While many of us are busy meeting the daily needs of our students and faculty, others on campus are working hard to prepare the university s administrative computer systems to meet the 21 st century. While most at JMU are just being introduced to PeopleSoft through the Finance module, all will see more and more over the next year. The HR module went into action in January, 1996. Since then the Offices of Human Resources, Payroll, Student Employment and the Graduate School have been using the systems to support the human resource needs of the university. While most are touched in some way by this system either through paychecks, benefits or employment tracking, it s use is currently restricted to those offices dedicated to these functions.
Future plans are to provide access or timekeeping and employee self-service.
The Finance module is the system which tracks the university s financial activity. It went into production in October of 1996 and is being distributed for use across campus to those who maintain budgets. Many have already been given access and others are being trained for it s use each month. Future plans include a move to a new release and the implementation of a purchasing module. In the last few months, work has been going on to move that module to a new release which provides more functionality and prepares us to implement a second module, Financial Aid.