We have completed the second pay period that uses self-service for student time reporting AND manager approval. Overall, this transition has been met with much success. Here are some numbers…

Last Pay Period (1/16 – 1/29)

• 737 students logged into HR Direct
• 925 students reported time during pay period
• Manager approved 95% ofstudent reportedtime in HR Direct

This Pay Period (1/30 – 2/12)

• 1137 students logged into HR Direct
• 1177 students have reported time
• 85% of this time was done via student self-service
• 15% done by timekeepers or managers to correct or update student time
• Managers approved 95% of student time — over 1100 job records approved!

The Human Resource office actively monitors student time approval on “Approval Monday”. Managers have until midnight to complete approvals,but arereminded throughout the day via email of any outstanding time needing approval.

While the numbers to indicate good success, there is always room for improvement. If you have any ideas or suggestions please share them with us at asi@uml.edu .

Effective January 16, 2011 — all student hourly employees should begin reporting time directly into the HR Direct application. Getting started is just a few simple steps away

1. Go to our training pages and view a printable job aid or view aquick 4 minute video. http://www.uml.edu/hr/hrdirect/training/Student.html
2. Login to HR Direct at http://www.uml.edu/hrdirect and click the ‘Login’ button. You will use your student email address and password to access HR Direct.
3. Start reporting your own time for hours worked AFTER January 16 (or upon other instructions from your supervisor)

If you need assistance with your login please contact the Help Desk at 978-934-4357 (HELP).

1/24 Update: Change in locations for drop in labs

Attention Managers who Approve StudentEmployees

The pay period beginning 1/16/2011 and ending 1/29/2011 will be the 1st pay period managers will have to approve student employee timesheets on line in HR Direct in order for the student employee to be paid. The approval deadline for this pay period is Monday, January 31, 2011. Any student whose hours are not approved will not get paid on the February 4th check.

Allstudent contracts entered into HR Direct will automatically be assigned the security access to enter their timesheets online. Paper timesheets will no longer be used and all student employees will enter their time worked online in HR Direct.
Exception: Student Teaching Assistants and Research Assistants will not have to enter their time online.

Learning Opportunities

There are multiple ways to learn more about the time approval process. See the “Information For..” pages for all the details. Addtionally, we are offering drop in labs for any employee who has questions or needs training to either enter their time on line or approve employee’s time in HR Direct.

Monday, January 24

• 9:00am-11:00am Olsen 105
• 1:00pm-3:00pm Olsen 105 (changed from O’Leary due to class schedule conflict)

Friday, January 28

• 8:00am-4:00pmOlsen 105

Monday, January 31— LAST DAY TO APPROVE TIME OR STUDENTS WON’T GET CHECK THIS PAY PERIOD —

• 8:00am-4:00pmOlsen 105

The following email was sent to all students on 12/1/2010 from theInformation Technology office.

++++++

Students,

It has come to our attention that your UMass Lowell student account password may have already expired or will expire shortly. We have received numerous calls, indicating that multiple users cannot access university applications that utilize your student credentials. Examples include:

‘ Emergency Notification System

‘ Wireless Access

‘ Library Access

‘ Access to 360/Apreso for lecture downloads

HR DIRECT IS INCLUDED AND IS IMPACTED BY THIS ISSUE

Reason:

Per policy, your UMass Lowell password will expire 180 days after you reset it. Since we migrated all student accounts to the new, larger Outlook Live mail platform beginning the last week of May 2010, some of you may have expired passwords already or will expire shortly.

Note: Although you may be able to login to Outlook Live to access your email account, you will not be able to access the above applications if your password has expired. The reason for this is that your mailbox is hosted at a Microsoft datacenter and they do not expire passwords ‘ by design, since we synchronize your password with the university’s environment. While your ‘on-campus’ password has expired, Microsoft hasn’t notified you.

Action:

If you are experiencing login issues to the above applications, you will need to reset your password in one of the two following methods:

1. Browse to password.uml.edu

o Enter your full email address

o Enter your current password

o Enter your new password

Once your password has been accepted, it will take five minutes to synchronize with the Windows Live environment. We appreciate your patience.

Login to Outlook Live via http://outlook.com to verify your new password.

2. Call the University Help Desk at 978-934-4357

o Be prepared to provide information to verify your identity

o Once you obtain a new password, visit password.uml.edu to reset it.

Future plans:

We understand this is an inconvenience to you, and we’re already working to prevent this confusion in the future. In a few weeks, we will start sending out notices via email that your password will be expiring, starting two weeks from the date that your password will expire. This should give you ample time to change your password without a disruption in service.

Additionally, over the course of the next several semesters, Microsoft has stated that they plan to improve their notification functionality, and actively monitor your password expiration. We don’t have a date for this yet, but once we do, we’ll make sure it’s implemented.

Regards,

UMass Lowell Email Services

Office of Information Technology

Olsen Hall Room 100

It has come to our attention that some pay advices have been printed incorrectly. If any employee is using direct deposit and still has their pay advice printed, some of the advices for 11/26/2010 were printed incorrectly. What was distributed to us were the advices for the 11/12/10 pay period. If this happened to you please go on line in HR Direct to see or print your correct advice and the correct amount deposited. You will be looking at a PDF of your pay advice. In order to look at PDFs you have to turn off ‘Pop-Up Blocker’ under Tools in your menu bar.

The Navigation in HR Direct is:

Select from Menu: Self Service> Payroll and Compensation>View Paycheck

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Most offices in the University will be closed on Friday November 26, the day after Thanksgiving. Included among the offices that are not expected to be open is the Bursar’s Office as well as many departmental offices. Since November 26 is a payday, individuals planning on picking up their check on Friday will have to wait until Monday November 29 when offices re-open to get your check or advice.

The solution for this, of course is to sign up for Direct Deposit. Doing so will guarantee that your salary will be in your bank account on Friday morning. This will eliminate the need to pick up a check, deposit it in your account and wait for the money to be available; not to mention the problem of lost or stolen checks. And while we are encouraging those individuals not on direct deposit to do so to avoid a problem on November 26, doing so now will avoid any issues that may occur on December 24, as well as any payday Friday when the University may close due to inclement weather. Check and advices are printed in Shrewsbury, MA and then are driven by courier. Simply, direct deposit is a safe and efficient way for employees to get paid.

Any employee who is currently active in the HR Direct system can go on line and sign up for direct deposit.HR Direct can be accessed at any time from any computer that has internet access. To sign up go tohttp://www.uml.edu/hrdirect. Attached is a User Guide for enrolling in direct deposit. If any person has difficulty with using the self-service option to sign up, please have them contact the Payroll office and we can walk them through the process.

Because the single largest group of individuals not using direct deposit is our student employees, we are asking all managersto makeall of theiremployees, and especially their students, aware ofthe Thanksgiving holidayand ask them to sign up as soon as possible. If they enroll on line by 10/25/10the check processing for 10/29 will validate their bank account numbers. This is called a prenote process. If the account numbers that they entered are valid their salary will be direct deposited to their account for the 11/12 check. If they enroll after 10/25 the first direct deposit will be for the 11/26 check.

Please give the user guide to any employee who may need assistance. The user guide is alsoavailable on the HR Direct website.

Thank You,

Theresa McDonald

Manager of Payroll Services

REFERENCED ATTACHEMENTS ACCESSIBLE HERE:

• Direct Deposit Video
• Direct Deposit Job Aid (pdf)

All employees responsbile for approving time are welcome to drop-in to learn more about the HR Direct time approval process. This is optional training intended to assist users with any questions or concerns they have about the time approval function.

No appointment is necessary — stop in any time during these lab sessions.

Friday, 9/24

• 9 a.m.-noon Olsen 105
• 2-4:30 p.m. O’Leary 300B

Monday 9/27

• 1-4 p.m. Olsen 105

Friday, 10/8

• 9 a.m.-noon Olsen 105
• 2-4:30 p.m. O’Leary 300B

Friday, 10/22

• 9 a.m.-noon Olsen 105
• 2-4:30 p.m. O’Leary 300B

Monday, 10/25

• 1-4 p.m. Olsen 105

Friday, 11/5

• 9 a.m.-noon Olsen 105
• 2-4:30 p.m. O’Leary 300B

Monday, 11/8

• 1-4 p.m. Olsen 105

While many campus employees use HR Direct self-service for time entry and approval, we do have some employees (Facilities and University Police) who report time via the Kronos TimeClock system.

The Kronos Workforce Central(WFC version 5.1) application was installed in 2006 to support Facilities and University Police operations. We currently have approximately 160 active employees and 30 managers using the system. Kronos has since released versions 5.2, 6.0, 6.1 and will be releasing 6.2 last quarter of FY 2011. To maintain vendor support as well as follow best business practices, the decision was made to upgrade to version 6.1 Summer 2010. The Project started in May 2010 and was completed by July 2010 when we completed a full payroll cycle. As part of the upgrade project, a small group of managers were involved in testing and product review. Drop-in training sessions were offered to accommodate all shift supervisors before the application deployed on July 21st End users at the clock have not seen any changes in functionality. Managers using the application have commented on the visual improvements and the ease of transition to version 6.1. We have also implemented LDAP logon for consistency with the HR Direct process as well as more secure access to the application.

Questions about the Kronos application can be directed to Norma Clark at x4764 or email atnorma_clark@uml.edu .

“Student time will need to be approved by managers or the student will not get paid.”

Student

As part of the ongoing rollout of time reporting self-service, Lowell will soonbe granting all student employees access to report time via self-serivce. This will allow student employees the ability to report their own time without having to complete a paper timesheet.

• Time Reporting Video and Job Aid

Timekeepers

Departmental timekeepers will still have security to report time as they do today, but the preferred method of time reporting will be via the self-service pages for the studentemployee.

As key resources within academic and administrative departments, it is important for employees whoserve astimekeepers to be familiar with the student self-service time reporting and approval process.

Managers / Time Approvers

Hourly student time will need to be approved by the manager before it can be paid — this is similar to the paper process in that a timesheet can only be processed if it is first authorized. Currently,Human Resources is still ‘batch approving’ any reported time that isn’t approved by the manager by the ‘Approval Monday’ deadline, but come this fall the campus will no longer ‘batch approve’ student hourly time. Managers will need to approve time or the student will not get paid that pay period. Hence, it will become more critical than everfor managers to adhere to the time approval deadlines within HR Direct.

Things you can do now…

In preparation for this change here are a couple tips for departments and managers:

• Confirm that managers listed on student contracts are aware of their time approving responsiblity. Make any changes as necessary.
• Managers that will be responsible for time approving, should become familiar with the HR Direct application. There are training tools on http://www.uml.edu/hrdirect and current managers should already be using the time approving functionality.
• Discuss a backup plan for your student employee time approval. The existing functionality of HR Direct is that if you can’t approve time, then your manager could approve time for your employees.

More information to come, but please ask questions and share your concerns. Contact ASI@uml.edu .

Earlier this summer we began a pilot with some student employees reporting their own time via HR Direct self-service. This pilot is ongoing and is currently limited to students working for the following list of managers:

• Chandra, Kavitha
• Clark, Norma
• Dubois, Patricia
• Morris, Adrianna
• Piscitello, Nicholas
• Thompson, Charles (Electrical Engineering)
• Tremblay, Jeannie

No decision has yet been made regarding full rollout of self-service time reporting to all students.