March 13, 2013
Issue #34 – 13th March 2013
News and Latest Developments
The most recent patch for Tools 8.52 has been released. See the above link for details of the fixes that it contains (Support Login required).
Functional
Wade Coombs from the Smart Panda blog has shared a link that combines all of the install and upgrade homepages into a single page. A really handy URL to bookmark.
Charlotte Van Beek from the Blogging about Oracle Apps blog discusses the area of Fusion that often appeals most to PeopleSoft clients – Fusion HCM Talent Management. She details the product, what areas it covers and the areas where it will be aided by Taleo.
Technical
Succeeder Simon explains a potential pitfall with archiving Integration Broker messages and shows how to avoid unexpectedly losing data.
Randy from the Remote PSAdmin blog talks about one of the nicest features that has been introduced to the Interaction Hub/Portal recently can save a great deal of administrative effort. Randy walks readers through how to set it up.
Wade Coombs has another entry on his Smart Panda blog about effectively writing Sign-on PeopleCode. It can be a little tricky, and he has some handy pointers.
This site is more to do with web design than PeopleSoft, but as the boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred this is pretty useful. It’s a single page guide to web design best practice, covering HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, images and the server side.
Reading
An interesting thought-piece by ‘Holger’ on the Enterprise Software Musings blog about Workday. He has concerns over Workday’s lack of profits (more on this $119m losshere), the ramping up of competition, slow adoption, architectural issues and the slowing down of new functionality in recent releases.
Pat Garrehy from the ERP Cloud News blog stresses the need for a sensible level of customisation within ERP implementations and suggests that some of the newer cloud-only ERPs, as they are still behind on functionality, require more rather than less customisation.
Infographic
The pros and cons of flexible working have been in the news a lot over the last fortnight after the Yahoo and Best Buy announcements that
working at home was banned. This infographic presents some of the figures, and contains some surprises (1 in 7 workers have special ‘summer working’ hours!).
And Finally…
We normally finish with an off-topic but interesting article, but this cartoon tickled us this week.
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March 6, 2013
Issue #33 – 6th March 2013
Thanks to Tonina from Computershare in Australia who was our 400th subscriber.
News and Latest Developments
Oracle have released patch number 7 for the Interaction Hub covering Oct 2011 to Jan 2013. The Interaction Hub is on the continuous delivery model so there may well be new functionality contained within, as well as bug fixes (support login required).
If you’re considering whether to attend the Collaborate Conference this year, you might want to register before the price goes up tonight.
Functional
These plugins have been around for a little while, but they’re one of the lower profile functionality additions to the suite. You install the plugin and it gives early warning of application specific issues that need attention. There are around 20 for different areas of HCM and Financials, and 10-15 for CRM, Campus, PeopleTools etc (support login required).
An interesting read, and a slightly different concept from what you’d initially think from the headline. It’s not to bribe selected poor performers to leave. All Zappos employees get offered $1,000 after being with the company 3 months, those who take it weren’t sufficiently engaged with the company.
Technical
Graham Smith (Tech Lead at Oxfam and Oracle ACE Director) blogs about a neat little customisation that helps reduce user frustration – written by one of his colleagues, Angela McKenna. It probably should be in the delivered product, to be honest.
A great article from Randy of the Remote PSAdmin blog showing how to take a more measured and precise approach to troubleshooting cache issues than the ‘reboot everything and clear all cache’ method.
Succeeder Duncan shows a quick way of accessing App Designer via the App Server for those without Config Manager profiles already set-up.
I’m going to wager that this isn’t going to be for everyone, but as an exercise in “it’s interesting to see what can be done” here’s an article from the PeopleSoft Wiki on the Vimium plugin for Chrome.
Reading
We included this article last week but the link was not working. Here is the correct link.
Watching
This video – found via the
PSFT_Support Twitter account – shows how to use Powerview within My Oracle Support. This is handy functionality that I didn’t realise existed (support login required).
And Finally…
A great little blog full of examples of innovations that we should have – but don’t – or for improvements to products that we do have but are fundamentally broken in some way.
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February 27, 2013
Issue #32 – 27th February 2013
News and Latest Developments
This is important news as many PeopleSoft clients will have standardised their corporate desktops on Windows 7 (and MS had previously said that IE10 was for Windows 8 only). It seems to work well with PeopleSoft and at first glance there don’t appear to be any broken objects. The Swan drop-down menu (8.50-52) looks a bit compressed but the newer Tangerine menu (8.53) looks fine. IE10 does seem to perform very snapily however.
Kristen Emery writes on the PeopleSoft Apps Strategy blog about Payroll for North America. I don’t think there are any new announcements here, it’s a recap of the value of an accurate and stable system.
Functional
The PeopleSoft Answers blog has a description of how PeopleSoft calculates holiday hours during the Paysheet Process. It’s NA Payroll focused but there are ample screenshots to help others follow along (scroll down past the job adverts to view the content).
Technical
Sometimes it’s the smallest customisations that make the biggest difference. Succeeder Jez has written up a small customisation that has quite a visual and usability impact for the client. Simply by adding an element from jQuery UI he’s greatly improved the usability of a client page.
Daniel Kibler has posted a part information piece/part question on the use of JavaScript within PeopleSoft and wants to know why the functions are numbered.
Chris Malek returns this week with an overview of the Compare/Merge pages functionality built into App Designer. It’s been built in to PeopleTools for quite a while now, but Chris is correct when he points out that most probably either don’t know about it or don’t use it as much as they could.
Reading
Some great guidelines from the bokardo blog on how to design your pages. If you have some free time in your tea break there are a lot of good articles on this site, including a great one on why people don’t copy from Apple.
Just when it is starting to look like Android is everywhere Fabrizio Capobianco (Founder/CEO of TOK.tv) asks ‘Is Android Dead?’.
An intriguing survey into the success/failure of some ERP projects. Although the numbers seem a little negative to us (a surprisingly high number go over budget or extend timescales) it’s pleasing that such a high proportion of clients feel that the end result is a success.
There’s an interesting piece on the Forbes website suggesting a candidate for the heady title of ‘World’s most dangerous software’. One of the aims of systems like PeopleSoft is to replace departmental spreadsheets, so it’s testament to its power and flexibility that it’s still ubiquitous.
And Finally…
We love a good infographic and there are some amazing stats contained in this one eg. ‘For each person on the earth there are 142 objects stored in the cloud’.
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February 20, 2013
Issue #31 – 20th February 2013
News and Latest Developments
There is a new ‘Statement of Direction’ document for the PeopleSoft Interaction Hub (i.e. the Enterprise Portal). There are a few things to note, including the delivery model and free Restricted Use Licence.
This week there has been a hotly debated report from Forrester Research stating that customers aren’t moving to Fusion particularly quickly. One of the reasons given is that Oracle is keeping its promise to keep improving PeopleSoft and the other Applications Unlimited apps.
In a somewhat surprising development, Microsoft has backed Oracle in its fight against Google in the Java copyright case.
Functional
Succeeder Tam spotted that HCM 9.1 MP7 has been released. It doesn’t form part of the media pack available from eDelivery and isn’t linked to on the Maintenance Schedule yet but is available from Patches & Updates on Oracle Support. Cumulative and Delta versions are available (support logon required).
Technical
This is the latest post in Brent Martin’s series about changing your database platform from one platform to another.
This is something that not everyone would want (as there are other ways of validating an email address than getting users to type it twice), however this is an example of easily adding some JavaScript into a page to alter functionality in a way that is not available in standard PeopleTools.
The Citagus Blog has an entry on troubleshooting the Authorization Errors that we’ve all seen at some point or other upon logon.
Reading
A great looking presentation filled with useful ideas. This isn’t just about style – although there is a lot of this too. Areas touched upon include the Metro UI, Google Now, Internet of Things and a great tool for responsive web design.
Watching
Creativity is often thought of as the work of an individual, but it’s more often the result of an ensemble of diverse people. Keith Yamashita talks about Forces, Superpowers and Decisions.
And Finally…
The set of criteria that Andreessen Horowitz use to pick which start-ups to invest in. Some of the points sound counter-intuitive, but you can’t argue with their success. Also, some great historical quotes about the non-viability of Facebook, Amazon, Twitter etc.
There’s a ‘3rd place’ that sits between working from home and heading into the office. Will these environments lead to an increase in remote working?
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February 13, 2013
Issue #30 – 13th February 2013
News and Latest Developments
For the second year in a row, KLAS has named Oracle’s PeopleSoft Financials best Financials/ERP software in its “2012 Best in KLAS Awards: Software & Services” report.
The results of this years’ PeopleSoft salary survey, analysed by Derek ‘PeopleSoft Career Guy’ Tomei.
The first patch for PeopleTools 8.53 has been released (support login required). It’s quite usual to get a patch released within days of a new PeopleSoft version coming out and it is – of course – ‘required for install’.
Functional
Succeeder Jacki gives a thorough run-down of the contents of the most recent Global Payroll UK bundles. There are a lot of changes in Payroll legislation in the UK at the moment, and payroll clients need to have a strategy for implementing these changes.
Technical
Brent Martin returns with a more in-depth look at the build phase of moving your PeopleSoft database from one platform to another.
Andrew Oliver – self confessed NoSQL-er and Big Data Guy – shows how you can scale Oracle. It’s a decent run-down, covering RAC, Mirroring, GoldenGate, Partitioning, TimesTen and Coherence.
Succeeder Dave spotted this on the Digital Eagle blog. It’s some sample code that builds on a
blog entry from Jim Marion to unzip a file in a platform independent manner.
Reading
ZDNet’s Larry Dignan analyses a report from Forrester Research on whether customers are considering moving from their exising ERPs to Fusion Apps, or whether they’re sticking with the Applications Unlimited apps. He also considers whether Oracle is content with this, or may try to speed the migration.
Next up in the ‘How I Work’ series is Chris Malek, founder/president of Cedar Hills Group and a regular contributer to this newsletter.
Watching
A 10 minute video in which PeopleSoft Product Strategy Director Marc Weintraub discusses PeopleSoft Innovation and Oracle Support.
This Oracle produced Video Feature Overview demos what can be done with PeopleSoft Pivoting Technology. Pivot grids were available in 8.52, but they’re much improved in 8.53.
And Finally…
There are many competing Project Management methodologies out there, but these are the main three. This lengthy article goes through the history of each, how they work and the pros and cons for each in certain situations.
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February 6, 2013
Issue #29 – 6th February 2013
News and Latest Developments
The much awaited PeopleTools 8.53 is now generally available. From being involved with the beta program we can tell you that it’s packed full of must-have features and has a great new UI.
Matthew Haavisto has published a new Release Value Proposition for the PeopleSoft Interaction Hub Release 9.1/Revision 2 (it’s on the continuous delivery model so won’t move to 9.2).
Marc Weintraub has posted a reminder to book for the Collaborate Conference, held April 7th – 11th 2013 in Denver, Colorado.
Functional
The Mipro blog has detailed some of the imrpovements that they’ve spotted so far while looking at PeopleSoft Financials 9.2.
Jiju of HRoi Consulting has a short post showing how to clean up orphaned AWE entries.
Brent Martin returns with a more in-depth look at the design phase of moving your PeopleSoft database from one platform to another.
Vijay from the Citagus blog shows how to configure the scheduled process that purges Process Scheduler report output.
Chris Malek of the Cedar Hills Group blog explains how to delete portal registry folders that have no contents.
Reading
Jim ‘PeopleSoft Journal’ Marion has a new book out. This one – which he’s co-authored with Paula Dean – is aimed at those of us who do other roles in addition to development, be that Sys Admin, Quality Assurance, applier of patches/bundles etc. You can also hear from the authors
here.
Cloud software has many benefits for customers, but it doesn’t suit everyone. Examples include customers who find the ‘rapid release of updates’ too much to keep up with. “They found themselves in a cycle of nonstop testing, and it was overwhelming.”
A 12 page PDF independent profile of Oracle as a company, its acquisitions, its corporate divisions and its strategy to take on IBM and HP.
Watching
Shown in PeopleTools 8.53, this Oracle produced Video Feature Overview demos what can be done with PeopleSoft Workcenters.
And Finally…
This is a charming item about a group of guys who have found a way of bringing the fun they had together when they were young into their adult lives.
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January 30, 2013
Issue #28 – 30th January 2013
News and Latest Developments
Oracle has announced the Exalogic Elastic Cloud Templates for quickly deploying PeopleSoft (and other Oracle Applications). This will allow customers to reduce the time and cost needed to get up and running on PeopleSoft. As we understand it, these templates can be used within both the public and private clouds.
The latest patch for the current version of PeopleTools was released recently (support login required).
Functional
Payroll guru John Eckersley writes about his experiences with the RTI changes here in the UK. If you’re after PeopleSoft specific payroll content, there’ll be an article next week on new functionality in the recent bundles and patches.
A comprehensive collection of links for the User Productivity Kit from the ‘Oracle UPK & Tutor’ blog.
Technical
Succeed’s infrastructure guru Tam posts about the use of Database Caching (rather than file system caching) in PeopleSoft.
A very comprehensive post from recently anointed Oracle Ace Hakan Biroglu and John van der Kooij from CGI in the Netherlands covering all aspects of Integration Broker. Not to be missed!
Most of us have either lost code due to an environment refresh overwriting it, or had to stall a refresh while we backup code. Chris Malek from Cedar Hills Group shows two different methods to determine what PeopleSoft projects will be lost due to a database refresh.
Altan Khendup posts about how useful SQL skills can be, and speculates that it’s a skill that may be on the wane. Of course, another reason for fading use of SQL might well be SaaS hosting (where you don’t get access to the database so lose the ability to utilise this useful skill).
Reading
This post by John Webb (VP, PeopleSoft Enterprise Product Strategy) is the start of a series on the innovations that we can all look forward to after upgrading to PeopleSoft 9.2. Some of these will be related to the platform that it’s built on (PeopleTools 8.53) and some on the improvements in the Applications themselves.
This time the spotlight falls on Praj Basnet, the man behind the very popular PeopleSoft Wiki website.
Listening
A 10 minute podcast on the reasons why Oracle software is the right choice for mid-sized companies that have ambitions of growth.
And Finally…
Many people have spoken about how the ‘Floppy Disk icon means Save for a whole generation who’ve never seen one’. We were surprised how many other design metaphors are just as outdated.
This one is included as much for the infographic at the bottom as the article text. A quick read through the list now and again should help keep us all focused.
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January 23, 2013
Issue #27 – 23rd January 2013
News and Latest Developments
For anyone who missed the blog entry when it was published, we’d like to wish all the subscribers to the PeopleSoft Weekly a Happy New Year. Thank you for reading.
The UK Government is looking to consolidate its many different systems onto a few select Oracle ERP platforms.
Functional
Click to zoom in on a great infographic, on the methods and resources workers in 2013 will use for seeking their next career move. Why do more women search for a job on Facebook, whereas men look on LinkedIn?
A great blog entry on alternative methods for making queries available to your end users. We’re sure most companies will not have known about at least one of these.
Succeeder Jacki shows how to troubleshoot payroll errors when you’re using pointers.
Technical
After a long break – two years, we’ve missed you Brent! – the PeopleSoft Corner blog returns with an article giving some ideas about how to plan the effort if you decide to move from one platform to another (either to increase performance or decrease costs).
Nicolas Gasparotto is relieved that Oracle no longer password protect PeopleTools patches. Now he just has one more thing to ask …
Chris Malek of the Cedar Hills Group blog explains why you should never use Global Variables in Application Class PeopleCode.
Reading
Vinnie ‘Deal Architect’ Mirchandani has a blog that’s well worth monitoring. In this post he suggests that the most influential role in implementations and selections – which for so long has been that of the accountant – may be about to wane in favour of the statisticians, a trend already in progress at Google and Amazon.
Tim Sackett questions the adherence to best practices without first questioning whether the practice is still relevant and the assumptions upon which it is based.
Watching
A great 4 minute video showing the power of the Oracle Public Cloud and the Oracle Private Cloud. This is worth watching for the digs at ‘niche cloud providers’ – “with the Oracle Cloud you’ll never find yourself in prison …”
And Finally…
Why is it that many of the best programmers find that they are at their most productive at night-time? Is there something that we can change about their working environment to enable them to replicate this in the office?
We all spend far too much time in front of a computer, and whilst some have made the transition to a standing desk, it may not be enough. Welcome to the next step … the walking meeting.
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January 16, 2013
Issue #26 – 16th January 2013
News and Latest Developments
Oracle IaaS enables organizations to deploy fully integrated Engineered Systems, including Oracle Exa-stack in their data centres (within their firewall) for a simple monthly fee.
Maria Ana Santiago from the PeopleSoft HCM team has an entry on the Apps Strategy blog looking at what was released last year, and what is coming in 2013.
There has been an update to the pre-release notes for Financials and Supply Chain v9.2 (support login required).
Functional
HR blogger Ahmed Limam gives 10 New Year’s resolutions for HR Leaders. The ‘Big Data can go and be big somewhere else’ line made us chuckle.
Oracle’s Matthew Haavisto has posted an FAQ document answering many of the questions regularly asked about the PeopleSoft Interaction Hub.
Technical
Some end users miss the ‘saved’ notification as it’s in the top right corner of the screen. We’ve even moved it to the centre of the screen for one client. Shyam shows how you can alter the length of time that the notification is displayed.
There’s some cool research underway using eye tracking to compare how an experienced programmer looks at code compared to a novice. Instead of getting interviewees to write code, could Technical interviews of the future ask you to just look at it?
Reading
Jiju Vengal of HRoi Consulting looks back over the year and all of the acquisitions that took place. When they trickle through one-by-one you don’t really notice how many companies do get bought out.
Oracle’s Scott Ewart talks about HCM in the Cloud, giving some background and statistics on other companies thinking of moving to the Cloud.
Steve Boese has posted a presentation on his blog with the top 100 trends to watch out for this year. You can flick through it quite quickly, but there are some real gems in there. Steve lists a few he likes, but we particularly like LaunchKey (number 70).
How I work
Next up in the ‘How I Work’ series is Jiju Vengal of HRoi Consulting and the popular PeopleSoft HCM for You blog where he focuses mostly on Time and Labor and Absence Management.
And Finally…
In a somewhat embarrassing piece of news, burglars broke into Microsoft’s R&D building but only stole Apple iPads. It doesn’t say whether any MS tablets were left behind.
The team looking after Watson – IBM’s famous artificial intelligence supercomputer – decided to upload the Urban Dictionary to its memory to help it better understand human communication. The only problem is Watson then started using the words itself, including swearing … so they had to remove it again.
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January 9, 2013
Issue #25 – 9th January 2013
We’d like to wish a Happy New Year to all our readers.
Thanks to Phil from Placer County California who was our 350th subscriber.
News and Latest Developments
My Oracle Support now reflects browser support of IE 10 on Windows 8 with PeopleTools 8.51 and above, which allows end users to utilize Microsoft’s newest browser in a production environment (support login required).
Oracle is currently in the process of certifying both Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 with PeopleTools. Windows 8 will be certified as a end-user browser client and as a development client with PeopleTools 8.52 and above. Microsoft’s Windows Server 2012 will be certified with PeopleSoft’s server components, including the database, web and application servers (support login required).
Functional
It’s not listed on the maintenance schedule yet, but Bundle number 11 for HCM 9.1 was released on 31st Dec 2012 (support login required).
Technical
Nicolas Gasparotto’s blog highlights how Integration Network WorkCenter interacts with statistics in Peopletools 8.52.
Derek Tomei blogs on the advantages of using Set based processing over Row-by-Row processing.
Reading
With 2013 upon us Steven Alexander from the Peoplesoft and SQR blog writes 13 PeopleSoft related resolutions for 2013. We particularly like number 10!
Steven Phillips on the IT Toolbox blog points out the pros and cons of using a bolt-on module within their ERP package. He makes some good points, but be mindful that when he discusses the downsides a lot relate to where the data is stored outside of thePeopleSoft database, which wouldn’t be the case for many bolt-ons.
Larry Dignan (ZDNet) provides and overview of how Samsung and Apple continue to dominate the smartphone landscape.
Watching
The schedule for Advisor Webcasts in 2013 has been updated (support login required). There are a lot of Payroll webcasts in the archive, and some good upcoming webcasts on PT8.5x security and upgrading to PeopleTools 8.53.
And Finally…
Stephen Searer tours workplaces, blogs pictures and reviews of the latest designs and trends in office design. Here are his top 25 offices from 2012. It will take a while to browse them all, but there are some amazing workplaces in here.
Peter Bregman is a strategic advisor to CEOs and their leadership teams. Here he provides an insight into how to feel at ease and How to Attend a Conference as Yourself.
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The PeopleSoft Weekly newsletter 