Release 1502 consists of a welcome change to merit roster production
and a fix to the PPTCTUTL program in response to an error report.

- Back in 1996, HRMI reorganized title codes from four groupings (staff,
   APS, MAP, and executive) into two groupings (PSS and MSP).  As a
   consequence, the selection of employees for merit rosters in program
   PPP670 was changed to be based on personnel program codes 1 or 2,
   representing PSS and MSP groups respectively.

   Back then, and for some time thereafter, this was a problem because
   the staff and APS employees, both of which were folded into PSS,
   weren't always on the merit increase schedule.  Campuses wanted
   to select one population or the other for their rosters, but were no longer
   able to identify them through personnel program code.  To address this
   need, PPP670 was modified such that if an effective month of October
   was entered on the spec card, it assumed the target population was
   APS only, and it excluded staff employees from October rosters.

   Over time, this distinction between staff and APS has faded away at
   campuses and, with the many merit processes having an effective month
   of October, has actually caused difficulties.  It has become common at
   many sites to enter a 'fake' effective month on the spec card, just to
   enable them to pick up the full population of employees for October merit
   increases.  The most recent example has been the CX merits effective on
   October 2002.

   Now, in r1502, the special code in PPP670 dealing with 'former APS'
   employees is removed, and it will no longer be necessary to play games
   with the spec card month value.  Note: Santa Cruz previously had local
   modifications to do the same thing, and these will now be replaced with
   Base code.

- The other change in r1502 is small.  The PPTCTUTL title code utility
   program selects data from the DB2 TSB table, but neglected to place the
   TSB-MERIT-BASED value in the linkage area to make it available for
   calling programs to use.  That problem is now corrected.

There are no table updates.

May we have your ok to install?

   bvb