Almost all of the technical PeopleSoft sessions at OpenWorld were using PeopleTools 8.52 which in not GA yet. I was pleasantly surprised that Oracle showed commitment to PeopleSoft platform and desire to develop not only the PeopleTools but also enhance the product offering by providing more integrations and run-times of the other products that Oracle owns, for example Oracle SES Search will replace Verity in the next version PeopleTools and will also provide enhanced search capability throughout the application. Here is a sneak peek of the new stuff:

• Pivot Grids – interactive analytics based on the query
• Related Content/Actions – additional action in the context of current transaction without leaving the current page
• Application Search / Component Search (SES) – navigate to transactions, items in the catalog and whatever else you have indexed
• Pagelet Improvements – Enhanced ability to drill, edit fields in the pagelets
• Modal Windows – removed limitations intorduced in 8.51, more widely used in Applications 9.2
• InterWindows communications are intorduced
• Application Designer–  (finally) drilling into Application Classes/Packages, Find Definition references for Application Classes

It seems that there are more good news across the Oracle products – in order to gain competetive advantage we should be seen more and more products being better integrated and even some of them being offered for free within a product you already own. Fusion Apps for example utilize Hyperion Analytics for grids. Of course those “free” components will have just a run-time license.

For full overview of the new features coming out in 8.52  you can download the PeopleTools Highlights session presentation from the OpenWorld Site

I figured I would write a quick post to remind my developers and others out there some of the features that have been implemented since version 8.49. For those experts readers who have been using these and other technics for awhile I would appreciate if you share your own technics.

 Running Compares

So without further due, below you can see a sample PeopleSoft’s visual merge compare for Project Peoplecode. In order to save you from long and boring explanations – I will leave it to PeopleBooks – Using Merge Interface. However I would like to add just a few comments – sometimes I find myself pasting compare code into good old Notepad++ and running a compare in there. I guess I do like the power of the full fledged editor and syntax highlighting does not hurt as well.

As much fun as App Designer reports are I always like to look at the reports in the HTML view  – better , faster and cleaner experience. And all it take is specifying Generate HTML report in the Compare Options in App Designer:

Secondary Pages

If you are creating a complex page that contains some sort of look-up pages – always a good idea to split the interface and not create page that would overwhelm the user.  In earlier versions of tools going to secondary pages required user to transfer to a separate page, however since Tools 8.50 – secondary and modal pages can open in a modal JavaScript Popup that still allows you to stay on the same page:

In order to enable this behavior for existing and new pages you just need to enable one little checkbox and voila:

Change Control

When working in a team and making multiple changes to the environment you don’t want to be stepping on each others toes. Although still quite limited and inferior to Tools like Quest Stat – PeopleTools built in change control does provide you the ability to lock objects while you change them and leave comments as to what was done (always a good idea). This also helps with documentation – once you are done with the changes you can run a quick SQL and get a report of all the changes that were done for more please go to here.

I hope you enjoy this and let me know if you have any suggestions.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/25496613/

Enjoy!

https://www.samplecode.oracle.com/

Aside from the obvious PSOPRDEFN table there is PSACCESSLOG – this table has OPRID, LOGIPADDRESS, LOGINDTTM, LOGOUTDTTM columns that give you information about user sign on activity. LOGIPADDRESS will contain the RemoteAddr property  of  %Request object, which is also useful in case you validate user ip address at the sign on. The only problem this could pose is in case your users are behind a single or multiple gateways that perform NAT. Then the value of this field would contain those NATed ip addresses and not the actual user ip addresses.

I would like to start from the end and the good news for all Oracle PeopleSoft application users – Oracle plans to maintain PeopleSoft application for some time even though there are plans to try and come up with mysterious Fusion Applications, but no one knows when, where or what modules would Oracle to start with.

Because Oracle does not seem to be a able to eliminate all of the product lines it has acquired over the years – the long term strategy is to keep the products but heavily invest into integration solutions – Fusion Middleware – and expand the suite of included product and toolsets.

Crystal Reports – currently part of the PeopleSoft , was recently purchased by rival SAP, will still be supported,  but if you would like to have less problems with upgrades and next version you should try and use XML Publisher.

PeopleTools 8.50 – the official “not written” word is 3rd quarter of 2009 and I really hope this is true, because after seeing the new suite in action,as in presentation in my earlier posts, we’ve been all waiting to get our hands on and give it a try. Just a quick note – as long as you are on version 8.4+ you should be able to upgrade to new tools to utilize the latest and greatest of the new platform – new sleek look, AJAX , partial page refreshes and new integrations.

All of the further slides I am including are borrowed from the presentation by Tom Vassallo.

Here is a diagram that outlines the Application compatibility and Tools Releases:

Furthermore , folks at Oracle PeopleSoft added some cool features like iPhone apps for Expenses:

Remember there was this great BI product Hyperion Essbase, oh sorry – Oracle System 11. Well the good news for all of us that are using these tools, according to the new strategy – “unite and conquer” – Oracle is throwing some free features with Tools:

The icing on this cake are ability to integrate with social networking, RSS feeds:

To stay with current trend Oracle is also starting to add SaaS solutions for all of the lines of products. I am sure we’ll see more of those appear soon.

To finish this post here is the official roadmap for PeopleTools and Application 9.1

The solution that I have employ to solve this problem is to modify the PT_BRANDING:BrandingBase class to dynamically display environment name based on the URL, like this:

PT_BRANDING Application package was meant to be used to dynamically customize the look and feel of you application and of course you can do a lot more with this but this is just a very simple example of how easy this can be done.

In order to achieve the above effect all you need is to add code to 2 methods in the class PT_BRANDING:BrandingBase

method GetUniHeaderHTML
method GetUniHeaderHTML_PIA

These methods, as the name suggests are responsible for rendering you Application Portal Header.

/*Iouri Chadour - Added to put Test Environment notification in the header&Request.ContentURI - returns your portal URL in form http://server:port/psp/PSPRC/Left(Right(&Request.ContentURI, 4), 3) - extracts the significant piece to displayon the header*/
&zEnvName = Left(Right(&Request.ContentURI, 4), 3);
&Greeting = &zEnvName | " Environment " | ", UserID:" | %UserId | ", Name: " | %UserDescription;
/* End Mod */

/* This code below is delivered checks for client browser to ensure that Header is displayed correctly */

If &navTheme.isNS4x() Then    &UniHeaderHTMLPIA = GetHTMLText(HTML.PORTAL_UNI_HEADER_NS4X, &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PS_LOGO), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_TBRCRV), " ", " ", &FavoritesHTML, &AddToFavoritesHTML, &HelpHTML, "", &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_CRV), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_BG), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_BG), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_TBRCRV), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_SHD), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_TBR), &styleSheet, &homeURL, &startURL, &AddToFavFormHTML, &LogoutURL, MsgGetText(95, 400, "Return Home"), /*20*/MsgGetText(95, 401, "Home"), MsgGetText(95, 402, "Return to Menu"), MsgGetText(95, 403, "Menu"), MsgGetText(95, 408, "Sign out"), &Greeting, &SearchHTML, &ColSpanHTML, &PersonalizeHTML, "", "", &HelpJSHTML, &homepageJS, "", &TabHTML, &WLHTML, &domainScript, &Response.GetJavaScriptURL(HTML.PT_SAVEWARNINGSCRIPT), "", &SaveWarnCrossDomainScript, &Response.GetImageURL(Image.PT_HOME_TAB_ACTIVE_CENTER), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.PT_HOME_TAB_INACTIVE_CENTER), /*40*/&Response.GetImageURL(Image.PT_HOME_TAB_LINE), %Request.ExpireMeta, &CTIHTML, &MCFHTML, &PPMHTML, &Charset);ElseElse    &UniHeaderHTMLPIA = GetHTMLText(HTML.PORTAL_UNI_HEADER_NNS, &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PS_LOGO), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_TBRCRV), "", "", &FavoritesHTML, &AddToFavoritesHTML, &HelpHTML, "", &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_CRV), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_BG), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_BG), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_TBRCRV), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_SHD), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_TBR), &styleSheet, &homeURL, &startURL, &AddToFavFormHTML, &LogoutURL, MsgGetText(95, 400, "Return Home"), /*20*/MsgGetText(95, 401, "Home"), MsgGetText(95, 402, "Return to Menu"), MsgGetText(95, 403, "Menu"), MsgGetText(95, 408, "Sign out"), &Greeting, &SearchHTML, &ColSpanHTML, &PersonalizeHTML, "", "", &HelpJSHTML, &homepageJS, MsgGetText(95, 138, "Tool Bar Header"), &TabHTML, &WLHTML, &domainScript, &Response.GetJavaScriptURL(HTML.PT_SAVEWARNINGSCRIPT), "", &SaveWarnCrossDomainScript, &Response.GetImageURL(Image.PT_HOME_TAB_ACTIVE_CENTER), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.PT_HOME_TAB_INACTIVE_CENTER), /*40*/&Response.GetImageURL(Image.PT_HOME_TAB_LINE), %Request.ExpireMeta, &CTIHTML, &MCFHTML, &PPMHTML, &Charset); End-If;

peoplesoft_workspace_and_pt850.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object)

Also please see our previous post about Tools 8.50 overview

Introducing PSUnit – Oracle Wiki

You can download the actual project file here:

http://blogs.oracle.com/peopletools/2009/03/psunit_unit_test_framework_for.html

Take a look at this great post by  Peter Slager about upcoming PeopleTools release

And here you can find the latest about PeopleTools 8.50 from Oracle – just an overview of things to come:

Release Value Propositions available

By matthew.haavisto on May 14, 2009 1:58 PM

Two new release value propositions are now available: one covers PeopleTools 8.50, another covers Enterprise Portal 9.1. Both documents provide an overview of the value proposition for the enhancements that are planned for PeopleTools 8.50 and Enterprise Portal 9,1. Both are intended to help you assess the business benefits of these products and to plan your information technology (IT) projects and investments.

PeopleTools RVP
Enterprise Portal RVP

And if you like pictures – then the older, but still valid presentation from last year’s OpenWorld would still do a goo job:

By jeff.robbins on September 24, 2008 5:26 AM

During Part 2 of the PeopleTools Roadmap presentation at OpenWorld, I promised to post the presentations and demo viewlets we used. The presentations are in PDF file and I’ll upload the viewlets later today.

Here is Part 1: Download file

Here is Part 2: Download file

Enjoy!

PeopleTools Roadmap Presentation at OpenWorld on Tuesday, Sep 23 (PeopleSoft Technology Blog)

Tags: PeopleTools, PeopleSoft