Quest had a chance to speak with Dan Holverson, Director of IT, at Clayton County Water Authority, about the company’s upgrade to 9.2 and their use of orchestrations and other 9.2 enhancements.

Key Takeaways

About Clayton County Water Authority

With approximately 82,000 customer accounts, Clayton County Water Authority provides water, sewer, and stormwater services to more than a quarter of a million people throughout Clayton County and its six cities. Clayton County is situated just south of Atlanta, Georgia with Atlanta International airport located in the very northern part of the county.

Despite having limited surface groundwater supplies available, the Clayton County Water Authority has developed a truly sustainable water supply through the utilization of treatment wetlands for the recycling of treated wastewater. The award-winning Authority is recognized as an industry leader, with utility peers worldwide visiting to learn more about processes such as the leak detection program and the use of constructed wetlands.

Visit the Clayton County Water Authority’s Website

What is the history of JD Edwards at Clayton County?

We implemented JD Edwards EnterpriseOne release Xe in 2002 and then later upgraded to 9.0. At the end of 2018, we upgraded from 9.0 to 9.2 in six months – on time and under budget with the help of our business partner, CSS. We did a Technology Plus upgrade since we added new functionality.

What new functionality was added as part of the upgrade?

We added the Health and Safety application. We have 200 vehicles on the road and with that many vehicles, there is a risk of incidents happening. We use some of the reports that were delivered with the Health and Safety application, and we have also created our own. The application works well for us.

Any upgrade best practices you want to share with other customers?

Use a business partner to assist with the upgrade and use their methodology. We integrated User Productivity Kit (UPK) inside of 9.2. If users have a question, they click on the UPK icon, and it either goes to the 9.2 documentation or the roughly 300 UPK recordings that we created.

Are you using any of the new functionality in 9.2?

Yes, we have been using orchestrations. We automated the Purchase Order process, which has saved us time and money right out of the box. The old manual process was cumbersome. Once the requisitions were approved, the end user would have to release it to a purchase order, then finance would print the purchase order and put it in the mail or an outbox where someone would pick them up. Sometimes, employees would drive 15 miles to pick up the POs, then they would scan them into a PDF and email them to the vendor.

With Orchestrator, the process now involves only one step for the originator and zero steps for finance. Now, once the requisition is final approved, it automatically generates a purchase order into a PDF via BI Publisher. It is then emailed to the Clayton County Water Authority originator, who then emails it to the vendor. It is all automatic.

Very efficient! Any other uses for the Orchestrator?

We have integrated our Cityworks Computerized Management System to JD Edwards using orchestrations. Cityworks handles our mobile field service work for pipes in the ground. They have their own application that they are most familiar and comfortable with that they can continue to use. We get all the information in JD Edwards, and they get costs back out of JD Edwards on a high-frequency basis into their application. This is all done by an orchestration.

We have also developed orchestrations to monitor orchestrations. The process runs every hour to monitor orchestrations, and if there are any that have not run, it sends an email to the appropriate people who can check the issue.

Are there other 9.2 enhancements you are taking advantage of?

We are using Mobility. We use five applications out of the box:

• Requisition Approval
• Purchase Order Approval
• Work Order Inquiry
• Two Health and Safety applications

We have also started using Notifications on a limited basis and have modified some grids.

What are your future plans?

We want to do a new Tools upgrade so we can start pushing some information to third-party applications. We would like to push employee adds and changes through orchestrations into a cloud application. We are also discussing Continuous Adoption processes.