PeopleTools 8.54: PeopleSoft Fluid UI

Last week the PeopleSoft Technology Blog announced the general availability of PeopleTools 8.54. We are really excited to dig into the new features, particularly the new PeopleSoft Fluid User Interface. This new interface gives flexibility to a developer to dynamically control the PeopleSoft applications page display based on the user’s device type.

PeopleSoft application fluid pages scale from large screen devices such as laptops and desktops down to the reduced viewing space of tablets and smart phones. For a larger screen size, the application content gets adjusted accordingly to fill the viewing space. Likewise, for a smaller screen size, non-essential information can be removed and content is presented in a very usable fashion fitting the small screen space.

PeopleSoft Fluid pages can be built in large part the same as a traditional PeopleSoft page is created in  the application designer.

However, designing the page and configuring the component is somewhat different from the traditional PeopleSoft page development. PeopleSoft fluid pages emphasis more on CSS3, HTML5 and JavaScript. CSS is highly used in controlling the appearance and layout of a fluid page. Hence, application implementation team may need expertise in these areas to develop/customize a PeopleSoft Fluid page.

We will post soon with our hands on experience on this.  

Peoplesoft Upgrade Strategy

Oracle-PeopleSoft 9.2 has includes new feature like,

1. Enhancements in Oracle's People tools ver 8.51
2. Ease of use of Reporting and Analytics
3. Greater flexibility and Adaptability
4. Access to industry's best practices
5. Excellent from the Risk and Compliance perspective
6. Low cost of future upgrades
7. Good Functional Enhancements
8. Increased RoI
9. A platform being set for Fusion

It has created significant business drivers for those organizations that are currently in the older version (both application and People tools) and are either supported or de-supported by Oracle.

The PeopleSoft product roadmap is

Let me give a perspective of going for PeopleSoft upgrade services offer from Kovaion consulting:

Kovaion offers the following:

1. Application upgrade

In this we provide a clear road map to improve the system from the existing set up and excel there on. At a very macro level, we would like to mention that we will do a discovery and consolidation of the application

2. Technology Upgrade
In this we provide

a. Tools only upgrade
b. Any re platform of O/S or DB
c. Re-host and moves only upgrade

Road map / Approach for the Application Upgrade includes,

A. Improvement of the current application

• The Upgrade is driven by technology/product support
• All customizations are relevant to the current business need 
• New features are not a requirement at this point of time for the business

Key facts of the Upgrade

• Lesser duration to upgrade
• Minimal involvement from business/SME 
• A high level assessment 
• Objective of the upgrade is very clear

Business Benefits

• Completion of upgrade in a shorter duration
• Minimal training effort 
• 95% of the customizations are available after the application is being upgraded 

B. Outclassing the existing application
The second approach will suit only if

• The business is driving the requirements
• Full utilization of the latest features and functionalities offered so that customizations can eliminated or minimized to abysmally low levels

Key Facts of the Upgrade

• Duration is longer, similar to a new implementation.
• Commitment and greater involvement from the Management, Project sponsor, Business and SMEs.
• There will be a detailed study undertaken for the upgrade.

Business Benefits

• Lower future upgrade and Maintenance cost since the client will be using the delivered features and functionalities of the product.
• Better ROI.
• Leveraging industry best practices.

Author

Parameswaran G
Head - Sales and Business Development
Mobile: +91 9841005917
e-mail - parameswaran.g@kovaion.com

PeopleSoft HR Notification – Announcements Made Easy

HR Notification is available from PeopleSoft HCM 9.2. It is a simple and powerful communication tool,

• It allows HR administrators to send out rich text announcements or personalized email to group of employees or a person with the support of PeopleSoft.
• In today’s hyper connected world, having this integrated communication tool can be a game changer, as everything is shared on the go.

A small play to understand the benefits of HR Announcements,

And Jane’s Announcement goes as,

                       

HR Notification can also be used for cases like,

• Announcement to employees on updating personal details.
• Request employee to utilize leave balance prior to the closure.
• Request a recruiter to prioratize and work on a specific job opening.
• Monthly news letter release.

The notification can be sent to a target group like a specific department, location, organizational manager level, etc

The process flow is user friendly

The whole activity can be achieved pretty easily. We did the whole configuration in less than 30 mins.

Configuration of HR Notification

1. Installation Settings

Navigation: Main Menu > Setup HCM > Common Definitions > HR Notifications > Installation Settings

Check ON 'Enable HR Notifications' to enable the HR Notification functionality.

Enter the user role to limit the rights to publish announcements only to users with that user role. If no roles are selected, all users are able publish announcements.

2. Notification Recipient Setup.

Navigation: Main Menu > Set Up HCM > Common Definitions > HR Notification > Installation Settings.

Specify the Recipient which you want to add. E.g., Company, Employee, Department.

3. Configure and Assign Embedded Links.

Navigation: Main Menu  >  Set Up HCM  >  Common Definitions  >  HR Notification  >  Configure Embedded Link/Assign Embedded Link.

Use the Configure Embedded Link page to set up links that can be included in notifications.

Use the Assign Embedded Links page to associate embedded links to application components.

4. Publish the Announcements.

Navigation: Main Menu  >  Set Up HCM   >  Common Def   >  HR Notification   >  HR Notification or to the application component where this feature is enabled.

Select the Delivery method as Announcement, Mail or Both.

Click Add link to attach any configured link and click Add attachments if you want to attach any file.

Click Advanced Options to change the posting Options and Recurring options.

Posting Options – Give Posting date and Expiration date if needed. User can delete this Announcement from their list if you check “User may delete this announcement” checkbox.

Recurring Options – Check Recurring Checkbox if you want to schedule the Announcement.

Click Send.

Note: Run the ‘Process Notification’ Process in order to send the Recurring pending announcements.

Navigation: Main Menu > Set Up HCM > Common Def > HR Notification > Process Notification.

How to Achieve this for any PeopleSoft Component? – How!!!

PeopleTools provides notification capabilities on every PIA page through the Notify button that appears at the bottom of the page. Clicking the button sends email notifications to the interested parties. But, this can be replaced with HR Notifications and take advantage of the additional features it offers, such as sending announcements that show on Workcenter or Dashboard pages, or sending delayed notifications.

1. Disable Notify option in Component Level.

Make sure Notify option is disabled under internet tab.

2. Add a Sub Page.

Add the “HCSC_ADHOC_NFY_SBP” subpage to the component page where the HR Notifications feature needs to be enabled.

The subpage must be at level 0. With that, the standard People Tools Notify button is overridden and the notification functionality is now being redirected and handled by the HR Notifications feature.

Make sure that by this time, the Enable HR Notification check box is enabled on Installation Setting Page.

3. Some PeopleCode Tricks – Finally!!!

Declare this peoplecode in HCSC_ADHOC_NFN.HCSC_ADHOC_NFY (Component level Rec Field Change).

import HCSC_NOTIFICATION:RecipientList;

Component HCSC_NOTIFICATION:RecipientList &Recipients;

&Recipients.AdhocNotify();

Archive HR Notification Data – PeopleSoft Data Archive Manager:

Notification data can grow out of proportion over time.  To keep the amount of data manageable, the system delivers an archive object, two archive queries and an archive template that are used to archive notification data through PeopleSoft Data Archive Manager.

The HR Notification Announcements can be archived based on 

• Posting date - All announcements posted before a certain date will be archived.
• Expiration date - All announcements which are expired before a certain date will be archived.

How to Achieve?

Navigation: Main Menu  >  People tools  > Data Archive Manager  > Archive Data to history

Select HCSC_NOT as Archive Template and select the Process type.

Click RUN to select the process and run it.

Once the process goes to success, data is archived.

Pain Relievers:

• Frame an announcement to a group.
• Maintain the Security for each publish, based on the character.
• Archive the old announcements for future.
• Can attach the relative link to the component in the announcement.
• Report the error on the go by attaching the screenshots, if needed.
• Download the output of a report and attach it for further analytics.
• Edit the announcement even if it is sent.
• Publish the announcement on recurring basis.

Limitations:

• HR notifications can’t be Embed and auto-populate the link for a particular transaction.
• Customization needed, if we want to achieve it for any PeopleSoft component.
• Can’t publish the announcement if Process Scheduler is down.

Author: Chandru Asokan (chandru.asokan@kovaion.com)

PeopleSoft Workcenters

What is PeopleSoft Workcenter?

PeopleSoft Workcenter page allows user to access all the related component, pages, query results, etc. from one central location. It divides the browser window into two frames, (i) an adjustable pagelet area and (ii) a target content area, which interact with each other by passing contextual information using an event driven model. 

Business benefits:

• Users can easily access all the desired pages and components from one location.
• Productivity can be increased by minimizing the time that a user spends by navigating through links.
• Personalized view of workload.
• Seamless multitasking and improved efficiency.
• Secured feature as it uses PeopleSoft delivered security..
• Easy to configure and maintain.

Sample Business Purpose/Example:

• Navigations and report for a particular role/user can be put together at one central location.
• Query-based pagelets, which are configured to display retrieved values as active links, are ideal for use with Workcenter pages; e.g. a drill down PS Query, which filters applicant based on a given criteria, can display the applicant’s detail in target window – by selecting the applicant from PS Query result.

A workcenter created for recruiting team.

Development process of PeopleSoft Workcenters

Developing a workcenter is simple with 4 steps,

1. Create a new pagelet based on requirements.
2. Create a Workcenter and designate it’s starting page.
3. Create pagelet groups and assign pagelet to groups.
4. Launch a Workcenter for test.

Step 01 : Create and publish new pagelet based on requirements.

Both homepage pagelet and template based pagelet can be consumed by PeopleSoft Workcenters.

A) Navigation collection based pagelet

Navigation: Main menu àPeopletools à Portal à Pagelet Wizard

B) PS Query Based Pagelet

Navigation: Main menu à PeopletoolsàPortalàPagelet Wizard

Create the PS Query and assign it to the Pagelet. This query fetched the Job Opening IDs of the current recruiter logged in .On the 5^th step of publishing the pagelet, user needs to create the link as can be seen below.

An example of pagelet with PS Query data type

Click on the link iconto configure Pagelet links as shown below

C) Component Based Pagelet

A component used for component based pagelet should have a dummy record as search record, should not have any save functionality and should consist of only one page.While registering the content reference, provide the template name as shown below

Step 2) Create the Workcenter and designate the starting page.

Create the Workcenter through Manage Workcenter Pages

Navigation: Main Menu à Peopletools à Portal à Workcenter à Manage Workcenter pages

• Click on Create new Workcenter page (as shown in above figure) and select the starting page. User can select the Workcenter starting page as either a Link to existing menu item or Existing menu item or Workcenter Dashboard.
• Select the starting page of Workcenter as shown below.

Step 3) Provide the Pagelayout option and pagelet groups to configure the Workcenter.

Provide the pagelet Group ID and Group Label and select the pagelet name. One can have more than one pagelet in a pagelet group. Having two pagelet groups created two tabs in Workcenter area. Launch the Workcenter.

This demo workcenter has all the frequently accessed recruitment links with applicant list as the landing page. Dashboard functionality can also be added by using Workcenter Dashboards.

User personalization capabilities:

Users can personalize their workcenters according to their requirements. They can sequence the pagelets; minimize the pagelets according to the requirements.

Limitations of Workcenter:

Few limitations on the current version (8.53 PUM 6) of Workcenters are, 

• Workcenter starting page cannot be a search page.
• Workcenter cannot be consumed as WSRP content.                                               

We hope this blog gives a good overview of PeopleSoft workcenter.

For any further clarification or suggestion, please reach us on info@kovaion.com