New WatIAM platform offers new functionality

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

As part of the Human Resources Business Plan, we have now initiated work to support IST with the replacement of WatIAM (the University’s Identity & Access Management system). While the service will continue to be offered under the WatIAM name, the current system supporting it will be replaced with a new platform.

This change will result in the system being down Monday April 9th at 4:30pm until Thursday April 12th at 8:00am. During this outage, authentication services will continue to stay active, and HR processing of new hires will be transitioned to the new system.

The new process offers several benefits, mainly the ability for an IT support in the departments to create a uwaterloo account for individuals who are not employees or students, but who may need access to UWaterloo systems and training. These accounts can also be created for employees before they are hired within Human Resources, allowing for systems access and email permission to be granted independent of HR processes. Question support will also be provided through the IST helpdesk.

It’s important to note that accounts created by sponsors for pre-employee on-boarding must not be used to complete mandatory compliance training (safety training, AODA etc). Employees should wait to do mandatory compliance training until they have been hired by Human Resources, otherwise their training completion won’t be marked in myHRinfo.

If you have any questions, please contact Nitish Khiria.