PeopleSoft Fines/Fees Integration (San Marcos Model)

If your library wishes to enable users to pay fines and fees through PeopleSoft while keeping fines and fees active in the Alma user records, this integration is designed to export fines and fees to PeopleSoft, enable payment by users through PeopleSoft, and update Alma user records with payment information.  

In this model, fines and fees data are generated through the Analytics API, as with the CashNet portal, and prepared for ingest into PeopleSoft.  San Marcos Campus IT is working on a script that checks user accounts periodically throughout  the day to check to see if payments have been made.  If a payment is made, that information is sent back to Alma through the Pay User Fines / Fees API.

This integration is currently under development as of April 2017.

Ex Libris Documentation

Pay/waive/dispute/restore user fine/fee - post fine/fee updates to Alma

Retrieve Analytics report

Considerations

• Analytics data only available once a day, meaning that PeopleSoft amounts owed are only updated once daily.  See Idea Exchange Entries:  Query Users by Fine Amount and Enable Bursar Export without Closing Fines
• Alternate methods of retrieving user accounts with fines/fees are available.

1. 1. Query all user accounts and filter results by those with an account balance. For large institutions this would negatively impact daily API limit.
   2. Utilize the Student Information Systems (SIS) profile to export accounts modified within the prior 24 hours and query each to determine if modification was the result of a new or modified fine/fee. This export can occur every 12 hours starting at 8am PT. This export process is currently in production use for exporting new/changed user account data to the Innovative DCB server at San Marcos.

Requirements

The conversion scripts will be available in PHP. The original scripts, as written by San Marcos IT, are written in Python.

A LAMP-type server environment to run the conversion scripts. 

A secure conversion output file directory accessible to your PeopleSoft SFS 

Step-by-step guide

1. Select method for retrieving user fine/fee data from Alma.
2. OPTIONAL: run API queries periodically throughout the day to determine whether user accounts with fines/fees (as found in query results of step 1) have updated balances.
3. Place the Alma-to-SIS data conversion script in a local server directory
4. Configure a process to run the Alma-to-SIS data conversion script on daily basis.
5. Setup file directory for output of the Alma-to-SIS conversion script. This location should be accessible to your campus PeopleSoft team because they will upload the script output to PeopleSoft.
6. Setup automated job to upload script output to PeopleSoft
7. Configure PeopleSoft query to retrieve accounts where library line items have changed.
8. Setup file directory to which PeopleSoft will automatically export the query results from step 6.
9. Place the SIS-to-Alma data conversion and post-to-Alma script on the same server as the directory setup in step 7.
10. Configure a process to run the SIS-to-Alma data conversion and post-to-Alma script on periodic basis.
    
    

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