Department of Engineering

Centaur - Guide for Computer Officers

This page covers aspects of Centaur, the Department's time management system, specific to Computer Officers. The Centaur homepage contains general information about Centaur and links to the guides for other staff groups.


Projects

Default Project

For COs and others without fixed working hours, there is the concept of a Default Project which is generally whatever your core job is and will be agreed between individuals and their manager. Time spent on the Default Project does not normally have to be recorded explicitly but it may be useful to log large amounts of time spent on a specific Task (see the general advice on this).

Whilst the concept of the Default Project means that there is no requirement for COs to record how every minute of every day is spent, any activity which does not fit within the Default Project's definition should be separately recorded unless it is of too short duration to be worth recording (as above, see the general advice on this). Similarly any major Task, even if it fits within Default Project, is worth recording as a separate Timesheet line. All this is important so that we get useful management data from Centaur.

In cases where the auditors require full recording (e.g. EU FP7 Grants), it is the responsibility of those recording and checking timesheets to ensure that the audit requirements are met. These will also require those affected to use the Leave page to record annual and sickness leave.

Standard Project List for COs

We have tried to create a sufficient set of Projects for initial CO use within the "Div S Projects". COs can create their own private Projects in addition to these (each CO has their own Project Group identified by their CRSid) if, for example, there is a major identifiable piece of work which they are doing but which does not warrant general accessibility in the Div S Project list. An example might be installing a new cluster for a research group. If there are any obvious gaps in this list of Projects, please let centaur-admin@eng know.

The decisions whether to create a new Project or simply use different Task descriptions within an existing Project, and when creating a Project whether to make it a clone of an existing Project, are by no means clear-cut and depend to some extent on personal preference and experience of the pros and cons from using the system. The main issues to consider are discussed on the project page.

Charging to Externally Funded Cost Centres

Wherever possible, time should be accounted to Projects from whose cost centres actual income can be obtained, i.e. primarily research grants and other externally chargeable work but only where these have funds for CO time in pooled labour or staff costs. People are accustomed to being asked for a job number by technicians when asked to do something, and we will need to adopt a similar system when it is not clear what the Project to be charged to is.

As the Centaur homepage notes, there is clearly a balance to be drawn between the time needed to record chargeable time and the benefit in doing so. In particular we need to learn from experience how to get the balance right between charging to grants vs the generic divisional support Projects. A key factor is likely to be whether a division can "afford" the time being charged to its generic numbers or needs more time to be charged on to external sources. This is mainly a matter for each Division's management.

Projects Relating to Research Grants

It is not yet clear how Projects for research grants will best be handled, e.g. the drop down lists of Projects on the timecards may become too long to be usable. This is not yet an immediate problem as relatively few Grants have provision for CO time to be charged to them but it is hoped that this will change in future to improve cost recovery so that the majority will, reflecting the fact that the majority do now need at least some computing support.

There are various ways this might be handled:

  • By making use of the favourites list which appears at the start of the drop-down list.
  • COs to create their own private Projects as clones of a master Project for the grant or simply to create a private Project and enter the cost centre code directly.
  • For some grants it may be sufficient to use a generic Project and attribute the cost to specific grants based on the requester information (but this may not be acceptable to some auditors).
  • Divisional or Research Group based groups of Projects are set up and COs are only members of those for their own Division/Group.

A developing understanding of the auditors' requirements and feedback from COs based on practical experience will guide the development of this.


Timesheets

Submitting the Timesheet

As COs are responsible for submitting their own Timesheets and it is important that these are submitted promptly, Centaur will remind users by email on a Monday night if their Timesheet for the previous week has not yet been submitted. If it is still outstanding by the Friday, a further reminder will be sent, copied to the administrator for their Group.

Since a Timesheet cannot be altered once submitted, it may seem sensible to delay submitting it pending the availability of some extra information. In practice it is greatly preferable for the Timesheet to be submitted on time; the missing information can then be supplied later to the relevant Centaur Administrator to be entered by them.


Leave

Recording Leave

By default, the calendar shows as 'leave' those days on which the Department is closed, and public holidays on which the Department is either closed or operating on a 'Sunday' basis but it is possible to unbook these if they have not been taken as leave.

Leave that has been booked in Centaur automatically generates leave entries in Calcium, thus removing the need to record the same information in two places.

Leave booked by COs is automatically approved rather than going via a supervisor as is the case for Assistant Staff.