Agenda & Notes 2-12-2008

Agenda

Meeting notes are in blue.

Invitees: Higdon, Rosie; Naff, Mike; Hoppe, Lee Anne; Galligan, Frank; Medaghri Alaoui, Ismael; Kroll, Greg; Mary Dunker

(Frank was unable to attend.)

Agenda:

• identify the shortcomings of the current implemention

Known issues:

1. Leave representatives need to be able to submit leave reports for individuals. Question: if this capability is available, will there still be any need for paper submission?

   • In the current leave system, leave representatives login using their PID,  enter the employee's ID, enter the employees leave, and when they "submit" the leave report the system prints out a paper form for the employee to sign. This process updates the leave balances (database) immediately.

   • Many departments want (and require) the leave representative to enter all employee leave.

   • We need a decision from human resources (Linda Woodard & Hal Irvin), on allowing leave representatives to digitally sign leave reports for other employees, "sign and submit on behalf of". In other words proxy capabilities for leave reps. PDC proxy capabilities would probably benefit other applications, too.

   • Current PKI policy prohibits the sharing of eToken passwords.

   • HRIS does not want some employees in a department using paper forms and some using digital signatures. It has to be all or none.

2. The P128 "hours worked" report for non-exempt employees needs to be integrated into the system. http://www.hr.vt.edu/downloads/forms/P128.doc

   • Having a digital leave report and a paper P128 is a problem for supervisors because they need both forms at the same time to reconcile leave. Submitting a digital leave report then forgetting to give a supervisor the paper P128 is a problem.

   • The FLSA portion of the P128 does not have an online equivalent. The leave portion of the P128 could use the current digital signature process.

   • There is another form, other than the P128, for wage employees.

   • Must have a process for employees without computer access.

   • Whatever process is selected it needs to be easy and intuitive.

   • One possibility is an enterprise wide time clock system. However, these are very expensive.

   • This issue needs a lot more thought and consideration by HR.

3. People need to be able to record leave online (not sign & submit) for the current month, before their leave for the previous month has been approved.

   • This issue was raised by Erv Blythe.

   • The problem, according to Ray Decker is, the java used in the current system did not refresh the leave balances before being submitted, making it possible for an employee to have a negative balance.

   • Client-side validation of leave balances, without a server-side validation, is a security issue.

   • The online leave reporting system is not a leave approval system, just a leave reporting system.

   • Since changing the way the balances are handled would be a major effort/architectural change, this request is not likely to be feasible. Lee Anne will run a report to see how long the lag time is between leave submission and approvals. Unless it is viewed as a major problem by the sponsor, we will not consider this item to be a showstopper to further rollout of the digitally signed leave reports.

• discuss potential solutions
• begin mapping out a time line for the work required to make improvements (We may not get to this item, but we'll see how it goes.)