Sasank Vemana, ERP Analyst at Florida State University and Oracle ACE, shared a blog post about his experience with PeopleSoft chatbots and gave a demonstration of the Absence Assistant that was delivered in PeopleSoft HCM Image 31.

Sasank’s DIY PeopleSoft Chatbots

Chatbots are here in PeopleSoft! The PeopleSoft Chatbot Integration Framework was delivered via Enterprise Components in various Applications (HCM, FSCM, CS, etc.). Utilizing this framework, HCM delivered the ‘Absence Assistant’ Chatbot in PUM Image 31.

Using an Oracle Cloud trial account, I went through the exercise of spinning up a HCM 9.2 – PI 31 instance on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) using PeopleSoft Cloud Manager, creating an Oracle Digital Assistant (ODA) instance on OCI, uploading the delivered “Absence Assistant” Skill to ODA, configuring the ODA Skill/Channel to point to the HCM instance and likewise configuring the HCM instance to point to the ODA Skill/Channel!

To see the demonstration that Sasank gave of the Absence Assistant, check out his original blog post.

I am very thankful to all Oracle PeopleSoft and ODA Product Managers, PeopleSoft Development team and PeopleSoft Support team for answering all my questions and pointing me in the right direction. Too many to list them all but they know who they are! Their insights are much appreciated.

Tips for Getting Started

Use HCM 9.2 PUM Image 32

If you are just getting started, I would highly recommend you to start with HCM 9.2 PUM Image 32. I started my proof of concept on PUM Image 31 and ran into several issues that were fixed in PI 32. Among other things, I had to pull out certain bugs (30151468, 30151584, 30150506) and the web SDK (ochatjs.zip) from PI 32 and apply them to my PI 31 instance. You will save yourself a lot of time simply by starting with PI 32!

Setup the <Proxy User> userid in PeopleSoft

Before we go any further, it would be a good idea to go ahead and set up the <Proxy User> userid in the HCM instance. This will be needed in the ODA Skill configuration.

PeopleBooks: Understanding Security for Chatbot Integration Framework

Blog Series on Configuration Steps

The following steps detail all the configurations that are necessary to set up the PeopleSoft – ODA Chatbot integration. This series of blogs addresses several practical tips, tricks and lessons learned that might not be covered in PeopleBooks and other documentation.

• Step 1: Setup PeopleSoft Web Server for ODA
• Step 2: Setup the ODA instance on OCI
• Step 3: Configure the delivered Skill in ODA
• Step 4: Configure PeopleSoft to point to the Skill/Channel in ODA

You can hear more from Sasank and Dave Bain about PeopleSoft chatbots during the PeopleSoft Technology Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting on December 4, 2019.