The CityLink Employee Portal has added the ability to enroll in or make changes to your monthly deferred compensation deductions. Here are the important things you need to know:

1.  A new Deferred Comp tab is visible on the CityLink Employee Portal: www.portlandonline.com/ep. This program is available to ALL benefits eligible employees in the City who have access to the CityLink portal.

Click HERE to access instructions or go to the SAP Learning Center (www.portlandoregon.gov/saplc) and select CityLink Portal on the left side of the page.

2.  You can make plan changes at any time, but only those changes made on or prior to the 15^th of the month will appear in the following month’s first paycheck. Any changes made after the 15^th must wait an additional month.

3.  To make changes to HOW your money is invested, you must visit the Voya or Advantis websites directly.

For questions about this program, contact the BHR Deferred Compensation Coordinator or visit the deferred comp website: www.portlandoregon.gov/bn.

How do you find out if there’s an emergency that affects you directly? (Think: power outage to Portland Building; major ice storm; or… the “big one”.)

Simple: update your emergency contact information in SAP using the Employee Self-Service links on the CityLink Portal: www.portlandoregon.gov/myinfo.  You can store up to eight different phone numbers (work and personal), as well as email addresses. This contact information will be used by Portland Bureau of Emergency Management (PBEM) and your own bureau to contact you about emergencies if you aren’t already at work.

You can also put in up to four emergency contacts (Think: an accident happens while I’m at work and someone needs to notify my spouse, mom, brother, daughter.)

How is this info used? This information is stored as a part of your electronic personnel record and is accessible only by bureau management and your bureau’s personnel admin (OBPA). The ability to collect and access this information in a central location is a part of the City’s Continuity of Operations Plan. For more information about this, contact your manager or bureau OBPA.

Fall is Patch Season

For many people, the word patch in the fall brings to mind a crisp fall afternoon spent in a pumpkin patch picking out the perfect pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns and pumpkin pie!  Patch has a different meaning here at EBS. 

Throughout the year SAP has released updates which are a combination of bug fixes and system improvements. Every September, the EBS team starts the annual patch:   the process to install all of those SAP updates. The end result is an SAP system which contains the latest updates to the system and ensures that the City of Portland SAP users have access to the updates and bug fixes.

This process typically takes about six weeks to complete, using most of EBS resources during that time.  In addition, bureaus and business process owners participate in testing the “patched” system. During this time, other SAP projects and non-emergency issues are put on hold until the updated system is up and running. Please check the patch calendar to plan your work around the SAP updates.

Contact Elana Schwartz with any questions you may have.

Do-It-Yourself HelpDesk Tickets!

Email to HelpDesk, waiting on hold when you call… surely there must be a faster way to get a ticket into the system when you have a problem! There is! You can write your own ticket in the brand new Cherwell Portal.

You can get there in two ways. Click on the new Cherwell Service Desk icon on your desktop (it probably looks like an Internet Explorer icon, but it’s labeled “Cherwell Service Desk”), which will take you directly to the Portal. Or, if you’re old school, you can type https://portlandoregon.cherwellondemand.com to reach the Cherwell Portal.

Once there, you can submit requests, track the progress of your requests, and find communications tools.

To access the SAP ticket template, you can either select “SAP Incident” from the right-hand side or drill into the service catalog by selecting Software and Web Applications → Citywide Applications → and look for SAP and CityLink topics.

The Portal also has information about major incidents (email distribution groups aren’t working, for example) and read about maintenance and scheduled outages. An overview is available in the Cherwell Portal Instructions, which describes the new portal and available functions.

In two weeks, we’ll post some suggestions about how to write tickets that can be processed quickly. But in the meantime, check out the new Cherwell portal!

eLearning Now Available in CityLink Portal

In 2013, BHR Training and Workforce Development and Enterprise Business Solution (EBS) completed the implementation of CityLearner, the City’s online system for managing employee training and development programs.

The course registration site now has the ability to house eLearning courses with the capability to measure your course progress, allow for tests, simulations and other interactivity, and track all of this on your personnel record in SAP.

Currently, the Mandatory Reporting for Child Abuse course is found there. Look for new eLearning course announcements in the coming months as the City continues to build the eLearning course catalog.

Access CityLearner by logging into CityLink, the same place you access your Employee Self Service page, or click this link: CityLearner

On the CityLearner Training Home page, you can find your up-to-date view of your personal learning transcript and identify courses you are required to complete. You can also browse the catalog and search for, view and book courses. A job aid explaining the quick steps to use CityLearner eLearning is at this link: http://www.portlandoregon.gov/cao/article/501588.