May Recap
- Michelle Drewes
- Amanda Folkman
- Lori Miller
- Pat Zelei
USAS-R Releases
Bug Fixes
The account change process has been corrected to properly handle overpaid purchase orders. Previously the amounts moved to new accounts related to an overpaid PO was resulting in negative remaining encumbrances.
This change impacted two specific districts and also includes a patch to correct the encumbrances for those districts' transactions.
Prevent password from being audited in the Password Change event
A bug was discovered in the 8.46.0 release of USAS-R that could allow the writing of a local user's password to a database table as plaintext. This could only happen if the user's password was reset, either by the admin user or from the change password option on the home page, and the password change happened between the release of 8.46.0 (5/6/2022) and 8.46.1 (5/10/2022). The password could be included in an Auditable Events template report that is only accessible by users with the ADMIN_AUDITEVENTS permissions. By default, this includes the Admin user and anyone with the SYSMAN_USER role in USAS-R.
This was included on the hotfix to remove any of the possible stored passwords from the Auditable Events table and also prevent the password property from being audited in the future.
To see if any users have changed their passwords since USAS-R 8.46.0, run the SSDT Auditable Events template report with the start date of 5/6/2022 and end date of 5/10/2022. Once the report generates look for User Password Change Event and Admin Password Change Event. It is recommended that any user you find here should have its password reset.
Improvements
Password changes and change attempts are now logged in audit log. This includes changes an individual does for themselves or a user with proper permissions does for another user's account.
Can be found on the SSDT Auditable Events report
Included in the System > Monitor > App Log
1099 PDF documents were created for both the 1099-MISC and 1099-NEC options. The new PDF copies that are available with this release can be found when selecting the new Output File Type value "Reference Copy" . This option will display a new "1099 Copy" field. The available PDF documents are Copy B, Copy C, Copy 1 & Copy 2.
Copy A will be completed under a later Jira issue.
This is not the folder/sealer copy that will be provided to the vendor.
Additional 1099 printing issues are being worked and when 1099 printing from USAS-R is fully available we will detail that in the release notes.
The PDF versions used last year are still available under the Output File Type: PDF Format.
Output File Type - Reference Copy:
Example of Copy 1:
Patches
A patch to clean up bad data migrated from Classic. This patch is specific to a single district that migrated in 2019, prior to the ability to post encumbrance impacts.
Internal
Research of different fillable file types help facilitate the generation of 1099 print files.
Transfer service improvements. Tests to ensure that certain changes made in USPS-R did not impact Workflows processes.
USPS-R Releases
Bug Fixes
STRS Advance
Improve how the increased compensation value is found when running STRS Advance.
Prevent advanced compensations for allow REG pay types.
Advance calculations will only use position level STRS items when present.
Leave Projection was requiring an unnecessary permission.
STANDARD_USER role should now be able to process Leave Projections.
Future Pay - Rate should persist when using Create New option.
When Create New option was chosen and Rate was changed for Future entry and Saved, then when another new future pay is created, rate should default back to the original value based on the compensation.
Prevent password from being audited in the Password Change event
A bug was discovered in the 6.65.0 release of USPS-R that could allow the writing of a local user's password to a database table as plaintext. This could only happen if the user's password was reset, either by the admin user or from the change password option on the home page, and the password change happened between the release of 6.65.0 (05/06/2022) and 6.65.1 (05/10/2022). The password could be included in an Auditable Events template report that is only accessible by users with the ADMIN_AUDITEVENTS permissions. By default, this is only the Admin user in USPS-R.
The hotfix will remove any of the possible stored passwords from the Auditable Events table and also prevent the password property from being audited in the future.
To see if any users have changed their passwords since USPS-R 6.65.0, run the SSDT Auditable Events report with the start date of 5/6/2022 and end date of 5/11/2022. Once the report generates look for User Password Change Event and Admin Password Change Event. It is recommended that any user you find here should have its password reset.
Order of attendance entry could cause errors depending on hours / days entered when it shouldn't
Example-entering an absence for 1.25 hours then another for .5 days (for the same day) This has been corrected so no error is produced.
Compensation Print Screen - days worked was not displaying the correct property value
Employee onboarding - contract work days were not persisting
ODJFS Report - negative values for wages or tax are not valid for the report
Leave Projection - prevent validation error when updating absences as a result of leave projection submission
Were eligible for leave at time of entry, but no longer eligible. Validations and events are now skipped so posting of Leave Projection will take place without ineligible error occurring.
Improvements
Improve the performance of the Pay Report.
53%-80% depending on report selections.
Layout changes to the Compensation Print Screen Report.
Compensation description & Supplemental Tax Option is only 7 characters and should be longer and fit on line correctly
State Reporting section should be after Salary Schedule so it matches the Compensation grid.
Employee Onboarding - Add missing compensation fields.
There is a new section labelled "Historical Context" (similar to under Core).
This section has 2 Calendar fields,-Calendar Start Date, Calendar Stop Date.
There should no be Retirement Hours under the "General" section.
Future / Current expenditure account filtering allows filtering on full account code, xRef code, and description.
The Account can be searched for by using dashes, not using dashes, by XRef Code or description.
New Contract - Carry forward contract values the same way classic Mid Year changes were handled.
Important information about mid-year contract changes
New contract has been updated to calculate mid-year contract changes in the same way that classic would calculate them. The work days, days worked, pays in contract, and pays paid will be carried forward into the new contract. Contract obligation, amount earned, amount paid, amount due, pay per period, unit amount, and retro next pay calculations have been updated to match the classic calculation methods. We will no longer only carry forward the remaining amounts (pays, work days, accrued wages) into the new contract.
If there are existing mid-year new contracts in the new contract view prior to this update, they can be activated using the old method of calculation if they are activated without re-calculating. If you would like to have the mid-year new contract re-calculated using the new method, you can edit the mid-year contract and click the calculate button. This will re-calculate the mid-year contract amounts using the new method. Optionally, you may delete an existing mid-year contract and re-copy it to use the new method.
If using the new method, multiple mid-year contract changes for an employee will calculate correctly. If a mid-year has been activated using the old calculation method, then multiple mid-year contract changes for an employee will not calculate correctly.
Improve the performance of Employee Master report
Report will now generate faster
The data for each employee/position/etc is now always in the same order
Only custom fields that have a value are now included on the report
Payroll Accounts View - Add new view to display each payroll account in a grid format
A new 'early release' version of the Payroll Account view has been added to the Core menu
There are a few limitations that are known at this time
No grid reporting
No grid preferences
Missing max amount remaining properties
The new view was at a place that we wanted the users to get access even though it is not fully featured
Please provide any and all feedback on this new user interface
You can find the documentation here
W2 City Overrides - Always display help screen variables when in edit mode
New Features
Handle 'Withholding Based on Earnings' STRS Advance
The 'Base Withholding On Earnings' is used for districts that base their STRS on Earnings. This needs to be checked for these districts.
Most districts base the STRS deduction on the gross pay. If you base it on the Earnings, no STRS deductions would occur during the summer
No Non-Taxed Advanced Amounts will calculate on the Fiscal Year to Date Report
No data will be returned on the Non-Advance Payment Report
No data will be returned on the Advanced Payment Report
The Submission file contains no advance amounts; taxed total includes taxed deposit pickup but no taxed advance amount. File will still contain the same employees as FY report, just no employees will have advance amounts.
The 'Advance Amount' in the STRS Advance Configuration will be set to 0.00 when submission file is generated. This will prevent the district from generating the submission file (the button will be de-activated). Then after 1 payroll is processed, the district will come out of advance because advance amount of 0 will equal amount paid back of 0.
Added new Check Distribution tag to Check and Direct Deposit XML files
Email notifications were sent out to 3rd party vendors regarding the change before the release went out.
Added new home page grid to display highest check number used per bank account(s)
If user has these permissions they will be able to view the highest check number screen
USPS_MANAGER_BANKACCOUNT_VIEW
USPS_STANDARD_PAYMENTTRANSACTION_VIEW
The Bank Account Number, Bank Account Description and Highest Check Number are displayed.
Patches
A patch that corrects payroll account history for a specific district that had entered an invalid account while processing payroll was created. The district could not transfer to USAS since the accounts has not been synchronized. The account could not be added in USAS since there is an invalid subject code.
Inventory Releases
Bug Fixes
Corrected a problem with Operating leased items showing as capitalized. Operating Leased Items are not eligible to be a capitalized item. If you have existing Operating leased items that have the incorrect capitalized flag, run System>Capitalization Criteria to correct capitalization status.
Group Manager and Standard User roles updated to include permissions needed to run System>Capitalization Criteria.
The items grid export has been corrected to allow exporting item data for tag numbers that have been changed.
Fixed Assets by Source report was excluding acquisitions for items that did not include a fund, but the fund did exist on the acquisition record. Items with a blank fund will now be included on the report.
Grid filtering improvements
amount filtering corrected (Including a decimal in the amount value will also filter correctly)
tag number filtering corrected for tag numbers that contain spaces or dashes
date filtering corrected so you can now filter using single digit day and month values (5/5 instead of 05/05), The following operations are also supported on the grids:
= value will select all records equal to the value entered
> value will select all records greater than the value entered
< value will select all records less than the value entered
Corrected an issue with System>Item import. It was not properly setting the enum value fields (listed below) and would import as null if the fields were not included in the CSV file.
Items
lease payment period
depreciation method
item status
Category Codes
insurance class
Recent Item grid filtering changes prevented creating transfer transactions. The item dropdown has been corrected and the ability to post transfers has been restored.
Improvements
Technical Changes for ITC Staff
Issue: admin user account contained an expiration date which had been met thus causing the instance to no longer be accessible.
To avoid this from happening again, we Implemented an environment variable to assist with resetting the password on the admin user account if it has been forgotten. The variable name is applicationAdminReset and it should be set to TRUE in the ssdt-inventory-app.properties file. It does not matter where in the properties file you include this new variable. An example is available in the Inventory Installation and Migration Guide. The application container must be recreated after this property is set to true by using the /ssdt/prod/update-inventory-app.sh script. If this property is defined in the ssdt-inventory-app.properties file and the script is run, the admin user account password will be reset to the value defined in the "adminPassword" variable defined in the ssdt-inventory-shared.properties file. Please note, recreating the container will cause the application to be unresponsive and no one will be able to access the application until the container is fully started.
Note: Any time the application is restarted the following values on the admin user account will be cleared: Account Expiration, Locked, Enabled, External Authentication. This is to prevent rendering the admin account unusable.
Note: If you need the admin account "unlocked" or "enabled", that is a different solution. The application simply needs to be restarted in these cases, The admin account can become locked if the current system date is later than the expiration date on the user account. The admin account can become disabled via the flag on the user account.