Integrating 3rd party systems into the

Colleague world with hybrid ELF Imports

Bryan CookSenior Programmer Analyst, Willamette University

Session Rules of Etiquette:

• Please turn off or silence your cell phone.

• If you must leave early, please do so as discreetly as

possible.

• Please avoid side conversations – if you have a question,

ask it!

Willamette Overview

• 2561 Undergraduate and Graduate Enrollment

• 800 Employees

• Datatel client number 1 from 1979!

• Sordid history including going off maintenance in the 90s

• Unidata on Solaris

• On the long march to SQL

• Pendulum has swung way away from all-in-one ERP

• 85 documented integrations at last count

Enterprise Applications overview

Colleague on Unidata

• Registrar

• Financial Aid

• Student Accounts

• Accounting

Workday

• HR

• Payroll

Synoptix

• Financial Reporting

Raiser’s Edge

• Advancement

Slate

• Undergraduate Admissions

• College of Law Admissions

Salesforce

• MBA Admissions

THD

• Housing

ARMS• Athletics Recruit/Compliance

Why migrate to Workday?

Customized Payroll

Custom time and attendance

Custom student employment system

An identified need to overhaul most HR business processes including:

• Hiring

• Time and Attendance

• Leave

• Benefits

• Student Employment

Makes Colleague on SQL feasible

Available funding for implementation and consulting

What data to sync?

Colleague Faculty/Advisor/Staff data

Existing integrations with other Enterprise Applications

Numerous other downstream integrations including:

• LDAP

• CBOARD

• Health Center

• Mail Center

• IPEDS and other reporting

What data to sync?

What data to sync?

What data to sync?

1. Student demographic data to Workday

2. Staff employee and demographic data to

Colleague

3. GL data to Colleague

4. Workstudy data to Colleague

How to sync?

Methods considered:

Real time

• API/ethos

Flat files

• Unibasic

• ELF

• Custom

• ELF/Custom hybrid

Why choose ELF?

Ellucian delivered

Person deduping and matching is a huge benefit

Why choose custom?

• Custom Tables in CORE for HR data

• International addresses needs not met by ELF

• A solid existing template for in-house integrations

• More in-house Envision experience than ELF experience

• Quicker iteration and testing of individual components

• SHOWA

• REFERENCED

• More flexibility to make changes as new understanding

comes to light during the implementation process

ELF/Custom hybrid

Two Passes

• ELF for ID matching and deduping

• Custom for full data updates

Timeframe

First pass ELF updates Alt ID if which allows 2nd pass to update

the same night

Potential duplicates require manual intervention – 2 days

First ELF PassGoal: Ease of maintenance and use for HR running EFDR

Goal: Dedupe and synch systems

First ELF PassGoal: Ease of maintenance and use for HR running EFDR

• Minimize false hits/unnecessary resolution steps

Turn off Address Householding on ADRO

First ELF PassGoal: Ease of maintenance and use for HR running EFDR

• Minimize false hits/unnecessary resolution steps

Turn off Address Householding

Person 1

Person 2

900 State St

Person 1

Person 2 900 State St

900 State St

Householding on

Householding off

First ELF PassGoal: Ease of maintenance and use for HR running EFDR

• Minimize false hits/unnecessary resolution steps

Colleague is no longer the system of record for employee

addresses

Purge former addresses

1. Archive existing address and person tables for reporting

2. Script to fix up 30 years of broken address pointers

3. Script to remove using S.DELETE.FORMER.ADDRESS

First ELF PassGoal: Ease of maintenance and use for HR running EFDR

• Minimize false hits/unnecessary resolution steps

Skip address updates on subsequent ELF passes

First ELF PassGoal: Ease of maintenance and use for HR running EFDR

• Minimize noise by adjusting controllers on RDSF

First ELF PassGoal: Dedupe and synch systems

• Widen duplicate criteria

• Updated Partial Values subroutine to match better on

hyphenated and multiple last names - 174.1177• Double check for errors/duplicates• Gate for record creation - prevent low info records

First ELF PassGoal: Dedupe and synch systems

• Widen custom duplicate criteria assigned via ESTO

First ELF PassGoal: Dedupe and synch systems

• Updated Partial Values subroutine to match better on

hyphenated and multiple last names

Document 174.1177

S.MIO.INDEX.PARTIAL – updated to allow arbitrary number of

last names, hyphenated or not

First ELF PassGoal: Dedupe and synch systems

Double check for errors/duplicates in Source Pre-Edit

First ELF PassGoal: Dedupe and synch systems

Gate lock for low information records in Source Pre-Edit

Workday prehires do not require a lot of data and can be created

relatively easy.

First ELF Pass• Scheduling ELF in Process Handler

Start here:

2448: ELF: Scheduling STII imports using the process handler

Custom JSPARAMS records

Creating a VOC using UTRR

Adding the VOC to the process handler via CPAE

First ELF Pass• Scheduling ELF in Process Handler

ITCI two options for appending error logs

1. Edit the PHANTOM.CONTOL records

2. Clean out the EPROCESS records with a custom process

First ELF PassQuestions?

Second Custom Pass

Validate our defaults and configuration

Ingest and transform .csv into our working data structure

Validate data

Validate Ids

Update Employee Data

Check ownership

Update Demographic data

Double check data in Colleague vs data in our file

Second Custom Pass

Second Custom PassValidate our defaults and configuration

Second Custom PassValidate our defaults and configuration

Second Custom PassUpdate Employee Data

Second Custom PassUpdate Employee Data

Second Custom PassCheck Ownership

Second Custom PassCheck Ownership

Second Custom PassCheck Ownership

Second Custom PassUpdate Demographics

International Addresses – Workday requires a very specific format that

is not compatible with Colleague standard

ISO region, sub-region, sub-municipality, sub-city codes per Country

S.UPDT.INTG.ADDRESS

Populate Address Lines like Colleague expects but store all the

individual components elsewhere for later retrieval

INTL.LOCALITY, INTL.REGION, INTL.SUB.REGION, user fields

Second Custom PassData Double Check

Second Custom PassQuestions?

Student Demographic Data to WorkdayWhat to do?

Easy choice – Entrinsik Informer (v4.x)

Most of our integrations out of Colleague are built with Informer

Maintainable by more staff members

Homegrown file transfer process Jenkins/python scripts

Student Demographic Data to Workday

Use the same translate tables on the way out for consistency

Report uses IS subroutine that does the inverse of the import

Student Demographic Data to Workday

Remove last address line from international addresses

Student Demographic Data to WorkdayQuestions?

GL Data from Workday to Colleague

Custom GLIM preprocessor – output to GL.INTERFACES

Student Payroll from Workday to Colleague

• Willamette has a large Work-Study program

• Robust off campus reading tutor program with local schools

• Lots of summer employment

• Needed a way to manage earnings limits vs awards

Student Payroll from Workday to Colleague

• Transform the data and store in an audit table

• Allocate the funds into various buckets based on eligibility criteria

and fund availability

Student Payroll from Workday to Colleague• Transform the data and store in an audit table

One of the ugliest files I’ve ever seen

Student Payroll from Workday to Colleague• Transform the data and store in an audit table

Different academic programs have different eligibility dates

Student Payroll from Workday to Colleague• Transform the data and store in an audit table

Student Payroll from Workday to Colleague• Allocate to Correct Financial Aid year and ‘bucket’

3 Buckets

• Federal Funds

• Non-Federal Funds (could go to Federal if eligible)

• Ineligible for Federal Funds

Assign all eligible earnings to Federal Work Study

Assign earnings over the limit or deemed ineligible to the other

buckets

Student Payroll from Workday to Colleague• Allocate to Correct Financial Aid year and earnings category

Custom batch process first pass, can be adjusted by hand

Student Payroll from Workday to Colleague• Allocation – manual adjustments

Financial Aid can manually move funds between workstudy and non-

workstudy positions

Financial Aid can lock positions to prevent additional funds from being

allocated to those positions

All earnings can be re-allocated for a person if desired

Student Payroll from Workday to Colleague• Allocate to Correct Financial Aid year and earnings category

Detail to individual audit records and job data

Student Payroll from Workday to ColleagueQuestions?

Workday Integration Lessons Learned

1. Dedicated project management resource is a must

2. Avoid dealing with International Addresses if at all possible

3. Get your identity management up and running first

4. If you go with consultants for your implementation, make sure

your IT is in the room when the SOW is negotiated

Enterprise Takeaways

Colleague may no longer be the system of record for given data

The Colleague way of doing things is no longer the reference point

We need to adapt Colleague to the needs of the Third Party System

Thank you!!

Bryan Cook

Senior Programmer/Analyst, Willamette University

btcook@willamette.edu