Rules are a component of the Colleague ERP application which are used to apply the appropriate business logic to many Colleague processes including registration, financial aid and billing. This policy outlines how and by whom modifications to rules in the Colleague production environment will be handled, and applies to everyone who has been authorized to access the Colleague ERP.
Principles
Often Directors and other department members will have the need to modify the rules used in Colleague to control business practices. There is a some level of technical expertise and precision required to create or change rules correctly. The recommended best practice is for new or modified rules to be tested thoroughly before being applied in production and that we keep an audit trail of such changes.
Those who are have a business need to add/modify rules and have authorization from their supervisor to do so, will get access at one of two levels:
- Standard rule access: The standard practice for rule changes is for the department to work on and test their rules in one of the Colleague test environments. Once the rule is working as expected, the person making the change will open a service request with IT Client Services for the rule to be promoted to production. This provides for both the need to test thoroughly before introducing the changes to production, as well as the need to maintain an audit trail of rule changes.
- Elevated rule access: There are sometimes updates to business practices which requires more agility when updating rules. For these situations, there we be some individuals who are authorized for elevated rule access and they will have the rights to add or modify rules directly in production. Employees with elevated access are still expected to develop and test their rules in a test environment before making the same changes directly in production. Field history for critical fields in the RULES file has been enabled in production which allows for creation of change audit queries. Elevated rule access for any individual requires additional approval by the IT Governance Committee.
Individuals who update rules, both the standard users and elevated users, are expected to remain aware of the importance of care and precision when updating rules. If rule updates are done carelessly or incorrectly there could be significant negative impact to the day to day operations of the University.
Enforcement
Violators of this policy may have the Colleague access reduced or revoked.
Approval
Approved by IT Governance Committee on 12/14/2021.