The Faculty Information System (FIS) Collection is a subset of the University Data Warehouse containing data from FIS, the Faculty Information System in use by Provost's Office until the implentation of Interfolio@Penn and Workday@Penn in July 2019. Following the retirement of FIS in June 2019, the legacy Faculty data collection remains available for historical analysis.
FIS supported Penn's schools and the Office of the Provost in managing the process of faculty appointments, promotions, and other actions. It also supported reporting and planning activities by managing selected biographical, demographic, and other data about faculty and their professional activities. The Faculty Data collection also includes a subset of data from the Salary Management system.
For a brief overview of the collection, see the Faculty Data Collection Quick Reference Guide (PDF).
Tables are listed in alphabetical order. Select Table to obtain the explantion, common uses, primary keys, indexed data elements, and related tables for a table. Select Elements to obtain the definition, list of values, formats, and not null values for each data element in the table. A description of table and data element terminology is in the document What the Warehouse Contains.
Looking for a specific element or caution? Try the searching the collection documentation for particular keywords (search page will open in a new tab).
Following the retirement of FIS, the legacy Faculty data collection remains available for historical analysis.
The following details explain the refresh schedule of the FIS collection before the implementation of Workday in July 2019:
All Faculty tables are refreshed on a daily basis, Monday through Friday. Biographical and job data from the Payroll is refreshed daily.
Source of the Data
The data in the data warehouse that is accessible via the Business Objects Faculty Information System universe comes from the Faculty Information system and the Payroll and Salary Management systems. The data in this Universe includes biographical information about faculty and academic support staff, information on their appointments, leaves of absence, and graduate group and committee memberships. The sources of the data is the Facutly Infomation System (FIS) application, as well as the EMPLOYEE_GENERAL and EMPLOYEE tables from the Salary Management System data collection.
Time Span Covered
The Faculty data collection stores data on all current faculty appointments, as well as terminations and resignations which have taken place from 2006 to June 2019. FIS also includes current appointments for academic support staff, and current graduate group and committee memberships.
The Faculty collection is described in the Faculty Detail diagram. This diagram illustrates the architiecture of Business Objects universe and identifies the join criteria between tables.
The Faculty Information System Universe diagram provides access to the Faculty data, in conjunction with person data from the employee and employee general information from the Salary management collection. Only indvidiuals with access to the Salary Management collection will be able to retrieve data from the EMPLOYEE and EMPLOYEE_GENERAL tables in this universe. This diagram should be printed using landscape orientation.
The FIS universe objects are grouped into two major classes referring to Faculty and Actions. The Faculty class then includes data that originated from FIS, as well as elements sourced from Payroll (stored in the EMPLOYEE and EMPLOYEE tables). Actions are then broken into a number of classes, each providing additional detail about an action or its related elements.
Data training for this collection is offered on an ad hoc basis -- please contact Enterprise Information & Analytics for assistance with specific training questions. You can also refer to the table and element documentation for information and cautions about specific data.
Those who wish to access the Faculty data collection must submit the Faculty Data Warehouse Access Request eForm. Individuals wishing to access Graduate Group information should submit that eForm. Although there is no training prerequisite, approval from the requestor's supervisor and school/center access administrator is required.
Releasing Data Outside the University
The only two offices that may disclose faculty data outside the University are the Office of the Provost and Institutional Research & Analysis. If you do not work for those offices and you receive a request for data to be sent outside the University, refer the requester to the Office of the Provost.
Releasing Data Within the University
Within the University, faculty data may be disclosed only if it is needed to do the business of the University, and only to those who need to know the information in order to do their jobs. If you are not sure whether to fulfill a request for faculty data, contact the Office of the Provost.
Query Results
If you save your query results in Excel, pdf, or any other local file type, you must see to it that any sensitive data stored on your peronal computer is safeguarded through physical security, access control software, or encryption. When a computer is left signed to an account, it is easy for someone to gain unauthorized access. Either sign off from your account before you leave your computer or restrict access by some other means (physical security or access control software).
For more information on security and privacy, contact the Office of Information Security.
If you have a question or comment about the Faculty data or data documentation, or have a suggestion for revising the documentation, please contact Enterprise Information & Analytics. For documentation published on the Web, please specify the URL for the documentation that needs to be updated.