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OpenWorld 2015 Wednesday

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Another packed day of great PeopleSoft news, tips and networking.  Just a few of my favourites from today

1.  PeopleSoft Cloud Deployment Architecture.  So, the PeopleSoft strategy guys have said that Oracle are not going to selling PeopleSoft SaaS.  However, the whole installation and deployment paradigm is changing with PeopleTools 8.55 and this will make it much easier to deploy to Oracle Public Cloud or any other public or private cloud or virtualisation platform.  New tools and processes will help customers provision and deploy new PeopleSoft instances automatically.



2.  Automated Configuration Manager (ACM).  Another exciting feature presented by Mark Hoernemann and Biju Narayanan from the Oracle Platforms team which is coming with PeopleTools 8.55 (which is "coming out very soon").
ACM will allow customers to automate the configuration and setup of parts of a PeopleSoft system once a new instance has been deployed.  All the components that administrators used to have to configure manually or with scripts such as Node Definitions, Integration Broker, Gateway Nodes, REN Server, Process Schedulers, URL objects, etc, will all now be orchestrated in meta data registered in your PeopleSoft system. Very powerful. Great time saver and will help customers improve quality and delivery time of new system instances.


3. PeopleSoft Update Manager Customisation Analysis.  Coming in 8.55 is a new feature which will take meta data about your customised objects, load it up into the PeopleSoft Image and then when you create a Change Package it will cross reference it with your customisation.  Now you can see immediatley the effect of the updates on your customisations without having to load the package project up into App Designer and run the compare reports.  Can't wait to see this in action.

So much more from today but after a fantastic musical treat from Sir Elton John at the Oracle Appereciation Party it's too late to type any more.




OpenWorld 2015 Thursday

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Every year I find myself saying the same.... "The PeopleTools team keep on delivering".  Oracle is certainly not in maintenance mode with PeopleSoft.  There's a huge amount of investment going into making PeopleSoft better and better each year.  If you're running PeopleSoft then it's a safe place to be. In fact beyond being safe it's an exciting place to be.  The challenge, as always, will be to find the time and money to take advantage of all these new developments so that our organisations reap the benefit.

Today there were some great session for PeopleSoft customers.  Here's just a quick listing of some of my favourites,

1. PeopleSoft Selective Adoption Experiences from the Front Line.  This session was led by Cedar Consultant, Oracle ACE - The PeopleSoft Tipster - Duncan Davies and Mark Thomas (IT Director at Hays).  This was one of 9 other sessions across the week on Selective Adoption - a major theme of this OpenWorld Conference.  Practical insight into how Selective Adoption works and is bringing new efficiency to Hays' PeopleSoft software lifecycle.

2. Fluid UI Component Design and Development.  From Dave Bain (Product Manager, Oracle).  This was the other major theme of this years OpenWorld conference.  Dave is a great presenter and you may have heard him on the Selective Adoption Spotlight Videos.  He gave a run down of the important things to consider when build a new Fluid page or when converting a Classic page to Fluid.

3. Rolling Out PeopleSoft’s Suite of Lifecycle Management Tools.  Michael Krajicek, Vice President - Oracle PeopleSoft Application Architecture Development gave a great talk on what's coming in 8.55 from PUM and PTF.  I think one of the most exciting new features is that you will be able to load up into the PeopleSoft Image a project of your customisations and then when the Change Package is created it will flag up which Updates are going to affect your customisations.
Change Package showing a green flag in the 2nd column indicating a customisation impact for this Update - Nice!

4. PeopleSoft Technology: Executive Panel.  Always a popular and candid session featuring customers vs the PeopleTools senior strategy and product management team.  Here's a few of the questions and my interpretation and paraphrasing of the answers.


Q. What improvements are going to be made to Application Designer?  
A. We want to make the development tools as easy to use as possible. I can't share our plans in detail but you can expect new tools for developers similar to what you've seen at OpenWorld this week. (GS: My take on this is that we saw some very cool drag and drop web based forms builder in Fluid.  I wonder if we might one day see a web based page builder for Fluid? It's all just meta-data underneath.)

Q. When will PeopleTools 8.55 be released?
A. Sometime in the next 12 months.  (GS: but more likely sometime in the next few months).

Q. When will Elastic search be available?
A. Not with the GA of 8.55 but sometime in 2016.

Q. Will we be able to take advantage of Elastic search as a service?
A. Initial release to customers will be on installed on premise or in cloud like we do at the moment with SES but Elastic service offering will be looked at.

Q. What is the PeopleTools team doing to help customers secure PeopleSoft on the public internet.
A. (paraphrasing here) Not a great deal.  In the same as PeopleSoft does not provide you with Anti-Virus for your PC or network switches PeopleSoft does not provide the networking security components to secure client to PeopleSoft web server.

Q (to audience). Who is using Interaction Hub under the PeopleTools limited free license?
A. No one.  (I didn't see any hands go up).  Conclusion?  Consensus from people around me in the session hall was that most customers couldn't justify the cost of the separate PeopleSoft instance required for IH.


CONCLUSION
I'm sure to blog more over the coming months about specific things talked about at OpenWorld but I'd like to end this week with saying just how wonderful it is to be part of this community called PeopleSoft.  The people involved in developing and supporting PeopleSoft are all first-class technology professionals who are on the forefront of thinking in our rapidly changing and sometimes volatile IT industry.  And then there's the customers and partners who bring a wealth of ideas, questions, challenges and solutions. They all make this global PeopleSoft community such a pleasure to be a part of. Thank you!
Paco Aubrejuan - Senior VP, PeopleSoft Enterprise, Oracle

Oracle Appreciation Party


Jeff Robbins - PeopleTools Strategy, Oracle


Howard Street - normally full of traffic- this week, full of Oracle people



Query Definitions in PeopleCode - PeopleCode Friday #3

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Just recently I've been working on a project which required me to dynamically create and manipulate PeopleSoft Query Definitions in PeopleCode.

I've always known the Query API Class existed but i've never really used it.  PeopleBooks, of course, is always my first place to look for documentation on how to use anything so went looking for Query Class methods, collections and properties and also to look for worked examples.  Unfortunately, whilst the reference material was adequate I found the worked examples confusing and with a few errors.  So, next port of call in my search was a general search in Google for "PeopleSoft Query API PeopleCode" looking for some other PeopleSoft enthusiast who had posted some working code. Allas!  Nothing.

So, after a bit of tinkering around I got everything I needed to work and thought it might be useful to write up a simple example that works.

Here goes.

Everything you need to know about Query classes you can find here http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E58500_01/pt854pbh1/eng/pt/tpcr/concept_UnderstandingQueryClasses-c07e19.html#topofpage

Watch out for the listed code examples... some of them don't work.

There are 5 basic steps to creating a simple Query Definition using PeopleCode.  You can create both public and private queries using the Query API. My example here will create a private against one the delivered PeopleTools tables present in all PeopleSoft systems of any version - PSPRCSRQST, and then set 2 sets of criteria.

1) Security.  Make sure the user that is ececuting the PeopleCode has permissions to the source record used in the construction of your Query. Use Query Access Manager for this.

2) In PeopleCode you need to create a Query Object from the %SESSION object http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E58500_01/pt854pbh1/eng/pt/tpcr/concept_UnderstandingSessionClass-c07b74.html#topofpage

/* Get a Query oject */
&apiQuery = %Session.getquery();

3) Name the query and use the Create method to create a new Query Definition.  NOTE: If the Query Definition already exists then it overwrites it when you save. The second parameter specifies Falsefor a private Query or True for a Public one.

/* Set Query Name.  Cannot contain spaces*/
&qryName = "MY_QUERY";

/* 3. Create a new Query */
&apiQuery.Create(&qryName, False, %Query_Query, "My query description", "My query long description");

TIP: Major sections of much of my code has numbers embedded in the comment headers.  This is just to help me and others that might have to maintain my code see instantly the sequence of flow.  It can be useful in long blocks of code.

4. When you use Query Manager in PIA to create a Query the first thing you do is specify which record the Query is based on. No different here.  Use the AddQuerySelect and AddQueryRecordmethods to do this.  Because a Query Definition may have multiple SELECT statements in say a UNION and each SELECT may have one or more RECORDS you need to set these structures up even though your Query only has one SELECT and one RECORD.

/* 4. Create Query Select object and add single record from source drop down 
****************************************************************************/
&apiQuerySelect =&apiQuery.AddQuerySelect();
&apiQueryRec
=&apiQuerySelect.AddQueryRecord("PSPRCSRQST");

5. What you do next may depend on your requirements but for this example I'm just going to iterate through the RECORD collection of FIELDS and add each FIELD object to the output list of my Query.  In PIA this is the same as ticking each field in the Fields TAB,  The key Query API method that adds the fields if AddQuerySelectedField. There are 4 parameters to this method - Record Name, Record Alias, Field Name and Field Label).

Setting the ColumnNumber sets the sequence of the field in the output list and I'm Ordering by the Field in ordinal position 1 in a Descending order. (NOTE: OrderByDirection property requires the ASCII code for D (descending).  If you want Ascending don't use CODE("A"). Instead just leave the OrderByDirection blank or CODE("") ).

/* 5. Add all fields from Source Record  to Query Output list 
**************************************************************************/
&recSource = CreateRecord(Record.PSPRCSRQST);
For&i = 1 To &recSource.FieldCount

&apiQueryField
=&apiQuerySelect.AddQuerySelectedField(&apiQueryRec.name, &apiQueryRec.recordalias, &recSource.GetField(&i).Name, &recSource.GetField(&i).Label);

/*Make the field a display field */
&apiQueryField.ColumnNumber =&i;
&apiQueryField.HeadingType
= %Query_HdgRftShort;

/* Set order by value is specified*/
&apiQueryField.OrderByNumber = 1; /* sort column 1 */
&apiQueryField.OrderByDirection = Code("D"); /*descending*/

End-For;

6. If you run the Query now it would work but of course may return a lot of rows.  So let's add some simple criteria by creating a QueryCriteria object and using the AddCriteria method.  The parameter of the AddCriteria method is a string label.  It has no meaning and is simply a useful reference for the developer.

Once you have a handle on a QueryCriteria object it's really straight forward to specify the left (6.a) and right hand (6.c) expressions and the logical operator (6.b).

My code below in section 6 creates the following criteria

             WHERE RUNSTATUS = '9' AND OPRID = 'VP1'


/* 6. Create Query Criteria  
In this example we'll setup RUNSTATUS = 9 AND OPRID = VP1
**********************************************************************************/

/* 6.a. LEFT expression is a field */
&apiQueryCriteria =&apiQuerySelect.AddCriteria("criteria_1");
&apiQueryCriteria.logical
= %Query_CombAnd;
&apiQueryCriteria.Expr1Type
= %Query_ExprField;
&apiQueryCriteria.AddExpr1Field
("A", "RUNSTATUS");

/* 6.b. Set expression operator */
&apiQueryCriteria.Operator = %Query_CondEqual;

/* 6.c. RIGHT expression is a constant */
&apiQueryCriteria.Expr2Type = %Query_ExprConstant;
&apiQueryCriteria.Expr2Constant1
= "9";

/* Second criteria row
************************/

/* 6.a. LEFT expression is a field */
&apiQueryCriteria =&apiQuerySelect.AddCriteria("criteria_2");
&apiQueryCriteria.logical
= %Query_CombAnd;
&apiQueryCriteria.Expr1Type
= %Query_ExprField;
&apiQueryCriteria.AddExpr1Field
("A", "OPRID");

/* 6.b. Set expression operator */
&apiQueryCriteria.Operator = %Query_CondEqual;

/* 6.c. RIGHT expression is a constant */
&apiQueryCriteria.Expr2Type = %Query_ExprConstant;
&apiQueryCriteria.Expr2Constant1
= "VP1";

7. Saving the Query will perform all sorts of validation and generate a useful collection of error messages.  Just remember "garbage in - garbage out".  The PIA Query Manager prevents the user from creating most illogical combinations when designing a Query so you're going to have to handle all possible error conditions in your code.

/* 7. Save the Query and handle any error messages 
*************************************************************************/
&res =&apiQuery.Save();
If&res <> 0 Then
&colMessages = %Session.PSMessages;
For&i = 1 To &colMessages.Count
&errorObject =&colMessages.Item(&i);
&messageText
=&messageText |&errorObject.Text;
End-For;
Error ("An error has occurred saving the query: "|&messageText);

&colMessages.DeleteAll
();
End-If;

8. At this stage, assuming your Query has saved, you can open the Query in PIA Query Manager/Viewer and execute it.  But my example below includes the generation of a Query URL and a New Window execute by simply viewing the URL.

/* 8. Run PeopleSoft Query to new Window 
**************************************************************************/
&isPublic = False;
&isNewWindow
= True;

Local string&url = GenerateQueryContentURL(%Portal, %Node, &qryName, &isPublic, &isNewWindow);

ViewContentURL
(&url, &isNewWindow);


Always happy to field questions, comments, observations, improvements or corrections.  Hope you found this a useful starter to creating Query Definitions in PeopleCode .

UKOUG APPS 15 Conference

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The annual UK Oracle User Group Applications conference is a great place to network with other PeopleSoft users, partners and of course members of the Oracle PeopleSoft team.

There are sessions covering many PeopleSoft topics including
  • Oracle PeopleSoft Applications and Technology strategy - Jeff Robbins, Oracle 
  • PeopleSoft and the "cloud" from various industry experts
  • PeopleSoft Fluid UI and mobile computing
  • PeopleSoft Payroll Update
  • PeopleSoft Talent Management and Taleo
  • PeopleSoft Portal
  • Upgrade stories
  • and more....  Two Day Agenda Here

Come and share your stories, bring your questions and be part of the community.

See you there.

Paste from ClipBoard into Grid - PeopleCode Friday #4

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A number of times in my PeopleSoft career I have been asked by users if I can provide a paste from the Windows clipboard into a grid.  Typical use cases include pasting Excel data into a grid or bulk loading text.

I've seen some PeopleCode and Javascript developer friends of mine code some really neat solutions but here I'm not going to attempt anything fancy.  I offer this code fragment for what it is - ruthlessly simple.




PIA Page with paste window and results grid

App Designer Page




Local Rowset&rs = GetRowset(Scroll.GRS_TBL);
Local array of string&aRows;
Local array of string&aFields;

&aString
= CreateArray("");
&aFields
= CreateArray("");

&aRows
= Split(GRS_WRK.HTMLAREA, Char(10));

For&i = 1 To &aRows.Len

&aFields
= Split(&aRows [&i], "|");
&rs
(&i).GRS_TBL.SELNUM.Value =&aFields [1];
&rs
(&i).GRS_TBL.DESCR.Value =&aFields [2];
&rs.
InsertRow(&rs.ActiveRowCount);
End-For;



Some observations:

  • You can obviously change the separator from | (pipe) to whatever works for you. Comma is useful when pasting from Excel.
  • You will want to add some structure checking code.  If you're expecting 2 fields but a user pastes 3 then you'll want to trap that.  
  • You may want to do some datatype validation to avoid generating PeopleCode or component processor errors.
  • You could get really smart and create a button which reads data directly from the clipboard.  Most browsers don't allow you to do this for security reasons but there are ways to configure browsers to trust the clipboard.  
  • I've been using this recently to repeatedly flush and reload data into tables on a new application I've been building.  I went as far as making the table name a parameter and setting GETFIELD(n).Value rather than an explicit field name as I had numerous tables to populate.
Any other ideas or suggestions then, as usual, just post comments below.

Embed Query Results in Page - PeopleCode Friday #5

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I recently had a requirement to include Query results in a component alongside other regular page objects.   I know that you can run an existing Query using PeopleCode I just needed a way to handle prompts and download to Excel etc.

I didn't have to look far for the answer.  PeopleSoft Query Manager  has a Run tab in which you can preview the results of your unsaved Query.    Behind the Run tab is a call to PeopleCode Functions ExecQuery and FormatResults.
Query Manager Run Tab.


Throw a Query object at these and hey presto.

Step 1 On the component page add the following 2 objects from QRY_VIEWER_WRK record.

  • HTML Area . QRY_VIEWER_WRK.HTMLAREA - Used to display Query results,
  • Text Box.  QRY_VIEWER_WRK.HTMLCTLEVENT - Used to drive operations like next/previous in list, download to Excel, etc.  This field should be invisible, modifiable by JavaScript and have a page fieldname of HTMLCTLEVENT
Step 2 Add the following PeopleCode (below) to some event. A button or page activate depending on how you want to control Query execution.  This code fragment is really just a starting point but should run any Public Query the user has permissions to run.  If the Query has prompts then a Prompt Dialogue will be generated when the ExecQuery function is called.


As always, feel free to leave comments, observations, alternative ideas or questions.

Page Definition for Displaying Query Results


Declare Function ExecQuery PeopleCode QRY_VIEWER_WRK.FUNCLIB FieldFormula;
Declare Function FormatResults PeopleCode QRY_VIEWER_WRK.FUNCLIB FieldFormula;

/* Create a new Query object*/
Local ApiObject&qryObject;

&qryObject
= %Session.GetQuery();

/* Open and existing Query */
&qryObject.open("XRFWIN", True, True);

/* Run the Query */
Local Record&cPromptRec = Null;
&bResult
= ExecQuery(&qryObject, &cPromptRec);

/* Display the HTML results */
QRY_VIEWER_WRK.HTMLAREA = FormatResults();


This is what the final page looks like

PeopleCode Debug a 2-tier Application Engine Process - PeopleCode Friday #6

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This is not really a PeopleCode tip but rather a tip to debug PeopleCode in an Application Engine process.

I had forgotten you could do this until recently I needed to step through some code in an AE and be able to examine buffer and variable state as I went.

For PIA debugging you need the debug service and the WSL setup on the Application Server and then connect Application Designer in 3-tier mode.  My recommendation is to set this up long before you need it!  This mode, however, is only useful for debugging online PIA sessions and not Application Engine process running on the batch server.

If you can run your AE process in Application Designer then you can use this technique to step through each Section, Step and PeopleCode statement.

Just a few tips

  • Create a run control called "RUN01".  This will make life easier if you're repeatedly running the same AE during development or testing as RUN01 is the default.
  • You can enable SQL and PeopleCode trace in Configuration Manager.  This will send trace output of the actual SQL being executed and you can open this file during debugging. Very useful.
  • Don't forget to use Step Over (F10) for avoiding getting bogged down in lots of function or method code.
  • Don't use Output Log to File when you run as it will repeatedly send prompts for user interaction to the log file until your local disk is full !!!! 


Step 1 -  Setup Config Manager

In Configuration Manager > Profile > Edit > Process Scheduler > Application Engine tick the Debug option.



Step 2 - Open the Application Engine

Step 3 - Open PeopleCode section and Enable Debug


Step 4 - Set Breakpoints in PeopleCode


Step 5 - Run the App Engine process


Step 6 - Use the AE process window


Step 7 - Step through PeopleCode



Watch the whole thing here...

UKOUG PeopleSoft Roadshow 2016

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What a great day at the annual UKOUG PeopleSoft Roadshow.


My top 5 highlights include
  1. Networking with Customers, Oracle and Partners.  Discussing new stuff, sharing stories, showing our tech-scars and solving problems.  Love it!
  2. Hearing all the latest from Marc Weintraub, Director of PeopleSoft Product Strategy at Oracle.  He's an engaging speaker and covered a huge range of topics including PeopleTools 8.55 and beyond, PeopleSoft Cloud Architecture, Oracle Compute Cloud Services, PeopleSoft ERP(FSCM) and HCM application updates.  The innovations and pace of new and exciting features is quite astonishing. 
  3. From PeopleTools 8.56 the monthly patch releases will start to include feature enhancements to PeopleTools.  This is an exciting prospect.

    The engineer in me loves PeopleTools.  One of those meta data based, domain specific programming frameworks where the language is used to develop and enhance the language itself.  (For example....  Q. what is PeopleTools Query Manager written in ?  A. PeopleTools ).
     
  4. Oracle Compute Cloud has a Database as a Service offering.  PeopleSoft can run on this platform  Very exciting for those temporary and transient instances of PeopleSoft that you need to spin up for development, testing, training etc but you don't want to buy another RDBMS license or go to the expense and trouble of finding a server, installing and then ongoing patching and maintenance.  I'll be blogging more on this very soon.
  5. And finally... I got a chance to discuss in detail some of the learning experiences of using the new PeopleSoft DPKs on both VirtualBox and Native.  The PeopleSoft Cloud Architecture really is another game changer for PeopleSoft customers in a similar way to Selective Adoption.  I'll be blogging more on this soon too.




PeopleSoft Cloud Architecture, PeopleSoft Predictions and more ...

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I think the community building work of Dan Iverson and Kyle Benson through their psadmin.io site is terrific.  I highly recommend their podcasts, videos, discussion and blogs.  Recently, I had a great time chatting with Dan & Kyle and you can listen to the podcast here. http://psadmin.io/2016/05/20/29-peoplesoft-cloud-architecture-w-graham-smith/



We talked about warm air produced by power supplies, loading 8" floppy disks into an IBM 36 and occasionally you can hear, in the background, a Class 43 Diesel heading into London as it passes my garden office  .... we also talked about PeopleSoft including the huge investment that Oracle continues to put into the applications and technology, what is the "cloud", what is "PeopleSoft Cloud Architecture", what does the automation of some admin tasks mean to the PeopleSoft administrator role and also some of my own thoughts on the exciting future of PeopleSoft.



AMIS25 Beyond the Horizon Conference 2016

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I've just returned from the AMIS25 Beyond the Horizon conference in the Netherlands.  AMIS are celebrating their 25th anniversary and put on a top rate conference with Oracle technology speakers from around the world.  They also hosted the OTN Cloud Developer Challenge at which I had the privilege of leading a team.  Featuring 30 ACE Directors from around the world the challenge was to design solutions using Oracle Cloud Services.



Here are my highlights from the 2 day conference.

Geertjan Wielenga (Oracle) with some slick, live JET demos
1) Oracle JET : Two excellent live demo sessions from Paco Van Der Linden (AMIS) and Geertjan Wielenga (Oracle).  Both gave live coding demonstrations of the JavaScript Extension Toolkit which is not a new JavaScript framework but rather a toolkit of the "best of what's available and what's most stable".  Oracle JET is included as part of PeopleTools 8.55 now and we should start to see PeopleSoft applications using these rather clever tools for charting, responsive UI, data binding of page UI elements and more.


AMIS developer Maarten Smeets on ICS Adapters

2) Why Build an Oracle Cloud Adapter: Maarten Smeets (AMIS) talked through the challenging development of new Oracle Cloud based adapters for Oracle's Integration Cloud Service.  More information on ICS adapters from Oracle here including a list of currently available adapters.  Probably best not to build one that someones already built.   You can find Maarten's excellent presentation here along with his example source code.

Prof. Steinbuch blows our minds with robotics
3) Keynote: The future of cars, robots and humans:Professor Maarten Steinbuch from Eindhoven University of Technology gave a thought provoking and captivating insight into robotics currently available, prototypes in the pipeline and what the future might look like.  He affirmed Moore's Law still to be valid and expects computing power to continue to double every few years.  If you want to understand what that might look like then if you take a 35 steps and double the size of the step each time then you'll have traveled around the world  several times!!!  This is fun to do with grains of rice on a chessboard too.   He discussed self drive cars (now a reality thanks to Tesla) and AI robot pets for the elderly who are too frail to keep a pet and the truly amazing robots that can assist a surgeon to stitch together 2mm diameter blood vessels. Whether you agree with this level of advancement or not it's happening.  

Reactive Programming Intro - Paco Van Der Linden
4) Reactive Programming: Paco Van Der Linden (AMIS).  I had never heard of reactive programming but in the world of web development the developer has to worry about asynchronous events and data streams.  This paradigm (with accompanying libraries ReactiveX) makes things a whole lot easier.  Many of my reader's world will consist of PeopleTools and maybe a bit of JavaScript so might be wondering if this is all relevant to them.  Well, it's probably not if you just stay with the synchronous model of PIA component interaction.  PeopleTools is nice as we generally only have one event at a time to manage and the component processor and client-side JavaScript does all the hard work for us.  But, I wonder where PeopleTools will go with an increasing demand for smarter and ever simpler UIs.
  

Database on Oracle VM Magic from ACE Director Francisco
5) Oracle VM for Oracle Databases.  Francisco Munoz Alvarez (ACED).  So here's a conundrum.  Which should be faster?  
  1. Oracle database running on dedicated hardware (using Linux),
  2. Oracle database running on the same hardware but on a virtual machine (using Linux) inside Oracle VM hypervisor
Interestingly enough.... the answer is (2) - the database running inside Oracle VM !!!!  At least... it is according to Oracle ACE Director Francisco Alvarez.  How can introducing another layer of software (the hypervisor) possibly increase the performance?  No one seemed to know... but this was a fascinating deep dive into the value of visualization to Oracle databases.  Given that Oracle VM is free to use it might just be worth some time testing it for yourself.

All the other sessions from the AMIS conference can be found on the AMIS Technology blog.

OTN Cloud Developer Challenge 

My project for the Cloud Developer Challenge was to demonstrate 100% PeopleSoft Patching in the Oracle Cloud.  This involved:
  1. building a PeopleSoft Demo Database using Oracle Database Cloud Service 
  2. provisioning a PeopleSoft Update Image instance in the Oracle Compute Cloud Service using an image from the Oracle Cloud Marketplace
  3. provisioning a Windows 2012 r2 server instance in the Oracle Compute Cloud on which to run PeopleSoft Change Assistant.
I'm gong to tell this story in detail very soon.

OTN Cloud Developer Challenge teams hard at work
Honestly Geertjan.... we are listening to your product briefing


Super Cool, inflatable session rooms.



PeopleSoft Predictions 2016

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Predictions

I regularly get into conversations with PeopleSoft customers, consultants and others about the future of PeopleSoft.  There is no doubt that Oracle continues to invest heavily in PeopleSoft technology and applications and I don't think there's been a more exciting time to be a PeopleSoft customer.  Is it just me or does it feel like that in recent years there's been a huge increase in the new release of new features, enhancements and new technology in the PeopleSoft products?  This product is far from being in maintenance mode.


  • Best in KLAS winners for ERP systems in the healthcare sector, a leading student administration solution for university campuses and the feature rich HR system used by some of the largest organisations in the world.
  • Recent (since 2013) innovations from Oracle include continuous delivery of features through Selective Adoption, responsive mobile ready UI (Fluid), PeopleSoft Cloud Architecture, Pivot Grids, WorkCentres, powerful facet based search (SES), REST based web services, Push messaging technology, Activity Guides, PeopleTools Test Framework, inclusion of JQuery and Oracle JET, and more.  And this is just referencing the underlying technology and development framework.  I haven't spoken of the thousands of new features and enhancements across the applications themselves.


So, talking about the past and present is easy.  But what does the future look like?  Here's some of my thoughts on what might happen in the Oracle PeopleSoft world.  I reserve the right to be proved right when these predictions come true and I reserve the right to change my mind as time goes by.

(Actually some of these things have already happened since I started writing this blog)

1) One click provisioning of PeopleSoft Update Images in the Oracle Compute Cloud.  I've been saying for some time now that Oracle were very likely to allow customers to buy on a pay as you go basis a PeopleSoft Update Image on the Oracle Computer Cloud.  You can now do this through the Oracle Cloud MarketPlace.    Read more here http://www.oracle.com/webfolder/technetwork/tutorials/obe/cloud/compute-iaas/deploy_psft_app_marketplace/deploy_psft_app_marketplace.html or access the images here https://cloud.oracle.com/marketplace/faces/homeLinkPage and search for PeopleSoft.

2) Easy Migration of existing on-premise PeopleSoft instances to the Oracle Cloud.  Actually this already exists as of 8.55 and is part of the DPK toolkit.  I think we'll see this process get easier in time.  Read more here http://www.oracle.com/webfolder/technetwork/tutorials/obe/cloud/compute-iaas/migrating_psft_app_occs/migrate_psft_app_occs.html

3) One click provisioning of individual PeopleSoft components in the Oracle Compute Cloud.   Tuxedo, WebLogic, PS_HOME file systems, Batch Servers are all commodity items in the PeopleSoft stack.  Yes... they can be configured and tuned but the platform itself is pretty much black-boxed as far as PeopleSoft is concerned (in my opinion).  A natural step is for Oracle allow customers to provision individual components in the Oracle Compute Cloud and plug them together with other Cloud based components or even on-premise components.  WebLogic doesn't even need an operating system either as since 11g you can run in just JRockit in  hypervisor mode.  I wonder what Oracle will do with one of it's most recent, Feb 2016, acquisition Ravello Systems, specialists in virtualisation, instance provisioning and cloud management tools.

4) PeopleSoft on Oracle Database Cloud (DBaaS).  An Oracle PeopleSoft database in the Oracle Cloud.  I predict we'll see this as a deployment option when installing PeopleSoft or when migrating an on-premise instance.  An easy, low cost, pay as you go, hassle free database platform for all those test, development, trial, UAT, training instances of PeopleSoft and soon, one day, even production.  Read more here https://cloud.oracle.com/database.  I'll be writing in more depth on my experiences of getting a PeopleSoft instance operational in the Oracle Database Cloud soon.

5) Automatic patching of Oracle Cloud provisioned components.  I predict this will be a service offered by Oracle and/or Partners.  If the component is running in the Oracle cloud then why can't you pay some extra $ and have all the latest security updates and bug fixes  automatically applied.  As Dan and Kyle point out in the podcast this may well take other forms as such as patching a shadow component and hot swapping the old for the new.  Either way,  I don't worry if my electricity supplier has patched their sub-stations.... I pay for a service and they deliver.  One day PeopleSoft component will be purchased in a similar way.

6) PeopleSoft Update Manager in the Oracle Cloud.  I think that prediction (5) above will extend to include PeopleSoft application and PeopleTools updates.  I wonder what this might look like as an automated service?  A monthly subscription to keep your PeopleSoft application up to date with every new PeopleSoft Update Image?

7) PIA(web) based drag and drop development of Fluid pages.  The beauty, power, future proofing and extensibility of PeopleSoft is the underlying PeopleTools meta data driven architecture.  Ha !!! GENIUS!!!  It made the transition form WIN32 client apps to HTML based pages relatively straight forward and it will make the development of a drag and drop web based page and component designer for building Fluid pages a natural evolution.  We already have seen this with the drag and drop Forms Designer.   Combine this with the powerful Event Mapping framework which allows customisations without customising and hey-presto you have a cloud application that you can extend and modify.

Happy to be proved wrong on all of these.  But one thing seems certain to me.  PeopleSoft has a bright future whether you're deciding to stay on premise or moving to the cloud.

Comments, suggestions, discussion and other predictions welcome in the comments below.

Many thanks for reading this far.  :-)

OpenWorld 2016 - My Top 10 Agenda Highlights

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I cannot believe it's a year since OpenWorld 2015.  Some say it's age that makes time go faster, some say it has something to with not watching a boiling kettle, or that time flies when you're having fun... still others say it has something to with the orbit of Jupiter and it's proximity to the Earth....hmmm... well I have a different theory.

Time flies when you're busy playing with all the great Oracle toys released in the last 18 months. 

Oracle Compute (IaaS) and Database (DBaaS) Services, PeopleTools 8.55, PeopleSoft Cloud Architecture DPKs, ACM, Oracle Marketplace provisioning of PeopleSoft Images, release of FSCM PUM Images 016, 017, 018, 019 and 020, HCM Images 015, 016, 017 and 018, to name but a few.  And when you're busy ... time flies.  There's simply not enough time to play with all the toys as much as I'd like to.

This is a great dilemma to have.  Can you imagine working with a dead, end of life product, where there was no investment and no strategic thought going into it's future and direction, no innovative and enthusiastic community of people who love to talk and share about how to get the best out of our investment?  So...I'm confident Oracle won't let up on the innovations this year; and our wonderful community of people will keep sharing;  and so we should expect this years Oracle OpenWorld conference to be another great one and another busy year of play.

The conference agenda is packed as always and I've struggled to keep my agenda highlights down to 10. But here goes. I look forward to seeing old and new friends at this years conference.  My top 10 agenda highlights for the 2016 conference are:

Sunday

Sasank Vemana
#1Life Hacks for PeopleSoft Development [UGF2499]- Sasank Vemana on Sunday @ 09:15 am
Sasank is a top PeopleSoft expert and blogger https://pe0ples0ft.blogspot.co.uk .  Anything he has to say on tips and techniques will be well worth rising early for on what is likely to be your first conference session of the week.  Good luck Sasank.

Monday 

#2Customer Successes with PeopleSoft Fluid User Interface [CON5090]- 4 customers including Jo Lock from Oxfam GB @ 1:45 pm
Customers want to hear other customer success stories.  I know for sure that Jo Lock, PeopleSoft Functional Lead from Oxfam GB, has a great story to tell of how Fluid is making a real difference at Oxfam (I even have Jo's name tattooed on my left arm!)

#3PeopleSoft Cloud Architecture: Practical Applications and Use Cases [CON3672] - Graham Smith @ 1:45pm
Is this a first for OpenWorld?  Husband and wife up against each other on the agenda.  If you want to hear about running PeopleSoft in the cloud then come to my session. If you want to hear about what customers have done with Fluid then go to the session where my wife is on the panel (really... I won't be offended.)


Jim Marion
#4Getting the Most Out of PeopleSoft: PeopleSoft PeopleTools Tips and Techniques [CON7070]- Jim Marion @ 4:15 pm
Need I say more. PeopleTools expert, blogger and author of three great books http://jjmpsj.blogspot.co.uk .  Jim draws a crowd because he knows his stuff and freely shares his insights into exploiting your investment in PeopleSoft.  Hoping this session is still on given Jim's exciting move to PeopleSoft mobile and security specialists GreyHeller (http://www.greyheller.com).  UPDATE: This session is still on


Tuesday

#5General Session: Today’s PeopleSoft is Intuitive, Powerful, and in the Cloud [GEN5077] - Paco Aubrejuan & Marc Weintraub @ 12:15pm
DO NOT MISS THIS SESSION.  The Paco & Marc show is the key PeopleSoft session for understanding where PeopleSoft is going.  Looking forward to hearing about new application innovations, PeopleTools 8.56 and beyond and what Oracle has in store for PeopleSoft in the cloud.
Paco Aubrejuan - Senior Vice President, PeopleSoft Enterprise,

#6PeopleSoft Technology Roadmap [CON7061] - Jeff Robbins @ 4:00pm
DO NOT MISS THIS SESSION.  PeopleSoft Technology is the foundation on which great apps are built. What's new in PeopleTools and what's on the horizon?  This is always a good session to be at and Jeff is a great presenter.

#7Hands-On with PeopleSoft: Value of PeopleSoft in Oracle Cloud [CON7072] - Jeff Robbins @ 5:15pm
You've always been able to run PeopleSoft in the cloud.  So, what's new?  Is there some new "secret sauce"?

Wednesday

#8Getting the Most Out of PeopleSoft: Transitioning to Elasticsearch [CON7066] - Matthew Haavisto @ 12:15pm
It's here !!!  Hello Elastic - Goodbye SES.  Nuff said.

#9Hands-On with PeopleSoft: A Successful PeopleSoft Fluid User Interface Rollout [CON7063] - Dave Bain @ 3:00pm
King Solomon said in the book of Proverbs "there's wisdom in the counsel of many" .  So, if your're working on Fluid projects or thinking about it then come and here some more "counsel".

Thursday

#10 PeopleSoft in the Cloud: Real-World Experiences [CON7064] - Jeff Robbins and Oracle Partner panel @ 10.45am
Have you noticed there's a "cloud" theme to this years conference.  I think that cloud is just a set of solutions to some common IT challenges and Cedar Consulting will be joining with other Oracle Partners to share their experiences.

#11Meet the Experts: PeopleSoft PeopleTools [MTE7726] @ 10:45
I'd be happy to sit around drinking coffee and tins of "interesting-conference-supplied" grape juice all day with these guys.  This is what you paid your conference ticket for (apart from Billy Joel of course. But then you can't drink coffee with him)

#12Hands-On with PeopleSoft: Develop Practices to Harden and Protect PeopleSoft [CON7074] - Greg Kelly @ 2:30pm
The last session of the day of the last day of the conference but one of THE MOST IMPORTANT -  security insights from Oracle's PeopleSoft security guru Greg Kelly delivered with his usual Irish wit and candour.



OpenWorld - Day 1 - Sunday

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The sky is blue, there's not a cloud in sight and it's very hot.  San Francisco is noisy and busy and Oracle OpenWorld 2016 has started.  Oracle are making up for the absence of airborne clouds. 

Cloud is not merely the conference theme this year but Oracle's corporate goal.  They want to see everyone using their cloud platform and software.

PeopleSoft users.... do not fear.  PeopleSoft has always been able to run in the cloud and with the release of PeopleSoft Cloud Architecture in 8.55 and the Oracle Marketplace Update Image Templates there are some great opportunities for customers.  More on this on my Day 2 update.

Sunday Morning

There was a great turnout for the Life Hacks for PeopleSoft session given by top blogger Sasank Vemana from Florida State University.  He demonstrated the power of PeopleSoft Branding using Macro Sets and Themes, something he's been blogging about for some time with very useful step by step examples.  You can find them all here https://pe0ples0ft.blogspot.com/search/label/Branding 

He went on to talk about the value of one of the JET components RequireJS for managing custom JavaScript modules - a simple solution to a very real problem the only JavaScript developers will know about.  He also talked about KnockoutJS (another JET component now included with PeopleTools 8.55) and demonstrated page data binding.   You can read more on this on Sasank's blog here https://pe0ples0ft.blogspot.com/2016/09/flu-ui-oj-ko-data-binding-demo.html.

The code writing experience in PeopleSoft (PeopleCode, SQL, HTML, JavaScript) has improved slightly in recent releases of PeopleTools especially for the PeopleCode editor in App Designer. But writing JavaScript directly in PeopleSoft in App Designer or in PIA is not a great experience.  Sasank demonstrated a way to embed the Ace web editor into the PIA page used to edit JavaScript. Nice!  Very nice!  (and it's free).  Ace is the editor used on Cloud9 IDE which I've been using for some time for writing JavaScript and Python online.  Check it out.  You can get a free account for one workspace.

He closed this highly informative session by showing a live demo of Google's reCaptcha plugin added onto the PeopleSoft signon page.  This can help protect your site from hacking by web bots.

Sunday (part ii)

My wife, Jo Lock, is here at OpenWorld to talk about her experiences at Oxfam GB with PeopleSoft Fluid user interface and so we took the chance to enjoy some of San Francisco.

Walked through China Town to Pier 41, lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe on pier 39, hired some bikes and cycled across the Golden Gate bridge (8 miles and some BIG hills), caught the ferry back from Sausalito across the bay to San Francisco and took the Cable Car back to Powell Street.















OpenWorld 2016 - Day 2 - Monday

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More than just a conference theme.  Oracle is fully committed to all things Cloud
"Choose Your Cloud"

Oracle Cloud Machine

Choose your cloud ... and the choices are... "Public Cloud" or "Cloud at Customer".  So, for customers who don't want their data physically leaving their own data centres Oracle now have the "Cloud Machine" or "Cloud at Customer".  This is a simply brilliant idea and as far as I know none of the other cloud vendors has a solution like this.  In a nutshell you can have any of the Oracle IaaS, PaaS and SaaS cloud services but they're all hosted in a "black-box" machine which Oracle supply and maintain and which is located in your data centre.  This sounds like hardware rental but it's very different in that Oracle fully manage the device(s) and the Cloud services are all charged at the same Public Cloud rate. (there's a minimum starting config and you need to commit for a specific amount of time but you still pay the same rate as if you were on the Oracle Public Cloud).  Secured behind customers own firewalls and seamlessly integrated with Oracle Public Cloud this sounds like a neat solution to security concerns or corporate data policies which restrict the movement of data.

PeopleSoft Live Talk! Marc Weintraub and Greg Parikh

This entertaining PeopleSoft opener of the conference had a simple message....


The place to go for everything you need to know about PeoplerSoft Concepts, Applications, Technology, Peoplesoft on Oracle Cloud, and so much more.

The Spotlight Series and the Video Feature Overviews are also great places to go for information on PeopleSoft apps and tech.

Mark and Greg introduced the key themes for the PeopleSoft conference stream:


Jim Marion - PeopleTools Tips and Techniques

Standing room only at Jim's session. As always Jim delivered a valuable set of tips for using Event
Mapping, POI for reading & writing binary data, D3 libraries that are hidden away in PeopleTools 8.55 and Oracle JET components such as KnockoutJS.  Jim also gave a live and crystal clear walk-through of Fluid page design, what some of the UI layout issues are and how to solve them.  Jim has blogged extensively on JavaScript and more recently on JET here http://jsjim.blogspot.com if you're a code monkey and enjoy this kind of thing.  Jim's technical skills combined the GreyHeller's mobile and security innovations should make a great combination.

These are just some of my highlights from this day at OpenWorld. As always the PeopleSoft team based on the Demo grounds are on hand to talk and listen to customers.  It's hard work to man these booths and so thank you to the PeopleSoft tools and apps people who make this such a valuable space at the conference.

PeopleSoft FSCM Showcase




OpenWorld 2016 - Day 3 - Tuesday

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What will happen if I walk through the Tunnel of "O" ?
Tuesday is traditionally when you get to hear about all the new PeopleSoft stuff and today was no exception.  There's so much to talk about that I don't have time right now to anything more than just bullet some of the highlights.  I hope you find this useful.

Mark, Maria, Amira and Alexandra

(1) Practical Recommendations for Using PeopleSoft Fluid User Interface with PeopleSoft ERP.  

A panel session with members of the PeopleSoft FSCM product management and strategy team Alexandra Masters (SRM Product Management), Amira Morcos(Director of Financials Strategy),Marc Weintraub (Director PeopleSoft Strategy) & Maria Pollieri (ESA/Projects Product Management) .  These are just a few of their recommendations:
(sorry... didn't catch everyones titles so forgive me if I get them wrong).

  • Don't wait until you're on 8.55. You can implement Fluid on 8.54
  • Roll out incrementally. Find small user group and one or two Fluid apps to start with
  • Approvals functionality is key in FSCM and Image 020 contains completely new Fluid Approvals software which replaces MAP Approvals (which, incidentally goes out of support in June 2017 so you need be quick!)
  • Use Fluid as one of the tools to show senior management that PeopleSoft has value to your organisation
  • Use the Oracle Community Ideas space to suggest and vote on enhancement requests. https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E52319_01/infoportal/mosc.html

(2) General Session: Todays PeopleSoft is Intuitive, Powerful, and in the Cloud. 

Paco Aubrejuan has an impossible job of cramming in all the innovations of the last year into 45 mins.  But he did a cracking job. Will write more later but for now here's the highlights with some photos. 


Fluid news

Quote of the session "we're going to make it hard for you not to take Fluid".  

(I think this was Paco's way of encouraging customers to adopt Fluid).  Over 300 customers are know to have implemented Fluid apps so far and quite a few were sharing their stories at OpenWorld including my good friends at Oxfam.  
Oxfam Logo right at the top of Pacos slide. Nice!

A new stylesheets will be available in 8.56 called Classic Plus. It'll take a Classic page and make it "look" (not behave) like Fluid. This is an obvious thing to do and one that will make a big difference to users that switch between Classic and Fluid on the desktop.  
Classic Plus

Recap of Fluid features added since last OpenWorld

PeopleSoft Cloud Manager

PeopleSoft Cloud Manager is a front-end to DPKs and the Oracle Compute Cloud written in PeopleTools and made available via the Oracle Cloud Marketplace.  Use PCM to define your instance types (web, app, batch, Elastic, etc), the size (cpu, memory, disk) and the zones it belongs to (dev, test, prod). You can then create environments from these templates, start them, stop and tear-down (delete) them all from a Fluid based management console. Nice !  very nice.  Only works on Oracle Cloud though so you won't the benefit of this on Amazon or Azure.  This could be a real differentiator for Oracle.  Paco did a live demo! Very impressive. 

Fluid Expenses

Another live demo from Paco showed new Fluid expense entry where he used SMS texting to send an image of his receipt to Twilio who process this and drop the receipt into his Expenses Wallet in PeopleSoft.  Cool integration with messaging partner Twilio.  
SMS Expenses

Employee Snapshot

PeopleSoft HCM has a dashboard for Talent Summary. This is now written in Fluid and called Employee Snapshot.  I took a photo.  It looked nice and live demo from Paco.
Employee Snapshot

Elastic Search

Long awaited news on Elastic search and .... we still don't know which 8.55 patch release it will come with.   They did announce that they had been testing Elastic with Wells Fargo and that results were very positive.  
Elastic News

Page Composer for Approvals

It's just for approval Fluid pages at the moment but this looks like it's set to be the way we're going to be building all Fluid pages going forward.   Live demo from Paco!

Page Composer.



I have just run out of time.... so I'm going to hit publish and hope to have some time later to continue Day 3.



OpenWorld 2016 - Day 4 - Wednesday

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The Oracle Key Message of OOW16

Day 4 of this "epic" conference began with one of the PeopleSoft big themes this year - Getting the Most Out of PeopleSoft: PeopleSoft Fluid User Interface.  With lots of useful reminders and advice from Oracle's Matthew Haavisto, Pramod Agrawal and blogger/developer Sasank Vemana from Florida State University.




Here's my takeaways from this session.
  • PeopleTools 8.55 now has Fluid 
    • Activity Guides
    • WorkCentres
    • Navigation Collection pages
    • Simplified Analytics
    • Related Actions
  • Advised customers to follow the PeopleSoft UX Design Standards http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E65859_01/fluid_ux 
Sasank gave a useful overview of the universities mobile strategy involving a blending of various technologies including PeopleSoft Fluid, ModoLabs and PeopleMobile and ERP Firewall from GreyHeller.  

Matthew, Ramasimha and Kevin 

ElasticSearch Update

Only one session at the conference on PeopleSoft and ElasticSearch featuring Oracle's Matthew Haavisto and Ramasimha Rangaraju (Product Development) and Kevin Antoff from Wells Fargo.
Key Elastic Take-Aways

ElasticSearch is a proven, robust and high performance search engine and the PeopleTools team are committed to making the transition as easy and as painless as possible.  Wells Fargo have been working with Oracle to test performance and get the integrations ready and the results have been very positive.  Wells Fargo volumes are large enough to keep most PeopleSoft customers satisfied with over 4.5 million job applications a year indexed.  They've seen a 50% improvement in indexing speed and a "dramatic" improvement in search speed.  
Elastic Transition Steps
Customers will need to get Elastic software from Oracle as a few additional integration components have been added.  The installation will be done using a new DPK package but supported platforms will be limited to only those that are certified for Elastic - Windows and Linux (so no support for Solaris).  PeopleSoft have engineered the Search Framework configuration so you can define the new Elastic search instance and simply re-use the existing search definitions all while the existing SES search instance is operational.  The effect of this should be zero down time as transition occurs. 

All the front end search interface and index design pages all stay the same with the new Elastic search and the process of performing an initial full index followed by incremental partial indexes will also remain the same.  However, a particularly nice design change that has been made is that the Elastic search server will now subscribe to Integration Broker messages generated by the PeopleSoft indexing process.  With SES it's the other way around in that PeopleSoft pushes data to SES.  What this means in practice is that as PeopleSoft publishes data changes, Elastic will immediately subscribe to them and update the indexes.  This opens the way for PeopleSoft transaction page updates to publish a single update message which Elastic will immediately pickup.   No more out of date indexes.  

The one missing bit of information is which PeopleTools 8.55 patch Elastic will be available on.

Fluid Approvals

With FSCM Image 020 the MAP based approvals have been completely replaced with Fluid Approvals.  (MAP and Fluid are the two mobile platforms available in PeopleTools). This needs a longer write-up as there's some exciting things here but for now here's just some highlights:
  • Fluid Approvals is part of Enterprise Components not PeopleTools
  • MAP as a PeopleTools integration / mobile technology is not going away (in fact is being enhanced in 8.56)
  • Each pillar will adopt Fluid Approvals in an Update Image (HCM will come in image 020).
  • Cross pillar unified approvals view (ie showing approvals from both HCM and FSCM say) will not be possible unless both pillars are using the Fluid Approval framework.
  • Page Composer is used to configure the approvals list and detail views.  Page Composer is only supported for use with Approvals at the moment and whilst nothing has been announced by Oracle it's pretty clear the vision for Page Composer is far broader than just approvals.  Could be the way we build Fluid apps in the future (see my prediction #7 here)

Fluid Approvals is clever. But needs some explanation (coming soon)


Customer Appreciation Event at the AT&T Stadium

And then on to the home of the San Francisco Giants with 50,000+ conference delegates. Just a few photos from an interesting musical experience with Gwen Stefani and an awesome blast of nostalgia from Sting.









PeopleSoft in the Oracle Cloud

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In 2016 Oracle released the PeopleSoft Cloud Architecture in 8.55, PeopleSoft Update Images on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace and produced a significant amount of tutorials and guides on running and managing PeopleSoft instances in the Oracle Compute Cloud.

Exciting times.  There are some real opportunities here for customers to take advantage of the benefits of cloud - including cost savings, converting capital expenditure to operational, infinite on-demand compute capacity, performance improvements, ease of management, subscription based costs, simplification of database and operating system licenses, and more.

I wrote an article "PeopleSoft and the Cloud" which was published in the December edition of UKOUG's Oracle Scene magazine and I wanted to begin a series of discussions on the benefits and practicalities of running PeopleSoft in the cloud.

Let's simply start with "What is the cloud?"

My definition is quite simple.  When a vendor claims to provide compute infrastructure, platform (database and middleware) and application services they should exhibit these key characteristics:



1) Infinite On-Demand Compute Capacity. If you need more compute capacity (servers or storage) then it's got to be available immediately.  If your "cloud" provider needs a few weeks or even a few days notice to provision additional servers then it's not cloud... it's hosting.  Compute capacity must be available on-demand.

2) Pay As You Go.  Subscription based pricing where you only pay for what you use is another characteristic of cloud.  If you can't quickly and easily add a few more servers because "it's not in your contract" then it's not cloud.

3) Automated Routine Operations.  Relocating one piece of server hardware in my data centre for another similar piece of hardware in someone elses data centre may still give some benefit in terms of cost saving, performance improvement and increased security.  However, what I really want is a cloud service that provides automation of routine operations such as server monitoring, operating system and application upgrades and patches.  SaaS typically provides this service but IaaS and PaaS should too.

Opportunities for PeopleSoft customers:


Experts in PeopleSoft and Oracle Cloud
  • Host your PeopleSoft Update Image in the Oracle Cloud
  • Lift and Shift your PeopleSoft environments into the Oracle Cloud
  • Implement PeopleSoft Cloud Manager (when it's released) to manage your PeopleSoft instances in the Oracle Compute Cloud
  • Get upgraded to PeopleSoft 9.2.  Highly recommend talking with Cedar Consulting.  We run a very popular Rapid 9.2 Upgrade Masterclass and have completed 16 upgrades to-date with another 3 currently in flight. 
  • Implement a Selective Adoption Strategy.  Cedar Consulting are experts in Selective Adoption and can help your organisation gain the value from the continuous software delivery model that is in PeopleSoft 9.2.



5 things about PeopleSoft Page Composer

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  1. Page Composer creates Fluid pages through configuration.  At the moment this is only available for Fluid Approvals (introduced in HCM & FSCM Images 020 and CRM 012 and ELM 015) but as a general framework for page construction you can see where Oracle is taking this.  It is part of Enterprise Components NOT PeopleTools. Although you will need to be on at least PeopleTools 8.54.27 or 8.55.10 (See Doc ID 2166359.1

  2. Page Composer pages are based on a Page Composer Registration in which you define the sections of the page (summary, header, detail, etc) and the data sources and custom business logic.  You can define up to 5 header and 5 line sections.  
  3. There is currently only one Page Composer composition type of APPROVALS.  The approvals pages are all based on the same component EOAWMA_MAIN_FL.  Page definition EOAWMA_RSLT_SBF renders the initial summary list view and page definitions EOAWMA_TXNHDTL_FL (header) and EOAWMA_TXNLDTL_FL (line) render the Detail you see when you click one of the summary list items.  (TOP TIP:  Of all the pages delivered with PeopleSoft I think I would try and avoid customising this page due to a) it's high complexity and b) the likelihood of it changing with each image release.  
  4. When defining the Page Composer Registration it takes a bit of trial and error to identify which page fields can be referenced and used.  Suggest looking at delivered Page Composer definitions in Image 020 and cribbing these for your own definitions.  
  5. You can assign custom PeopleCode to page field events.  Create an App Package class which extends class EOPC_RUNTIME:pcFieldEventAction and assign to a field in the Page Composer Registration Field Event page.  

5 things about Fluid Page None Search Type

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There are 3 search types you can specify for a Fluid component : None, Standard (also known as Pivot Grid ) and Master /Detail (on page, left side, persistant search results).

Here's 5 things about None:
  1. None is the default Search Type for a Fluid Component and is set in the Component properties Fluid tab.  It is often found in self service applications where the search data is  known and already exists in the database (e.g. employee id)
    Search Type = None
  2. A Search Type of None will not give you a search page (sorry to state the obvious here but some aspects of Fluid development are not always obvious).  However, the component still requires a search record.  This can be a record with no search keys such as the INSTALLATION table or a record with multiple search keys such as HR_SS_PERS_SRCH.  
  3. Even though the Component search record may have search keys a Fluid component will not present a search page.  Instead you must set search keys either in SearchInit PeopleCode event as the component loads or in a parameter record in a TRANSFER(...) function or  as parameters in the URL. 
    Set search keys in SearchInit

    Transfer with keys in record


    Search keys in URL parameters


  4. Use  SearchInit PeopleCode event  SetSearchBehaviorMode(0)to automatically execute the search and land on the first page.  
  5. If you need to open a Fluid Component in Add mode then append &action=A parameter to the transfer URL or use the "A" parameter in the TRANSFER function.  This is not as easy as it sounds with a Fluid component set to search type None and so if you need add mode it might be better to set search type = Standard (more on this in a future blog).

5 things about PeopleSoft Cloud Manager

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PeopleSoft Cloud Manager was announced at OpenWorld 2016 . On Feb 14 it became available on Oracle Cloud Marketplace.  

  1. Cloud Manager is a PeopleSoft application which can define and manage instances of PeopleSoft in the Oracle Cloud.  
  2. PeopleSoft Cloud Manager only runs on Oracle Compute Cloud infrastructure and you can get it from the Oracle Cloud Marketplace .  Just search for Cloud Manager.   
  3. Cloud Manager is written in PeopleTools using the PeopleSoft Interaction Hub and needs it's own standalone instance just like any other pillar (HCM, FSCM, CRM, etc). 
  4. You can subscribe to software updates that you have an interest in which will be automatically downloaded for you.  This includes:
  • PeopleTools patches, 
  • application PRPs, 
  • PUM Images 
  • Cloud Manager software is free for PeopleSoft customers but you pay for infrastructure used on the Oracle Compute Cloud.  OCC is charged on the basis of how many OCPUs you use and how much storage you use (there are other chargeable items which you can read more on here). 

  • Useful Links:


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