What is UCPath?
UCLA transitioned to a new HR and Payroll product, PeopleSoft Human Capital Management (HCM) in September, 2018. The transition from the Personnel/Payroll System (PPS) to HCM was a sweeping one, introducing new and changed business processes at UCLA and the entire UC system.
The HCM data is provided to UCLA by UCPath in a standardized form and is sourced from the UCPath Reporting Instance (RI).
The UCLA Enterprise Data Services Team has provided and continues to add pre-built reports in Cognos to meet the business needs of our customers. You also have the option of building your own ad-hoc reports using Cognos Reporting.
What Changed From the old PPS System?
With the introduction of UCPath, the business processes of HR and Payroll changed. While many concepts remained, such as hiring employees and associating them with a position, or paying an employee and tracking an employee’s leave, the way in which these concepts are recorded and tracked changed with the new UCPath business processes. These new processes defined what data is included in the UCLA ODS and the Data Warehouse/Cognos.
These changes marked a difference in the way PP QDB and Data Warehouse/Cognos users think about and interpret data. Some examples of the changes are:
- Certain elements transitioned to new elements. For example, title_code transitioned to job code.
- There are many new concepts from UC Path, which means that users have access to new attributes about employees, their jobs, benefits, pay, etc.
- Some elements and concepts were not carried forward to UC Path and were replaced with new concepts or were specific to PPS
New Subject Areas for UCPath
With UCPath, HR and payroll concepts are grouped into subject areas that gather related data based on usage and business process. The subject areas with UCPath are:
- Person - Data that are unique to a person, such as employee ID, name, citizenship attributes, etc.
- Job - Data about an employee’s position(s) with the University as well as attributes that describe the job itself.
- Benefits - Data about employees and their dependents' benefits elections as well as data about plan types and deductions.
- Absence Management - Data about any absence from an employee’s job.
- Payroll - Data about the pay process from a point prior to funding to actuals.
- Commitment Accounting - Data about the costs associated with an employee, including budgeting and cost distribution.
- Labor Ledger - Data about payroll transactions at an employee level, including associated accounting unit, earnings and deductions. Also includes summarized data as posted to the General Ledger.
- Identity Management - Data about an employee's association with various UC identity management systems (e.g. UID/Employee ID).
- Budget Export - Data to determine the amount it will cost to operate if current obligations remain consistent for the current year, how much it would cost to operate next year if currently open positions are filled or subsequently eliminated, or new positions are created.
- Job Profile Management - Data that track attributes of a person such as Honors and Awards, Degrees, Licenses and Certifications.
Please refer to the data models for each subject area for further information.
Historical PPS Data
The UCLA ODS does not contain historical information from PPS prior to UCPath. Historical data is available in the UCLA Data Warehouse/Cognos. The data retention policies for the UCLA ODS was determined for all UC by UC Path.
What does this mean for PP QDB and UCLA Data Warehouse/Cognos users?
The method in which users and applications access data changed with the new environment. Ad-hoc users transitioned to COGNOS while applications using PP QDB data were retrofitted to use the new data model within COGNOS. Daily downloads of data transitioned to the UCLA ODS.
