software development simplified
Rice in the Middle: The Forging of a Kuali Rice-Powered
Infrastructure at Indiana University
Brian McGough – Indiana University
Eric Westfall - Indiana University
Kuali Days 2010
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Kuali Rice At IU a Brief History
• Around the turn of the century we saw an
explosion of workflow related applications
• We desired an extensible business process
workflow engine that could be used
– Abstract enough to work with any system
– Valuable enough to integrate with systems
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Consistent set of data across any process
Audit trail for any transaction
Common “action list” or inbox, for all transactions
Common searching for all transactions
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Kuali Rice At IU a Brief History
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2001 - the EDEN project kicked off
2003 - the EDEN project went live
2005 - 2006 – writing of KNS with EDEN integration
2006 - Converted EDEN to KEW and donated to Kuali
2006 - 2007 – Kuali Rice was born and KEW was
subsumed as a module of rice
• 2009 – Major release of Rice at IU finally bringing KEW,
KNS, and KSB together
• 2011 – Next major release of Rice at IU bringing in the
KIM module and deploying ready for Kuali Coeus
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Kuali Rice the vision for IU
• Core infrastructure
– Supporting Enterprise Apps
– Supporting a shared development methodology
for the institution
– Supporting our Service Deployment and
Deployment Strategy through KSB
– Supporting our evolving IDM process through KIM
– Supporting departmental processes through eDoc
Lite
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Enterprise Integration Timeline
Date
Application
May 2003
Electronic Research Administration
October 2003
Human Resource eDocs
June 2005
EPIC (Electronic Procurement and Invoicing Center)
October 2006
Timekeeping
September 2007
Add/Drop Course
November 2007
Indiana University Foundation
December 2007
Grade Change
November 2008
Intelligent Infrastructure Billing
February 2009
Schedule of Classes
July 2009
Electronic Paid Time Off (EPTO)
October 2009
Travel
May 2010
Kuali Financial System - General Ledger
August 2010
Course Remonstrance
August 2010
Graduate Admissions Application
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eDocLite Application Timeline
Date
Application
February 2007
Office of Affirmative Action
July 2007
Student Special Credit Request
August 2007
Safeword Card Administration
September 2007
University Graduate School – Course Remonstrance
July 2008
Office of VP for Research – Internal Funding Request
August 2008
Office of VP for Research Administration – Conflict of Interest
August 2008
Health Center Appointment Request
January 2009
Registrar – Staff Orientation Information Request
May 2009
Payroll Request
September 2009
Security Office – Web Vulnerability Scanning Request
December 2009
Registrar – Course Bulletin
January 2010
Optometry Appointment Request
March 2010
Motor Pool Vehicle Request
March 2010
Purchasing Contract
May 2010
Oncourse Adminstration Request
August 2010
Business Intelligence Project
Submission
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Millions
Expanding Implementation
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10
9
8
7
6
Documents Routed
5
Requests Generated
Actions Taken
4
3
2
1
0
2003
2004
2005
2006
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Usage
Number of Unique Users
70000
60000
50000
40000
# of Unique Users
30000
20000
10000
0
2003
2004
2005
2006
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administration
software for education
2007
2008
2009
Architecture and Infrastructure
• Load balancer with four clustered Kuali Rice
standalone server instances
• Use Tomcat as the servlet container
• Shared file system mount for attachments
• Oracle database
• Many client applications use an embedded
workflow engine
– This is our recommended integration model
• There are a few “thin client” applications
remaining which utilize plug-ins
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IU Kuali Rice Architecture
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KIM Integration
• Identity management at IU is handled by a
separate team
• Use a tool from Microsoft called “Identity
Lifecycle Manager”
– Provisions identity data into KIM database tables
– Does so in as near real-time as possible
• Implemented a custom SOAP service and
published on the KSB to receive CRUD operations
• Also integrates with Active Directory for groups
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KIM Architecture
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Scalability
• Designed for horizontal scalability
• Load balancer helps to distribute requests
• Could add additional application servers to
suit needs
• Over the years have moved from two
application servers to four to handle increased
usage
• Using embedded workflow engines also helps
to distribute the load
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Scalability
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Improving Enterprise Business Processes
• As shown earlier we have tackled many
enterprise integration projects over the years
• We will take a closer look at a few of these:
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Human Resources
Timekeeping
Paid Time Off
Purchasing
Student Systems
Travel
Enterprise Portal
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Human Resources – HR eDocs
• Electronic documents for human resource
transactions
• Examples:
– Hire
– Terminate
– Transfer
– Additional Pay
– Create Position
– Maintain Position
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HR eDocs - Goals
• Conceived as a project to eliminate paper-based
processes for these various transactions
• HRMS system at IU is based on PeopleSoft
• Native PeopleSoft screens for these transactions
were deemed too unwieldy for departmental
users
• These home-grown electronic documents helped
to insulate users from PeopleSoft
• Bonus! When IU upgraded to PeopleSoft 9, endusers of these transactions did not notice any
difference
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HR eDocs – How it used to work
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Paper-based “Personnel Action Form”
Campus mail for approval
Average two-week turnaround
Paper form would get stuck on someone’s
desk and it would be difficult to track it down
• Manual data entry into PeopleSoft
• Afterwards, route again via campus mail for
notification
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HR eDocs – How we made it better
• Using the power of KEW, approval processes
for these transactions were automated
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HR eDocs – Workflow Benefits
• Staff could save data to PeopleSoft without
re-entry
• 1 paper form turned into 22 tailored
electronic forms
– streamlined data collection
• Average turnaround time went from 2 weeks
to a matter of hours!
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HR eDocs – Usability Rewrite
• After 6 years of useful life, the application was
given a “face lift” in 2009 to address usability
• As part of a usability rewrite, HR eDocs
became first application at IU to use the Kuali
Nervous System
• This also resulted in bringing an aging product
into technical alignment with Kuali Rice and
other enterprise projects at IU
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Timekeeping
• Allows hourly and bi-weekly paid workers to
– Clock-in
– Clock-out
– Maintain their timesheet
• KEW-enabled version was preceded by a version
with an application-specific workflow
• Approval process is fairly simple
– Supervisors
– Payroll Processors
• However, time constraints on approvals add
complexity
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Timekeeping – Workflow Process
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Timekeeping – Rice Integration Benefits
• Original process was only for hourlies - ~7,000
employees
• New process rolled out to bi-weekly
employees as well – combined total of
~20,000
• Unified the way in which timesheets were
handled
• Allowed for supervisors and payroll processors
to be notified of approval through the Action
List
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Electronic Paid Time Off (EPTO)
• Allows employees to submit the holidays and
vacation days they took the previous month
• Routes to supervisors for approval
• Originally this process was different for every
department
– Some were electronic
– Some used paper
– None were tied into Kuali Enterprise Workflow
• Took a departmental process and made it
universal
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Precursors to KPME
• KPME stands for “Kuali People Management
for the Enterprise”
• A new Kuali project to build an HR system
• IU’s HR eDocs, Timekeeping, and EPTO will
help form the basis for KPME
• Allows for us to contribute this intellectual
capital to kick start the project
• Already implemented using Kuali Rice!
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Purchasing (EPIC)
• IU’s EPIC application handles
– Requisitions
– Purchase Orders
– Payment Requests
• Replaced the last IU mainframe application
– Mainframe retired 6/23/2006
• EPIC eventually became the system of record for
the KFS PURAP (purchasing and accounts
payable) module
• EPIC will be replaced by KFS in December 2012
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Purchasing (EPIC) – Workflow Process
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Student Information Systems
• Our student area has taken on many projects
which are utilizing Kuali Rice
– Drop/Add Course
– Grade Change Request
– Schedule of Classes Change Request
– Graduate Admissions Application
– Course Remonstrance
• Many of these processes were previously
paper-based
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SIS – Drop/Add – The Old Way
• The student-initiated drop/add class
application addressed a major issue
• After the first week of classes, students
required to get approval to drop or add class
• Original paper-based process, student would
have to:
– Go to Registrar and get a paper form
– Have advisor sign the form
– Have professor sign the form
– Take it back to Registrar for manual data entry
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SIS – Drop/Add – The Rice Way
• The original process could take days (and lots of
walking!)
• CIO of IU worked in same building as Registrar at
the time
– Noticed the massive lines out the door of the building
– Said: “This has to stop!”
• An online drop/add application was implemented
powered by KEW for routing of the form
• The student’s job is done once they submit the
form!
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Add a Class
SIS – Drop/Add – The Rice Way
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Travel
• IU’s Travel system handles
– Pre-Travel Authorization
– Reimbursements
– Pre-Payments
– Supplements
• These were originally handled differently for
each department
– many of them paper-based!
• Travel leverages existing routing used for EPIC
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Enterprise Portal
• Our Enterprise Portal is currently using a
“closed-loop” version of the service bus to
handle communication between different
instances in their application cluster
• Action List portlet
• Notifications Channel
• Future projects:
– Bringing portal onto the enterprise bus
– Loading student calendars via web services
– KIM Integration
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Enterprise Portal
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eDocLite
• A tool for building simple web forms quickly
• Ideal for quickly turning paper-based forms into
electronic forms
• Uses XML Stylesheet Technology
• eDocLite documents backed by workflow engine
to allow for routing
• At IU we’ve used this to eliminate many paperbased processes
• Allows departments without development
resources to get online!
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University Graduate School – Course
Remonstrance
• Remonstrance is a process by which faculty
can review submissions for new or modified
course descriptions
• Descriptions sit on remonstrance list for 30
days
• Graduate school previously did this with a
paper-based process
• Manual entry into an MS Access database
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The Problems
• Paper-based process involved campus mail
and was slow
• Difficult to figure out where a request was
stuck if it had not been processed yet
• Paper forms would oftentimes have bad info
• Occasionally, after sitting on the remonstrance
list for 30 days without approval:
– Student Enrollment Services would notice an error
– Process would have to start over!
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Problem Solved!
• eDocLite allowed them to:
– Bring their form online quickly
– Add validation to their form
– Use KEW to route for approval
– Track in progress documents
– Add an additional SES pre-review step in the
workflow
• Additionally, eDocLite could feed the form
data into their database
• Eliminated manual data entry
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Enterprise Course Remonstrance
• This ultimately was retired in favor of CARMin,
our enterprise course remonstrance system
– Transition was seamless for users since they were
already used to electronic process
– Used a very similar workflow process definition
• Despite remonstrance moving to enterprise,
UGS still uses eDocLite for some of their other
unrelated forms
• As a result, their office is nearly paperless
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Research Administration – Conflict of
Interests
• Faculty need to submit conflict of interest forms
on an annual basis
– Research office distributed to departments to
disseminate to faculty
– Once faculty filled out form, they gave back to
department
– Department returned to research office
– Office staff performed manual data entry
• All faculty must have their COI on file in order to
receive funds and apply for grants
– Regulation of the NIH
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The Problems
• Paper-based forms took anywhere from two
weeks to two months to get back
• Had to wait this long even to get back forms
from faculty with no disclosures
• This would hold up funding
• In some cases funding was dependent on the
COI being in place
– Without this a researcher might lose a funding
opportunity!
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Problem Solved!
• Created a multi-page form to collect all
disclosures
• Faculty with nothing to disclose can simply
submit the form after filling in some info
• For those with disclosures, cut the processing
time from up to two months, to within a week
• No more data entry costs – staff can work on
other things
• Reporting:
– Send reports to departments
– Run reports to determine who still needs to disclose
– Metrics
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Research Administration – Conflict of
Interests
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Research Administration – Conflict of
Interests
• For those faculty with no disclosures, they can
select all “No” and they are finished
• If “Yes” is answered to any question, it takes
them to a screen where they can enter
disclosures
open source administration software for education
Kuali Rice At IU a peek into the future
• 2011 – deployment of Kuali Rice 1.0.3
– Update all client applications
– Deployment of Kuali Coeus v3.0
– Continued deployment of CARMIN functionality
• 2012-2013
– Full deployment of KFS
– Rollout of KPME
– Continued rollout of services and edocs
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Kuali Rice At IU
• Thanks for Coming
• Questions???
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