Re: Activities Pausing for Alpha Financials Cutover
To: All staff, faculty and post-docs
Nov. 18, 2020
Hello campus colleagues,

Alpha Financials is UC Merced’s project to replace the legacy financial system hosted at UCLA with Oracle Cloud Applications. As part of the cutover to Oracle, the project teams must complete a massive data conversion. This will require pausing campus activity such as purchasing, travel, recharge and non-PEARS (non-payroll) entry in several existing UCLA-based systems (a complete list can be found at the end of this communication*).

During this cutover period, Dec. 8 through Jan. 4, there will be limited to no functionality for most processes and transactions (see table below). Limited exceptions will be made for critical business activities, such as contracts and grants, gifts and endowments, or emergency purchases. There also will be some downtime during the cutover process for systems that interface with the UCLA financial system, including GLAAS and Banner, to allow the new interfaces to be put in place for the Oracle go-live on Jan. 4. 

We also will take steps to address potential business disruptions during the cutover period. Many of you will receive targeted emails specific to the potential impacts of the cutover process on your business area or function and any actions that you will need to take.

Below are key upcoming cutover dates and business impacts:
Project information is available on the Alpha Financials website, including FAQs, reference materials by project area, and training information. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the cutover process or training, contact us at [email protected].

We all are looking forward to leveraging this new technology platform to improve our business processes. Thank you in advance for helping the Alpha Financials project team bring this project to a successful launch. 

Kim Groesbeck
Interim Assistant Vice Chancellor/ Controller
Business & Financial Services
* Systems that will require a pause in activity
  • Data warehouse DDODS/Cognos report
  • ODS
  • OFSR reports and Document Direct reports
  • DACSS – system security
  • Security backbone -- vulnerability, forensics, SSO, governance
  • UCPath IDM interface
  • QDB
  • FS applications (journal, TOF, recharge, etc.)
  • FS mainframe
  • Payroll (PPS) mainframe
  • FS, Budget applications data storage & management (local to applications)
  • PAN history data management
  • PAC/Cat Buy (Procurement)
  • Consolidated gift fund management
  • Glacier (Tax)
  • Express (Travel)
  • PTA (Travel)
  • Effort Reporting (ERS)
This is an important message from UC Merced. Please share with colleagues who may not have ready access to email.