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Redesign Performance Improvements

With more and more districts of various sizes migrating to Redesign this past year, some of the larger districts expressed concern in regards to concerns with performance and if the Redesigned redesigned applications can accommodate them.  We have taken those inquiries very seriously and over the past several months have made vast improvements on the speed of the software.  Both the USAS-R and USPS-R teams have been hard at work to increase the speed of various canned and template reports and improving problem areas in each package application that we have received frequent feedback on.  The improvements are impressive with the average increase in performance speed at 70% for both applications.  Listed below are just a few of the heavy hitters:

• USAS-R: 
  • Financial Detail Report: 94% improvement in performance
  • Posting/Updating Purchase Orders: 57-70%
  • Cash Reconciliation: 75%
  • Appropriation Resolution Report: 99.9%
  • USPS/USAS Account Sync Process: 89%
• USPS-R:
  • Employer Retirement Share Report/Submission: 98% improvement in performance
  • Payroll Posting: 5-10 times faster
  • Unposting Payroll: 30 times faster
  • AFFORD Report: 98%
  • Payroll Report: 60%
  • Payables Summary/Detail Reports: 78-98%

Improving your Custom Grid Performance

We will continue to improve performance in both applications but a frequent question we receive is how to improve performance when filtering on a grid.  If filtering on the grid is causing delays in retrieval of the data, you need to review the columns included on your grid.  The number of columns containing calculated amounts can impede performance.  If you have 10 calculated columns included in your expenditure grid, the harder the page has to work to calculate and display all of those figures .  because the amounts are not stored, they are calculated on the fly.  We advise a maximum of 1 or 2 calculated fields per grid, especially for district districts with a large chart of accounts.   It becomes increasingly more difficult if you are adding add columns that come from associated grids (i.e., on the expenditure grid, you include calculated amounts from the associated cash or appropriation amountsaccounts) or columns that include a complex calculation (i.e. FYTD Expendable calculation takes into account Initial appropriationinitial, budget adjustments, and prior year encumbrances amounts to calculate the total).  

One thing to consider is a more convenient way to pull data with calculated fields.  If you frequently generate a report from the grid and purposely include a number of calculated columns on the grid for the purpose of running that report, we instead recommend creating a report for all of those calculated amounts.   For example,  use the “Save as” option on the Report button to capture all of the columns you want from your grid and send those to a Report definition that you can generate any time you want.   They can  You can then reset the grid to the default columns using the "Reset" icon on the top right side of the grid to remove the calculated columns and then add back any necessary columns as needed. 

Helpful Tips for Audit

We have received some questions regarding auditor access in the software.  Listed below are some tips

to assist you with access questions/requests your auditor may have during your next financial audit.

• Do you have a recommendation on the level of access that should be granted when creating an auditor user account?

USAS-R: You can create a user account granting the USAS_RO role which is equivalent to the OECN_USAS_RO (USAS Read-Only) identifier in Classic.   Read-only access will allow them to run reports themselves as well as query transactions and view monthly and year-end reports under File Archive.   TIP: Creating a generic auditor user account allows them to mark reports as favorites or create custom reports which can be recalled in future audits.   You can set an 'account expiration' date on the user account in order to time it with the audit period so once the audit is complete, the account is disabled.  The following year, you can re-enable the account and it will contain the custom reports and reports favorites the audit team used in the prior audit.  If you do not wish to grant read-only access, you can create a custom role for the auditor selecting specific permissions you would like them to have access to.  For example, if your prefer to run reports/query data for your auditor but would like them to have access to the reports under File Archive (equivalent of MONTHLYCD/FISCALCD in Classic), you can create a custom role (i.e. 'Auditor Archive Reports') including the MODULE_FILE_MONTHLYREPORT_VIEW and MODULE_FILE_FISCALYEARREPORT_VIEW permissions and include the custom role when creating their user account.

USPS-R: You can create a user account granting the STANDARD_READONLY_USER role which is equivalent to the OECN_USPS_RO (USPS Read-Only) identifier in Classic.  Read-only access will allow them to run reports themselves as well as query employee data.   TIP: Read-only does not automatically grant access to the reports under File Archive.  You will need to create a custom role (i.e. 'Auditor Archive Reports') including the MODULE_FILE_PAYROLLARCHIVE_VIEW permission to this role and include that additional role to their existing user account.  If you wish to provide access to the File Archive reports only, remove the read-only role from their user account.  As mentioned in the prior paragraph, the auditor can mark reports as favorites with their own account or create custom reports which can be recalled in future audits.   Also, the account expiration can be set and the account re-enabled for future audits as well. 

• Auditor is requesting a report of User Account information. 

  • We have three different levels of this report available in both applications. 
    • SSDT User Listing AOS Extract: This recently added report extracts user account data into a tab-separated value format. per request from state auditors.  It contains the Username, Name, Last Login, Enabled, Locked, Password Expiration, External Authentication  as well as the Roles assigned to the user and associated permissions for each of the roles.
    • SSDT User Listing Report: similar to the AOS Extract but it does not contain as much information.  Included in the User Listing is the Username, Name, Last Login and Roles assigned.
    • SSDT USXS Role Listing Report: The data from this report is not pulling user account data.  It is pulling the SSDT and custom roles the district has created along with the permissions assigned to each role.

• Auditor is requesting a USAS template report generated from the prior fiscal year.  What are my options?

  • First check to see if the report needed already exists in the archived fiscal year end report bundle 
  • Account-based template reports contain a 'Total as of Period' parameter which should be entered in MM/DD/YYYY format.  So if you they need the report as of June 2020, you do not need to re-open a prior period June nor do you need to set June as the current period.  The 'Total As of Period' will calculate amounts for the entire period based on the date entered.  So if you enter 06/15/2020 or 06/30/2020, you'll get the same results.. the total amount will be as of 06/30/June 2020.
  • For transaction based template reports, they you can generate the report retroactively without reopening re-opening June.  Simply enter the prior year start/stop transaction dates. 
  • If neither option is available for a specific report and you need to change the period to generate the report, you can do so without re-opening June. Under Core > Posting Periods, leave June closed but click on the 'current check mark ' checkmark icon to make June the current period (will highlight the period green) and then run the needed reports. Make sure to change the current period back when finished.   
• Auditor is requesting a report of User Accounts and their permissions.
  • SSDT User Listing AOS Extract - USPSR
  • SSDT User Listing AOS Extract - USASR
• User accounts for auditors
  • In USAS-R, it is recommended an user account be created using the USAS_RO role which is equivalent to the OECN_USAS_RO (USAS Read-Only) identifier in Classic.  The permissions on this role can be found here in the manual under USAS_RO  https://wiki.ssdt-ohio.org/display/usasrdoc/Roles.  USAS-R would be USAS_USER_REPORT.  Thus, create a ROLE (for example something like. 'Audtior Standard Report') and then add the permission USAS_USER_REPORT to this role.  Then go to the auditor user record and apply this role (along with USAS_RO) to the auditor's user account.
  • For USPS-R, the Auditor user account can be set to the role of USPS_STANDARD_PAYROLL_VIEW. To view reports under File Archive, create a ROLE (for example something like. 'Audtior Standard Report') and then add the permission USPS_STANDARD_REPORT to this role.  Then go to the auditor user record and apply this role (along with USAS_RO) to the auditor's user account.
• Audit Trail Report
•  new Audit report that works better, It's under Reports/Audit Report.

•  known issue's with the SSDT Audit Trail one.  So they created a new Audit Report that will run with no issue's.  The auditors may not be aware that they can now use this new Audit Report instead. 

  If they want to use this old one, they may have to schedule the report to run as a job and email/ftp the report to themselves.

 I told this Treasurer to use the audit report from the Reports dropdown menu but it doesn't show up for her. She had been assigned a special META Group manager role so I figured maybe I needed to change that to just the regular SSDT manager access. Had her log out and back in but it still doesn't show up. Shouldn't this report be available for anyone with standard or group manager access? What would I need to do so she can get access to it?

yes, they should be able to see it. We will create a Jira issue and attach it to this ticket.  For now, have them add 

 MODULE_AUDIT_VIEW
•  

f you could possibly change the current SSDT User Listing to the attached .json file (sample also attached) as soon as possible.  Below I have attached statements from Gregory Woodruff, Audit Manager:

The user list showing roles and permissions though should be a tab separated text file and include the following columns; Username, Name, Last Login, Enabled, Locked, Password Expiration, External Authentication, Role and Access Identifiers.  I know there are a lot of districts live and I don’t want you to have to rerun these reports.  If you want to send us a sample report we can let you know if that will work.

…. we are trying to be consistent with all the ITCs.  If we could get that report as a tab separated text file that would be perfect.

…. As far as the ITC go this should be requested by all of the State Auditor’s performing the SOC 1.  We will actually create files for each district as well and provide them to the financial auditors performing the district audits.

I have run the attached samples by Greg, and he approves.  Also, this would be incredibly helpful for our users when we do our spring user accounts audit for the SOC1, as we are usually asking them to run it from the grid as the SSDT User Listing provided does not give quite enough detail.eports will be added as SSDT Template reports in the Report manager. The USPS-R issue indicates that they plan to include the update on 6.17.0 and USAS-R doesn't have it listed yet but I believe Jodi said she will likely be able to include it in one of the July releases.

• district had us add an auditor of state username, and we granted it the ‘STANDARD_READONLY_USER role.  The payroll clerk is saying that they don’t have access to run the Employee Master report in the Reports drop down area in USPS-R.  What role would they minimally need to have to run that repor should be able to create a ROLE (Standard Report) and then add the USPS_STANDARD_REPORT option to this role and then apply that Role to the auditor user record.

Social Media Update

• What audit reports are available in USXS-R to assist the auditors?

  • Both USAS & USPS contain template reports called SSDT Audit Trail and SSDT Auditable Events.   The Audit Trail report displays every change made in USXS-R to any object. It will require heavy filtering since it contains so much data.  The SSDT has an existing JIRA issue in USAS-R to improve the usability of the USAS Audit Trail Report .  The Auditable Events report includes things like 'Rules Reloaded Event' and 'Modules Installed Event'. Different events in the system will be captured in this report.     TIP:  As an alternative to the USPS SSDT Audit Trail report, we have a canned report called 'USPS Audit Report' allowing the user to select specific objects (i.e. employee, payroll item, etc.) and/or users, date range and type of operation performed (add, modified or deleted) displayed in a column format listing the field name, old value and new value making it much easier to read than our traditional Audit Trail report.      TIP: In order to access and run the audit reports, the 'MODULE_AUDIT_VIEW' permission is required.