A customization is any change that can be overridden or must be known during the lifecycle process. There are customizations that are managed (AppDesigner, Online Application Data Sets) and customizations that are unmanaged (online definition/setup, external).

One of the best values PeopleSoft offers is the ease of making customizations to get the application to work the best for your business, but those customizations come at a cost. When applying maintenance, you have to account for the changes. However, there are strategies you can take to minimize the cost of customizations. Bain’s presentation covered what is available in the lifecycle products to help you manage change.

Strategies for Managing PeopleSoft Customizations

There are several strategies to utilize to help make applying maintenance to customizations easier.

• Isolating customizations with Event Mapping, Drop Zones, or Pluggable AE
• Configure with ADS Projects or Page and Field Configurator
• Copying, renaming, and inventory and document changes

Considerations for Managing Customizations

It is important to keep in mind several key points in regard to managing customizations. Managing customizations with PeopleSoft Update Manager (PUM) is target environment-specific. There is a repository of all managed objects (AppDesigner and Online) that is used to identify objects that have been customized in the target environment. This repository is used to identify conflicts in the change package definition process. Users are also able to take action on conflicts prior to the compare process.

To create a customization, AppDesigner and online projects can be uploaded to the customization repository through Change Assistant. The projects contain one or more managed objects. Then, the user will export PUM metadata from the existing PUM source import to the new PUM source. When exporting and importing, it is important to remember to utilize PUM customization information, test information, and package definition information. This process is needed if any customization repository data is changed or entered manually.

There are several valuable things to mention in regard to the management of customizations:

• Customizations are managed in PUM.
• The Customization Name is the Project Name.
• The Customization Description is a short description that can be used to describe the features in the project.

There are also several valuable things to mention with managing customized objects:

• All objects are included in the customization project.
• There is a type of object section and an object key.
• There are also links to customization impacts.
• It is very important to note that customization definitions are key only, and they don’t include the actual customization.
• The user can also add or delete customization references from customization projects.
• It is possible to build your own projects by hand or modify existing ones.
• Any PeopleSoft object can be referenced by multiple projects.

Run Customization Calculation is used to re-calculate customization impacts. It should be run anytime customization references change in any way.

The Update Manager Dashboard is a delivered analytic that relies on customization repository information. Customization Impacts by Bug shows the rough percentage of bugs that have no customization dependency versus some dependency.

If a bug has a customization impact, it is flagged in the list of updates. The user will then drill into the details to get more information on the customization impact. In the bug details, the customization impact section is available. The customization impact section will show the Projects that have impacts. “Include in Package” prevents those objects from being added to the change package.

There are several parts to the lifecycle management of customizations. The user begins with inventory and documentation, where they keep an inventory of customizations by business features and then import changes into the PUM environment. Then, each PUM cycle evaluates new changes have to existing customizations. Next is the Skip/Merge step, where the user either doesn’t apply the changes or uses the LCM tools to merge the change. Following that is the elimination, where the custom feature is removed from all impacted objects. Next is optimization, where the user refactors customizations using new options. Finally, the user manages by creating long term plans/automated tests for customizations.

What’s Next for Oracle

In the future, there are four key things that Oracle hopes to do in regard to managing customizations.

1. Oracle would like to help more customers manage the complete spectrum of customizations rather than just isolate or configure.
2. Oracle would also like to see a better indication of conflict with isolation tools.
3. Improving the customization repository to help it satisfy additional requirements is an additional goal.
4. Finally, Oracle would like to improve the experience of managing actual conflicts.

To learn more about how to manage customizations in PeopleSoft, check out Bain’s PeopleSoft Week presentation and additional resources below.