Teammates,
I continue to appreciate your patience and resilience as we transition to IPPS-A Release 3. Though it may not always feel like it, we can see progress being made. For those that may not know, IPPS-A is the largest PeopleSoft implementation to date and the largest Enterprise Resource Planning implementation in the Department of Defense. This certainly was never going to be easy given the complexity of the task to not only combine the processes of three components, but to also work through the issues our legacy system data has caused.
I’d like to focus this week’s message on some trends we are seeing and to provide some context for you to share with the Soldiers in your units.
We continue to get RFIs on provisioning. We have also seen issues with completing actions that are often a result of not having the right roles and permissions. We have taken the task to make the roles/permissions more streamlined; however, we won’t be able to do that in the near-term. HR Professionals and Commanders need to be correctly provisioned within IPPS-A to be able to conduct their daily tasks. Keep in mind that you can uncheck items from a user’s access to restrict what you want them to do. For instance, if you don’t want your platoon sergeants to just approve absences, you could uncheck all items but absence approver from their Commander/Manager access. Additionally, we have shut off notifications, but some of these notifications are directly tied to users who have roles beyond what they may need, or for higher level commanders having roles too low for their actual responsibilities. If your CG or BDE Commander is getting Company-level notifications, look at their Commander level access request and see if they can be removed from some of the roles that they won’t need and they won’t get those notifications. We often see requests for World Access with the justification that the user needs to see multiple components. This same result can be achieved with an Inclusive ROWSECCLASS. Consider requesting that as a solution. Check out the Provisioning Overview to help you with requesting proper access for your responsibilities. By reviewing your roles/permissions first, it helps us get to the root cause of system issues as well. We are here to help and I hope you will all continue to share the solutions broadly.
Please review the schedule of additional MPD Refresher Training sessions. This document highlights topics, dates/times, and how to enroll. The training will provide a refresher for executing human resources and applicable pay actions using IPPS-A. I ask your assistance with informing your MPDs of these sessions. These are not only great sessions for our MPDs, but also help all units learn the end-to-end process to assist in supporting the field. Our MPDs play an extremely important role in the hire-to-retire lifecycle of a Soldier and there are some critical gaps we need to fill across the force to make sure you can get accountability in your units. I ask that these sessions be supported widely.
We hear the challenges with CRM cases getting closed. We will continue to work closely with the Tier 1 Helpdesk to ensure cases are closed after resolution is confirmed. However, there are also a growing number of cases that are sitting with unit level provider groups. All cases, unless initially submitted as an IT case to go directly to Tier 1, are created as HR cases and go to the lowest level provider group (typically the BN S1). In some cases, these provider groups were created, but personnel not assigned. You may have Soldiers in your units that submitted cases that are waiting to be actioned. I have previously shared the Provider Group set up deck and will post that on S1Net for your use, but this backlog is growing and requires your action.
Lastly, I’d like to mention absence requests. Absence requests submitted via IPPS-A are not submitted through the local finance offices. These requests send directly to DJMS, the pay system. While we understand that several finance offices across the Army have noted they are not taking absence requests submitted via IPPS-A, this demonstrates a lack of understanding on how these absence requests are completed and processed. The DA31 is a thing of the past. All units should absolutely be having Soldiers submit absence requests via IPPS-A as this also ensures the duty status is recorded appropriately. We will continue to coordinate with the finance offices at our level; however, increased understanding on your part will also ensure that you know how best to support your unit. PCS absence requests do need to be included in the PCS packet so the finance office to do their departure transaction in the pay system; however, final processing is also done via IPPS-A. Routine absences never go to finance.
We also know there are still several Soldiers who moved during BOCO that do not have assignments. Please continue to send us your lists of Soldiers with as much information that you have so we can work with HRC/TRADOC/IMCOM to get these assignments loaded. Many of the continued issues we are seeing are still largely tied to conversion and the catchup from BOCO.
We will continue to post the listing of known issues on our website and encourage you to reference that list frequently as it also includes answers to common questions we get from the field. We are committed to working through the issues with you and the entire team is on hand to do that, so please continue to pass the issues you are finding to us. For a list of known issues please go to https://ipps-a.army.mil/ipps-a-known-issues/.
We greatly appreciate your patience and diligence.
Thank you.
VR,
COL Eggers
COL, AG
IPPS-A FMD