Installed 8.50 but still have the old look? November 5, 2009
Posted by Tipster in PeopleTools 8.50.1 comment so far
If you install PeopleTools 8.50 with an ‘old’ application (i.e. one that is prior to v9.1) then the UI you’ll see still looks very much like the one we’re used to. What’s happened to all of the new 8.50 ajax-y goodness?
Yes, this is Tools 8.50!
These are the changes you need to make:
Main Menu->PeopleTools->Utilities->Administration->PeopleTools Options:
Style Sheet Name: PSSTYLEDEF_SWAN
Main Menu->PeopleTools->Portal->General Settings:
Navigation Type: Drop-Down
PeopleTools->Portal->Portal Utilities->System Options:
Style Sheet Name: PTSTYLEDEF_SWAN
That’s better!
Thanks to Bauke Gehem for commenting on Nicolas Gasparotto’s blog with the above advice.
When you install a fresh 9.1 environment this is set by default.
Oracle OpenWorld Day 3 October 15, 2009
Posted by Tipster in OOW.4 comments
The week’s best bit of news came in Larry Ellison’s keynote today. Larry said that although Fusion will arrive sometime next year, Oracle will keep developing PeopleSoft for a few years yet.
“We’re going to enhance those applications for the next decade. We’re a pretty large software company. We can afford not only to maintain the software you’re running today, but to build the next generation of applications.…We don’t think all customers are going to replace what they have today with Fusion.”
A fuller recap of Larry’s keynote can be found here.
Graham Smith (Oxfam) gave us an insight into the OpenWorld party, which sounds amazing.
There’s a packed post from Brent Martin (ERP Associates) full of Tools info. Apparently there’s a new reporting console to replace Progress Monitor and Report Manager in Tools 8.50, which I didn’t know.
Great work guys. Thanks!
Oracle OpenWorld Day 2 October 14, 2009
Posted by Tipster in OOW.add a comment
Following on from yesterday’s summary of Day 1, here are some of the links for Day 2:
Larry Grey (Grey Sparling) was first up with an excellent account of the Tools 8.50 Beta Programme Customer Perspective. There’s a couple of good pieces of info in there, so check out Larry’s post. For those working with Financials, Larry also posted a Financials 9.1 session and Larry’s colleague Chris posted on using PeopleSoft with Oracle Enterprise Manager.
Graham Smith (Oxfam) also posted his day 2 summary with info on the Tools roadmap and future PeopleTools enhancements (one of the most positive points to come out of this so far is that Oracle appear to be continuing development of the PeopleSoft product line).
Finally, Brent Martin (ERP Associates) blogged about the sessions he attended.
Thanks chaps!
Oracle OpenWorld Day 1 October 13, 2009
Posted by Tipster in OOW.add a comment
As I’m not there in person, I’m eagerly devouring blog posts and tweets from those that could make it. Below is a round-up of what I’ve managed to find so far. Please go to their sites and read their posts to get full value from this:
Graham Smith (Oxfam and UKOUG Tech SIG chair) has a comprehensive post on some of the sessions he went to, including SOA, Financials 9.1 and lots of Tools 8.50 stuff.
Brent Martin (PeopleSoft Corner) went to some of the same sessions and has a similarly positive outlook from what he saw. Both Brent and Graham were impressed with the drag-n-drop Org Chart in Succession Planning. Also Oracle are going to release PeopleSoft VMs to download and keep them current, which will be useful.
Chris Heller (Grey Sparling) is there also. He has posted on Duke Energy’s session on keeping current with maintenance and a roundup of Paco’s keynote. You can also follow Chris on Twitter.
As I mentioned, there’s a lot of details in their posts so make sure you head on over and check them out. Thanks for keeping us in the loop guys!
To close off, a summary from Brent:
“Is 9.1 as good as what PeopleSoft would have released in the pre-acquisition world, and was the release as timely? I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s relevant. According to the presenters, PeopleSoft has a very high customer retention rate, over 50% of Oracle’s clients are on post acquisition releases, and over 250 new customers were added last year. If the customers are happy with the value they’re getting that’s really all that matters.”
PIA Colour Schemes v2 October 12, 2009
Posted by Tipster in PeopleTools.add a comment
A few years ago I put together a set of five alternate colour schemes for the PeopleSoft PIA and made them available for free download. The intention was that clients could use a colour for each environment, for example, DEV could be Red, TST could be brown, UAT could be green, SIT could be purple etc.
Version 1 of the colour schemes had a surprising amount of downloads, and it’s quite gratifying to walk onto a customer site and see them in use. There were however, some flaws:
- The PIA Header at the top was not altered (as it relied on graphics, not style sheet changes),
- The small icons in the menu, the navigation collections and the pages themselves were still blue, and
- I’d missed a couple of minor style classes
So, I’ve now finished Version 2 of the colour schemes which addresses each of the above issues.
Details and download here.
A first look at Tools 8.50’s new User Interface October 7, 2009
Posted by Tipster in PeopleTools 8.50.6 comments
I’ve installed a Tools 8.50 VM and thought I’d post a few screenshots of the new ‘Swan UI’ improvements, just so to get those of you that haven’t taken the plunge yet excited. (more…)
Release of PeopleTools 8.50 September 19, 2009
Posted by Tipster in PeopleTools, Strategy.5 comments
It’s been a long, long time coming, but PeopleTools 8.50 has been released!
There were a couple of docs floating around that listed 18th Sept as the release date, but no official confirmation from Oracle, so I wasn’t 100% sure that it was coming. Further details here:
http://blogs.oracle.com/peopletools/2009/09/general_availability_ga_of_peopletools_850.html
Rather intriguingly not only is there this release (which is the biggest in the PeopleSoft world for a good year or so) but also a new release of the Oracle Database, and a hardware tie-in with Sun in the last few days. Why are these being released now, with OpenWorld so close? Is there something even bigger that is going to be unveiled during OpenWorld?
A Progress Bar within the REN Window July 20, 2009
Posted by Tipster in PeopleTools.2 comments
A while ago I showed how to output to the REN Window using PeopleCode while running processes through the Process Scheduler. A post I’ve been meaning to write for a while was a practical use of this some colleagues and I made during a Data Migration.
Typically Data Migration programs can run for a while, and for this client (which had >100,000 employees to process) a fair bit of time was spent watching the screen wondering how long was left (or watching the row counts via SQL). We soon got fed up of this and wrote this very quick progress bar for the REN Window:
This migration routine was just for the employee personal data, but we used a similar trick for the other migration processes also.
We could go and get a coffee, or catch up on some other work and with a quick glance every now and again we could see how long remained.
Real or Fake? July 16, 2009
Posted by Tipster in PeopleSoft.2 comments
Every site will have at least one environment with Demo data in it, and many developers will have a favourite PeopleSoft Demo data employee, one they know the Emplid for better than their own.
Some pick the first in the list, so that’ll be Rebekah Jones or Kimberly Adams. It’s often wise not to pick the top ones as they’re also likely to be chosen by others – and it’s good to find an employee that others don’t mess with.
These names will be instantly familiar to most long-time PeopleSoft (HR) developers:
Darlene Bergsten,
Leo Puddephat,
Paul Acosta,
Beatrice Test,
and my personal favourite: Ginger Buckalew.
I’ve often wondered – and perhaps a PeopleSoft alumni can help with this – were these ever real people? Or did someone fake up a load of demo data one day?
Service Start Up – Automatic (Delayed) July 15, 2009
Posted by Tipster in Administration, Infrastructure, Windows.add a comment
I’ve been spending a little time putting together a VM using Windows Server 2008 and was pleasantly surprised to see that there is a new start-up type when configuring the PIA, App Server and Process Scheduler to start as services.
As well as Automatic, Manual and Disabled, there is now an Automatic (Delayed) option.
David Kurtz has spoken about using service dependencies, but I just want my App Server and Process Scheduler to start after the intial flurry of start-up activity has finished and everything else has calmed down.
Services that have a delayed start still start automatically, they just wait until all the services that aren’t delayed to finish before firing up.
It works a treat!
