Quest had the opportunity to talk with McMaster University about their Fluid User Interface deployment.

Key Takeaways

About McMaster University:

McMaster University was founded in 1887 and located in Hamilton, Ontario. It is a medical-doctoral, research-intensive university with 28,000 full-time students, 955 full-time faculty members, and 11,000 staff members. The university is currently on HCM Image 23 PeopleTools 8.55.05, FSCM Image 25 PeopleTools 8.55.05, Interaction Hub Image 2 PeopleTools 8.55.12, Campus Solutions 9.0 PeopleTools 8.55.12, EPM (DW) 9.1 PeopleTools 8.55.03, Custom PeopleTools Dev. (Bolt On) PeopleTools 8.55.05 and Hyperion 11.1.2.3.700.

Website: https://www.mcmaster.ca/

What were the drivers for your to being using Fluid User Interface?

FSCM was the first PeopleSoft application Fluid with when we implemented Maintenance Management in January 2016. PeopleSoft didn’t have a mobile presence for service requests or work orders, so we built it using the Fluid tools components delivered in PeopleTools 8.54.10. We wanted a tool that would allow for the following:

• More intuitive user interface
• Easier roll-out of MSS/ESS functionality
• Mobile-friendly/responsive design
• Ability for our end-users to personalize the system
• Technology currency and support
• Quicker Selective Adoption
• Utilize new features

 Where and how are you using Fluid?

We replaced our classic homepage tabs/ pagelets/ works centers with homepages/titles/Fluid navigation collection and Fluid dashboards. Currently, we are using a few of the delivered Fluid tiles such as News, Pay, and My Team.

Our PeopleSoft Interaction Hub uses Unified Navigation to combine homepages and tiles from all our PeopleSoft systems together for the end user, in an intuitive and enterprise-focused fashion. End-users can create their own homepages.

How are you rolling out Fluid User Interface to your end Users (e.g pilot, phased, big bang, etc?)

We used the big bang approach by transitioning from Classic to Fluid UI for all the PeopleSoft applications for all users; including students, staff and faculty. We have had the Fluid UI running since November 2016.

What was your experience in deploying Fluid? What did you learn that other customers could benefit from?

We did several things to engage the user community early to get their feedback on several things.  We started out with a new user interface mock-up to get pilot feedback, hosting workshops and running multiple user experience open-houses throughout the project to inform design. The workshops enabled the users to get hands-on experience with the upgraded system and new navigation; this helped us to have early champions/change agents. We also provided several learning assets such as  video, tip sheets, and WebEx sessions on the new user interface and new features. We also offered lots of demos via town halls, user groups, steering committees, and sustainability meetings. Additionally, we provided drop-in sessions.

What obstacles, if any, did you encounter in deploying Fluid?

The deployment of Unified Navigation among the Fluid PeopleTools environments was technically challenging. We found it useful to leverage the delivered vanilla images to simplify the deployment of United Navigation and to troubleshoot issues that were identified in our development instance.

These were some of the most common issues and questions our users had:

• Missing breadcrumbs since there is no main menu navigation
• Losing their favorites
• Different navigation: multiple homepages (tabs replaced by homepages) and “Where do I find …?”
• Seamless integration to classic applications, different PeopleTools versions (CS &DW)
• Technical issues: multiple bugs identified for the Interaction Hub during the upgrade

What concerns, if any, did your company have in deploying Fluid?

Our Power users still miss breadcrumbs and have expressed difficulty navigating in the Nav Bar. We have attempted to pivot our end users to build personalized homepages along with utilizing navigation collections for most commonly used links.

Are you deploying Fluid as delivered? If not, how customized / modified are you and why?

We have deployed Fluid User Interface along with some Fluid delivered tiles. Regarding homepages, we have used a combination of delivered and new pages. We have also branded the user interface. As we have been exploring push notifications, we have requested a few new features from Oracle to help enhance the functionality of push notifications.

Since deploying Fluid, what benefit have you seen for you and your company? 

Our end users think that the new user interface is more aesthetically pleasing and those who have leveraged homepages like working with them. Additionally, the Navigation Collections and Title dashboards have been very useful to simplify navigation.

What service partner did you work with, if any?

We did all our work in-house, so we did not use any service partners. As early adopters, we worked closely with Oracle Support to provide us with guidance for configuration issues that arose.

Where do you want to take your company’s Fluid strategy in the next two to three years?

We want to see continuous improvement. We are excited to embrace and leverage new technology.