October 9, 2020

TO: UCPath Transactional Users
FR: UCSB UCPath Team
RE: UCPath Planned December Outage: Important Dates and Impacts

In December, the UCPath Oracle hosting platform transfers to Amazon Web Services (AWS). 

UCPath will be offline beginning at 10 p.m., Wednesday, December 9 until 6 a.m., Monday, December 14, 2020. 

The shift to AWS provides a mature platform for an improved end-user experience and better system performance for critical UCPath areas, leading to faster payroll cycle times.  

During this time, neither employees nor transactional users (including central offices) will have access to the system. It is critical for departments to plan ahead and process transactions before the outages to assure correct pay on the pay dates during and immediately following the outages. Below are instructions for UCPath transactional users regarding payroll deadlines, hiring employees, separating employees, and employee self-service actions.

Biweekly Pay deadlines for UCPath transactions

  • Biweekly check date: December 9
    • The December biweekly pay statement will be available early in UCPath, beginning on Monday December 7, 2020, at 8 a.m. Employees will not be able to view pay statements during the outage.
  • To ensure biweekly employees are paid on Wednesday, December 23, all transactions must be in UCPath by 3 p.m. on Tuesday, December 8. All timekeeping sign-offs must be completed in Kronos by 11 a.m. on Tuesday, December 15. All timekeeping corrections must be completed by 1 p.m. on Wednesday, December 16.

If a transaction requires processing through a central campus office (Academic Personnel or Payroll) the transaction must be submitted to those offices early enough to allow the central office to meet the UCPath Center deadlines.  

New Employees Starting in December

Departments must notify BFS of a new hire via ServiceNow at bfshelp.ucsb.edu before the employee’s start/effective date to generate the I-9. 

For Section 2, the I-9 verification needs a remote Section 2 in-person verifier who can verify the employee’s documents. This person must be over 18 years of age and not related to the employee. We will need the name and email address for the remote verifier in the ServiceNow ticket. The verifier will receive a one-time link to verify the employee’s documents on our behalf. For questions about this process, please contact Shannon Jackson at shannon.jackson@bfs.ucsb.edu.

Departments are cautioned to avoid scheduling new hire start dates when the UCPath system is unavailable. When the UCPath system is unavailable, new hires cannot login to the UCPath portal, preventing them from completing their Patent Acknowledgement, W-4 form, Direct Deposit, and benefits enrollment. New employees eligible for university benefits and those with a qualifying event (such as birth or adoption) should be encouraged to enroll in benefits when the UCPath portal is available. Please contact HR if you need more assistance with benefits enrollment in December.

For concurrent hires or other pay-impacting changes (i.e. pay rate change, FTE change), make every attempt to process the updates prior to the outage periods and payroll processing deadlines. We expect longer-than-average processing times at the UCPath Center for template transactions, so departments should prepare to submit transactions as early as possible in December.

Employees Separating in December

Submit any anticipated December resignation/terminations in advance of the biweekly or monthly payroll-processing deadlines outlined above. For separations requiring a final payout, Final Pay requests should be submitted to the Payroll Office via ServiceNow by noon on December 18, 2020, for the biweekly paycheck on January 6, 2021, and for the Monthly paycheck on January 4, 2021. If there is an unanticipated termination requiring special handling, please consult with the Employee & Labor Relations unit in HR or with the Academic Personnel Office as appropriate.

Employee Self-Service Actions with Limited Availability in December

During the outage, employees will not have access to UCPath Online and will not be able to:

  • View earning statements and W-2s
  • Make address changes
  • Enroll in direct deposit
  • Make benefit selections

Please watch your email over the next two months for additional updates from the UCPath team and the central offices.

Additional resources

If you have questions or situations that are urgent during one of the freeze periods, please contact the following offices: