December 19, 2012
Issue #24 – 19th December 2012
This will be the last issue for 2012 but we will be back in January. In the meantime we hope you all have a Happy Christmas and Best Wishes for the New Year!
News and Latest Developments
Which vendors stood out in 2012 and why?
Oracle has posted some decent earnings for the 2013 Q2 quarter, exceeding most expectations. Software and cloud revenues were particularly strong, hardware a little less so. Oracle’s shares are up 28% this year.
Carolyn Cozart on the PeopleSoft Apps Strategy blog reassures those concerned about the impending tax changes that Oracle will deliver updates as soon as the IRS releases the required information.
Functional
Looking to plan your bundle / patching efforts for 2013? Oracle have published the release schedule for HCM in 2013 (linked above, support login required). Also available are
Campus Solutions,
Financials,
CRM and
ELM. Some have more detail than others however, and there isn’t one for PeopleTools yet.
Technical
Succeeder Munsif has documented this issue in PeopleTools 8.52, and how to work around it.
This is the first entry in the PeopleSoft Weekly from the new blog by Kovaion Consulting. It explains archiving within PeopleSoft.
Reading
Predictions for the coming year, including a couple about Oracle and some more about competing vendors. It also ends with a great quote from Bill Gates.
An analysis of the competing cloud vendors, and a snapshot of the market that Oracle Cloud is entering into. Amazon has 3 times the penetration of the number 2 vendor and massively outstrips the others in expected growth. It’s also interesting the Oracle’s Java is the second language for the cloud (after JavaScript), and knocks Python and Ruby into 3rd and 4th.
ZD Net analyst Jamie Yap has written an interesting piece showing that the ease of integrating SaaS applications may be overstated. “While some SaaS vendors claim their applications are easily integrated with on-premise apps, the general feedback from the industry has been negative … The integration is not seamless”.
Watching
A new video on the PeopleSoft Interaction Hub. There’s some fresh content in here, including the auto-resizing windows zipping in from the left. It also shows what you get under the restricted use license.
And Finally…
Tech industry leaders and firms have come out with some interesting and funny quotes this year.
We’re all envious of Google’s ‘20% time’, but when a company doesn’t allow time to innovate, is creativity stifled? Also, it seems LinkedIn has gone beyond the innovation time offered by Google, Apple, Atlassian etc.
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Posted by corrinadavies2012
December 12, 2012
Issue #23 – 12th December 2012
There was no PeopleSoft Weekly last week due to the UKOUG Conference, so this week is a double issue!
News and Latest Developments
Oracle have announced a new travelling roadshow running from January 2013 where senior Oracle staff will give further detail about the Oracle Cloud.
Oracle have published some new Video Feature Overviews taking the library to 26, of which 11 cover the new version 9.2 Applications (support login required).
Functional
Henry Tapper blogs about the success of the Pensions Auto-enrollment project at Morrisons (that Succeed were heavily involved in delivering).
Charlotte from Blogging About Oracle Applications has posted an entry about making an HR Helpdesk call center agents life easier with the use of text trays.
The Oracle Apps blog is hosting a webcast on Friday 14th December on how to get maximum value from implementing the PeopleSoft Grants solution.
Technical
Nicolas Gasparotto continues his investigation into the WorkCenter to help setup and troubleshoot Integration Broker.
The Oracle OTN forum is a great place to go for help, but this must be the most detailed answer ever! Jim Marion gives a fully architected response to an interesting question on broadcasting to users, and there’s a good follow-up debate on polling and push/pull.
We don’t normally link to individual forum topics here, but this gem of knowledge is too small to warrant a blog post of its own but is still worth highlighting.
Reading
Emily Snider of TechTarget interviews industry analysts and talks to Succeeder Duncan to determine if now is the right time for PeopleSoft customers to make the jump to Fusion.
Reading through this article, there have been some very expensive project failures in 2012. It’s reassuring that only one involved PeopleSoft.
This is really big news for close followers of the mobile market. Long-time Apple employee and evangelist Guy Kawasaki has switched to Android and today uses no Apple mobile products. For such a high profile Apple supporter to make the switch is quite a coup for Google. Always one for a sharp quote, Kawasaki says “Apple’s slogan was `Think Different,’ but today if you think different you’re looking at Android.”
It’s still early days of the big data movement but here are the 13 pioneering vendors that could be pushing big data analytics to the next level in the next 12 months.
Watching
Mark Hurd talks about Oracle Cloud, playing catch-up with applications, Exa servers, massive storage, social and Oracle’s acquisition strategy.
Not known for their humorous videos, this one will raise a smile. It’s part of their
‘The browser you loved to hate’ campaign. This is pretty important for us in the PeopleSoft world as so many enterprises standardise on IE.
And Finally…
The Tim Sackett blog contains some real gems. This is one of the lighter items, but the chance to lessen the load of the Performance Review process would appeal to many.
What skills do you look for when hiring a tech? This article lists their top 4, and technical skills aren’t included.
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Posted by corrinadavies2012
November 28, 2012
Issue #22 – 28th November 2012
News and Latest Developments
An interview with Oracle President Mark Hurd outlines how he believes Oracle has to have more than just great technology, it needs to listen and respond to “truly partner with our customers.”
Functional
You can create multiple dashboards with PeopleTools 8.52 each aligned with different areas of the business. Even better, you can construct the dashboards from a mix of existing pagelets, query pagelets and pivot grids/charts, meaning that you don’t always need a techie to create a dashboard.
Much of this info will already be known to a lot of techs, but Derek Tomei provides an excellent overview for a newbie or an interested functional person.
Technical
Succeeder Duncan battles the EM Hub and Change Assistant, showing how to correct the error where CA incorrectly reports that all the agents aren’t running.
Nicolas Gasparotto details how with PeopleTools 8.52 you can set up Integration Broker from a single component. There’s no more hopping between multiple menu items.
PeopleSoft performance guru David Kurtz explains how in PeopleTools 8.52, Application Engine has been enhanced to set the action to the full Application Engine step name. It’s useful for those on Oracle DB and using either OEM or ASH.
Reading
The next step on from ‘Bring Your Own Device’ could be individuals using 3rd party mash-up services with corporate data. With services like
IFTTTit’s very easy to get started with this exciting trend.
Mipro’s Anne Meyer gives her opinion on Fusion and the longevity of the PeopleSoftproduct line. “The future may be Fusion, but as far as Oracle is concerned, there is still a definite future for PeopleSoft.”
Matthew Haavisto – Oracle’s “Strategy/Product Manager, PeopleTools” – is the first US-based PeopleSoft guru, and the first Oracle employee, to be profiled in the ‘How I work’ series.
Infographic
We love infographics like this at Succeed. This one combines two of our favourite areas – retail and big data. Not only an interesting read, but contains some great statistics for using in presentations.
And Finally…
This blog is well worth bookmarking as it’s a trove of great opinion pieces. This one – on different personality types necessary to drive a company forwards – is a real gem.
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Posted by corrinadavies2012
November 21, 2012
Issue #21 – 21st November 2012
News and Latest Developments
One week on from Oracle’s Engine Yard investment InfoWorld speculates on the motivations behind the move (which we were initially surprised about given Oracle’s strong focus on Java, and Engine Yard’s Ruby, PHP, and Node.js applications).
The Economic Times reports that SAP has made some in-roads into Oracle’s lead in India, and Oracle is determined to reverse the slide.
PeopleTools 8.52.12 has been released. The release notes document is linked to above (support login required).
Functional
The team from HROI Consulting have spotted a couple of gotchas while using the Group Build functionality and aggregate functions within Query.
Derek Tomei posts on IT Toolbox with a short piece on why the Cumulative Feature Overview tools that we’ve mentioned in previous newsletters are a vital tool when preparing for upgrade.
Technical
Succeeder Jeremy talks about the ANSI SQL Merge statement, shows code samples, examples of when to use it, and uses a work we’d never heard of before … ‘UPSERT’.
Chris Malek from the Cedar Hills Group blog shows how to create simpler pages for your Self Service users.
Jim Marion shows how to loop through a series of Approval Workflow Engine transactions and approve them. This isn’t the sort of code you’re going to need every day, but will save you a lot of time when you have this requirement.
Reading
An interesting read about the direction technology may be heading, and some of Steve Job’s observations certainly seem to be coming true in the way that Apple – and latterly Oracle – are engineering their systems.
Another industry titan – this time Jeff Bezos of Amazon – is profiled. With Amazon’s Web Services platform they’re dominating the cloud infrastructure market that Oracle is now starting to show an interest in. How did an online retailer beat technology incumbents like Oracle to the IaaS game?
Watching
A series of semi-amusing videos covering Oracle RAC, Active Data Guard and Flashback.
And Finally…
Posted by Aaron Levie – CEO of Box – this chart shows the market share of computing platforms over the last few decades. Whilst it’s interesting to see the rise and fall in fortunes of the various companies, the last few years are looking very ominous for Microsoft.
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Posted by corrinadavies2012
November 14, 2012
Issue #20 – 14th November 2012
A big thanks to Jennifer from American Family Insurance for being our 300th subscriber.
News and Latest Developments
The Cumulative Feature Overview (CFO’s) tools are now available for PeopleSoft 9.2. The tools allow you to understand major changes that have occurred across multiple releases in comparison to your exisitng product version.
Oracle announced yesterday its minority investment in Engine Yard, a leading cloud development platform that supports Ruby, PHP and Node.js. It is expected that this partnership will provide cloud application developers with a greater choice of development and deployment options. Engine Yard is a competitor to Salesforce’s Heroku PaaS offering.
Functional
On the PeopleSoft Answers blog there is a two part series on PeopleSoft AWE (Approval Workflow Engine). Part Two is linked to above, click
here to recap on Part One (scroll down past the job adverts to read the article).
Following on from last week, Jiju Vengal has posted Part Two of his series examining some of the new features in version 9.2 of PeopleSoft HCM for the Time and Labor module. Part One is linked
here.
Technical
Succeeder Simon explains a handy technique that he’s learnt from working withPeopleSoft CRM.
The addition of PS_CUST_HOME is one of the lower-key items in the PeopleTools 8.53 RVP. This brief post serves to remind us that it’s something to consider when upgrading.
Daniel Kibler from Robert Half International shows how to easily present the user with attractive popup forms using jQuery UI.
Courtesy of Matthew Haavisto on the PeopleTools blog is the PeopleTools Resource Library. This library contains a lot of documentation including presentations, white/red papers, data sheets, links to video feature overviews, viewlets, appcasts, and the latest release information.
Reading
If you only have time to read one item this week, make it this one. Brian Sommer, CEO of TechVentive, documents this seven part look at how the ERP software market has fundamentally changed.
Nicolas – Oracle DBA & Peoplesoft administrator and Oracle ACE – contributes to the ‘how i work’ series this week.
And Finally…
What techniques could really give your day a jump-start? Tips from Tim Ferriss, Tony Robbins, Standford Univeristy and TED Talks.
Joris Luijke, VP of Australian software company Atlassian outlines their approach to move away from six monthly performance reviews, 360 degree feedback and five point scale ratings. He shares Atlassian’s innovative alternative.
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Posted by corrinadavies2012
November 7, 2012
Issue #19 – 7th November 2012
News and Latest Developments
There’s a lot of strong content in the PeopleSoft streams at the upcoming UKOUG conference. We have speakers from Oracle, from partners like Grey Heller and Succeed, and clients like Cambridge Uni, Hays, Oxfam and Quintiles over the 3rd/4th December.
Functional
In what has been a prolific week for Jiju, he’s posted Part One of his series on the various new features proposed in version 9.2 of PeopleSoft HCM for the Time and Labor module and his take on how useful they will be.
On the PeopleSoft Answers blog there is a two part series on PeopleSoft AWE (Approval Workflow Engine). Part One is linked to above, click here to read Part Two (scroll down past the job adverts to read the article).
Technical
Succeeder Munsif defines what is meant by the term Big Data, how it is characterised, where it comes from and how to best utilise it.
Chris Malek from the Cedar Hills Group demonstrates the steps to bypass a standard PeopleSoft search page – ideal for Self Service pages or where you want a different search experience.
Reading
Mike Krupa was at the HR Tech conference in Chicago last month and gives a nice summary of what the vendors were focusing their message on.
Hakan – from the Blogging about Oracle Applications blog – is the next up in the ‘how i work’ series.
Watching
We’ve featured some of these before, but John Webb has posted a more complete list on the PeopleSoft Apps Strategy blog. There are 33 individual videos listed, each around 6 minutes in length.
And Finally…
There’s some great thinking coming out of the team at Etsy, and this is no exception. They argue that becoming a Senior Engineer is not just a matter of years of experience, but more maturity of approach and mindset.
Also riffing on the theme of seniority (but this time in terms of age) with the recent upsurge in new-ish language frameworks like jQuery, Rails, Django etc do older engineers stick with programming or move into management roles? There was also a
viewpoint from Vivek Haldar of Google.
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Posted by Duncan
October 31, 2012
Issue #18 – 31st October 2012
News and Latest Developments
Natalia Rachelson covers the HR Tech Conference in Chicago, including the panel with some incredibly big names.
Functional
David Vap (Vice President, Applications Product Development) discusses the Oracle Customer Experience Summit – the first-ever event to cover the full breadth of Oracle’s CX portfolio.
Technical
Jim Marion shows us a new query to give us the navigation to a content reference or menu/component/page (spotted by Succeeder David).
Pawan Mundhra covers the steps needed to setup Data Archive Manager.
A thoughtful piece on why the NoSQL movement isn’t going to put much of a dent in Oracle’s RDBMS business, but may have an impact on RAC.
Reading
The second in a new series of posts which aims to give a bit of insight into how some of the veterans in the industry approach their work. This week the spotlight falls on David Kurtz.
Watching
There’s a series of short videos each giving an overview of new features in v9.2. The link above gives the master page, however these are the direct links for the HCM ones: PeopleSoft Update Manager, Work Centers and Life Events (support account required).
And Finally…
For the Apple acolytes – after the departure of Steve Jobs – the Apple employee closest aligned to the Jobs design ethos is undoubtedly Jonathon Ive. He’s just received a large promotion and now holds responsibility for far more aspects of the Apple suite of products.
When you tire of PowerPoint or Keynote, the first product to check out is Prezi. They’ve just introduced a slew of new features and an improved UI.
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Posted by Duncan
October 24, 2012
Issue #17 – 24th October 2012
News and Latest Developments
Oracle have released ADF Mobile, the new HTML5 and Java-Based Framework which enables developers to build Mobile Applications for multiple platforms, including iOS and Android.
For the second year running, Succeed scooped Gold at the UKOUG PeopleSoft Partner of the Year competition. It makes us especially proud as it’s voted for by our customers, so thank you all who participated.
Fusion
The Fusion Weekly newsletter is getting ready for launch. If you want to stay as informed about the world of Fusion as you are about PeopleSoft, head to website to sign-up.
Functional
The HROI blog shows how you can lose security access to employees after assigning them to a Pay Group.
Technical
Mark Hurd discusses the Big Data Appliance, and why all the ‘big players’ are standardizing on Hadoop.
Succeeder Tim spotted that the October 2012 Oracle Critical Patch Updates are out, including updates for PT8.50, PT8.51, and PT8.52, and for Campus Solutions 9.0. There are also fixes for very serious (CVSS 10) bugs in Oracle database and Java, and a serious (CVSS 9) bug in MySQL.
Pawan Wadhwa has posted a few SQL scripts showing how you can quickly find whether a user has access to certain portal content references.
Reading
The first in a new series of posts which aims to give a bit of insight into how some of the veterans in the industry approach their work.
And Finally…
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Posted by Duncan
October 17, 2012
Issue #16 – 17th October 2012
News and Latest Developments
Whilst speaking at the HR Technology Conference in Chicago, Oracle President Mark Hurd reassured HR Execs that PeopleSoft still has a strong future. He also confirmed that – far from petering out – the PeopleSoft contingent was the largest for any platform at OpenWorld.
Is Larry Ellison about to splash out again? AEG owns the Millennium Dome (now called the O2 Arena) in London – the World’s busiest music arena. What are the odds on it being re-christened the Exa-dome?
PDFs of the presentations given at OpenWorld are now available for download. Unlike other years you can still get the content even if you didn’t attend as there is no logon required to access the site.
Functional
Succeeder Jacki continues her series on PeopleSoft changes for the new UK HMRC rules.
Technical
Jim Marion’s always-useful blog has a new entry on using Java within PeopleCode to handle zip files. Jim’s post also includes a link to Chris Rigsby’s blog post on using Groovy within PeopleTools.
Watching
Here are some videos on the imminent Oracle Social Network. Some of the content (presence, chatting, following etc) will be very familiar to those of the ‘Facebook generation’, but it’s good to see that they’re all in version 1 of the product.
Reading
This blog article – pointed out by
John Palethorpe – discusses use of the tablet with Enterprise software, concluding that the Windows Tablet (rather than Android or iPad) will be the eventual winner.
Confused by Larry’s tech-heavy messages? This small translation guide will help you make business sense out of Larry Ellison’s OpenWorld musings.
Larry has large interests in both Oracle and NetSuite, so how do they avoid a collision course?
And Finally…
We love the concept behind this. Designers pick a site that they think needs a new look and showcase their talents. It’d be interesting to see a redesign of the PeopleSoft UI.
Stefan Ried from Forrester research compares OpenWorld to DreamForce. Some of the scoring seems a bit off (Larry’s keynote on Sunday was a triumph, with very clear messaging (“Social, Mobile, Cloud”) so the overall result should probably have been a tie), it’s a good read however.
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Posted by Duncan
October 10, 2012
Issue #15 – 10th October 2012
News and Latest Developments
Marc Weintraub announced at OpenWorld that the extended support for PeopleSoft v9.0 applications (HCM, FSCM and CRM) has been extended until June 2015 (probably mirroring the slip in release of PeopleSoft v9.2 apps). Extended support fees have also been waived. The same goes for PeopleSoft v9.1 and 2017.
@lex from the Siebel Essentials blog noticed that the Oracle Cloud now contains a lot more content, and gives a run-down of the options.
Functional
The pre-release notes are out for PeopleSoft v9.2 HCM and FSCM (support login required).
Technical
Last week Steve and Duncan gave a session at Oracle OpenWorld on the PeopleSoft UI and mobile. This write-up shows how it went.
Matthew Haavisto of the PeopleSoft Technology Blog explains the differences between Workcenters and Dashboards and the Interaction Hub.
Larry Zagata for the Mipro blog has a quick video walking through the steps needed to create a Pivot Grid.
Watching
Larry Ellison talks about Oracle’s priorities, future plans, his best friend Steve Jobs and what he intends to do with some of his houses.
Reading
Was it Ellison/Oracle, NetSuite or Benioff/Salesforce? It sounds like it all came from a meeting the three of them had a long time ago.
Covering Oracle’s reinvention into a cloud provider. There’s also discussion over whether Oracle’s high-end Exadata cloud approach is preferable to Amazon’s use of commodity hardware here.
John Eckersley provides some facts to refute the doomsayers.
And Finally…
Some of the AppsLab came up with a fun diversion at OpenWorld to highlight the Oracle Social Network and ease of integration.
In the future, could you hire and fire employees using just a gesture?
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Posted by Duncan
The PeopleSoft Weekly newsletter 