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| Application Details |
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| Approval Table Maintenance |
The University's mainframe is host to a system called the Integrated Business Information System (IBIS). One very useful application of IBIS is the Electronic Approval System (EASY). EASY allows Financial Officers to control the electronic routing and approval of IBIS documents. The EASY system allows Financial Officers to control other aspects of document approval such as monetary limits and proxy approvers.
In 1991 when EASY came online, editing of approval tables was done via a mainframe screen interface. This interface was cumbersome, slow to use and was devoid of any ease of use features.
The College of Engineering was a pilot site for this system. The College of Engineering's Financial Officer edited a several approval tables and then projected the time needed to complete all tables for the College. Sixty hours was estimated to be the time needed to initially populate Engineering's routing tables. On top of this initial loading, thousands of changes would be required over the years. The College was emphatic in its need for an improved interface. With the help of the Office of Administrative Systems (OAS) the College of Engineering developed this new interface and then turn it over to central computing operations; it is still operational today.
A grid interface was implemented on a personal computer (PC). This interface allowed all routing information, along with dollar limits and proxies, to be quickly entered on one screen. The data was then formatted exactly required by the EASY system.
This system was well received by Financial Officers across the University and it allowed mainframe code to remain unchanged. The work that was projected to take sixty hours utilizing the mainframe terminal interface required only two hours utilizing the Approval Table Editing System. This system not only saved thousands of hours during the initialization of the routing tables but it has saved many thousands of hours during years of table maintenance.
In addition to developing this interface, the College of Engineering proposed other enhancements that would have made the approval tables virtually static, thus requiring little or no maintenance. Two of the most important suggestions were the de-coupling of approval tables and security-by-position. Each of these suggestions required changes to mainframe code and were not implemented. |
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