About UCPath

What is UCPath?

UCPath is an acronym for UC Payroll, Academic Personnel, Timekeeping, and Human Resources.

UCPath is the University of California's human resources, academic personnel, benefits, and payroll system for all UC employees systemwide. It replaced UC's nearly 40-year old Payroll/Personnel System (PPS) and was implemented at UCSF in June 2020. UCPath employs new technology to ensure consistency, data integrity and policy compliance across the UC system. UCPath helps us work more efficiently and enables employees to manage essential tasks and view their own payroll and benefits information. Most importantly, UCPath gives us greater operational freedom to focus on UC's core mission of teaching, research and public service.

The UCPath Center   is UC’s shared transactional and service hub managing payroll, benefits and human resources services for more than 200,000 UC employees. The UCPath Center is located in Riverside and processes routine transactions related to payroll, benefits, leave management and workforce administration. The UCPath Center also provides dedicated and responsive customer service support to employees systemwide.

The UCPath online portal provides employees, managers and supervisors with 24/7 access to view and manage payroll, benefits and human resources information. Employees can log into UCPath from any device - desktop, laptop, mobile or tablet. UCPath online replaced most functions previously provided by At Your Service Online (AYSO).

UCPath Governance

Governance refers to structures and processes that are designed to ensure accountability, transparency, and responsiveness. The UCPath governance structures and processes help ensure that the system meets the needs of UC employees by providing a means for locations to give feedback to UCPath management, prioritize changes and upgrades, improve business processes and increase system efficiency over time.  

UCPath is a UC-wide application, and the governance structures include location-specific teams as well as UC-wide groups. Expand each section below to learn about current governance structures.

UCSF UCPath Governance Groups

UCSF has established local structures to monitor UCPath service delivery, to manage our location-specific requirements for UCPath, and to identify opportunities for continuous improvement of local HR, Finance and IT processes and systems that pertain to UCPath.

UCPath Core Leadership Team

Charge:

  • Represents UCSF on UC-wide UCPath governance groups and related committees, including advocacy for prioritization of roadmap initiatives
  • Serves as the escalation point to UCSF and UCPath leadership to address system and service delivery issues
  • Provides strategic direction for initiatives at UCSF that support the continuous improvement of human resources, finance, and information technology processes that are impacted by UCPath

UCPath Operational Group

Charge:

  • Tracks UCSF trends and user experiences to help optimize UCPath
  • Escalates concerns to the Core Leadership Team
  • Coordinates cross-functional activities in the following areas: 
    • Training needs 
    • Communications  
    • Process improvement 
    • Consistent/accurate use of the UCPath system 
    • UCPath Center engagement 
    • Reporting needs 
    • Security needs 

UCPath Customer Advisory Board

Charge:

With stakeholder representation across UCSF Health and campus departments, group members ensure that the UCSF community has a voice in providing feedback on UCPath through the following activities:

  • Gathering trend data and sharing user feedback to help optimize the UCPath experience for employees, departments and transactional users
  • Identifying pathways to define, develop and implement UCSF process improvements
  • Developing opportunities for process improvements at UCSF that work within the parameters of UC-wide system features, procedures and policies
  • Informing their constituencies about updates on UCPath service status and development roadmaps

UC-Wide UCPath Governance Groups

UC-wide governance for UCPath includes the following teams, which include representatives from all UC locations, UCPath leadership and the Office of the President Center of Expertise (COE).

UCPath Executive Leadership Team

Charge:

  • Makes final decisions related to the UCPath roadmap, including scope, budget, timeline and policy. Ensures that decisions contribute to effective delivery of UCPath services
  • Provides strategic leadership and serves as the escalation point for the UCPath Steering Committee and UCPath Advisory Board
  • Monitors the UCPath Steering Committee’s responsibility for making ongoing efficiency improvements in the design and delivery of UCPath services

UCPath Steering Committee

Charge:

  • Makes final decisions related to systemwide business processes for payroll, academic personnel, human resources and benefits administration within the scope of UC policy
  • Has responsibility and accountability for ongoing efficiency improvements in the design and delivery of UCPath
  • Provides guidance and approval for the UCPath roadmap and reflects local guidance and considerations in roadmap implementation
  • Prioritizes UCPath continuous process improvements
  • Approves and monitors project plans for ongoing UCPath projects

UCPath Advisory Board

Charge:

  • Makes recommendations on alignment of UCPath and UC location business processes in the areas of payroll, academic personnel, human resources and benefits administration, within the scope of UC policy 
  • Through ongoing partnerships between UCPath, the UC locations and UC-wide policy teams, offers advice regarding UCPath effectiveness, development priorities and operating efficiencies across all UC locations
  • Serves in an advisory role for UCPath operations. Recommends remediation or mitigation efforts as required. Performs periodic assessments of service offerings 
  • Monitors metrics and provides feedback to UCPath leadership on UCPath performance. Reviews analytics and determines root causes and remediations 
  • Reviews and makes recommendations for the UCPath roadmap 
  • Reviews external benchmarks and identifies best business practices to improve the effectiveness of UCPath
  • Members share UCPath information with their location constituents 

UCPath Communities of Interest (COI)

Charge:

  • Set priorities for location change requests and defect fixes
  • Provide input into alignment of UCPath and UC location business processes in the areas of payroll, academic personnel, human resources and benefits administration, within the scope of UC policy
  • Review and provide input on UCPath roadmap initiatives

Current Communities of Interest include:

COI Participants Example Topics

Work Force Administration
  • HR representatives
  • General UCPath workforce administration, UCPath online-self service, I-9

Absence Management
  • Participants identified by locations, UCOP COE
  • Extended absence, accruals, leaves

General Ledger (GL)
  • Controllers and delegates
  • GL related, salary cost transfers, funding entry

Payroll
  • Payroll directors
  • Payroll regulatory changes, on/off cycle processing, tax issues

Benefits
  • Benefits managers
  • Systemwide benefit programs

Academic Personnel
  • Academic Personnel directors
  • Academics, Postdocs, GME

ePerformance
  • ePerformance workgroup
  • Performance management

IT
  • IT leadership call
  • Reporting instance, UCPath upgrades

Labor Relations
  • Participants identified by locations, COE
  • Union, Labor Relations topics

UCPath Roadmap and Initiatives

UCPath key priorities aim to reduce administrative costs and activities and repurpose funds to further the basic mission of UC. The UCPath system has communicated UC’s roadmap of system initiatives that focuses on addressing improvements in five priority areas:

  • Stability and fixes
  • Maintenance
  • Enhancements
  • Cost reduction and cost avoidance
  • Strategic planning

Priorities are expected to shift over time, as resources transition from stabilization efforts to an increased focus on cost reduction, enhancements, and strategic initiatives.

UCSF contributes to UC-wide initiatives via participation in UC-wide governance groups and communities of interest. Current UCPath initiatives impacting the UCSF community include:

  • Upgrade the underlying Oracle PeopleSoft system to the current version
  • Stabilize General Ledger pay cycle processing to improve processing performance and accuracy
  • Reduce pay cycle processing time from 8 days to 7 days
  • Implement monthly releases for change requests, configuration updates and defect fixes prioritized by Communities of Interest
  • Create capacity at the UCPath Center to manage current case volume, resolve a backlog of cases and meet service targets

UCSF also aims to support the UCSF community in its use of UCPath and mitigate issues through local process improvement initiatives.

  • HR Shared Services maintains a list of UCPath HR priorities on the Human Resources website   (MyAccess login required). Known issue statuses are updated on a quarterly basis and/or when significant changes occur.
  • Known system issues with significant impact on the UCSF community are posted and tracked to resolution on the UCPath website.
  • Payroll processing updates  , including updates for department funding entry and salary cost transfer transactors, are announced in the Controller’s Office Newsletter.