During Quest Forum Digital Event: PeopleSoft Week, Arkalgud Venkatesh, Director of Technical Services at Alameda County, talked about how Alameda County achieves a smooth functioning application stack and runs its PeopleSoft application at its best!

About Alameda County

Alameda County was established in 1853. There are 1.6 million diverse residents according to data from 2014, and the 9,500 Alameda County employees speak 57 different languages.

In 2019, Alameda County received multiple awards for their technological advancements, including achievement awards from the National Association of Counties, fourth place honors in a nationwide digital county survey, and was named the project winner of the Government-to-Citizen category at the Government Experience presented by the Center for Digital Government. Venkatesh attributed the county’s drive toward cutting-edge technology to CEO Tim Dupuis.

The county’s PeopleSoft footprint is displayed below:

As shown, Alameda County upgraded to Fluid in 2017. They are currently running PeopleSoft Tools 8.56.13 Fluid for both Financials and HRMS. IT aims to keep both areas on the same toolset for integration purposes. They are not able to maintain the same PUM image between the two.

Venkatesh also noted some important items for PeopleSoft customers to know:

• Oracle has extended support through 2031
• PT 8.58 is out for on-premise
• HCM PUM 34 is out
• FSCM PUM 35 is out
• Kibana is in PT 8.57
• Look for COVID-19 fixes
• Drop Zone for Classic pages is in PT 8.58

Fluid User Interface at Alameda County

Alameda County’s Fluid page set-up includes four homepages in HCM. Below is an example of two of them. You’ll notice the organization has changed the PeopleSoft icon to Alcolink in the top left corner, as that is their internal name for the system. Several of the tiles are custom, but the graphics are Oracle-provided. Many of the HCM homepage tiles are utilized as links to internal portals, UPK for training, and queries and reporting. Tiles on the Financials page include administrative tiles, help resources with external sites for regularly-used links, and announcements.

Venkatesh said one of the questions he fields most regularly is, “So, you are on PeopleSoft… Do you think you are using a state-of-the-art application?

On a periodic basis, he creates a business case for the CIO comparing the PeopleSoft technology being utilized to applications available on the market in order to verify that they are taking the best approach for them.

Proven Best Practices at Alameda County

Venkatesh shared a few proven best practice that Alameda County follows:

• Aim for no customizations
  • Revisit existing customizations during every PUM upgrade
  • Use Page and Field Configurator, Drop Zones, Event Mapping
• Patches — security and other
  • Apply as soon as you are made aware— it is a healthy practice
• Timely and well-structured PUM consumption
  • Templated approach
• Complete adoption of FLUID
  • Users like it
  • Avoid end of life pages
• Look at new ways of doing things
  • Activity Guides
• No SQL (backend) updates
  • Online fixes ensure no orphans are created
• Our Business users are the real testers
• Have a mutually agreed-upon set schedule for Keep the Lights On recurring events
• Take on major projects in between annual key events
• Have a dedicated IT and Business point person for each module
• Open an SR with Oracle before you do a customization
  • Oracle may already have the functionality with minimal process or system changes
  • Learn from other customers
  • Visit Oracle, Quest Forums — post questions
• Research, Learn, Try and Implement
  • Attend Quest, PSUG, and other webinars

Continuous Improvement of the System

Alameda County always aims to have a state-of-the-art application. Part of this is answering the question: Is the system creating business value? Furthermore, what business process improvements will help our customers?

One of the first improvements was to digitize all paper forms with a project they called “Paper Be Gone.” When the entire department moved to a new location, the CIO only allowed each individual to take a laptop (no desktops!) and two bankers boxes worth of tools. This included paper. The team had to digitize everything before moving to the new location.

Next, they achieved integration with other systems such as Web Services, db connect, and SSRS. They are connected to the following applications:

• Filenet
• DocuSign
• Budget system and other mainframe systems
• LMS
• JobApps – outbound from PS

Reporting occurs through Dashboard and Salesforce. The team is very excited for Kibana.

Partnership Between Business and IT

Successful partnerships between Business and IT (from the IT perspective) will follow these guidelines:

• Meet regularly and listen to the needs of the business user.
• Remember that both entities have the same goal: To provide the best solution to the end-user and all departments.
• If something is important to the business user, it should be important to IT, too.
• Understand that the business user has business other than the system work.
• Mutual appreciation and respect for a job well done goes a long way.
• Make sure business users know IT is always there to support their business strategy and roadmap.
• Ask the business users to be open to IT recommendations.

The County Procurement Division at Alameda County spoke highly of the interactions they’ve had with IT:

It is a great partnership where ITD makes themselves available. The team is very solution-oriented and willing to accept new challenges.

According to the Auditor Controller Department:

It is a great partnership. The team is very solution-oriented and always willing to accept new challenges. We have never felt limited by technical constraints due to their expertise and tenacity in resolving issues and building solutions.

Venkatesh believes a portion of the excellence achieved by his team is due to the fact that he has four employees who worked for PeopleSoft on average for ten years. He appreciates his team very much – citing extreme dedication, self-learning, excellent task management, proficiency in simultaneous system support and PUM upgrades, out-of-the-box thinking, and positive attitudes.

Response to COVID-19

As COVID creates challenges around every corner, the team has adjusted in the following ways:

• Microsoft Teams for collaboration
• Security Challenges
  • Use county-provided devices
  • Devices are updated timely with all needed OS patches
  • Bitlocker enabled
  • MFA enabled for Office 365 to access any non-county devices on mobile or portal
• Weekly social calls or “virtual water cooler chat”

Key Takeaways

Alameda County is at the cutting edge of technology in government county organizations. Multiple awards support this fact, and a zealously tech-savvy CEO can be blamed for the focus on tech. Based on their IT department’s best practices, devotion to extra-department partnerships, and continuous improvements to systems, Alameda County is achieving great success in this area. Take note of the lessons learned by Venkatesh’s team and apply them to your organization to utilize PeopleSoft applications to their very best.

To learn more, check out the Quest Forum Digital Event: PeopleSoft Week presentation attached below.