UCLA Opus Support

Link UCPATH Position is a feature that allows department staff to record the UC PATH position number in its corresponding appointment in Opus.  Making this link in Opus will assist in future integrations between Opus and UCPATH.

Opus is not automatically making the match between a PATH position and an Opus appointment. The expertise of the department’s academic personnel staff is required to determine when a position (PATH) should be linked to an appointment (Opus).  To make this matching task more manageable, Opus suggests potential matches between the two systems as Good Matches, Possible Matches, and No Matches depending on how similar the Opus and PATH data are.

Good Matches

For many appointees, they have one position in PATH and one appointment in Opus with consistent data in both system.  For example, Prof. Jess Bruin has the following position data in PATH and appointment data in Opus:

The data between the two systems is consistent and so this PATH position will be displayed on the Good Matches tab.  Department staff can click the Confirm button if they agree and the match will be made (and now Jess Bruin displays on the Confirmed tab, rather than the Good Matches tab).

Possible Matches

Sometimes the two systems might have similar but not identical data.  For example, Prof. Jack Bruin:  

PATH has Jack Bruin at the Associate rank (job code 001200), while Opus has him as Full Professor (title code 001100).  This PATH position will be displayed on the Possible Matches tab (the ranks differ, but both systems agree on the personnel series).  

Let’s say this discrepancy is due to a recent promotion that hasn’t been entered into PATH yet.  Department staff should make sure PATH gets updated to reflect the promotion.  But they can click the Confirm button now if they agree with the suggested match.  The match now displays on the Confirmed tab, rather than the Possible Matches tab.  When the job code update is made in PATH, it won’t change the position number (just an update to job code/rank/step) and so this will remain a Confirmed match.

No Match

Sometimes there’s no position that looks like the Opus appointment.  For example, Prof. Jill Bruin:  

PATH has Jill Bruin in the Emeritus series (job code 001132) while Opus has her in the Regular Professor series (title code 001100).  Opus might not suggest this as a match because the systems have Jill in different series.  Jill’s Opus appointment will be listed on the No Match tab.  If Opus needs to be updated, the department staff can make that update (or contact Opus Help if they cannot make the update themselves).  When Opus and UCPATH have the same series for Jill Bruin, she’ll appear on the Possible Match tab.

Updates

Opus will refresh the suggested matches from PATH every night.  In the No Match example above, if Jill Bruin is appointed to the Emeritus series in Opus, the suggested match to the PATH position will appear the following day.

Multiple Possible Matches

Sometimes Opus will find more than one PATH position as a possible match to the Opus appointment.  One example might be someone who has a summer appointment in addition to their usual academic year appointment: 

If one of the suggestions is correct, click the radio button next to that option before clicking Confirm to associate that position with the Opus appointment.

Ongoing Maintenance

As a department progresses through matching their Opus appointments to the PATH positions, they will notice the count of their Confirmed matches (on the Confirmed tab) increases while the counts on the other tabs go down.  

• As new hires come in to the department, they will show up on the Possible Matches or Good Matches tab for the department to review before confirming a match.

• A Change-In-Series or other action that causes the appointee to move to another position in PATH will break any confirmed match.  The appointee will appear on the Possible Matches or Good Matches tab once Opus and PATH have the appointee in the new personnel series.

The Benefits of Matching to PATH Positions

Getting the Opus appointments matched to the PATH positions is a big chore at first. Once a department has made the matches between the systems, it will require minimal ongoing maintenance as outlined above.

In the near future, the Position Number will be an available field on the Opus appointments table.  Having this data there can assist in querying and reconciling between Opus and PATH.  

Looking ahead to 2021, we are exploring how this PATH-Opus link could improve handling End Dates for appointees on year-to-year appointments.  For example, if an Opus appointment has a June 30, 2021 End Date but their matched PATH position has a 6/30/2022 End Date, Opus might update to the 2022 End Date or at least flag the appointment for the department to review.  And any other future integrations with PATH and ASCEND will require this link between the PATH position and Opus appointment.