Key Definitions and Acronyms

Key Definitions

Ancillary System

ATP Definition: An ancillary system consists of any system or application that uses or provides HR or financial data or utilizes UDDS (Unit-Division-Department-Sub-Department). An example ancillary system might be as simple as a spreadsheet that pulls in financial data.

For the purposes of Identity & Access Management (IAM), ancillary systems include any system or application that will remain after Workday Implementation and has a connection to IAM infrastructure (NetID, Campus Active Directory, Manifest/ Grouper, Legacy Data View).

ASCII/Formatted Data

Currently, almost all UW–Madison ancillary systems are receiving data from the Human Resources System (HRS) as ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange). ASCII does not support a variety of characters, which limits accessibility and use of other languages, and is mostly confined to A-Z, 0-9, and some special characters. ASCII is limited to the English language and does not support international characters, most symbols, or punctuation for words borrowed from other languages. For example, ASCII does not support diacritical marks in résumé. Under ASCII, 1 byte = 1 character.

Data encoded in ASCII will be referred to as formatted data in Person Hub because IAM does some formatting to allow for data that is ASCII compliant.

UTF-8/ UTF8/ Unformatted Data

Workday will make data available as UTF8 (Unicode Transformation Format – 8-bit).  UTF8 allows representation of characters as ASCII text, international characters, such as Chinese characters, and other types of punctionion like the e-acute in the name Beyoncé. Under UTF8, 1 character does not always use 1 byte. UTF8 characters can take up to 4 bytes.

UTF8 data may also be referred to as unformatted data because IAM does not have to apply formatting to allow for data that is UTF8 (e.g., to allow for other types of punctuation like the e-acute in the name Beyoncé).

Characters vs Bytes

Currently, almost all UW–Madison ancillary systems are receiving data from the Human Resources System (HRS) as ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange). Under ASCII, 1 byte = 1 character.

Workday will make data available as UTF8 (Unicode Transformation Format – 8-bit). Under UTF8, 1 character does not always use 1 byte. UTF8 characters can take up to 4 bytes.

Acronyms

  • Ancillary System Program (ASP)
  • Ancillary System Owners (ASO)
  • Administrative Transformation Program (ATP)
  • Program Project (PM)