Dear all AMS users,

This is a reminder that the first cutover dry run for the S/4HANA Migration will happen this Friday, September 25 at 5:00 p.m. to Monday, September 28 at 7:00 a.m. This dry run will simulate the Go Live weekend’s activities in early November, and will help to ensure all functions will continue to work properly as we transition to a new platform for our Administrative Management Systems (AMS).

As a result, all administrative management systems (see below for the specific affected systems) marked with an “x” will be offline during this time and on the future dates:

*The systems that have a checkmark will be available during the regularly published availability hours. See the website for more details. 

Please note:

• RPT instance/clone (containing October Month End + November 3 Bi-weekly pay) will be available to end users on Monday, November 2 (and beyond) so that Business Officers (and anyone else) can review their pre- migration balances and reports and begin/complete the reconciliation of their October Month End balances.
• Documentation will be made available to provide some guidance on how to “back out” the November 3 payroll activity from their Funds Management report balances so they can reconcile to their October Month End Monthly Statement of Account balances.
• The Student Information Systems will still be available during these outages.
• As we move closer to the Go Live date, additional detailed communication and documentation will be provided.

Learn more about the U of T Enterprise Modernization Program. 

Thank you for your support in making these improvements.

Sincerely,
Enterprise Applications & Solutions Integration (EASI)

Dear SAP GUI users:

As you may be aware, the S/4HANA Migration requires an upgrade to the SAP GUI before a university-wide transition to the new S/4HANA platform. This is a reminder that SAP GUI users will need to be upgraded from SAP GUI 7.5 Patch 12 (Enjoy theme) to SAP GUI 7.6 Patch 6 (Blue Crystal theme) by September 18.

In order to prepare for the system migration in November, your local IT administrator(s) will need to deploy the updated SAP GUI software to your computer before September 18. After the deployment, users will have new shortcuts/logon entries. Users will still need their eToken and CISCO VPN to log in to the AMS environment.

If you do not have a managed desktop or a local IT administrator, you can submit a ticket to the Enterprise Service Centre.

Please review this PDF to understand the minimal differences between the Enjoy and Blue Crystal themes. As also mentioned in the PDF, please do not use new shortcuts/logon entries until further notice.

Learn more about the U of T Enterprise Modernization Program.

Thank you for your support in making these improvements.

Sincerely,
Enterprise Applications & Solutions Integration (EASI)

Dear all AMS users,

As you may be aware, Enterprise Applications & Solutions Integration (EASI) is launching the next phase of an upgrade to the Administrative Management Systems (AMS). As part of this phase, called the S/4HANA Migration, we are moving to a new platform. The transition to the new platform requires several cutover dry runs (i.e. simulating the actual Go Live weekend’s activities) prior to the Go Live itself to ensure all functions will continue to work properly.

As a result, all administrative management systems (see below for the specific affected systems) marked with an “x” will be offline on the following dates:

*The systems that have a checkmark will be available during the regularly published availability hours. See the website for more details.

Please note:

• Reminder communications to end users will be provided regarding the system availability surrounding the Go Live weekend.
• Targeted communication regarding the November 3 Bi-weekly pay will be sent separately.
• RPT instance/clone (containing October Month End + November 3 Bi-weekly pay) will be available to end users on Monday, November 2 (and beyond) so that Business Officers (and anyone else) can review their pre- migration balances and reports and begin/complete the reconciliation of their October Month End balances.
• Documentation will be made available to provide some guidance on how to “back out” the November 3 payroll activity from their Funds Management report balances so they can reconcile to their October Month End Monthly Statement of Account balances.
• The Student Information Systems will still be available during these outages.
• As we move closer to the Go Live date, additional detailed communication and documentation will be provided.

Learn more about the U of T Enterprise Modernization Program. 

Thank you for your support in making these improvements.

Sincerely,
Enterprise Applications & Solutions Integration (EASI)

Date: September 8, 2020
To: RPT Users
From: Enterprise Applications & Solutions Integration
Re: Important Message for RPT Users

Dear all RPT users:

As you may be aware, Enterprise Applications & Solutions Integration (EASI) is launching the next phase of an upgrade to the Administrative Management Systems (AMS). As part of this phase, called the S/4HANA Migration, we are moving to a new SAP platform and recently entered our third and final testing cycle. An important change to note is that after we go live with the new platform, the RPT instance will no longer be refreshed and you will need to use AMS to run all future reports. 

RPT was built in the late 1990s to offload the reporting functionality of AMS in order to improve the performance of AMS. Since then, we have learned that RPT is being used for running reports during scheduled AMS downtimes, to provide a static data set and compensate for historical performance shortcomings in AMS. With the move to the Azure Cloud last year and the upcoming S/4HANA upgrade, these historical constraints no longer exist. We thoroughly investigated the possibility of continuing with the RPT instance in S/4HANA; however, due to both technical and cost constraints this option is unfortunately not feasible.

As a solution to the issue of not being able to run reports during AMS system downtime, we will be piloting a modern user interface to enable users to run a range of key reports, which will be available 24/7. This new user interface will be part of the University’s first steps into SAP’s latest and greatest web-based user experience offering: the SAP Fiori Launchpad. We will be sending out future communication on this to advise which key reports have been developed and ask for your feedback on potential additional reports that could be added. We believe this will provide the required reporting functionality during scheduled AMS downtimes (Fiscal Year End, Holiday Shut Down, Fiscal Month End and pay runs).

What do you need to know?

• The last time that RPT will be refreshed will be at the end of October 2020.
• To assist with the reconciliation and comparison of pre and post S/4HANA migration financial results, this RPT clone will remain available to the end users for a period of time.
• After the S/4HANA migration, you will be able to use AMS to run your reports with the following improvements:

o   Added horsepower to the AMS system.

o   A new database called AMS HANA that lays the foundation for future improved performance.

• To further mitigate the impact of the loss of RPT, we will be reducing our scheduled downtimes – please stay tuned for the details. It is anticipated that the new 24/7 reporting solution will be available by the holiday shut down period. The EASI team will be optimizing the post go live downtime periods in November and December to ensure maximum availability.
• A link to the new reporting landing page (with login using UTORid) will be provided on the Administrative Web Services webpage in advance of the holiday shut down period.
• A Connect & Learn session for interested users will be scheduled in advance.

Learn more about the U of T Enterprise Modernization Program. 

Thank you for your support in making these improvements.

Sincerely,
Enterprise Applications & Solutions Integration (EASI)