ATS Advisory Committee Meeting December 17, 2012

Transcription

1 ATS Advisory Committee Meeting December 17, 2012 The ATS Advisory Committee Meeting was held December 17, 2012 via conference call, with the following ATS staff were present: AGENDA I. Roll Call Teresa Bruns was having difficulty with her audio so Scott Woodward opened the meeting and welcomed everyone attending. The following utilities were present: Utility Adams-Columbia Bailey County Black River Blue Ridge Choctawhatchee (CHELCO) Covington Central Florida Empire Electric Gulf Coast Hancock Wood Harrison REMC Illinois Rural Jay County Jones-Onslow Laurens Meriwether Lewis Mountain Parks New River Platte Clay Sam Houston South Alabama South Central South River Talquin Tri-County Wright-Hennepin State WI TX SC AL CO OH IN IL IN SC TN CO MO TX AL IN TX MN December 17, 2012 ATS Advisory Committee Minutes Page 1

2 The following ATS staff was present: Scott Scott Lisa Kim Mark Darlene Mary Jo Darlene Jennifer Joe Name Woodward Tolbert Edwards Kent Holder Caley Smith Gainus Orrock Krueger AGENDA II. Updates on Projects a. 11g Rollout Scott Woodward stated we currently have 7 customers who have been migrated to the latest 11g environment, which is There are no new reports of scrolling issues in this environment. Scott stated that we will contact you as we get closer to your upgrade. The upgrade schedule is a moving target, due to several variables across our client base. The variables are; 1) is new hardware necessary, 2) is RAM needed, 3) is the client on a combo box, 4) is the client on version The average down time is just a few hours for an to upgrade, unless there is a hardware change over. Then the downtime is greater, closer to 4-5 hours on average. Scott Tolbert stated that splitting the database server into two components, the MRCA and the actual database, has enhanced performance as well. We are also removing combo boxes. When we rolled out the original application server (10g), there were some client locations which requested no new hardware. Therefore, we placed the database and application server on the same physical server. This was an acceptable method in Oracle 10g, but not recommended in 11g. Placing the application server on its own server improved performance as well. b. Active Directory December 17, 2012 ATS Advisory Committee Minutes Page 2

3 Joe Krueger stated we are currently getting ready to make changes to the single sign-on. It will not matter what Microsoft version you have. You will be able to manage all your passwords through a single application. Joe stated we are shooting for the 1 st Qtr 2013 to roll this out for anyone that is interested. All rights will still be through the ATS system. User sign-on name and password will be the only information in the Active Directory. c. Software Audits Scott Woodward stated the audits have gone well. Kim Kent stated we have completed 16 audits this year. We originally had 2 ATS employees for 2 days scheduled for the audits, but a few customers asked for a longer period of time and more resources. This has worked well. All and all, the feedback as been positive. Kim also stated some of the clients have had employees retire, so the timing of the training was good. Also, clients who changed various business processes saw improvements. Maura from Mountain Parks stated this was the best money they have spent and was nice to know that they are using the software to its potential. Maura also asked Kim to keep ing the tips on the ATS User Forum as that has been beneficial. Shannon Thom from Hancock Wood stated their Audit was very useful and plans to do this at least every 2 years. The documentation that was sent and the status of request were very beneficial. Kim stated that if you have not received your documentation, it is a priority for us and we will be getting it to you as soon as possible. Any configuration changes are also documented. We do not put hours to RFF s until you have decided if you are interested in it. Kim mentioned we do try to put any RFF s that require a lot of hours out on the forum to see if others would be interested in cost sharing. December 17, 2012 ATS Advisory Committee Minutes Page 3

4 If you have any suggestions or wish any follow-up or want to schedule an audit, please contract Kim Kent. d. ATS Prepay Another Prepaid Solution Scott Woodward stated that the Board of Directors of ATS approved the development of a Prepaid solution. We are currently working on the project. We will still continue to support other prepaid vendors. We want to make this part of our own CIS System. Scott Tolbert stated we will be pulling and storing meter data. Through this process, we will provide the usage information to the customer and CSR/MSR. The information will be available from a smart phone ultimately. All the data will be in CIS so they will not have to connect to anything else. Existing reconciliation issues should no longer be a problem, since billing will be processed daily within the ATS CIS application. Tim Peede from South River asked when this will be ready. Scott Tolbert stated Phase I will take about 6 months. This will consist of capturing, storing and displaying hourly or daily readings on both EBPP and in the CIS application. Phase II will be the prepaid system and should be completed in about 12 months. The final phase, a meter data management system, should be completed in 18 to 24 months. Shannon Thom from Hancock Wood asked if we would be taking into consideration that an account could go into a negative balance. Scott Tolbert stated we are considering allowing this, but also we can give access to the data so you will have all the information you need. The Green Button initiative will also be satisfied with this implementation. e. PCI and the Heartland Solution Scott Woodward stated we finally received our PA-DSS certification for CIS version 5.8 in October. Lisa Edwards stated that the new Heartland Solution will be coming with CIS 5.9 version. We decided not to go with December 17, 2012 ATS Advisory Committee Minutes Page 4

5 Heartland s cashiering system due to client overhead in maintaining a client application. With the Heartland solution, we will no longer store the credit card data, be it for drafts, future payments or one time payments. We will only be storing the last 4 digits of the credit card number. Scott Tolbert stated Lisa has a document that she will be sending out to the AAC with all this information. Scott Tolbert just ordered a secure card swipe device to test for compliancy. Scott Woodward stated that if you are using the PayPal gateway, you can now use the Heartland gateway and save the fees that you are paying to PayPal. Scott Woodward stated we will be working on the PA-DSS certificate for CIS 5.9 version; however this will be a full validation. We are testing Tomcat 7 as well for this certification. Heartland stated that they would beat any other provider out there from a cost standpoint. Shannon Thom asked Scott Tolbert if Heartland would work with Milsoft Porche IVR. Scott Tolbert stated he thought it would, but would verify. Carrie Peters from Jones Onslow stated they went with Heartland to save the PayPal fees, but stated that the customer service is much better at Heartland than PayPal. Kate Frank from South Central Indiana stated she has Meritcard and wants to know if she can get rid of PayPal. Scott Tolbert stated we have a meeting next month and will find out what can be done. Shannon Thom asked for a document on the workflow of the credit card. Scott Tolbert stated we will send this information out next week. f. ADF Oracle Application Development Framework Scott Tolbert stated we are looking at ADF as an option to get off of Oracle forms. This will be a frontend application, which will use java. This will give us the ability to do more in the web environment. The goal is to not have any Java requirements on the client. We are currently speaking with an outside contractor to see what direction we should move towards. We will take a December 17, 2012 ATS Advisory Committee Minutes Page 5

6 couple of our forms and convert them over. We hope to know by the Users Conference which direction we will move towards. g. Oracle Value Based Licensing and Support Pricing Scott Woodward stated he has sent a letter out to the person that receives the ATS invoice for each of our customers regarding the Oracle Value Based Licensing. In moving to this type of licensing from Oracle, we no longer have to worry about the CPU counts. This new licensing model also gives us more options that we had previously wanted to use, but would have incurred additional license fees. Scott stated if you have not seen the letter that went out and would like a copy, just him and he will send it to you. Tim Peede from South River stated he appreciated all that ATS does to try and control the costs of the Oracle Licensing. Sally McGinnis from Platte Clay also wanted to thank ATS for all that they do. Scott stated one of the Enterprise Editions Options is advanced compression. This tool will play a significant role in our meter data storage mentioned in the ATS Prepaid section above. Virtualization was also discussed. Oracle s OVM (Oracle Virtual Management) will be a much cheaper option than VMware, although VMware may have more options than OVM. There are considerations for each option, both from a cost and functionality standpoint. Teresa Bruns from Wright Hennepin stated they are very excited about this conversion to the Oracle Value Based Licensing and the cost savings they are going to have. AGENDA III. Open Discussion Scott Tolbert mentioned that Lisa Edwards has been working on a notification system that will be fully multispeak compliant. The notifications will come from the CIS system. This will be coming out 2 nd Qtr Teresa Bruns from Wright Hennepin asked if anyone is using the Heartland web services. December 17, 2012 ATS Advisory Committee Minutes Page 6

7 Maura Ransom from Mountain Parks asked what the arrangement RFF for EBPP timeline was. Kim Kent stated that it is in testing and will be part of the 5.9 version upgrade, which will be coming late 2 nd Qtr 2013 Steve Moore from Harrison stated it seems a number of clients have been taking part in cost sharing RFF s and he was wondering if there is a specific time where ATS would say it is a global change and should be cost shared by all clients. Typically, ATS delivers a number of change requests at no charge, which typically stem from the Open Forum at our User Conference. However, we can look into addressing some smaller RFFs that are widely requested via the ATS User Forum list serve at no charge. Sally McGinnis from Platte Clay stated that their accountants did not like the changes made to the GL Lookup and was wondering if anyone else was having any issues with it. Jennifer Orrock stated we had fixed the issues with it, but Sally stated they cannot select when a field is blank. Scott Tolbert stated we will get with Sally after this call regarding her issue. Scott Woodward congratulated Mark Arnold from Jay County on his promotion to General Manager. On a side note Maura Ransom asked if anyone was having issues with the print vendor CBS. She stated they have been having issues with postage on the envelopes. Scott Tolbert stated he had a contact at CBS and he would call and have them call Maura. AGENDA IV. Closing Remarks by Teresa Bruns Teresa Bruns wanted to thank everyone for their participation in this conference call and for sharing all their comments. She also thanked the ATS staff for their time and all they have done to help everyone. She looks forward to working with everyone in AGENDA V. Meeting adjourned December 17, 2012 ATS Advisory Committee Minutes Page 7