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Redesign Performance Improvements

With more and more districts migrating to Redesign this past year, some of the larger districts expressed concern in regards to 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 package 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 district with a large chart of accounts.   It becomes increasingly more difficult if you are adding columns that come from associated grids (i.e., on the expenditure grid, you include calculated amounts from the associated cash or appropriation amounts) or columns that include a complex calculation (i.e. FYTD Expendable calculation takes into account Initial appropriation, budget adjustments, and prior year encumbrances 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.   They can reset the grid to the default columns using the "Reset" icon on the top right side of the grid and then add back columns as needed. 

Helpful tips/tricks for Audit

• FYE current period changing
• User Reports
• User accounts for auditors

Social Media Update