Highlights from the PeopleTools 8.53 RVP July 9, 2012
Posted by Duncan in PeopleTools.comments closed
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:
- A simple and intuitive UI for Self Service.
- Improving productivity for day-to-day users.
- Streamlining maintenance, reducing downtime, improving performance.
So, what stood out for me? (more…)
A New App! – Custom Sign-on Page May 28, 2012
Posted by Duncan in PeopleSoft App Store.comments closed
There’s a new App on the PeopleSoft App Store!
Everyone knows that first impressions are vital, and the sign-on screen is the first glimpse many users will have of your system.
We’ve found that adding a log-on page that’s branded to the individual client – so it’s both attractive to look at and recognisable as ‘one of our systems’ – creates far more positive feelings than one that’s left as vanilla.
Here’s an example (using a nice photo of the Oracle HQ in Redwood Shores, California):
Concerns about The Cloud March 26, 2012
Posted by Duncan in Strategy.comments closed
Those of you that know me will be aware that I’m very ‘pro cloud’. We (Succeed) run many PeopleSoft instances there, and some other things besides. We develop, monitor and automate in there also. That doesn’t mean that I’m blind to its flaws though.
This was brought home to me by the recent outage in Microsoft’s Azure platform. For those that didn’t hear, Azure (Microsoft’s cloud platform) went down on 29th February and many people lost access until well into the next day. This isn’t a service we use (we’re with Amazon – by far and away the market leader) but it’s certainly a warning shot. AWS itself had problems in one of its regions not so long ago too. Losing access is one thing, but losing data is quite another. Although I’m not aware of any instances of this happening yet it’s only a matter of time (and a company with the wealth of experience of MS still struggling with leap years shows that the cloud is a brave new world and still has some maturing to do).
Overall our experience has been overwhelmingly positive – and of course outages are still possible on-premise too – just don’t think that because you’ve moved to an enterprise size cloud provider (or even one of the smaller, newer ‘niche’ providers) that you’re immune from things going awry.
Monitoring/Automating PeopleSoft with Open Source Tools March 20, 2012
Posted by Duncan in Infrastructure, UKOUG.comments closed
About a week ago I posted a video over on the Succeed Blog of a session I gave at the UKOUG PeopleSoft Conference.
If you read this blog and haven’t yet added the Succeed blog into your feed reader I suggest you do so as there’ll be an increasing amount of content there, both from myself and my colleagues.
A New App! – Copy Homepage Layout February 22, 2012
Posted by Duncan in PeopleTools.comments closed
There’s a new App on the PeopleSoft App Store!
It enables you to quickly set-up a new user’s PIA homepage by cloning from an existing user. Using this utility you can easily boost everyone’s productivity by giving them one-click access to important areas on their homepage, without the need to create complex matrices of optional/required pagelets.
See a screenshot and more details here.
Updated Blogroll February 8, 2012
Posted by Duncan in PeopleTools.comments closed
It was pointed out to me today that some of the links in my BlogRoll were quite out of date. I’ve pruned some of the blogs and added some in that I’d either criminally omitted or are newer.
In comes Graham Smith’s blog, Jiju Vengal’s Blog, Oracle’s own PeopleTools blog and – of course – the new Succeed Consultancy blog.
If you’ve not checked any of them out yet and added them to your feed reader I encourage you to do so!
PeopleSoft App Store February 6, 2012
Posted by Duncan in Look and Feel.comments closed
It’s been a long time coming, but the PeopleSoft App Store is finally ready to see the light of day.
The intention is for users to be able to browse a central repository for PeopleSoft apps. There’s plenty of precedent for this type of site with the Android Marketplace or Apple AppStore on mobile platforms, and the Salesforce AppExchange or SAPs App Store (which was even longer coming than this site!). Top blogger Jiju has spoken about this also, although the concept is broadly similar his ideas are very different.
I’ve put a few small-ish ‘apps’ live already, and the intention is to add many more apps and improve the site as time goes on (I’m aping the Facebook “Done is better than perfect” philosophy).
Have a look and let me know what you think.
PeopleSoft 1 day Conference 2012 January 25, 2012
Posted by Duncan in UKOUG.comments closed
We’re putting the finishing touches to the agenda for the 1 day UK & EMEA PeopleSoft Conference in London on 23rd February.
There’s some interesting content in all of the streams, however just highlighting some of the Tech stream:
- Jeff Robbins is over from the US to talk us through PeopleTools 8.52 and the PeopleTools roadmap,
- Chris Heller from Grey Sparling is also coming over – he’ll be giving a session on the Test Framework, however come and find him around the Succeed stand if you want to talk to him about their Mobile Framework.
- Steve Smith from Cambridge Uni is going to talk about security/auditing, and having seen first hand some of the work they’ve done there to customise PeopleSoft I’m looking forward to an interesting session (no pressure Steve!)
- We’ll also have a round-table session, so if you’ve got anything that’s challenging you technically bring it along and see if the awesome combined PeopleTools brainpower we’ve assembled can help out.
You can see the full agenda here.
New Blog and Twitter Account January 11, 2012
Posted by Duncan in PeopleTools.comments closed
If you pop by here now and again may I recommend another blog and twitter account that’s just started, but which will be worth following?
It’s the blog of many of my colleagues at Succeed consultancy – and they’re going to post genuine soundbites of knowledge, not promotional content for Succeed. Many of them are well worth listening too, and as there’s lots of them I hope they’ll post a bit more frequently than I can on here. The address is http://blog.succeed.co.uk/.
We also have a twitter account, @SucceedUK. If you follow it, then look at that account’s follower list you’ll find the twitter accounts of many Succeed employees who might also be worth a look.
Deleting old User Profiles January 10, 2012
Posted by Duncan in Administration, PeopleSoft, Security.comments closed
Vanilla databases often contain 150-200 ‘example’ user profiles. While these can be useful to clone as a starting point early in an implementation, they’re frequently left dormant as the project continues – and sometimes still exist in Production post go-live.
It’s a straightforward task to lock the accounts, but once you have your security setup in place and your own template user profiles to clone then these ‘example’ accounts no longer serve any purpose. Here’s an easy way to delete them. (more…)
The PeopleSoft Tipster Blog 