Attendees: Amy Bauer, Donna Duprey, Steve Ettinger, Janet Evans, Janice Kauvar, Anita Monk-Ryan, Ingrid Moore, Mike Moran, Bob Tan, Karl Werner, Justin Young.
Review Minutes from May 14, 2004
Future of Reporting (Werner)
Karl had received the emails from DWAG listing their top used Bi-Tech
reports.
A suggestion was made that a “map” of the available DWOW reports would
be very helpful, especially for new users.
Donna handed out an example of a new layout of the DWOW home page,
which is tentatively called “ART” for Administrator Reporting Tool. Reports are
broken out into different categories: Current, Historical (DWOW) and HR
(iVantage & DWOW). The timing of the release of ART depends on the
implementation of Crystal Enterprise v10. Joe Bitzko is currently testing CE
v10. The new Event Master software requires CE v10. Live data also would use
Bi-Tech tables rather than the DWOW tables, which are entirely different. The
current DWOW tables do not include all data fields from Bi-Tech.
Donna mentioned that there is a possibility that new software might be
used for live data report writing from Bi-Tech, CDD (Click, Drag and Drop). The
problem is that it is not compatible with Crystal. IT will continue researching
the software.
Bi-Tech will be meeting with Finance/IT September 8 – 10. They will be
discussing Bi-Tech 7I. The current database uses Informix which will be End of
Life as of 2006. Finance/IT plans to migrate Bi-Tech to SQL Server or db2,
which will be more integrated with Microsoft products.
Justin reported to the group about the re-engineering committees he
will be involved with beginning this September. The objective of the Reporting
Re-engineering committee is to look at the reporting tools and priorities of the
company. Justin said he would like to see one library of reports for all
Administrators to run each month.
He is also part of the BudFin Tools committee, which was created
primarily to review the ABR process. It has since been expanded to encompass all
financial tools and includes software and systems. This group would take
recommendations from the re-engineering group to see if new tools are needed
for the users.
Karl suggested BudFin Tools meet with IT and the reporting group on
future needs. BudFin Tools would like to look at the “Cradle to Grave”
budgeting process, but are now needing focus group information from the Budget
and Report Re-engineering committees, which include representation from all
divisions within NCAR/UCAR/UOP.
The question was raised again about DWAG’s role particularly with
regard to the other new groups. Janice thought the CRUsers group might be
important to focus on at this time to share information about what reports have
been developed. Donna reviewed the DWAG charter for the group. (http://www.scd.ucar.edu/dir/DWAG/charter.htm) The main purpose of DWAG is to help IT
prioritize reporting issues as an advisory group.
Action Items (Kauvar)
Amy will consolidate all the top Bi-Tech reports sent to Karl to DWAG.
DWAG members are to respond to the group if they have any existing
Crystal Reports that provide the same information as the top used Bi-Tech
reports. IT will then let DWAG know a timeline for creating any new reports.
Janet will set up a meeting at the ITTC in CG4 for a CRUsers hands-on
seminar. Email jevans@ucar.edu if you are
interested in attending.
Karl will send the IT Strategic Plan Draft to DWAG for review.
Janice will talk with Katy regarding DWAGs role with the Reporting
Re-Engineering group’s objective. Karl
will let Shawn know about the DWAG’s discussion, and Janice will talk with
Shawn before contacting Katy.