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Redesign Performance Improvements

With districts of various sizes migrating to Redesign this past year, some of the larger districts expressed concerns with performance and if the 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 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.   We advise a maximum of 1 or 2 calculated fields per grid, especially for districts with a large chart of accounts.   It becomes increasingly difficult if you add columns that come from associated grids (i.e., on the expenditure grid, you include calculated amounts from the associated cash or appropriation accounts) or columns that include a complex calculation (i.e. FYTD Expendable calculation takes into account initial, 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 and send those to a Report definition that you can generate any time you want.   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/tricks for Audit

We have received some questions regarding auditor access in the software.  Listed below are some tips/tricks to assist you with access questions/requests your auditor may have during your next financial audit.

• Auditor needs a 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 they need the report as of June 2020, you do not need to open a prior period 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 06/30/2020, the the total amount will be as of June 2020.
  • For transaction based template reports, you can generate the report retroactively without reopening 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' 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.  We have two different flavors of this report. 
  • SSDT User Listing AOS Extract
    • This recently added report extracts user 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 them and associated permissions for each of those roles.
  • SSDT User Listing Report does not contain as much information as the AOS extract report.  Included in the User Listing is the Username, Name, Last Login and Roles and Description of the role.
• Do you have a recommendation on what access should be granted when creating an auditor user account?
  • In USAS-R, it is recommended a 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.  If your auditor also needs to view the reports under File Archive, you can create a custom role (i.e. 'Auditor Standard Report) including the USAS_USER_REPORT permission. and include that additional role to their existing user account. 
  • For USPS-R, it is recommended a user account be created using the STANDARD_READONLY_USER role which is equivalent to the OECN_USPS_RO (USPS Read-Only) identifier in Classic.  The permissions on this role can be found here.  If your auditor also needs to view the reports under File Achive, you can create a custom role (i.e. 'Auditor Standard Report') including the USPS_STANDARD_REPORT permission to this role and include that additional role to their existing user account. 
• USXS-R Audit Trail Reports
  • USPS Reports/Audit Report.
    • I told this Treasurer to use the audit report from the Reports dropdown menu but it doesn't show up for her. Need to have 'module_audit_view' permission to run it
  • USAS Audit