The Administrative Information Systems (AIS) team supports the non-academic aspects of Williams College. Among other tasks, the AIS staff
The college uses PeopleSoft's HRMS, Financials (FS), and Student Administration (SA) applications. HRMS and FS have been in use since 2001. The first module of the SA application to go live was Admissions in early 2003. Since then, we've fully phased in the following modules: Admissions, Financial Aid, Student Financials, and Student Records. The AIS staff has customized the PeopleSoft applications to support operations at Williams. All customizations are carefully reviewed and are designed to facilitate ongoing maintenance.
The Administrative Information Systems team supports the college's PeopleSoft systems and more than 50 other systems on campus. We work with staff members in most administrative offices on campus to provide reporting capabilities using a variety of SQL-based tools, including PeopleSoft Query, Crystal Reports, Microsoft Access and SQR. The AIS team also provides guidance for offices working to put information on the Web.
In January 2001, we went live with the Human Resources component of PeopleSoft. Our first paychecks were generated in the PeopleSoft environment and the HR department began to do business in the new PeopleSoft world. Since then, Human Resources and OIT staff continue to maintain the new PeopleSoft HR system. As the need arises, new reports are developed and tested. Human Resources staff also looking at enhancing the system by implementing additional PeopleSoft functionality and possible third party enhancements. The combined HRMS and Student Administration software was upgraded to the web-enabled Release 8.0 version during the second half of calendar year 2002.
Williams began processing financial transactions with PeopleSoft Financials (FS) in July of 2001. The college currently uses the General Ledger and Accounts Payable modules.
One of the first and most difficult tasks facing the FS implementation team was the creation of a new chart of accounts compatible with PeopleSoft's design parameters. The chart of accounts is in essence a very large collection of alphanumeric codes used to describe various aspects of financial transactions. Deciding how to organize the codes to work best with PeopleSoft and yet reflect the internal organization of the college was a substantial task.
Reporting of financial information to those who need it is a large part of any financial management system and the PeopleSoft FS team has done much work in this area to make it easy for users to get the reports they need. The team has developed a web-based view into a large set of reports created on a nightly basis. Security has been designed so that each authorized user can see the appropriate reports. The PeopleSoft environment also offers a rich source of ad hoc reporting capability to those who need it.
We plan to upgrade the Financials system to a web-based version by the beginning of calendar year 2005.
Most recent implementation activity has focused on the third and largest phase of the PeopleSoft implementation, Student Administration (SA). The SA application includes functionality for admission, student record maintenance, student financials, financial aid and other student-oriented functions. Full implementation was completed by the beginning of 2005.
Work done on the Student Administration project included
We look forward to using new technology to improve the administrative aspects of the college. We're excited about providing students and faculty better access to their own information. We believe that these new systems have improved our capabilities to meet the primary business objective of the College: To recruit, matriculate, educate, and graduate students.