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Employee W-2′s Go Online

November 26, 2012 by

Tax season.  Those two words can mean different things to different people.  For the UM Payroll Office, it means one thing…producing W-2 statements for employees.

Viewing a W-2 form online

Each January, between 7,000 and 8,000 W-2 forms are generated, printed, and mailed to employees.    This process consumes a tremendous amount of paper in the form of special paper stock to print the W-2 form and special envelopes for mailing, not to mention the cost of postage for mailing the forms.

For several years, the university has wanted an online, self-service solution for W-2 forms that would allow employees to opt-in to receive their W-2 form electronically .  As a result of our last SAP upgrade in April, 2011, the University was asked to participate as a pilot site for SAP’s online W-2 solution for the 2011 tax year.  Now, after a successful pilot in 2011, all university employees may elect to receive their W-2 forms online for the 2012 tax year and beyond.

Two new options now appear on the Employee Self-Service area of myOleMiss.  The first, “Online W-2 – Opt In,” is where employees can elect to receive their W-2 form electronically for tax year 2012 and beyond.   The second, “Online W-2 – View Forms,” is where employees can view their W-2 forms for tax year 2012 and beyond.  Each application has online help to assist employees in both opting-in and viewing their W-2 forms.  Employees must opt-in to be able to receive their W-2 electronically.

Employees will be able to opt-in for the 2012 tax year beginning November 26, 2012, and continuing through January 20, 2013.  The W-2 forms will be generated between January 20 and January 31, 2013, and once they have been generated, those who have elected to receive their forms online will be able to view their W-2 in myOleMiss.

Audrey Floyd, Manager of Payroll, is excited about rolling out this new feature to UM employees.  “We issued over 7,000 W-2s last year.  The reduction in paper use and postage costs would be significantly lowered if half of our employees take advantage of the online W-2 functionality.  Other advantages include faster retrieval, secure electronic access from any location, and the ability to access forms from tax year 2012 forward.  I would encourage all UM employees to take advantage of this new feature.”

 

 

 

Filed Under: myOleMiss, SAP

Assign/Update Graduate Academic Advisor Workflow

November 19, 2012 by

Assign/Update Graduate Academic Advisor workflow  is an online tool that allows the student/faculty/chair/GPC to initiate academic advisor assign/update requests for graduate students. Requests will be automatically processed once approved by chair/GPC and graduate school.You can view the application within myOleMiss by following the steps below:

  • Students: Student tab => My Requests => Graduate Students
  • Chair/GPC/Graduate School: Employee tab => Students => Graduate Program Coordinator Services => Graduate Student Requests

The application provides an interface for students, advisors, chair, GPC and graduate school to view the status of all the requests associated with them.

To initiate a request:

1.  Select the “Initiate a Request” option on the landing page.

Or, select “Pending Requests” from the dropdown option in the student detail section.

2.  The initiator will need to select the department, effective year and term in the request form. A list of current advisors
will be provided. Initiator can choose to:

  • Add a new advisor
  • Replace the existing advisor with a new advisor
  • Delete an existing advisor

The initiated request will be automatically sent to the chair/GPC interface for approval and then to the graduate school for their approval. Once the graduate school approves the request, the change is updated in the SAP system.

The student and the advisor will be notified about the advisor assignment/change automatically by email. The chair/GPC and graduate school will be notified about any pending requests via UM Today.

For questions or assistance, contact the IT Helpdesk at (662) 915-5222 or helpdesk@olemiss.edu.

Filed Under: Advising Tagged With: ,

Academic Technology Updates from EDUCAUSE 2012

November 10, 2012 by

EDUCAUSE is an organization dedicated to supporting Information Technology (IT) professionals in higher education. EDUCAUSE recently held their annual conference at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, CO. Attendees were able to discuss a variety of academic support topics with colleagues, attend technical sessions and discuss future products with vendors. Below are a few of the highlights of the conference related to academic technology at Ole Miss.

Highlights

Accessibility – We saw the premier of the video, “IT Accessibility: What Campus Leaders Have to Say” and engaged with the CIOs from the video on their personal experience and continued efforts.  We listened to how Penn State University established a campus-wide software license to automate the checking of websites for accessibility. Further, we learned about the current status of Google Apps for Education and their accessibility initiatives.   As examples of the technical discussions, university accessibility coordinators are recommending that Microsoft Outlook be used to interface with Gmail and Google Calendar.  Also, Amara was a free cloud service recommended for captioning existing online videos.

Blackboard and Open Educational Resources – Blackboard provides open education resources via COURSEsites.  Users may access a series of courses focused on the effective use of technology in teaching and learning. Blackboard’s COURSEsites offers a stand-alone course for instructors and content developers that explores what accessibility and universal design mean and how they can be applied to online learning.  If interested, sign up for this free course.

LMS Trends – Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Instructure, Moodle Rooms and Sakai were all present on the vendor floor this year.  The big buzz was Canvas, Instructure’s learning management system.   Most discussions circled around Blackboard Learn vs. Instructure Canvas.  During LMS sessions, IT professionals cited reasons why universities are migrating to Canvas (e.g., ease of use, customer support quality) while others are staying with Blackboard (e.g., frequent Canvas interface changes, Instructure is a young company).  The University of Maryland is the latest university that is going live with Canvas so there will be more to report on their efforts in the spring.

Lecture Capture – Echo360 was the most widely discussed lecture capture solution among universities attending EDUCAUSE.  Session leaders mentioned the high costs involved with making classrooms into lecture capture environments.   A low cost alternative from Swivl got a lot of attention. We plan to evaluate Swivl’s solution in the near future.

Mobility Through the Looking Glass – This session covered a faculty cohort program at Purdue University. Faculty applying for the program received an iPad for use in the classroom. They provided program statistics.  Additionally, one faculty member discussed the innovating ways of using her iPad in her classroom.  Rather than writing a research paper, students used their iPads to create a video documentary of their research.  Related, Purdue received funding and implemented an iPad rental program for students.

Funniest Conference Quote – During a presentation of how iPads were provided to Enterprise MBA students at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the presenter was asked how this initiative was funded.   The presenter replied, “At Wharton, we may not be first at everything, but we are first in tuition.”

Further Information

EDUCAUSE 2013 will be held in Annehiem, CA. Dr. Kathryn Gates is on the 2013 conference planning committee.  Please let us know if you would like to suggest a session topic to highlight academic technology initiatives.

 

Filed Under: Academic Technology

Short Links for UM Google Sites

November 1, 2012 by

Sites are Google’s cloud solution for web site development. Provided as a part of Google Apps for Education at the University of Mississippi (UM), faculty, staff and students are beginning to use Sites for course collaboration sites and organization web pages.

One reported downside has been the length of the Sites links. I have good news. You can promote a shorter link for all your Sites hosted under the UM Google domain.  When you are ready to publicize your site, use the link http://sites.olemiss.edu/google_site_name where google_site_name is the name you chose when creating a Google Site under your UM Gmail account.

Your Google Sites

We want to know what you are doing with Google Sites to share with your colleagues in a future TechNews article.   Send me an email so we can share your creativity!

Further Information

Visit the IT Helpdesk web design link to learn about web design options at UM.   If you have a UM Gmail account and want detailed training on Google Sites development,  Google offers online training.

Filed Under: Web Site