October 2022: Mosaic Rapid Release

Goal:Implement new eform for BI Reporting Requests

What has changed: You can now request updates to existing BI finance-related reporting and new BI reports using the BI Reporting Request eForm, located in the Administrative Home page/Chartfield & BI Report Requests tile.

Anything Else I Need to Know: This will help to gather and prioritize end user requests more effectively.

Goal: Enhance the Chartfield Add/Update eform

What has changed: We’ve updated instructions for our Chartfield Add/Update eform and included useful queries within the form menu to help users with completing the form.

Anything Else I Need to Know: This form can now be found together with the new BI Report Request form on a re-labelled tile in Administrative Home: Chartfield & BI Report Requests.

Goal: Incorporate Co-op rows into EMT Report

What has changed: A new setup table and screen has been created to facilitate tracking co-op and non-coop programs together during Admissions reporting.

Anything Else I Need to Know: This will eliminate previous manual steps by staff to merge these rows in the output of the report.

Goal: Provide an easy way to review instructor info for scheduled courses

What has changed: We added a new query to the Campus Centre, enabling faculty offices to review instructor information on scheduled course sections.

Anything Else I Need to Know: This will be useful to make sure this data is accurate for examinations, course evaluations and grade rosters.

Goal: Expand the HR Strategic Reporting Hub – Oct 2022

What has changed: Based on great feedback from end users, the HR Strategic Reporting Hub has been expanded to include new reports aimed at improving efficiency within Human Resources Services.

Anything Else I Need to Know: Two (2) new reports have been added to this popular navigation collection! The new reports were created to support auditing annual and operational pension processes to ensure retirements are administered efficiently.

Goal: Migrate the FS and HR databases to Oracle Gen2 – a Mosaic First!

What has changed: Moving the Finance and Human Resources databases to Oracle Gen2 hardware will improve performance and response time, and is the first step in the move to Oracle Cloud.

Anything Else I Need to Know: Loading pages, and running processes and reports in Finance and HR should be faster with this upgrade.

We will continue with migrating CS, DW, and Portal to Gen2 in the near future.

Goal: Enable Grad students who no longer have an active job record to complete expense reports

What has changed: Several system updates were completed to provide the ability to complete expense reports for Grad Students who may no longer have an active job record. This should help reduce the impact of the required HR mass termination & re-hire process for Grad students.

Anything Else I Need to Know: Please note that if a grad student has never had a job record with McMaster (includes TA, RA, research scholarship), expense reports are not possible and reimbursements must be completed via non-po voucher.

Goal: Add new field to Expendable Balance Template for Aid and Awards

What has changed: Added “Allocation Type” field to the Expendable Balance Template that is used to load max fiscal balances for awards and bursaries.

Anything Else I Need to Know: This simple change will assist Aid & Awards staff in sorting and prioritizing data when loading fiscal balances.

Goal: Provide Data Cookbook summaries on the HR Reporting Hub – Phase 1 – a Mosaic first!

What has changed: Our very first Mosaic navigation collection to be integrated with Data Cookbook! We have begun by providing Data Cookbook summaries on 43 of our most frequently accessed reports on the HR Reporting Hub.  No need to open up a separate user guide to understand what data the report will generate – the definitions and summaries are all at your fingertips! We are very excited about this new feature!

Anything Else I Need to Know: We will continue to integrate additional reports in this same Navigation Collection with Data Cookbook summaries in future releases.

Bonus: we plan to add Data Cookbook integrations to other navigation collections, both in HR and in other streams in future releases!

Goal: Streamline the process for applying user security settings

What has changed: Automated a very labour-intensive process that was required to set up new users in the system with the proper security settings.

Anything Else I Need to Know: This will expedite user access.

Goal: Sync the security role for research accountants between our pre and post-award systems

What has changed: We have synced the security role for research accountants between our pre-award and post-award systems to save manual effort when opening research projects.

Anything Else I Need to Know: An automated query and update script has been put in place to run nightly, removing the need to manually update hundreds of projects opened each year – a huge efficiency!