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Advantage system upgrade on Labor Day weekend
will change way employeess access time sheets

More than a year in the planning and testing process, ITD Advantage 3.7 will make a debut to the transportation department on Labor Day weekend, announces Ken Stewart and Dave Merriweather.

Advantage 3.7 is a major upgrade to the financial, human resources and procurement system that was introduced in late 2005 and early 2006. Many of the functions remain unchanged in the newest version, but accessing those functions might be different, especially timesheet data entry, which affects almost all ITD employees.

“We will cut over to the upgraded version on Labor Day weekend and make it available to the department Sept. 2,” Stewart explains.

He encourages all employees to become familiar with the new access to the timesheet portion of the system. Changes are outlined in a detailed PowerPoint presentation and in document available in pdf format.

Stewart said employees should be aware of the following:

Employee time sheets

The timesheet is slightly different, and getting to the time sheet is also slightly different. No formal classroom training will be provided because the changes are few but significant. However, there will be a document outlining the differences and that document will be made available on the network. It is critical that you review the document so you are able to process your time sheet in the upgraded system.
The time sheet for the period of Aug. 24 –Sept. 6 will not be made available until we go live on Sept. 2. Typically the time sheet for a pay period is opened on the first Tuesday of a given pay period. In this case that should be Aug. 26; however, to keep your timesheet data from being corrupted during cut over, we won’t open the time sheet for that pay period until Sept. 2. Consequently, you will need to maintain your timesheet details manually for the first week of the pay period and then can put the information into Advantage starting on Sept. 2.

For important information on new access
to time sheets, please check the following:

PowerPoint Presentation

PDF Instructions

InfoAdvantage reporting
InfoAdvantage is being upgraded also. A formal class is being presented by Human Resource Development staff to Advantage report users. A PowerPoint presentation also will be made available. The reports themselves have not changed, but navigation to the reports has changed quite a bit so participation in the class and review of the materials will be critical.

System down time
In preparation for the cut over we will be blocking access to the current Advantage System beginning Friday, Aug. 29, at 3 p.m. All transactions should be completed prior to that time. We will reopen access as soon as the cut-over is complete – likely late on Monday, Sept. 1. A couple days prior, we will likely coordinate with the system users to reduce transactions to only those that are critical.

How to get to the new system
The links on the Intranet home page (http://intranet/) will be changed during the cut-over weekend. On the left side menu under “ITD Advantage” the links will be changed to reflect the new application locations. Employees who have set up shortcuts, either on their desktop or as a favorite in Internet Explorer, will notice previous links and shortcuts will no longer work after 3 p.m. on Aug. 29. Those who prefer to use the short cuts will need to create new ones. If you need assistance, contact the helpdesk for Headquarters users or respective district IT coordinators.

Assistance
For Advantage-related assistance, use the 2020 line, call the team leader you normally work with or contact the ETS service desk (Help Desk at ext. 8175).