Shelby Klingerman, Content Curator |

A recent presentation from Jeremy Irrthum, PeopleSoft Developer at the University of Minnesota, shared a breakdown of the University’s technique for managing new Images and refining the Image application process.

Application Process

First, do an initial pass in your DEV environment. This is the time and place to work out the kinks, improve performance and identify any custom steps that you might need to take. After you work through those steps in DEV, move through your other environments until you make it to Production. Establish your timings and get in your practice before moving from one environment to the next.

Object Organization and Control

Every custom object in the University of Minnesota’s system has an assigned project name that matches a given modification number. This helps keep track of what object and modification go together to serve a specific purpose. An organization set up like this can help save time retrofitting unorganized objects.

Object Control is crucial because it helps you not lose track of things. The University of Minnesota also locks certain objects, which can make objects read-only or prevent the migration of objects that have a lock in the next database that you’re moving to. Controlling your objects this way is another great way to stay organized and ultimately become more efficient.

Identify Conflicts

To identify conflicts, you’ll need to compare reports. You can do this with HTML reports or with the Compare Report Summary Tool that will show you differences between the two versions. You can also use Query Project Tables to compare the delivered project to modification projects.

Apply Retrofits

Retrofits should be assigned to several developers, and the University of Minnesota suggests grouping the assignments by modification. For example, one developer at the University handles all retrofits that are associated with the Modification ID “UM_RS003_0001.” Comparison tools like Compare Reports and XML Files can be useful when identifying differences between versions, and STAT or PeopleTools Queries can be helpful when applying retrofits.

Deployment

The University of Minnesota lets the Change Assistant drive the deployment process, and they run it on Virtual Machine. Change Assistant handles all of the delivered steps during the process. It’s important to remember that every time there is a PeopleTools upgrade or a CPU, the Change Assistant is affected. It’s important to remember not to try to anticipate what the Change Assistant will do each time because it is changing over time as well.

After Change Assistant handles delivered steps, the University of Minnesota uses STAT to migrate retrofits and handle PeopleTools and File Objects. They found that Change Assistant doesn’t migrate file objects very well, so they decided to use STAT for that part of the process instead.

Post Migration Verification

It’s difficult to verify that everything migrated successfully. Sometimes, an object doesn’t migrate because of a fluke. If that happens, you need to know early in order to fix it, but you don’t always have time to run a Compare Report. Luckily, there is a Project Object Verification Query that can help with this verification process. The query will go out to all objects in the project and then check their Tools table to see if the objects are there and the latest update time.

The University of Minnesota also does a technical verification. They let Change Assistant drive this process. After the technical verification, there is a functional verification and functional testing. Not only is it important to verify that all of the objects are there but also that they are working properly.

Learn More

In order for this process to work, you have to practice what you implement and implement what you practice. For more information about the steps of this process, check out the full presentation from University of Minnesota below.

Additional Resources

Want more resources like this, all in one place? Discover everything available at COLLABORATE 19, the Technology and Applications Forum for the Oracle Community, April 7-11, 2019, in San Antonio. Learn more and follow #C19TX on Twitter to stay up-to-date on all things COLLABORATE 19!