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.

Oracle will try to release once a year Tools updates called – “Feature Packs”. I would like to talk in more detail about this because it affects upgrade strategy and resource planning.

• Each PeopleTools version will be patched until 12 months after the NEXT version is released
• Critical Updates (CPU’s) will be produced for 12 months beyond that

Oracle recommends upgrading Tools on an annual basis to keep in sync with releases. Some people who usually upgrade to get significant features or to resolve problems, would find this annoying and resource consuming. For those folks there is  Alternate Strategy – Skip One:

• Upgrade prior to end of patch support (every 2 years)

Oracle will make major application releases approximately every 3 years.

For better of for worse – the above allows to do better planning of the resources on IT and business side. I just hope Oracle will actually keep this schedule.

Please see the screenshots from the relevant Oracle presentation slides below:

PeopleSoft Patch Support

Peopletools Alternate Upgrade Strategy - Skip One

In the first part I would like to talk about what I would call “quick hits” – items that requires little explanation but you should look-up those for further details in either PeopleBooks or other resources. In the second part of the RoadMap post I would like to talk about other items that I believe require more explanation and I would love to hear more feedback on from all who reads my blog, and as you all know I always appreciate you questions and comments.

PeopleTools – New Features

1. PeopleTools 8.51 is released and has some new features that I will talk about in a separate post
2. Concentration on better Integration with existing products to maximize value – Hyperion, Fusion, GRC and SaaS solutions
3. Embedded application help – AJAX driven help pop-ups on different component, can be customized by making your own entries in PeopleBooks
4. Smart Navigation includes – Persistent Search Results, Related Actions, Hierarchical Navigation
5. Work Center FrameWork – UI improvement that allows for better work management: dynamically displays pending user work as it comes all in one place. This feature emphasizes productivity and allows for better work tracking.
6. Financial Close – process based, gant charts, graphs , status pages – complements work to people
7. Partial Page Refreshes – allow for less traffic and faster page rendering of the components
8. Use of modal dialogs – concentration on bringing work to users instead of making users navigate to processes
9. Collaboration – Instant Messaging, Integration with Email, Rich Text Editor
10. RSS Feeds Results enabled in Query, Portal Content and Integration Broker Web Services
11. Dashboards – nice and pretty dashboards are available for multiple components
12. PeopleSoft Test Framework and Usage Monitor
    • Test cases and data are Peopletoold metadata objects
    • Integrated with usage reporting
    • Allows to record and maintain system test scripts
13. GRC solution – analyst driven, identified risk based transactions
14. Support for 64 bit AIX and Windows platforms
15. Support for SFTP

Note: that part of Oracle’s aggressive strategy of optimizing their products for their platforms  there will be additional tuning option for Oracle db and other oracle products.

Please see a screen-shot from Oracle Presentation that  has a more complete list of features. If you would like to see larger image please use open the image below in New Tab or new Window:

Tools 850 Enhancements

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

Enjoy!

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

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

Also please see our previous post about Tools 8.50 overview

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