The Financial 2000 2010.01 Release is scheduled for deployment to CECC members on Friday, November 20. Included in this release are the Phase II features for EPICS as promised. The new features included in this release are the Personnel Action Form component, the Leave of Absence process as well as the Flex Calendar component.

The Personnel Action Form (PAF) is an optional component of EPICS that automatically generates a report to predefined recipients based upon activity in certain sections in the employee maintenance page. The reports are triggered based upon the employee processes or when specific data elements are modified. Each System Defined PAF (SDP) or User Defined PAF (UDP) has a report layout that can be customized.

In addition to producing and distributing reports, the employee changes are always stored for historical tracking and retrieval. Because EPICS is integrated with the Payroll and Budget systems, multiple departments use the data maintained in the system and need to be informed how the integrated data may have impacted their job. The PAF reports are an excellent communication device between departments.

Also included in this release is the new Leave of Absence Process, which can be used to put an employee on paid, unpaid, or a combination of paid and unpaid leave of absence over time. This process is also available for both positioned and un-positioned employees.

The new Flex Calendar feature is also available. When an employee is given the ability to select the specific days they will work within a year, the work calendar is considered a "flex" calendar. Controls are established by the district technician and the employee is notified to mark their calendar accordingly based upon the predefined controls. Once the calendar is saved, the supervisor is notified to review and approve. This new feature allows for unique calendars based upon the needs of the district and the employee.

Staff will be working with each CECC member over the next several months to move existing members from PC2000 to EPICS as well as move other members from MAGIC to the EPICS application.

CECC staff has received very positive feedback about the application as well as comments on how easy it was to transition to this new program.