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Cornell University

Expense Review Project

Cornell's unified expense review tool

Invitation to the Pilot

Below is the email sent to people who volunteered to be part of the Expense Review Pilot. If you are reading this, feel free to try out the pilot! (If you do, please join the email list for pilot users.)

Hi,

You’ve indicated interest in piloting Expense Review. Now is the moment!

Acting as an early user and providing us honest and detailed feedback is extraordinarily helpful and will materially improve the experience for all campus users this fall. In the past we’ve dramatically changed features, documentation, or rollout plans based on detailed and thoughtful feedback we received from early users like you.

In addition to helping gather feedback early users can use their experience to plan rollout in your units.

We will be releasing additional features in September and through the end of the calendar year. If you want more information about our plans, please see the August Status Report.

The remainder of this email provides the 1) process instructions, 2) a list of the current features, 3) how to log into the application, 4) how to give us feedback, and 5) how to get more information. I’ve attached a pdf Quick Reference Card as well, which is also available on the web.

Process Instructions

The Expense Review report does not have instructions yet. We will be adding them shortly. Here is a summary of the instructions.

  • Only Account managers can record reviews of their accounts.
  • Research Administrators can leave notes on the overall report and on the individual transactions. In the documentation we talk about this as the “Pre-Review”.
  • We limit the transactions that require review to sponsored transactions over $75. Benefits and F&A transactions don’t need to be reviewed because they are derived from other transactions being reviewed.
  • Details for all transactions are available by clicking on the transaction.
  • All transactions are available for review, but we don’t require recording the review.
  • Act-as is required to look at someone else’s reports. See https://guide.pidash.cornell.edu/act-as for for more information. You will need to work with your unit’s financial staff to be granted this access.
  • The Quick Reference Card includes these instructions as well as documentation on how to use the system.

Completed Features:

  • Expense Review Reports for all account managers for the last two months (in the future we’ll have all reports to the beginning of the prior fiscal year)
  • Details panel for all the transactions
  • Ability to add notes to all transactions
  • Ability to add an overall note for the month
  • You are able to see the reports and add notes to the reports for all people you can act-as
  • Account managers can “Complete Review” on their monthly reports

Future features are described in the August Status Report.

Feedback Requested

We’re very interested in your feedback. We track all feedback and will consider how best to address each suggestion in future releases. Right now we’re most interested in feedback about misleading labels or information, pain points, and suggestions related to reviewing your expenses and the documentation we’re sharing with you. We’re also interested in hearing about how you plan on working with your unit on the rollout. We’ll let you know when we add new functionality we’d like you to try out.

  • Research Administrators, can you please “pre-review” one of your faculty member’s reports and add notes as you would in preparation for their review. You are welcome to share the pilot URL and have the faculty member review the report you “pre-reviewed”.
  • Account Managers, can you please review one of your reports just as you would in production.
  • Let us know about Pain Points, misleading information, and suggestions. You can send us a note by clicking on the ​​ icon in the bottom right of the PI Dashboard window.  Please include:
    • If relevant, can you include a screenshot or the URL of the page.
    • What you actually experienced.
    • What you expected or would prefer.
    • Why do you expect it or would prefer it? The “why” part may be obvious to you, but it is often helpful in prioritizing the bug or suggestion.

Access

  • Log into https://pidashboard-pilot.rais.cucloud.net/expense-review.
    • This development server is only available from 7AM to 7PM.
    • Changes will not carry forward to the production environment.
    • For those of you who have set up “secure connect“, you will be prompted to use two step login instead since this is a development server.
  • You can act-as anyone you can act-as in the financial dashboards by selecting them in the menu with your name on it in the upper right.
  • Anyone with the URL can log in. You are welcome to share it with the people you work with directly, preferably by forwarding this email.

More details

Additional details are on the project website:

Best Regards,
-Paul Davis

—

Paul Davis
Product Manager, Data Products
Research&Innovation
Cornell University
607-254-5068

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