Introduction
Our company, Surety Systems, and I want to welcome everyone to today’s webinar: 5 Key Focus Areas in Your iSeries Upgrade webinar. Today’s discussion will be talking about, and hopefully helping you prepare, plan, and upgrade smoothly and avoid surprise disasters with Kronos iSeries Upgrade. I want to welcome our presenter today and introduce her to you. Holly Ladd is our presenter. We are honored to have Holly and share her experiences and her expertise with us. Holly comes to us with a wealth of Kronos specific knowledge, dating back to version 4, and 16 years. Holly’s presentation today draws from her specific experience, which is the Kronos iSeries product. Just a quick, high-level summary of Holly’s experience, impresses me, and I know it will impress you, has experience in over 200 Kronos upgrades both as a Project Manager and as an Account Consultant. Her experiences extend into multiple industries including manufacturing, healthcare, retail, government, and education. And with that introduction, Holly, I will turn over the presentation to you.
Presentation
First off, I want to welcome everyone, and I know it’s a really busy time of the year so I really appreciate you guys for taking time out to join us. And hopefully, you will get some good information to help you move along with your upgrade.
So today, what we are going to focus on, is what I like to consider the 5 problem areas and the things you really need to look out for and focus on when you’re doing an iSeries Upgrade. Those 5 areas are:
- Security
- HTML
- Job Descriptions
- Co-create (COCRT)
- Enhancements / New Features that are available in the new software
Security
For the first area, that I feel like is absolutely most important and the most you will need to focus on, spend the most time on, would be Security.
What they’ve done with the new security in version 6 and above, is they’ve revamped it completely. They’ve added a lot of flexibility, a lot of functionality; but what that means is they’ve also added a lot of fields that you have to look at.
So in the old versions, there’s a little over 100 fields that you have to say “yes” or “no” to, give a value to, and now there’s almost like almost 1,400. So what that means is, and they totally revamped how you use security. Used to, you would update the individual users, and/or user group profiles.
Now what they’ve done is created what we call FAPs (Function Access Profiles). Those Function Access Profiles control all of your settings for your users. And then what you will do is you will create your user and assign them to the FAPs. Instead of managing them at the user level, you’re really kind of managing them at the FAP level.
Ove of the questions we always get asked is “Does this convert from the old security?” The answer is Yes and No. Yes, those 100 fields that existed in the old security get converted to the new security; but that doesn’t address all of the new 1,300 extra fields that are now added that need to be addressed, and ensured that they are set properly.
So if you’re upgrading from a version prior to 6, this definitely is the area that you’re going to be focusing on…80% of the upgrade is on security…is revamping those FAPs and user security levels.
Some of the lessons that I’ve learned, just in my experience doing upgrades, by not addressing security, can really cause a lot of issues. I’ve actually had a casino, they decided to upgrade without addressing security, they went live and it resulted in 3 days worth of time that the end users, the supervisors, couldn’t login because security hadn’t been addressed. So, we had to take 3 days to just totally look at security before they were able to get in and do their jobs. So, you know, that’s downtime for your supervisors. Also, I’ve had a hospital that chose not to address security, and I actually didn’t get involved in this upgrade until after the go-live, but they didn’t address security. It caused to have to roll back to the previous version. That delayed their go-live by almost a month while they addressed the security concerns. So, that’s just kind of lessons to take away from. So if you chose not to address security, there can be some big problems. And that’s if you’re upgrading from a version prior to 6.0.
So if you’re upgrading from a version 6.0 or newer to 6.2, obviously you’ve already addressed that new security. So you have the FAPs built, you have them already set up the way you want them, but there are some new functions that you’ll need to address and we will talk about a couple of those things.
First off, is the Navigators and Widgets, which are new functionality that’s added to the software. You’ll definitely want to take advantage of these new tools; but in so doing, you’ll have to address the new functions that were added to address these.
The second thing is, definitely that will need to be addressed, is you now have the option to export reports to Excel within version 6.2. There are a lot of new functions and some new programs that you have to take care of to make this happen. So, those are just some things that you’ll have to address if you’re upgrading to 6.2 from a version 6 or 6.1.
So again, I just want you to make sure your takeaway today is security is very, very important. You will definitely need to address it.
HTML
So the second area that really is a key focus is HTML. Now we may have a few customers out there that aren’t going to take advantage of the HTML, but 98% of them are going to use the new HTML. It’s a great piece of software, it really gives your end users more of a window’s look and feel. So I really feel like it’s very important for you guys to look at this and utilize the new functionality that’s been given in the HTML. But in so doing, there are some definite gotchas that you need to be aware of, and be careful about, when you’re installing HTML.
So if it’s a first-time install, you’ve never installed HTML before, the first thing you need to be aware of are the OS levels. There are some PTFs that are necessary for some of the OS levels in your AS400. So if you’ve got an OS level that’s a V5R4 or less, you’re going to have to address some PTFs, and in this box, we give you that information on what PTFs need to be installed. So you definitely want to make sure if you’re on an older version of the OS, that you can access the HTML: the Apache Administration Manager. You’ll need to go out to the webpage, and try to access this and ensure that you can get into it, ensure that you can get into the HTTP Administration, so that you can install the HTML.
I actually had a customer, a resort property, that did not have access to the Apache Administration, but didn’t check it prior to installing. When they did the install, they couldn’t install it and it took a couple of months for them to get that up and running and they had to work with IBM to do it, because it’s not a Kronos functionality, it’s actually an IBM function. So, if you can’t access it, unfortunately, there’s nothing that a Kronos Account Consultant can do to help you through that. You’ll have to work with IBM. So that is something that you want to make sure you can access before you do any kind of installs.
Also within the HTML, there is some, again, new functionality. You’ll want to make sure that you take advantage of this. Genies and Navigators are two of the most important within the HTML.
Genies control which employees you see and kind of how you navigate through the software for that employee. So basically, if I chose an employee, where do I want to go? Do I want to go to Time Editor? Do I want to go to their People Editor? Do I want to go to their Accruals? All of that is handled through the navigation in the Genie. So those are real important to ensure that you have them set up properly, and to ensure that the security is setup properly for the Genie.
Navigators are the new functionality that they’ve added in 6.2 and there really, really neat. They really help your end users: your supervisors, your managers – manage and maintain their employees on a daily basis or hourly basis even. It gives you updates, screenshot of information that’s updated constantly – it’s information such as tardy’s, schedule not clocked-in, missed punches – so that they can manage that information in a more timely fashion and not have to do it all on Friday morning or Monday morning at the end of a pay period. And it really helps them maintain and update their employees’ information. So, you really want to take a look at that and ensure that it is set up correctly.
Job Descriptions
So the next focus is on Job Descriptions and AS400 utilities. So, with the admin of 6.2, job descriptions become very important. Before, you could have your job description setup, and the library list just be astrick liable, it just pulls from a default library list on the AS400. That just doesn’t apply anymore. The job descriptions must be a valid and unique job description. They have to have the library list built to the correct libraries. If not, it will not load. One of the things that helps with that, is not only the libraries lists themselves within your employee’s users IDs, but also what they have built, is what’s called Co-Create. That also builds the library lists. And so, you can select the library that you want to go into and it builds the library lists correctly. But that any of the reports or programs that you run within the software uses those job descriptions and company maintenance, and those have to be valid and unique.
The other thing that you need to do with AS400 user IDs, and this will be for green screen users, so if they’re using the HTML portion of the software, this does not apply; but if they’re using the old green screen, logging in that way via the green screen, then you will need to ensure that their AS400 user IDs are assigned to Kronos Group in the Supplemental Group Field of the As400 User Profile setup. If you don’t, they will either 1) you will not be able to access Kronos, or 2) may not be able to update or maintain any files inside of Kronos. So basically, they are rendered useless. So, you definitely need to ensure that if they’re going to still be that green screen and not the HTML, that they do have the Kronos Group in the Supplemental Group.
So again, the job descriptions, the AS400 user ID setup, those things are very important in 6.2. They weren’t as important in the previous versions.
COCRT
So the next key focus is on Co-Create. What they’ve done is they’ve created a new program under the COCRT command, which was always used to co-create commands like copy a database, but now they’ve actually used that as a database utility manager. All of your databases, whether a single database or a multi-database, are listed under the COCRT command. And it controls several different things. It controls what version that database is using, and this is what allows you to have different versions on the same AS400.
I get that question a lot, is “Can I run a test environment for the new version on my production box that I have an older version running on?” You couldn’t very easily, prior to some of our older versions, but 6.2 you can very easily – it causes no problems as long as it’s done correctly – and one of those things you really have to look at is COCRT to make sure that each database is set up to the right version; secondly, it’s set up to point to the correct libraries, because you’ll build your library lists inside of this COCRT under the database maintenance; and thirdly, you’re allowed to set up what type of database it is. ONe of the things added with some of the newer versions, 5.2 and above, allows you to have a test environment, and/or archive environment that do not count towards your employee count. In previous versions, if you wanted to have a test environment or an archived database, you would have to pay for additional licenses to store those on the same box as your production.
Well, now you don’t have to do that. You can set the library as a test, you can set it as an archive, and those employees don’t count towards your employee count. So, that makes it really nice to set up test environments either for a new version upgrade or just as a test environment going forward to test new configuration changes and things of that nature.
So COCRT is very important to ensure that all of those setting are right inside of COCRT.
Enhancements / New Features
The last thing that we really want to talk about are the Enhancements and New Features. And the reason that I put this as a key focus is a lot of times customers don’t know some of the new features and enhancements that have been added that really add benefit to the software. So, if you don’t utilize them, then you’re not getting those benefits that they’ve added.
We want you to take the time to understand and deploy these and improve your system. So, some of those things that are new, I think are really value-added features:
First off, the HTML. The HTML has both the employee software service module as well as the manager module. The manager module gives your supervisors, managers, and whoever else that needs to access the system to maintain employees’ time a really good format to do that. It doesn’t look like the green screen. It looks more like a Window’s based software. You know, before we had the old SQL GUI but it was just more of an overlay of the green screen, this is actually a very definitive Window’s look and feel that customer and user really love. So I definitely recommend that you guys at least consider adding the HTML. Yes, it’s an additional cost for that module, but if you have the SQL, you can trade your license for the GUI to HTML licenses. And again, it really just adds a lot of really nice functionality.
Navigators are also a new feature in that it is only applicable to HTML users, it’s not available for the green screen; but again, navigators really give you some enhanced functionality for supervisors to view and maintain their employees’ time. Again, you have what you call a widget, which is just a little box of information, but it refreshes every 6-8 seconds and you can autorefresh is as often as you’d like. So that information is stuff like missed punches, scheduled not clocked-in, tardies, unscheduled, you can have employee time off requests, you can have accrual information on the screen. You kind of customize it to what is important to your supervisors and then that’s what they will see. And they are also able to navigate from that little widget to the employees’ time cards to maybe add in a missed punch that the employee forgot to punch the clock and things of that nature. So it’s a great, really great new tool that I would definitely, highly recommend you guys look at. And that is not an additional cost. That is in the base software. So, that’s a good thing. You don’t have to worry about paying for that additional functionality.
They’ve also enhanced the Genie functionalities. Now Genies are available in green screen and HTML. they are not as userfriendly in green screen and I don’t have a lot of customers that utilize them in the green screen; but, in the HTML module, it kind of controls everything that you do inside of that module. So, Genies are very important in the HTML world. So, some of the things that they’ve enhanced in those genies are: They’ve allowed you to now do historical genies. Before you could only do the current pay period, that was it. You couldn’t that option to do different weeks, different days, you know go back in history. Now they allow you to do pretty much anything that you want in that Genie. You can do current week, next week, previous week. You can do current pay period, or you can have a date selection which allows you to select any dates that you want to see in that Genie. And the other thing that they’ve allowed you to do now is export those Genies to excel, which is really nice functionality, because there’s some really good information inside that you can add in those Genies that is nice to be able to export to excel.
One of the next new features that have been added to the software, and again, this is new functionality that has been added to the base software, it is not an additional cost, but that is Time Off Requests. What this allows an employee to do is either at the clock or via the employee self-service module, they can request time off. And that’s either from their vacation accrual bucket, sick accrual bucket, whichever accrual buckets you allow them to request time off for: PTO, personal, they can do that at the clock or via the employee HTML. It goes to the supervisor. The supervisor can then reject that time or approve that time, whichever they see fit to do. If they approve it, it automatically writes to the timecard. It gets approved and it’s kind of done. So, it’s really neat functionality. It also sends emails back and forth between the employees and the supervisors, granted as long as the employee has access to email. But it does the emailing as well as sends messages through the employee self-service module or the clock. So, it is something that you may want to look at if that is functionality that is beneficial to your company.
So the next new functionality that has been added, that’s again free, is in the base software, not an additional cost is Attestation. And what Attestation is it’s allowing the employee to, again, either via the time clock and/or the employee self-service module, attest that their time is correct. So, you’re allowing the employee to approve their timecard, basically. So, instead of having to print out a timecard report or a punch report and having them sign off on this that their time is right, you can have it done electronically at the clock or via the employee self-service module.
Leave module is an additional module. It is an additional cost, but they’ve really enhanced some of the functionality of the leave module. It assists in tracking your leave request, your SMLA, your FPD, LTDs, anything that needs to be tracked as a “leave.” That module helps you control that. Deducts their time, how much time they’ve taken off throughout the year and that kind of thing. So, it’s a really nice module, if that is beneficial to your company.
And the last one that I want to talk about is Exporting Reports. This is a new functionality in 6.2 that I’m really excited about because, in my 16 years with Kronos, I guarantee you at least once or twice a month I have a customer ask “why can’t I export these reports?” They have just never have been in a format that cleanly exports as Excel. Well, now there is. There are some things that you have to set up to make that happen, but once you get the configurations set up and the columns the way you want them, that total report, total hours report, there are several reports that they’ve added and they are going to continue to add more till probably you’re going to be able to export all of them; but right now, at least the most important ones I feel like are already done. But it gives you the ability to export those to excel. Now that’s only available in HTML. That is not available in the green screen. So if you are wanting to get that functionality, you will definitely want to look at using that HTML module so that you are allowed to do that.
Recap
So I just want to recap kind of the areas that we talked about today: Security, HTML, Job Descriptions, COCRT, and then the Enhancements and New Features. And again, I want to thank you guys very much for joining us. Charlie is going to field some questions, so I appreciate your time today.
Thanks, Holly! Again this is Charlie. I want to let everybody know that we do have some time remaining for questions and answers. I did not make it apparent at the top of the presentation; but if you do have questions for Holly, please use your chat feature and we will field those questions to Holly.
Question: Can I do this on my own?
Answer: Yeah, that’s a great question and I have people ask me that all the time. In previous versions like 5.2 and before that, my answer would have been “yes, of course, you can do this on your own.” In the later versions, I tend to say “no” and the reason being there are just too many features, especially in security, that if you attempted on your own it just causes problems and you just don’t get the benefits of it because you don’t learn about all the new stuff. I have had customers attempt it on their own and they have ended up having to go backwards and call us in after the fact. I really suggest that you get some kind of help, at least to go through the new stuff.
Question: Can I convert to 6.2 with 480 clocks?
Answer: Yes you can. That’s the thing with iSeries is, actually a Workforce product, Kronos Workforce Product, they do not support the 480 clocks anymore but the iSeries product does still support the 480 clocks. So that is not a problem.
Question: If I am using groups in security, do the group convert to FAPs?
Answer: Great question and the answer is yes. The security groups that you have created in the older versions do convert to FAPs (Function Access Profiles) which gives you kind of a leg up when you are looking at security. You kind of have a head start because that is one of the first things you do in security is look at your roles in the company and what kind of FAPs you’re going to need going forward. So if you are utilizing groups, that’s kind of done for you already so you kind of have a leg up.
Question: Is terminal entry still available?
Answer: Good question and the answer is yes. It is still available in green screen. If you are using HTML, you’ll actually convert your green screen terminal entry licenses to employee self-service module licenses, and within that employee self-service, there is a mode called Timestamp Mode. that timestamp mode is basically the same thing as the terminal entry in the green screen, it’s just that you’ll have to use the employee self-service license versus the terminal entry license.
Question: I heard there is no history module. Is this true?
Answer: That is true. But what it does not mean is that you don’t have history. With the admin of 6.0 and above, Kronos finally got smart and said: “we’ve been charging our customers for the history module, for their history of their employees all these years, maybe we shouldn’t do that.” So what they have done, is just gotten rid of the history module and so you don’t pay extra for your employee’s history anymore. So what that means to you is you will no longer see a history menu on the main menu, but if you go into daily processing you’re going to see your time history editor, your time history inquiry under that daily processing menu. And the reports that you use to have in the history module, like your punch detail history report, and so on and so forth, those are now, you just go into your normal reports and inquiries, you go into your normal punch detail report, and that’s now written to look at both current and history; which before, you had to run for current time you would go run your punch detail, for historical time you would have to run your punch detail history report. Now you just have to access the one report.
Question: Has there been any progress on the creation of a comprehensive security report?
Answer: That’s a great question and unfortunately, no. I have…and I am assuming you guys are meaning a report that shows an employee and what they are assigned to functionality wise. The question is a great question because what is available now is a security report that gives you the employees and what FAP they are assigned to, and then you have to go run the function access profile report, which gives you all of the functions that they are assigned to; but there is no comprehensive report that kind of melds that all together. The one thing that I do believe is that you can export that security report to excel, I believe. I need to verify that because I am not sure if that’s on there or not. I know it was on the list to be done. But no, they have not created a new report, unfortunately.
