School of Social Work Comprehensive Administrative Information Database
From Business Intelligence
Contents |
[edit] Project Contact
If you have questions or would like more information, please contact Meredith Ingram, (ingramm@umich.edu).
[edit] Project Description
Candace Terhune-Flannery, director of administration at the School of Social Work (SSW), created a comprehensive database that serves as the hub for all aspects of administrative data. It contains information about the SSW building; faculty, staff, and students; budget; and research funding. It helps faculty and staff work more efficiently, plan more effectively, and ultimately save SSW money.
[edit] Business Need
- Obtain a comprehensive view of the SSW administrative functions to support cohesive management decisions.
- Automate administrative processes to save time, reduce redundancy, and improve accuracy.
[edit] System/Application & Data Sources
The SSW administrative database was built in FileMaker Pro. It consolidates all administrative information for the School and draws data from the M-Pathways systems.
[edit] Project Purpose, Scope, & Deliverables
- Integrate the financial, research administration, human resources, payroll, and student services data.
- View faculty members’ profiles to learn when they were hired, workload for next semester, classes they have taught, their advisees, their annual performance reviews, and sabbatical and retirement eligibility.
- Develop a time-saving process for managing payroll that includes an interface to upload payroll electronically as well as support for handling timesheets from distribution to approval, checking project grants for adequate funding, entering hours in Elapsed Time, and reconciling pre- and post-pay, tracking remaining project grant and work study funds, and maintaining a record of submitted payrolls.
- Enable online management of petitions to register for closed courses that students submit each term
- Maintain online data about all functions that relate to courses in one, coordinated area to minimize the chance of conflicts or inaccuracies in the information.
- Provide simultaneous access to information about all field study students in SSW including interactions and communications exchanged with them, and enable them to complete multiple documents online.
- Automate journal entry creation and upload process and link required fields so they pre-populate other fields.
- Track information by shortcode, including project end date and available balance data, to prevent overdrawing accounts and reduce the effort spent making corrections.
- Track proposal and award information for sponsored projects to report research award activity.
- Link proposal documents and financial reports to provide a complete picture for a sponsored project.
[edit] Audience/Users
- SSW dean and assistant deans
- SSW faculty
- SSW department administrators and other staff
[edit] Duration/Timeline
The database Candace created has been in use over several years by members of the SSW. Administrators from other units around campus have consulted with her to help them establish a similar system in their own units.