The PeopleSoft Tipster Blog

Generating a Calendar View of Employee Absence November 24, 2014

This blog post has been kindly contributed by Richard Yip. Richard is a PeopleSoft HCM & Payroll Technical Consultant at Santander Bank here in the UK. He is a long-term PeopleSoft techie and a regular at the UKOUG conferences.

We have posted two guest posts from Richard already, they can be found here:

Generating a custom Org Chart in PeopleSoft

Interacting client-side JavaScript with server-side PeopleCode

Introduction

In PeopleSoft HCM 9.0, an employee’s absence history is displayed in the usual tabular format (a grid with rows and columns). However, we felt the presentation was a bit uninspiring, and needed a better look to it. So we custom built a transaction whereby absences are displayed on a calendar used in both employee and manager self-service transactions. (more…)

PeopleSoft Roadshow / What’s next for PeopleSoft … a Correction April 11, 2014

Thanks for all your feedback on the roadshow / what’s next for PeopleSoft write-up. It’s wonderful that there’s such a large and active PeopleSoft community out there that’s so positive about the new functionality that Oracle is adding to the product.

After I posted the article Marc Weintraub got in touch and has asked me to correct an inconsistency in one of the sections. I had included a paraphrased quote which gave the impression that net-new PeopleSoft opportunities are not important, and this was misleading. I’m happy to concede that about a week elapsed between his session and when I posted it here and my memory might not have been as fresh as if I’d live-blogged it.

I’ve updated the article, and the paragraph in question now reads:

Also, there was another statement which I didn’t realise the signifcance of until letting things percolate down through on the train journey home, but Marc’s statement that PeopleSoft has a “95% retention rate, and the focus is on our existing customers.” is quite important. It’s great that Oracle are focusing on keeping existing customers happy – that’s what the ongoing licence fee is for, after all – and 95% is a good success rate and ongoing investment is designed to add value to existing customers.

Marc also added “The 95% retention rate of existing PeopleSoft customers is accurate. The point I wished to convey is that our future investments are more aligned to meeting the needs of our existing customers. Oracle still does secure net-new customers for PeopleSoft at a rate significant rate.”

This last point is something that we can testify to as Succeed have implemented at least one greenfield PeopleSoft implementation every year for the last 5 years.

Apologies if this has caused any confusion and I’m happy to set the record straight.

UKOUG PeopleSoft Roadshow 2013 April 30, 2013

Last week – along with others from Succeed – I attended the UKOUG PeopleSoft Roadshow. Although it’s just a single day event (where the Apps Conference is spread over two days) it does have the benefit of Senior Oracle US speakers – Jeff Robbins and Marc Weintraub.

As we have for a few years now, Succeed sponsored the event/the post event drinks.

We also took out a stand, here’s John and I attempting to charm some delegates:

There’s many reasons why I enjoy attending these events. It’s great to catch up with friends I’ve worked with previously, it’s great to meet new people who we might be able to help in some way, and it’s always a treat to hear what innovations are coming down the line in recently released and future versions of PeopleSoft and PeopleTools.

So, other than the exhibition, what did we learn?

From Jeff, (other than what we’ve previously discussed on Tools 8.53) we found out:

– the release frequency of PeopleTools is now around every 12-18 months, so Tools 8.54 would be mid-2014.

– Tools 8.54 is fully defined scope-wise and the developers are almost done with it. About half of the scope for 8.55 is done.

– the way PeopleTools handles mobile devices is changing, allowing it to be much more responsive to the resolution of the requesting browser based on templates (so a page would have different templates, a large and graphically rich one for PCs on the LAN, a smaller resolution graphically leaner template for mobiles etc).

– the new Update Manager Tool isn’t that new. It’s something that Oracle/PeopleSoft have been using internally for a decade, so it should be stable and mature already.

– there’s a new ‘Mastering PeopleTools’ scheme that is starting, enabling everyone easier access to Best Practice and to make sure that customers aren’t just upgrading to stay supported, but gain genuine value from the new functionality

Jeff also flashed up some brief glimpses of something that his team are trying with Tools 8.54. They’re changing the UI a little more – and it’s a tile-based layout (more akin to Windows 8 or Pinterest, I guess). This is the landing page:

Also, to access the menu you’d hit the orange button on the right:

Finally, there were a host of other ‘coming soon’ areas, like In Memory Processing, TimesTen for nVision and a ‘TCO lower than SaaS’ which will be really interesting to see how it’s done. Jeff actually said PeopleSoft will have the lowest TCO in the market, bar none, which we’ll all really look forward to.

One of the most interesting take-aways for me wasn’t something that was said, but was more of a general feeling. A couple of years ago when Oracle said “we’re still investing in PeopleSoft” I don’t think many people believed them – I was certainly sceptical. However with the content in the latest Tools and App releases their claim is much more credible. There were certainly a lot of customers that I spoke to who were either planning a 9.2 upgrade or had it on their roadmap.

The first two photos are from the UKOUG Facebook page which contains many more photos of the event.

A quick shortcut for 3-tier access March 4, 2013

I’m not sure how long you’ve been able to do this, it may have been in the product for a while, however I’ve only just discovered it.

Normally, when I need 3-tier access in App Designer I go through the process of setting up a profile in Config Manager. I believed this to be the one and only way of getting it to connect.  There is a shortcut, however:

This isn’t a strangely named profile chosen from the dropdown. I’ve just specified the App Server IP (or hostname) and the WSL port and it will connect. This also gets around having to know the Domain Connection password (which you’d need to enter if setting up a Config Manager profile.

Off topic – The Pebble Watch February 28, 2013

This post is nothing whatsover to do with PeopleSoft but I’m hoping that some of you will find it interesting nonetheless.

You may have heard of Kickstarter. It’s a web-site where enterprising inventors/creative types can post an idea, a promotional video and a funding target. Users can browse the site and if they spot a project that they like they can pledge money towards it. There are typically different levels of pledge amounts, and each level has an appropriate reward.

One of the higher profile projects was the ‘Pebble Watch’, a bluetooth smartwatch that integrates with your smartphone (iPhone or Android). They posted their project with a $100,000 funding target that they raised within the first 2 hours(!) and hit $10.2m in the month-long period that it was open. I was one of the 69,000 that pledged to support the project, and in return they promised each of us one of the watches. Mine arrived this afternoon!

This is what it looks like:

There are a range of different watch faces, including standard analogue designs and variations on digital clocks. The chief benefit though is that it communicates with your phone via bluetooth. Any time you receive an email, text or incoming call the watch vibrates and displays what is happening on the screen. For texts or emails it displays the contents, enabling you to scroll up and down to read the message. For incoming calls it displays the caller, and gives the option to answer or decline the call. You can also do things like control the music on your phone remotely.

When I was out for a meal with the family earlier this evening I was able to subtly screen emails and texts, and even decline an incoming call (sorry boss!) without taking my phone from my pocket or my wife even noticing (a real plus!). I imagine that it’ll be far more discreet in meetings than glancing at mobile phone screens to see if the interruption is important.

A further point to note is that Pebble allow you to create your own Apps for the device. Even at this early stage there are already apps for adding additional notifications, and a RunKeeper app and an IFTTT channel are on the way.

If anyone is intrigued, there are more details and a video here.

Disabling paste on an input field February 14, 2013

A colleague of mine recently had a requirement to place an email address field on a page, and then just below it a ‘confirm email address’ – however the user should not be permitted to copy and paste from the first field to the second, they should retype their email address.

We didn’t think that there was a way of disabling paste via PeopleCode, so resorted to JavaScript. The solution was actually quite straightforward in the end:

1) Place the two input fields on the page and connect them to the records you wish to save to, as usual.

2) Place an HTML Area on the page, making sure it’s beneath the other fields (both on this screen and the order tab).

3) Make the HTML Area contents static, and paste in the following:

<SCRIPT language=JavaScript>
var message = "Paste disabled. Please re-key.";
 
function disablepaste(){
alert(message);
return false;
}
 
document.getElementById('DERIVED_TEST_TEXT2')
.onpaste=disablepaste;
</SCRIPT>

4) Swap DERIVED_TEST_TEXT2 in the above code snippet for you Record/Field name (i.e. it’s the record name, then an underscore, then the fieldname. Look in View Source or Chrome Dev Tools/Firebug if you’re not sure.)

5) You might also want to make the alert message a little more user friendly too.

Jim Marion’s new book February 5, 2013

I’ve been meaning to read Jim Marion’s new book ‘PeopleTools Data Management and Upgrade Handbook’ for a while, and last month it finally got to the top of my reading pile. This time he has co-authored with Paula Dean who also has a strong past in the PeopleSoft world.

Here’s a link to it on Amazon.com.

And here’s a link on Amazon UK.

Those are direct links, not affiliate links.

I also wrote a review of the book on Amazon.com. Here’s what I said:

The ‘Data Management and Upgrade Handbook’ fills a large gap in the PeopleSoft book marketplace. We have Jim’s first book which caters for genuine hard-core PeopleCode developers. We also have David Kurtz’s book which caters for DBAs. For a long time we’ve been missing a book for those of us that sit in between, maybe we do some development, but we also perform some system administration activities too (like migrating code between environments, using data mover, applying the odd patch or bundle etc). This book is aimed squarely at these ‘DevOps’ staff – and there are a lot of us.

In the first part of the book (Data and Change Management) Jim and Paula take us methodically through each of the tools that you’re going to need to use as part of your day job (like Change Assistant and Data Mover) and introduces those that you might not ‘have’ to use, but should make your life easier (like Data Archive Manager and Version Control).

In the second part (Upgrades) they walk us through a typical upgrade, covering the factors that govern the time and manpower required, through project teams and activities, and onto the tools that smooth the process (like PeopleSoft Test Framework and automated test suites).

It’s just over 300 pages, so it’s short enough to read through cover-to-cover when you’re trying to upskill someone with a few years experience, but it’s also detailed enough to keep around as a reference manual. There’s not a single customer that couldn’t benefit from having a copy or two of this in the project office.