Recap: PeopleTools 8.60

A great Quest PeopleSoft Week was had! Among several sessions that Astute hosted, one of them was about the new PeopleTools 8.60.

Highlights:

• PeopleTools 8.60 features
• Live Demo of some of the 8.60 features
• Why upgrade to latest PeopleTools
• Why PeopleTools upgrade on OCI
• Issues and Challenges during the upgrade

Why Upgrade to PeopleTools 8.6 is easier on OCI:

• One-click Upgrade
• One-click Cloning/Provisioning
• Elasticsearch
• Management utilities
• Speed of Deployment
• Operational Cost Reduction
• PeopleSoft Upgrade Automation
• Higher Performance
• Increased Security

To learn more about why staying current on PeopleTools is important, check out this blog:

New Features in PeopleTools 8.6

1. PeopleTools 8.60 that was released in Oct 2022 was Cloud First delivery. This was released for on-prem later on December 1, 2022.
2. The default branding is Redwood with Redwood color scheme, icons, and UI patterns across the application. It also offers co-branding features which can be used to create your own branding and save it for future upgrades.
3. In Application Engine, there is a feature called Selective Tracing which can be used to set trace options for selected PeopleSoft and SQL trace output. The display of Application Engine can be zoomed in/out.
4. Application Designer
   • Drop zones for CI - Component interface offers the support for fields from your custom subpages that are dynamically added to the component buffer at runtime.
   • Mask data in PeopleCode trace - ‘Do Not Trace Value’ check box on the Record Field Properties page in Application Designer to mask the passwords and PII record fields.
   • Page modifications don’t erase grid personalization - Modifications to pages with grids will no longer erase user personalizations for those grids.
5. Fluid Application
   • Global Search is available on all PeopleSoft pages. Below screenshot how the Global search is available on a small form factor such as mobile, ipad and tablet.
   
   • Quick access bar - The quick access bar buttons are located on the banner and provide one-click access to your Favorites and Recently Visited items.
   
   • Spell Check Available for Rich Text Editor Fields
   • Transparent Borderless Buttons - The push buttons can be made to look transparent and borderless using the psc_button-transparent style. These can be used on standard text buttons, text and image buttons, and image-only buttons.
   • Customize ‘Recently visited’ - The ‘Recently Visited’ can be customized to display up to 50 items. The default is 10.
6. User Interface
   • Device type in System Information page - The different device types from which you are accessing the application can be viewed in System Information page.
   • Redwood color scheme and banner layout changes
   
7. PeopleCode - There have been several new classes, methods, built-in functions, Meta SQLs added in PeopleTools 8.60. There will be a few built in functions to be deprecated in future release (Decrypt, Encrypt, and EncryptNodePswd)
8. Search Technology
   • Configurable Search - Configurable Search provides a consistent search experience for users in classic and fluid components.
   
   • Mask your data at the Query Level for Global Search and Kibana
9. Reporting and Analytics
   • Composite Query Scheduler - A run control ID can be used to schedule a composite query using the Schedule Composite Query page. The run status can be checked using the Process Monitor link, and the report can be viewed using the Report Manager link.
   • System-level settings for pop-up notifications - Select a system-level setting on the Process Scheduler Settings page to enable or disable pop-up notifications for Process Run Status changes and Distribution Status changes.
   • Option to select Date Range filters after displaying all process requests .
   • The processes are listed in Hierarchal order in the process monitor.
   • Run Control ID is available to be seen in the Process List Grid.
10. Test Framework
    • Support Chrome and Edge for recording - PTF now supports recording tests in Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers.
    • BYOD - Users can download the latest version at the time of using PTF. PTF is enhanced to verify the availability of drivers in the PTF install folder.
11. Password length - As a security measure, the passwords can be now set to upto 64 characters length.
12. User Profiles - Now we can specify account lock date on the User profile.

Let us now get into the details of the benefits of upgrading to PeopleTools on OCI.

• One-click Upgrade - Choose one of your application images from your cloud repository and the latest Tools version, the app will be upgraded as part of the provisioning process.
• One-click Cloning/Provisioning - Clone existing environment or create a new one with the latest PUM.
• Elasticsearch - Simplified provisioning includes deployment and configuration of Elasticsearch.
• Management utilities - Monitor, pause and terminate deployed environments.
• Speed of Deployment - One-click provisioning of the entire PeopleSoft stack. No more manual installations, automated Lift and Shift to OCI, Use Terraform to automate complete infrastructure build.
• Operational Cost Reduction - No upfront investment in hardware. Pay ONLY for what you consume, dynamically start and stop instances.
• PeopleSoft Upgrade Automation - One-click Tools 8.59/8.60 Upgrade, Tools Patching. Accelerate and simplify Upgrades and Patching with Cloud Manager, OCI DbaaS one-click patching and more.
• Higher Performance - Bare Metal and Dense I/O for higher performance. Improve Payroll, batch and online performance
• Increased Security - Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), HIPAA, ISO, SOC, PCI DSS and more.