February, 2016
From the Editor
The big news this month is the completion of the SRM Usability Project. Check out the Reporting News section below to learn more.
Providing hands-on training and developing Help Guides to assist employees who are new to BW reporting or who want to learn more about it continues to be my focus, and that of the BW Newsletter. For that reason, I want to direct your attention to the Training section. In particular, I want to point out two upcoming opportunities:
- SRM reporting: I will be offering two versions of SRM report training in February and March. One version is intended for employees who have not previously attended an SRM reporting session. This workshop will introduce BW basics in the context of the revised reports. The second workshop is intended for anyone who has previously attended any introductory-level BW training class. We will skip the BW basics and focus on the revised/new reports in a 90 minute session. Remember: prior attendance in a BW intro class is mandatory.
- Employee Model reporting: attendee feedback has overwhelmingly confirmed the value of learning how to use the reports based on the HCM Employee Model. For that reason, I have scheduled another session. Payroll coordinators and managers are eligible to attend.
- Go to the newsletter Training section below to register for any of these sessions.
As always, I hope you find this issue of the Newsletter informative. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.
Bill Stewart
Reporting News
If you are someone who uses Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) reports to monitor activity involving shopping carts, purchase orders, vendors, invoices or payments, the BW team has some great news for you. The SRM Distributed folder now contains reports that have been significantly enhanced or are entirely new. All of the details about these reports, and the project that spawned them, are provided on the SRM Usability Project page.
Training Calendar
February/March Training Opportunities
Upcoming Intermediate-level Workshops
SRM Reports: Introduction to the recently-released reports – available to employees with the shopper or approver role who have previously attended an introductory-level BW training session. Anyone who has not attended an intro session should register for this SRM reporting session.
HCM Employee Model Reporting – available to Payroll Coordinators and Managers, the reports examined in this workshop provide access to vast amounts of master data and enable users to develop answers to their various personnel administration and organizational management questions.
Introductory Workshops offered this month
As always, an assortment of introductory workshops will be offered. These sessions present to new employees – or employees assigned a new business role – the fundamentals of reporting for a particular subject area. The sessions are a great way to review material, too. Even if you previously attended an intro session, you are likely to learn new things about reporting – or to be reminded of concepts that you had forgotten.
Click on any of the following links for a course description and/or to register for an upcoming session:
Supplier Resource Management Reporting
Labor Distribution (Payroll) Reporting
Tips & Tricks
Some of these Tips may be new to you, while others may be familiar. Regardless, we hope you find value in these and future Tips, even if we do no more than remind you of the existence of tools you once knew about but had since forgotten.
Note: all of the Tips posted in BW newsletters are archived on this page.
Viewing Aggregated Funds Management Commitment Item Data
In a recent FM intermediate training session (What? You use FM reports and you haven’t attended an intermediate-level session yet? What are you waiting for?), a question arose about whether it is possible to arrange Commitment Item revenue and expense data in such a way that logically related items were grouped together. The answer is yes! The process involves displaying something named Commitment Item Sets. Here is an example of the Commitment Item sets for one Funds Center:
And this is what the content of one of those sets, the Supplies, Books & Equipment set, might look like:
Want to know more? The step-by-step process for displaying these sets is described in this Help Guide: How to – View Funds Management Hierarchy in a BW Report.
End Notes
Custom Training Sessions
Have you ever thought that it would be really useful if you could get members of your department together with a trainer to focus on BUworks functionality that is specific to the work your department does? I’m happy to work with any department or group that would like to develop and conduct a custom basic- or intermediate-level reporting training session. There are only two requirements for such a session: (1) input from the group is necessary to develop a relevant agenda, and (2) the group should include four or more employees. If you’re interested in discussing the development of a custom session for your department or school/college, contact me via email or give me a call at 617-353-6382.
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