Dear Colleagues,
We write to inform you about some changes that will occur in our online consulting approval system beginning on Monday, September 15. On that day, we will launch a new on-line system and the old system will be disabled. Faculty who have submitted requests in the current system for this academic year will not need to resubmit new requests using the new platform. Instead, we will maintain the reconciliation component of the current system until September of 2015. In addition, we will maintain the routing and approval process in the current system until September 30, 2014. The Faculty Consulting Office will work with faculty, department heads, and deans to ensure that all requests in the current system are resolved prior to September 30.
We believe that this new system, which is similar in most aspects to the current system, will be welcomed by faculty, departments heads, and deans. For example, the Faculty Consulting Oversight Committee has recently granted approval for accelerated requests to be approved only by the department head, meaning that the dean and provost will not approve or review accelerated requests after the department head's approval.
In addition, requests in the new consulting system will now be routed in a more streamlined fashion so that our faculty in Law, Nursing, and Social Work will no longer require “double” approval by the deans’ offices.
Training materials and Frequently Asked Questions for the new system are available on the Faculty Consulting website: http://consulting.uconn.edu/training.html. Instructional materials will be revised and expanded in the weeks and months to come, but these initial documents should be helpful to faculty and staff unfamiliar with the online Faculty Consulting process.
Link to access the Consulting Form: http://forms.uconn.edu/apps/ofcas
Link to access the Dashboard: http://forms.uconn.edu/apps/ofcas-dash
Please note that this new system does not support secondary delegates – all approvers are treated equally and will receive email notifications. However, the Faculty Consulting Office can easily add or remove delegates and delegates may set up filter options in their email. If the latter option is preferred, we ask that approvers check the dashboard frequently. We do, however, recommend the use of Firefox or Chrome instead of Internet Explorer for the best experience in completing these forms.
In the new system, the reconciliation component will be located in the same platform as the form. Faculty will no longer need to wait until the requested end date has passed to reconcile; instead, they may reconcile anytime after approval, though they will only be able to enter the current date or an earlier date.
Most importantly, the approval dashboard will now display a faculty member’s consulting requests at all stages, and faculty will be able to see where their request is during the approval process and whether or not it is available to reconcile. Department heads and deans will also be able to see the consulting requests of their faculty – filtering and sorting features are available within the dashboard.
We greatly appreciate your patience with this transition, which we hope will make the consulting approval process easier for all of you.
Please call or email Brandon Murray (brandon.murray@uconn.edu) at the Faculty Consulting Office if you have questions or concerns about any consulting request or the changes to the on-line system. We are happy to assist department heads and faculty in all aspects of the review and approval process.
Sincerely,
Sally Reis and Brandon Murray
For more information, contact: Brandon Murray at brandon.murray@uconn.edu