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ARCHIVE - New Features in MARS as of April 15, 2010 Reporting and Querying Module XI3.1 Migration: MARS Reporting & Querying was migrated from SAP Business Objects version XI 2 to XI 3.1 in January 2010. A new user guide was written and can be found on the MARS Web Page under Reference Materials / Training Material / Reporting & Querying User Guide. For experienced users of the old release, a What's New Guide was developed to help them with the transition. The What's New Guide can be found on the MARS Web Page in the bottom right corner. Corporate Documents Converted to WebI: Many of the corporate documents were built using the Business Objects Desktop Intelligence (DeskI) product. Reports built with this product were not editable by users (discernable by the blue icon in front of the document name). The conversion of the DeskI reports to the XI3.1 version of Business Objects caused errors to occur in these reports. Rather than fix the errors in the DeskI version, the MARS team decided to rewrite all the DeskI reports in Web Intelligence (WebI). Now users have the ability to edit any MARS report. New Report Notes: The MARS R&Q team has implemented a new way of handling report notes. Report notes are shown as a separate tab on each report. Historically, these notes have been entered into PowerPoint and pasted into the report note tab. If a change was needed to the report notes, the MARS team had to modify the report and put it through the change control process. The report notes are now entered into a database and are shown in the reports note tab via a query to this database. The report notes are refreshed each time a user runs a report. This allows for central maintenance of notes that can be changed on the fly without having to modify the report itself. As of 4/15/2010, the Monthly Variance Reports and Funds Control and Budget categories of reports have been converted to this new technique. All categories should be complete by then end of FY10. Misc Reporting Additions and Modifications: Report Change - Transaction Reports - MARS Non-Labor Open Obligations - This report is used for the Certification of Obligations data call. Per new requirements from NOAA Finance, this report has been changed to only show the last two Fund Code Fiscal Years for non-PO documents. PO documents do not have this restriction. To make the MARS report more like the Discoverer workbook, we've added the identification of Deob Candidates. A Deob Candidate is defined as document that has had no activity since the end of the current month in the previous year. Added a link to the MARS Affected Reference Number Query and MARS Affected Document Number Query. Added filters on Amount, Item Type, Doc Group and Affected Reference Number. Report Change - Higher Level Review - MARS IT Cost Distribution - Reimbursable funds have been filtered out per the recommendation of the Business Rules Committee. Report Change - NOAA Variance Reporting - ORF, PAC & Reimb Graphs - Funds 3 and 4 have been added to the ARRA fund grouping. Report Change - Labor Reports - MARS Employee Overhead (OAR Only) - New tabs for hours worked vs.total hours. Report Change - Higher Level Review - MARS NOAA - GL Flux Analysis - Detail and Summary - Added Activity filter. Separated ARRA Funds to mirror change made to the CBS GL Flux Discoverer workbooks. New Report - Transaction Reports - GSA Billing - Monthly billing report that links GSA Web Bill, GSA Inventory and CBS stored accounting. Report Change - Higher Level Review - MARS Financial Review - Graphs and Comments - This report supports a process similar to the NOAA Variance Reporting. It was designed for NWS to run their own monthly and quarterly financial reviews and has been in use for 5 years. It has been updated so that the process can be used by all LOs. If your LO is interested in using this process, contact the MARS help desk to log this request. Misc Universe Additions and Modifications:
Data Entry Module New Grouping Options for the Report 14 (Monthly Obligations by Program/Project/Object Class). Org level grouping added (chosen level, from 1 to 7) to get a necessary level of detail and to compare with Monthly Budget Report 12y on any selected org level. Previously, Report was only available by FMC. New Layout for the Report 75a (Quarterly Funds Control vs. Budget) - New layout to view the yearly Budget/Allotments comparison: quarterly data side-by-side (AA, Budget and Difference lines) to assist in CBS BOP Upload Preparation. COLA Changes for MARS Labor Projections - Per OPM regulations, the changes were made for COLA rates in Personnel tracking and Labor Projection modules to allow COLA rates to be projected by an effective pay period (before and after January 1st rates). Production data for the affected regions has been updated. New Internal Fund Analyses Reports for NMFS: Internal Fund Distribution Report (25I) - Created to track IF distribution by object class based on percentage used by fund/program/project by Line Office and FMC. This report displays a summary of allocations, actual obligations, pending obligations and the balance grouped by Major Object classes. Depending on the grouping chosen, the report displays org code summary (chosen org level), Program or Org/project/task summary. NMFS Internal Fund Analysis by Program (2P) - This Report allows to run Internal Fund Analysis by Program/FMC or Program/Project/FMC for the whole Line Office. |
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