June 15th, 2017
PeopleTools 8.56 General Availability has Arrived!
This week has been packed full of updates in the PeopleSoft World – mainly with PeopleTools 8.56 being released for general availability. Below is an overview of the updates and enhancements available – for more information reference the Cumulative Feature Overview Tool.
PeopleTools 8.56 Enhancements and New Features:
User Interface Enhancements (0:24)
- Classic Plus – Allows re-worked classic pages to have an appearance similar to that of fluid pages. Classic Plus allows a more seamless transition, especially where both types of pages exist. Selecting “Fluid like theme for Classic” within the System Branding page will display Classic pages with Fluid-like styling.
- Personalization of Fluid Homepages on Smartphones – Users can now personalize home pages using the “Personalize Homepage” link, including adding tiles, re-arranging tiles, and removing tiles on their smartphone.
Portal Technology Enhancements (3:45)
- Unified Navigation – Any PeopleSoft System can serve as the designated portal system within a cluster with unified navigation.
- Contextual Fluid Dashboards – Application Developers are now allowed to design a fluid dashboard in which user-specified or fixed content values determine the content of the tiles displayed on the dashboard.
- Event Mapping – The event mapping feature delivered in 8.55 has been enhanced with the Event Mapping References page to assess the impact of when an application class has been modified or upgraded. In addition, two additional events have been added, the Activate event at the page level, and the FieldChange event at the component record field level. Event mapping also allows more than one custom application class to be associated with a single PeopleCode event.
Test Framework Enhancements (5:47)
- Support for Testing with Charts – Charts are now a pivotal feature for simplified analytics within PeopleSoft Applications. You can now record test scripts with JET charts using PeopleSoft Test Framework and validate during playback.
- Query-Based Testing – Data can now be used from the PeopleSoft Query Results. There is no requirement to record new test cases if the test script utilizes the dataloader step type.
Update Manager Enhancements (6:48)
- Improved Analytics – PeopleTools has added the ability to differentiate the delivered changes between maintenance and bugs to provide a better understanding of the health of the system, and evaluate what features you currently have and can adopt. Four new pivot grids have been added and include Enhancements by Image, Enhancements by Product, Enhancements by Minimum Tools, and Applied Bugs by Image Lag.
- Analytics Driven Change Package Definitions – Point and click functionality from the analytics now allows you to create the change package definitions and apply the change package directly within the analytics. Enhancements by Image analytics allows you to see the percentage of enhancements you have applied for each Image. You can also add additional un-applied enhancements to a change package. The Enhancements by Minimum Tools release analytic shows the enhancements available based on PeopleTools release for the targeted environment. Applied Bugs by Image Lag analytic shows the difference between when changes are delivered versus when they are applied. Drill down on specific pivot grids are reformatted to provide more information and provide an analytic driven interface to create the change package.
- Change Package Definition Merge – An easier way to select and add content to change package definitions. Users are now able to merge contents from multiple packages into one package to make maintenance changes to a system.
- Enhanced Customization Repository – Customization repository has been expanded to support the customization impact of ADS Customized Objects and Managed Objects.
File Processing Enhancements (16:18)
- Cloud Attachments – As of PeopleTools 8.56, Oracle Document Cloud is accepted as a Cloud Storage Provider using the Adminster Cloud Provider Page.
PeopleSoft Search Framework for Enhancements (17:05)
- New Search Engine – Elasticsearch – In PeopleTools 8.56 – SES and Verity are no longer supported, and are replaced by Elasticsearch.
- Using Clusters for Elasticsearch – Elasticsearch uses distributed architecture and is built to be scalable using clusters. High availability enables PeopleSoft Search Framework to provide a fail over mechanism
- Processing Attachments – Attachment processing is enhanced to improve the indexing performance.
- Partitioning Application Data During Indexing – Enables you to partition the application data using the Date Range option to improve indexing performance and index chunks of data based on date range.
- Administering Elasticsearch – Elasticsearch provides several REST APIs that can be used to obtain details of a cluster or index in the PeopleSoft Application. Elasticsearch Interact is a user interface that enables you to choose a cluster and index level options on which you want to obtain information from the Elasticsearch Search Engine.
- Monitoring Elasticsearch Using PeopleSoft Health Center – Monitoring and Diagnostic Dashboards provide insight into performance issues that may arise for a cluster and nodes within a cluster. Users cannot run tasks or make updates within the PeopleSoft Health Center.
For more information on the integration of Elasticsearch with PeopleSoft, see the Elasticseach Home Page, 8.56 Search Technology PeopleBook, or the PeopleSoft Information Portal
Note: For SES customers upgrading to PeopleTools 8.56, you will have to manually move from SES to Elasticsearch. Live cut over is not an option because SES is not supported in PeopleTools 8.56.
PeopleTools Platform Support Enhancements (24:17)
- PeopleSoft Deployment Packages – DPKs help automate creation, cloning, and maintenance of PeopleSoft Environments. With PeopleTools 8.56, Oracle will expand the support of DPKs to not only include Linux and MS Windows environments, but also to include Solaris and AIX. You can download DPKs for every PeopleTools 8.56 patch from MyOracleSupport for all four environments.
- Microsoft Visual Studio C++ Redistributable Installed with PeopleSoft PeopleTools 8.56 – Running PeopleSoft PeopleTools 8.56 requires Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015. The packages install run-time components that are required to run C++ applications built using Visual Studio 2015, as is PeopleSoft PeopleTools. Because the redistributables have been packaged, automatic Microsoft Windows security updates are enabled to help keep your system secure.
