The PeopleSoft Tipster Blog

Highlights from the PeopleTools 8.53 RVP July 9, 2012

As some of you may have noticed, the Release Value Proposition for PeopleTools 8.53 was made available a couple of days ago. This document is basically a ‘teaser trailer’ for the main release, which I’m hoping we get to see around OpenWorld time.  Somewhere around the same time (likely just after) we should see the version 9.2 Applications – so the RVPs for those should be coming out of Redwood soon-ish too.

The full document is available here (support login needed).

This release is aimed at 3 main themes:

1. A simple and intuitive UI for Self Service.
2. Improving productivity for day-to-day users.
3. Streamlining maintenance, reducing downtime, improving performance.

So, what stood out for me?

New Styles and User Interaction Model

I think most could take a guess what the first part means, unfortunately there are no screenshots to get us excited. I’m sure I saw Jeff Robbins flash up a screenshot when he came to the UKOUG PeopleSoft Conference earlier this year, but I wasn’t quick enough with my camera phone. From memory it was a paler blue, and had lots of gradient shading … that’s about it though.

The document also promises more in Work Centers, Dashboards, Related Content/Actions etc, which is good news. The Activity Guides for Self Service sound useful – a little like we’d see in the Pagelet Wizard, or on Amazon but with the ability for different users to perform different parts.

PeopleSoft Data Migration Workbench

This sounds similar to functionality that I’ve heard discussed before … a method of migrating config data between environments as managed objects, rather than using DMS. If it allows you to insert config into projects in the same way that you can Tools objects that’ll be pretty handy.

PeopleSoft Update Manager

This allows you to pick individual patches, rather than having to apply entire bundles. I’m not entirely sure I’d be advising this as I’d rather stay reasonably current if I were a client – I’ve often found that the further behind you get, the more time you waste battling issues that have already been resolved (and that you’d never have hit if you were current). Nevertheless, this gives clients extra flexibility, which is always good. It’d be useful if there’s a maintenance freeze in the run up to a big go-live, as it allows you to sneak in individual fixes rather than having to test a whole bundle.

Overhaul of PeopleBooks

It sounds like PeopleBooks is being brought more up to date.

Supported Platforms

I suspect that discontinuing support for Windows XP on the client is going to catch a few clients out. [Edit: After being corrected by eagle-eyed colleague Dave Wiggins]. Support for XP ended in Tools 8.52 (but was presumeably retired again in this RVP for clarity). Support for Windows Vista has been discontinued in Tools 8.53, but I doubt that many enterprises have standardised their desktops on Vista.

Others

Others mentioned that sound interesting are:

• PeopleSoft ‘Secure by Default’ initiative
• Some JSON/Rest improvements
• Integration Network improvements (for monitoring Integration Broker)