Supervisors and managers at the University may look forward to a new user-friendly experience when working with Oracle’s PeopleSoft Human Capital Management [HCM] 9.2 application upgrade.

The upgrade will go live May 26 at 6 a.m.

Dave Weimer, applications developer, and Margo Kammeyer, project manager of Information Technology Services, explained the upgrade through a demonstration in Olscamp on Wednesday.

“The HCM system effects everyone at the university,” Kammeyer said. The purpose of the application is to allow faculty to see time and labor functions and timesheets.

The new, cleaner and user-friendly upgrade stores information for faculty members and includes common labor and payroll testing.

The major change of the application includes the ability to manage delegation. Managers can approve or report time for their employees as well as create delegation requests.

Employees can request vacation times or leaves of absence and supervisors or managers can approve or reject the transactions all through the HCM application.

New features also include timesheet tabs that report time status and a leave and compensatory pay plan.

According to Weimer, the updated features are “really good for supervisors,” but the reason for upgrading is because of the software provider.

“The HCM upgrade is necessary because it is an Oracle product and will end the support of the current version in June, so we want to make sure we stay supported by Oracle,” he said.

Weimer said the application upgrade will change for managers and supervisors, but student employees will see very few changes to the BCOMM time clock system.

Kammeyer said features from the old version of HCM will still work, but managers should take advantage of the upgrade.

“It gives them expanded capabilities, quicker access to employee information and we’ve consolidated a lot of information so they don’t have to go to multiple places to find it,” she said.

Weimer noted the importance of staying up-to-date on the latest HCM upgrades.

“It’s so [managers] are aware of the new functionality,” he said. “If you’re not paying attention to the communications, you might not realize you have a lot of new features and more information at your fingertips.”

Lydia Rosales, clerical specialist, attended the event because she deals with payroll services on a daily basis. She was satisfied with the preview of new features of the HCM upgrade.

“It’s easier to navigate,” she said. “It seems like it will make things quicker for us.”

Kammeyer suggests managers who are not familiar with the software should take training classes to learn about the applications.

“It’s going to increase efficiency across the board,” she said.

Managers and supervisors who are interested in becoming more familiar with the applications can attend Manager Self Service classes, offered April 6 through May 14. Register at infopro.bgsu.edu.