT Connect to ensure no data is lost.

The project team will notify service owners, managers and content producers when the new IT Connect is live and the freeze is complete, which may be sooner than the scheduled date if the work goes smoothly.

Attend IT Connect orientation, check site content after launch

In order to ensure a smooth transition after the launch of IT Connect, please plan to attend an orientation session and check your content to help correct any issues missed during the changeover.

The project team has finished its user research and moved on to the site development phase. A month-long content freeze (see first story) is planned from August 8 to September 7. Then the project will finish the implementation, and launch the new IT Connect in early September, with a completely-redone content organization and a sleeker, simpler look and feel.

After the launch, please make time for the following two critical items:

Attend an orientation session: Shortly after the new IT Connect launches, the IT Connect service manager will hold orientation sessions for content producers. These sessions will go over the new organization of the site, showcase new functionality to help content producers with their pages, and provide an opportunity for questions and answers. Communications about these sessions will be sent to all content managers as we get closer to launch.
Help check content after launch: As part of implementation, the project team will scrutinize IT Connect in order to fix items that aren’t working as expected on the new site. But your help is needed to ensure no issues are missed. After the site goes live, take some time to go over the content you manage and send the IT Connect project team any issues you might find through help@uw.edu with the subject line “Communications team.”

Web content best practices: Summarize content on page in the intro

As the primary source for information about technology tools and resources at the UW, IT Connect gets many visitors a year, users with many different backgrounds and reasons for coming to the site. To help users know if the page they’ve landed on has the information they are looking for, write an introduction as the first paragraph on every page that concisely describes what is on the page. This allows users to quickly assess if they have found the information they need, or if they need to continue looking for it on other pages.

DOCUMENTATION, TRAINING & CONSULTATIONS

Do you need some help creating IT Connect content, another head to brainstorm content organization and layout, or want to learn how to use the features available in IT Connect? There’s several ways to get help:

- Content Manager Documentation: Extensive documentation ranging from the basics of WordPress to advanced features for pages is available on the IT Connect Content Manager Documentation.
- Guide to writing documentation: Use the Getting started with documentation guide to help you start writing documentation. The guide breaks down a process you can use to help you get information to your end users in documentation.
- Training: One-on-one training for managing content on IT Connect is available from the IT Connect product manager, Nick Rohde, over Zoom or in person (once normal operations continue after the coronavirus pandemic). Get tips on correctly formatting content using the tools in IT Connect or learn how to organize your content. To arrange training, send an email to help@uw.edu with IT Connect Training in the subject line.

Consultation: Consultation sessions for individuals or teams are available from the IT Connect product manager, Nick Rohde. Send an email to help@uw.edu with IT Connect Consultation in the subject line to schedule a consultation.

A consolidated, redesigned BI Portal launched on June 27

With a new interface and backend code base, UW-IT Information Management’s Enterprise Reporting and Analytics team has concluded over two years of work to consolidate and redesign two separate portals — BI Portal and UW Profiles. The main objectives of consolidating these two portals were to improve the customer experience and reduce the overall cost of running two separate infrastructures.

The new BI Portal user experience enhancements include:

Improved search capability
Logical grouping of BI products (reports, cubes, dashboard) by tagging
Simpler user interface
Future integration of report catalogs from external platforms, like Workday
Faster time to deliver new reports or update existing reports through automation and custom development tools

The overall redesign provides the additional benefits of streamlining and automating the development processes, including publication of reports to the BI Portal. This publication improvement eliminates complex manual processes that delayed reports publishing in the past, processes that were highly prone to human error.

What is the BI Portal?

In 2013, the BI (Business Intelligence) Portal made its debut and was created to provide reports, cubes and dashboards for data available in the EDW (Enterprise Data Warehouse). Reporting accessible through the BI Portal offers current and historical institutional data for finance, student and research departments, informing the University’s operations and strategic decision-making.

What is UW Profiles?

In 2014, UW Profiles was added to get more data into the hands of more users. This web-based tool displays institutional dashboards created using Tableau software. It was designed to provide University leadership (Provost, Deans, Executives, Directors) with longitudinal information about UW. Each dashboard displays aggregated data for high-level analysis, not detailed information, to be used for operational reporting.

The teams behind the scenes

“The success of this project lies with the team! The team’s focus, dedication, and professionalism made this project a reality and fun to work on. I want to thank them for an excellent job!” said Bart Pietrzak, Director, Enterprise Reporting and Analytics.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Snezana Popovic, Technology Project Manager, UW-IT: Research Computing & Strategy: Program Management Office

DEVELOPMENT AND DEPLOYMENT

Andrew Nelson, Full-Stack Developer
Courtney Drake, Database Developer
Indra Narayan, Data Engineer
Jean Darlington, Business Analyst, Tester
Moon Koslowski, Full-Stack Developer
Tracy Fisher, Tester
Katy Moazzami, Business Systems Analyst

Andrew architected the BI Portal software design utilizing micro services and set up a continuous delivery and automated deployment process on Azure. He also set up the workflow orchestrations allowing for automated SSRS report deployment, archiving and report versioning.

Indra focused on designing and implementing the backend database that supports the existing and new BI Portal and its corresponding administration tool with its complex workflows.

Courtney joined the team mid-project and took over the database work without skipping a beat. She planned and executed the complicated migration process from the old BI Portal and UW Profiles databases into the new, consolidated database.

Moon architected the frontend and display data services for the new BI Portal and the administration tool using the React framework, as well as created the hosting for both applications within Azure.

Tracy was the technology tester who put the consolidated and redesigned application through its paces to validate all user scenarios, uncovering any bugs, errors or defects that a user might encounter.

Jean, as business analyst, ensured that the team as a whole was on the same page regarding design, implementation and testing. She provided all the project coordination, working closely with the project manager (PM), communications, development team, QA and design.

Katy, who joined later in the project, assisted Jean with documenting User Acceptance Testing (UAT) feedback in JIRA tickets. She’ll be coordinating future BI Portal work and is currently collaborating on the intro video for the new portal.

DEPLOYMENT PREPARATION

Bomani Siwatu, Sr. Applications Systems Engineer
Grzegorz Grabowski, Sr. Applications Systems Engineer
Rosalie Leano, Sr. Applications Systems Engineer
Tom Escobar, Sr. Applications Systems Engineer
Travis Boyle, Infrastructure Engineer
Nina Velikin, Technology Manager

Bomani and Rosalie were instrumental in preparing the deployment of the reports, cubes and dashboards to the new BI Portal. They helped to clean up objects in the old catalog and helped with testing of the objects as they were deployed to the new catalog.

Grzegorz, Tom and Travis worked on preparing the objects in the old catalog for the migration. They ascertained the correct versions of the reports, made necessary adjustments, and worked closely with Courtney to ensure that new BI Portal databases were populated with the proper data.

CUSTOMER SUPPORT DOCUMENTATION

Mairead Roden, Business Systems Analyst
Audrey McGrath, Business Systems Analyst
Shawn Lowe, Technical Trainer, UWFT

Mairead was the architect behind the content of the Help pages, organizing it into the coherent and well-presented BI Portal Introduction. Customize the BI Portal Wiki page is Audrey’s design and presentation. Shawn is creating the BI Portal introduction video.

User feedback

UAT started in January of this year. Users with different data needs took part in reviewing and testing the new consolidated portal, performing their business use cases and providing recommendations and feedback.

A mini freeze

In mid-June the team implemented a code freeze. Users were able to work as usual during this freeze while request tickets were held until the freeze ended.

A summer release

After the brief freeze the new BI Portal went live on June 27. The new BI Portal is now one main road that leads to a variety of reporting needs, including the off-the-shelf reports that used to live separately in UW Profiles, now located in the Browse by Tags section.

Customer requests for features and other nice-to-haves are now in the queue for future updates and releases which will be easier and faster to implement now that the two portals are one.

By the numbers

Users say:

“There are tags that are meaningful for my work. And I think it could be a good way to search to find options other than the reports I most typically use.”

“The plus sign (+) to give more information is great and the tool tip to see what each report is before clicking to see the detail is a wonderful addition.”

“The functionality is very intuitive. I love that my favorites are at the top, and I love the look and feel of the icons.”

What’s next?

The new BI Portal will be the topic of a BI Portal webinar in September. We hope you’ll join the Reporting and Analytics team to take a deeper dive into the new interface and get answers to your questions.

Questions?

Please contact help@uw.edu with BI Portal in the subject line.

Knowledge Navigator Metadata Update Spring Qtr 2022

UW Metadata Manager, Keith A. Van Eaton, from Information Management’s Enterprise Reporting & Analytics team, has added or updated metadata objects in Knowledge Navigator.

In their ongoing partnership, the UW’s data domain stewards, subject matter experts, and metadata manager ensure metadata objects are vetted and approved so that UW data users have a common understanding around UW data.

New terms added

New structured objects or reports added

17 Enterprise Dashboards
1 UW Finance Cube
1 UW General Ledger Cube
3 tables & 70 columns EFECSDataStore database
6 tables & 100 columns GLDataMart database
3 tables & 56 columns UWSDBDataStore database
30 tables & 407 columns UWODS database
6 tables & 591 columns WDFinDataMart database

UW Metadata Objects

The Tableau visualization below shows, over time, all objects brought into Knowledge Navigator. Hover over any graphic element to get more info. https://bitools.uw.edu/t/Transitional/views/UWMetadataObjects/UWMetadataObjects?:showAppBanner=false&:display_count=n&:showVizHome=n&:origin=viz_share_link

UW Metadata Engagement

The Tableau visualization below shows, over time, the Subject Matter Expert who drafted a business definition and the Data Steward who approved the definition for any given data. Hover over any graphic element to get more information. https://bitools.uw.edu/t/Transitional/views/UWMetadataEngagement/UWMetadataEngagement?:showAppBanner=false&:display_count=n&:showVizHome=n&:origin=viz_share_link

To access these links from an off-site location, please do one of the following:

Remote into your work computer.
Use the F5/Big VPN (not UW MWS VPN) with your personal computer.

Knowledge Navigator is the UW’s metadata repository which contains information about the following collections and object types:

Glossaries of business terms
Database tables and columns
Web Service resources and fields
Cube dimensions and measures
Enterprise reports and dashboards

Terms and objects are updated regularly. To learn more about Knowledge Navigator, where terms come from, and how they get included in Knowledge Navigator, visit the information page at https://it.uw.edu/work/data/understand-data/data-definitions/.

If you’d like a demo of Knowledge navigator for your department, or if you have questions, please contact help@uw.edu with “Knowledge Navigator” in the subject line.

EWS EVAL Release 10 is now available

Monthly Scheduled Releases

Updates to EVAL for all EWS services are now released on the same monthly schedule. This allows us to better synchronize with Enterprise Data Platform’s release schedule for Finance Transformation. For more information, refer to the Data Availability Timeline.

What’s New in EWS EVAL Release 10

Web Service	Overview of Release
FWS v2 (Outbound)	Several existing resources were updated Several new resources and sub-resources were added New endpoints were made available to search Two breaking changes were introduced: Removed PrimaryProjectHierarchies and restored with ProjectHierarchies data with the /Project resource Multiple resources were updated to use the same format as the Org based Entity Hierarchy resources For more information, refer to FWS Reference Data (Outbound) – Release 10. For support, refer to Support \| FWS.
FWS v2 (Inbound)	Some existing resources were updated Bug fixes Added capability to submit ISD transactions up to 10K rows Provider and Cash Flow Code can no longer be used as worktags No breaking changes were introduced For more information, refer to FWS Common Transactions (Inbound) – Release 10. For support, refer to Support \| FWS.
HRPWS v3	Some existing resources were updated Multiple breaking changes were introduced: Some fields have been updated with the correct data types Some fields have been renamed XML tags have been refactored and will impact consumers who use xml payloads HREFS have been updated Multiple resource changes introducing breaking changes For more information on this release, refer to HRPWS v3 – Release 10. For support, refer to Support \| HRPWS. For an introduction to HRPWS and the Finance Transformation, including information on the transition from v2 to v3, refer to HRPWS for Finance Transformation. Note: If you are a current user of HRPWS v2, we ask that you transition to HRPWS v3 by end of 2022. If you are a new user, your HRPWS integration does not need to be ready until UWFT Go Live.

New BI Portal is LIVE

Team successfully released the new BI Portal v2 on Monday 6/27.

What’s new?

New Interface: The BI Portal has a new look but the content is the same, including all the items you had in your “Favorites.”*
UW Profiles is now inside the BI Portal: You can navigate to the original dashboards via the Browse by Tags section (shown below) on the home page, then clicking the UW Profiles tile.

Where we started
In 2013, the BI (Business Intelligence) Portal made its debut. It was created to provide reports, dashboards and cubes for data available in the EDW (Enterprise Data Warehouse). Reports, dashboards and cubes accessible through the BI Portal offer current and historical institutional data for finance, student and research departments, informing the University’s operations and strategic decision-making.

Bringing it all together
In the spring of 2020, UW-IT Information Management’s Enterprise Reporting and Analytics team started the work of bringing the two separate portals — BI Portal and UW Profiles — together. The main two objectives of consolidating these two portals were improving customer experience and reducing the overall cost of running the infrastructure from two portals down to one. Some user experience enhancements included: improved search capability, logical grouping of BI products (reports, cubes, dashboard) by tagging, and a more simplistic user interface. The overall redesign of the solution presented additional benefits of streamlining and automating the development processes, including publication of reports to the BI Portal. This improvement eliminates complex manual processes that delayed reports publishing in the past, processes that were prone to human error.

During the past year, the team has finalized the design and development of the new BI Portal. Further refinement of the work came from engaging a small group of users who provided initial feedback around the design and functionality of the portal. During this process, issues were categorized, triaged, and prioritized based on the predefined project criteria, ensuring the product meets the business requirements, use cases, and project timeline. The final User Acceptance Testing (UAT) completed in April of 2022. This UAT group included a much larger group of users who provided additional feedback that was either backlogged or incorporated into this final product.

What’s next?
The new BI Portal will be the topic of a BI Portal webinar in September. We hope you’ll join the Reporting & Analytics team to take a grand tour of the new interface and get answers to your questions.

Questions?
Please contact help@uw.edu with BI Portal in the subject line.

* Favorites bookmarked during the migration process will not be captured and will need to be bookmarked again.