During PeopleSoft Week 21, the PeopleSoft Technology SIG hosted the Oracle PeopleTools team for a PeopleTools 8.59 question and answer session.

At the start of the session, Bain showed the results of a series of surveys to provide insight into where the community stands with PeopleTools.

• When a new PeopleTools version is released, my organization…
  • Starts working on it as soon as possible, usually patch 1 or 2 – 9%
  • Usually waits several months before working with it – 16%
  • Usually waits for it to mature around 12 months before working with it – 16%
  • It depends when our next PeopleTools upgrade is scheduled – 44%
  • Not sure – 14%
• Releasing the first two PeopleTools patches on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)…
  • Has no impact on my organization – 45%
  • May upset me but doesn’t impact my organization – 5%
  • Impacts when we will first use the release but not the upgrade plans – 9%
  • Directly impacts my organization’s plans – 3%
  • Not sure – 38%
• The current PeopleTools release cycle of 15-18 months is…
  • Too long, I would prefer around 12 months – 5%
  • Just about right – 37%
  • Too short, it’s hard to keep up with releases. Prefer 18-24 months – 39%
  • Length of time between releases doesn’t matter – 5%
  • Not sure – 14%
• Three years from now, my PeopleSoft apps will most likely be…
  • Running on-premises – 39%
  • Hosted by a provider or Oracle – 6%
  • Running on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – 17%
  • Replaced by a Software as a Service (SaaS) app – 4%
  • Not sure – 35%
• How well are your customizations documented?
  • Poor, very little or none – 7%
  • Good, but needs work – 31%
  • Very good, but there are gaps – 34%
  • Exceptional, all customizations are well documented – 15%
  • Not sure – 14%
• I have sufficient tools and processes in place to know which users have access to what data.
  • Strongly agree – 7%
  • Agree – 44%
  • Not sure – 29%
  • Disagree – 17%
  • Strongly disagree – 3%
• I have sufficient tools to properly audit when access changes are made.
  • Strongly agree – 5%
  • Agree – 42%
  • Not sure – 33%
  • Disagree – 17%
  • Strongly disagree – 2%
• Was isolating customizations worth the effort?
  • No, too much work for the benefit – 2%
  • Yes, it has been beneficial – 38%
  • Yes, the benefits have been outstanding – 10%
  • Haven’t done any, so I don’t know – 19%
  • Not sure – 31%

PeopleTools 8.59 Question and Answer Session

Do we see any improvements in Health Center?

Starting in PeopleTools 8.58, Health Center has moved to be based on the ELK Stack. The functionality that was available before continues to be available. In addition, you can store the history so you can view historical data. There is less overhead on the PeopleTools stack because the metrics are being fed to the Elastic Stack, and the UI is being generated through Kibana. Over time, functionality will be improved to provide more metrics and take advantage of the ELK Stack.

When will PeopleTools 8.59 be available for download on-premise?

On-premise availability is planned for mid-July.

What automation tools are people using to do Tools updates?

Automation that Oracle has provided for PeopleTools maintenance is all delivered through PeopleSoft Cloud Manager. This is an OCI-only application that is based on the PeopleTools Stack. You can install it through the OCI Marketplace and find the latest version. It installs PeopleTools versions, patches, PUM Images, and helps you migrate your instance from on-prem to cloud. Once you do that, you can utilize Cloud Manager’s automation to do updates, create change packages, and apply to environments. Cloning, backups, and downloading changes are completed automated.

We’ve also recently introduced Policy Manager into Cloud Manager, which helps you automate things around events and things on schedules. For lifecycle processes, outside of Cloud Manager, you can use Update Scheduler in on-premises environments to automatically download patches and have those applied to your PUM environment.

Any improvements to PeopleCode Editor?

We do improve the Tools available inside the App Designer, including PeopleCode Editor. With every release, we try to make incremental improvements across the Designer tools. Specifically, with respect to 8.59, I can’t think of anything regarding PeopleCode Editor, but I would recommend checking out the documentation that shows new features to get an outline of all of the new features in 8.59.

Will another browser replace IE for the recording of PeopleSoft Test Framework scripts after 2022?

We are in the process of adding support for additional browsers for PTF recording capabilities. This is something we are actively pursuing, and once we do make that available on other platforms, we will be retiring IE 11.

Is PeopleTools 8.59 required for install and setup of HCM Encryption Framework?

To look at dependencies, check out the Cumulative Feature Overview tool. Look at the tool in question, and it will show you the Tools dependencies.

Can you talk about Real-Time Indexing?

Real-time indexing is a new feature with PeopleTools 8.59 that we are very excited about. We are working hard on it from a performance improvement standpoint. If some of you are using Elasticsearch, you know that if you want to keep the indexes updated after the transaction tables have been modifying, you would typically schedule an incremental crawl, however often you want to keep current. Real-time indexing takes that a step further to do real-time updates to an index vs. scheduling incrementally.

The Applications Teams are working on enabling Real-Time Indexing for the indexes they have delivered. However, not all indexes make sense to make real-time. This is why the Apps Teams are going through to look at which ones it makes sense for.

One of the indexes that PeopleTools delivers is the index related to Menu Search as well as Recents. This is another new feature with 8.59. We’ve made it very intuitive for users to search for and find what they are looking for.

Can we use Edge for PTF development?

We are actively working on a replacement browser for PTF recording. The first browser we are going to support as an alternative is Chrome for recording. Beyond that, we’ll look at others that we may potentially support.

When do you think 8.59.07 will be released?

Typically, we release patches around every six weeks, but that can vary. So, PeopleTools 8.59 was generally available in April, and the 02 patch was about six weeks after that. You can take the math from there!