Oracle reassures PeopleSoft users of future investment

Oracle has confirmed its commitment to continue investing in its PeopleSoft product at the UK Oracle User Group's (UKOUG) conference for the community.

The company was eager to reassure PeopleSoft users that its Fusion Applications did not mean an end to the PeopleSoft product line.

"No, Fusion is not impacting investment in PeopleSoft. There is a way of coexisting Fusion and PeopleSoft," said Rosie Warner, HCM business development director at Oracle.

"There was some concern about the impact of Fusion on PeopleSoft, but once users attended the session [on the PeopleSoft roadmap at the UKOUG conference], they seemed far more comfortable that there is a roadmap for them."

Customers can adopt PeopleSoft and Fusion in a coexistent model because the Fusion Apps use common data structures, which mean that information can be shared between the two systems in a unified way.

Warner said that there are currently 110 customers globally who have gone down the coexistent route, and a further 140 customers live or imminently live on HR Fusion.

The take-up of the PeopleSoft product is still strong, however, as customers are free to choose the option that is simplest for them, Warner said.

Source: http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/applications/3340835/oracle-reassures-peoplesoft-users-of-future-investment/

New Red Paper Available on Crafting a Great User Experience for PeopleSoft

Many people don't realize that they can craft a rich, web site-based user experience with PeopleSoft.  Now there is a new available that provides a practical guide for technical users, installers, system administrators, and programmers who implement, maintain, or develop applications for your PeopleSoft system. This red paper, provides a guide on how to configure a contemporary user experience using PeopleSoft Applications Portal.

The red paper contains information on the following essential topics:

·       Branding

·       Creating a Portal header definition

·       Customizing the Homepage Tab layout

·       Customizing Pagelet Layout and Behavior

·       How to build rich pagelets using Pagelet Wizard

·       Creating Navigation Collection-Based Accordion Style Pagelets

·       Creating News Publication Based Slide Show Pagelets

·       Creating HTML Pagelets with Rich Content

·       Navigation Collections (several topics)

The paper also cover application integration with Portal:

·       Configuring Unified Navigation

·       Consuming Content Provider Pagelets

In addition to the Portal, the new workcenter framework is also covered, as are Collaborative Workspaces. 

·       Customizing the WorkCenter Layout

·       Customizing the Workspace Branding Theme

There is great detail provided in this paper, and should prove useful to anyone deploying PeopleSoft's Applications Portal.

PeopleSoft Long Term Investement Plan and Roadmap

Customers often ask us, "what's next for the PeopleSoft product line?"    We are happy to answer that there is a lot happening,  because we are working on many exciting things for PeopleSoft products.  For examples of some of this, check out our recent releases of Feature Packs for HCM and Financial/SCM.  We are also posting examples of cool new features in our Video Feature Overviews.  We want to get as much of this information to our customers as possible, so not long ago we published a multi-year roadmap that went well beyond a typical Statement of Direction for the next planned release.  It included both functional and technical directions for all PeopleSoft products over multiple years.  A number of the features highlighted in this original road map document have now been delivered with the culmination of 9.1 Feature Pack 2 and PeopleTools 8.52.  We've now included additional updates for PeopleSoft 9.2 and beyond.

This document is available on My Oracle Support for all Oracle customers with a valid MOS login:

PeopleSoft Long Term Investment Plan and Roadmap

Oracle's PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2 Delivers New Capabilities that Enhance and Streamline Business Processes

New Features Help Accelerate Business Performance and Lower Total Costs of Ownership for PeopleSoft Customers

Redwood Shores, Calif. – Feb. 16, 2012

News Facts

To help improve employee productivity, automate compliance and financial controls, and deliver greater industry depth, Oracle today announced the availability of Oracle’s PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management (FSCM) 9.1 Feature Pack 2.

Developed to accelerate business performance and lower total cost of ownership, PeopleSoft FSCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2 offers new applications for financial governance and control, healthcare materials management and enterprise service automation.

Oracle’s Feature Packs delivery method underscores its commitment to provide new functionality between major releases. Feature Packs enable a quicker response to PeopleSoft customer requests, while giving customers the ultimate choice of how and when to deploy new functionality to their users.

PeopleSoft FSCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2 Features and Details

PeopleSoft FSCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2 delivers new applications and capabilities for financial governance and control, healthcare materials management and enterprise service automation.

New financial governance and control features are designed to:

Streamline integration: Oracle Enterprise Transaction Controls Governor is now integrated with PeopleSoft Procure-to-Pay to allow customers to audit transactions according to their industry and organization policies. Additionally, PeopleSoft Global Payroll is now integrated to PeopleSoft Cash Management to enable customers to comply with the upcoming Euro Zone Single European Payment Area (SEPA) payment format.

Increase employee productivity: New capabilities allow customers to approve multiple general ledger journals at one time, while providing visibility into the graphical approval chain and access to attachments and comments. The approval framework is also extended to commitment control budgets for publicly funded customers that need to support control budgeting and encumbrance accounting.

New healthcare materials management features are designed to:

Streamline inventory management: Updates to PeopleSoft Mobile Inventory Managementinclude the ability to capture digital signatures on deliveries for “chain of custody” tracking of controlled substances and expensive materials or samples.

Expanded industry standards support: The implementation and use of Global Location Number (GLN) has been expanded to support current global standards outlined in GS1 directives for Healthcare in the PeopleSoft eProcurement and PeopleSoft Purchasing. In addition, mobile transactions have been enhanced to recognize the Global Trade Identification Number (GTIN) when scanned in lieu of a PeopleSoft Item ID.

New enterprise service automation features are designed to:

Optimize contract revenue management: A new Contracts Workbench user interface inPeopleSoft Contracts enables contract administrators to easily and effectively handle large contract portfolios by organizing critical award, contract and project information for rapid access and updating.

Enhance project management: Integration of PeopleSoft Program Management andOracle's Primavera P6 Enterprise PPM 8.1 allows organizations to streamline information flows between field project managers and financial operations staff to improve the quality of accounting, increase project success rates and accelerate cash flow.

Increased productivity and effectiveness of staffing: New portal pagelets, flexible agenda management tools, a job board distribution integration framework and enhancements to the recruiting funnel and the candidate overview in PeopleSoft Staffing Front Office help increase order fill rates and raise customer satisfaction.

Supporting Quotes

“Throughout the year, we collaborate with Oracle’s PeopleSoft development team regarding requirements and designs for product enhancements. We are very pleased to see Oracle translating the feedback from concept into real product so rapidly and delivering new capabilities that we at the University of Massachusetts view as valuable to our user community,” said Holly Wang, Director of Grant and Contract Administration, University of Massachusetts President's Office.

“To quickly and easily extend the value delivered by Oracle’s PeopleSoft 9.1, customers are increasingly leveraging Oracle’s Feature Packs to access new capabilities,” said Paco Aubrejuan, group vice president, Oracle’s PeopleSoft Applications. “The new applications and features delivered in Oracle’s PeopleSoft FSCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2 are designed to help customers streamline and enhance financial governance and control, healthcare materials management and enterprise service automation. By delivering such a comprehensive Feature Pack, Oracle is further demonstrating its commitment to delivering best-in-class solutions to PeopleSoft.”

Source: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1523960

University of Puget Sound Selects Oracle's PeopleSoft Applications to Facilitate Information Exchange and Enhance Strategic Reporting Capabilities

--  Oracle today announced that the University of Puget Sound, a national

            undergraduate liberal arts college in Tacoma, Washington with 2,600

            students, has selected Oracle's PeopleSoft applications and Oracle

            Hyperion Public Sector Budgeting and Planning running on Oracle

            Database to overhaul its legacy student, financial and human resources

            systems. The new systems will help facilitate more efficient

            inter-campus information sharing and enhance analytics capabilities

            for administrators.

--  Puget Sound's legacy student administration system was developed

            in-house and was nearing end-of-life. Its maintenance costs were

            escalating and it lacked meaningful reporting, forecasting and

            analytics capabilities. The institution needed new student, financial

            and human resources solutions to meet dynamic constituent and student

            needs, facilitate complete data transfers between departments and

            ensure efficient and cost effective maintenance.

--  After an exhaustive RFP process, Puget Sound selected Oracle's

            PeopleSoft Financials, PeopleSoft Human Resources, PeopleSoft Student

            Administration and Oracle Hyperion Public Sector Budgeting and

            Planning, all running on Oracle Database. The institution selected

            Oracle's PeopleSoft applications due to their flexibility, ability to

            exchange data with external systems, reporting and budgeting tools and

            Oracle's longstanding support for the higher education community.

--  By selecting Oracle applications, Puget Sound is looking to

            standardize business processes and adopt best practices. Specifically,

            the institution will leverage more robust reporting and analytics

            capabilities to assist in strategic planning and decision-making and

            compete more effectively with peer institutions in delivering new

            features that students and staff expect, such as sharing information

            via mobile applications.

 --  Puget Sound recently began the implementation and will complete its

            project, known as "Optimize Puget Sound," in December 2013. Once

            complete, the new system will provide access to approximately 3,700

            users, including students, faculty and staff. The institution is

            working with Oracle Gold Partner MIS, Inc. on the implementation.

Full article here

PeopleSoft 9.1 Feature Highlight: Forms and Approval Builder

OVERVIEW

PeopleSoft Forms and Approval Builder is part of Common Components 9.1, therefore available for use throughout all of the PeopleSoft HCM and FMS modules.  It allows a business analyst or other non-developer PeopleSoft application expert to create simple forms and establish an approval for the content.

HOW-TO

Begin with creating the form using the Design Form Wizard.

Navigation:  Main Menu > Enterprise Components > Forms > Design a Form

1.      Basic Information – enter information about the form, including effective date and a description.

2.      Instructions – enter instructions that will be available for users accessing the form.

3.      Form Fields – enter the fields that will be available for users accessing the form.  Fields of a variety of data types are displayed in one or two columns.  You can enter a short and long label, indicate if a field is required, designate a prompt record, and define a prompt control for the field against an existing field and record.

4.      Attachments – indicate if any attachments should be made available to users accessing the form, for example a policy or template document.

5.      Publish to a Menu – designate where the form should be accessed on the PeopleSoft menu.

6.      Approval Process – designate the chain of approval the form should go through, if needed, and if the fields on the form should be locked down after submission, approval, or not at all.

After creating the form, it can be previewed in design mode, prior to activation onto the PeopleSoft menu.  Activate the form to make it available to users on the menu as designated.

When a user accesses a form, three tabs are available.

1.      Form

2.      Instructions – displays the instructions entered during form creation.

3.      Attachments – provides access to any attachments assigned during form creation and allows the user to upload a form as well.

As an added bonus, you can connect data collected on a form to one or more component interfaces in an effort to eliminate redundant data entry.  (Example:  new vendor request form can feed into adding a vendor.)

Full article here.

PeopleSoft & Oracle Secure Enterprise Search (SES)

Oracle Secure Enterprise Search (SES) provides a familiar user interface to internet search users and gives secure access to all of your organization’s data sources—Web sites, file servers, content management systems, enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management systems, business intelligence systems, and databases.

Looks familiar?

That is indeed familiar, that’s Google with an Oracle logo… Oracle seems to have build a search engine and has made use of the familiarity of the Google GUI and behaviour to position this tool. Oracle is supplying SES as stand alone product and has integrated SES with it’s other products like Siebel, JD Edwards, E-Business Suite & PeopleSoft.

Where Google will search the internet based on supplied keywords, SES will search your Enterprise data based on keywords. Oracle has created an embedded framework in PeopleSoft to integrate and communicate with SES, called PeopleSoft Search FrameWork.

PeopleSoft Search Framework is a PeopleTools 8.52 indexed search technology that relies on Oracle SES (Secure Enterprise Search) engine by way of Integration Broker. It leverages indexes, and requires the use of PeopleSoft Query or Connected Query to create search definitions that identify the objects and attributes to make available to the indexes. Integration Broker provides the interface between PeopleSoft Search Framework and Oracle SES engine to deploy the search definitions, build the indexes, and return the search results.

PeopleSoft Search Framework supports both application (global) and search pages (component) search capabilities. Application search provides an alternate navigation mechanism that bypasses the classic PeopleSoft navigation. The Search Pages feature allows keyword-based searches within administrative components. Both searches target the PeopleSoft pages and components as if you navigated directly to them, while providing flexibility in searching. Data is secured so that search results return only data rows to which the user has role and permission list access. Users can choose to display the search results in list or grid format.

Full article here.

Oracle's PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2 Delivers New Capabilities that Enhance and Streamline Business Processes

To help improve employee productivity, automate compliance and financial controls, and deliver greater industry depth, Oracle today announced the availability of Oracle’s PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management (FSCM) 9.1 Feature Pack 2.

Developed to accelerate business performance and lower total cost of ownership, PeopleSoft FSCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2 offers new applications for financial governance and control, healthcare materials management and enterprise service automation.

Oracle’s Feature Packs delivery method underscores its commitment to provide new functionality between major releases. Feature Packs enable a quicker response to PeopleSoft customer requests, while giving customers the ultimate choice of how and when to deploy new functionality to their users.

PeopleSoft FSCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2 Features and Details
PeopleSoft FSCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2 delivers new applications and capabilities for financial governance and control, healthcare materials management and enterprise service automation.

New financial governance and control features are designed to:
• Streamline integration: Oracle Enterprise Transaction Controls Governor is now integrated with PeopleSoft Procure-to-Pay to allow customers to audit transactions according to their industry and organization policies. Additionally, PeopleSoft Global Payroll is now integrated to PeopleSoft Cash Management to enable customers to comply with the upcoming Euro Zone Single European Payment Area (SEPA) payment format.
• Increase employee productivity: New capabilities allow customers to approve multiple general ledger journals at one time, while providing visibility into the graphical approval chain and access to attachments and comments. The approval framework is also extended to commitment control budgets for publicly funded customers that need to support control budgeting and encumbrance accounting.

New healthcare materials management features are designed to:
• Streamline inventory management: Updates to PeopleSoft Mobile Inventory Management include the ability to capture digital signatures on deliveries for “chain of custody” tracking of controlled substances and expensive materials or samples.
• Expanded industry standards support: The implementation and use of Global Location Number (GLN) has been expanded to support current global standards outlined in GS1 directives for Healthcare in the PeopleSoft eProcurement and PeopleSoft Purchasing. In addition, mobile transactions have been enhanced to recognize the Global Trade Identification Number (GTIN) when scanned in lieu of a PeopleSoft Item ID.

New enterprise service automation features are designed to:
• Optimize contract revenue management: A new Contracts Workbench user interface in PeopleSoft Contracts enables contract administrators to easily and effectively handle large contract portfolios by organizing critical award, contract and project information for rapid access and updating.
• Enhance project management: Integration of PeopleSoft Program Management and Oracle's Primavera P6 Enterprise PPM 8.1 allows organizations to streamline information flows between field project managers and financial operations staff to improve the quality of accounting, increase project success rates and accelerate cash flow.
• Increased productivity and effectiveness of staffing: New portal pagelets, flexible agenda management tools, a job board distribution integration framework and enhancements to the recruiting funnel and the candidate overview in PeopleSoft Staffing Front Office help increase order fill rates and raise customer satisfaction.

Supporting Quotes
“Throughout the year, we collaborate with Oracle’s PeopleSoft development team regarding requirements and designs for product enhancements. We are very pleased to see Oracle translating the feedback from concept into real product so rapidly and delivering new capabilities that we at the University of Massachusetts view as valuable to our user community,” said Holly Wang, Director of Grant and Contract Administration, University of Massachusetts President's Office.

“To quickly and easily extend the value delivered by Oracle’s PeopleSoft 9.1, customers are increasingly leveraging Oracle’s Feature Packs to access new capabilities,” said Paco Aubrejuan, group vice president, Oracle’s PeopleSoft Applications. “The new applications and features delivered in Oracle’s PeopleSoft FSCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2 are designed to help customers streamline and enhance financial governance and control, healthcare materials management and enterprise service automation. By delivering such a comprehensive Feature Pack, Oracle is further demonstrating its commitment to delivering best-in-class solutions to PeopleSoft.”

About Oracle Applications
Over 65,000 customers worldwide rely on Oracle's complete, open and integrated enterprise applications to achieve superior results. Oracle provides a secure path for customers to benefit from the latest technology advances that performance. Oracle Applications Unlimited (oracle.com/application) is Oracle's commitment to customer choice through continuous investment and innovation in current applications offerings. Oracle's next-generation Fusion Applications build upon that commitment, and are designed to work with and evolve Oracle's Applications Unlimited offerings. Oracle's lifetime support policy helps ensure customers will continue to have a choice in upgrade paths, based on their enterprise needs.

About Oracle
Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center.

Trademarks
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Contact Info
Simon Jones, Blanc & Otus
P: +1.415.856.5155 - E: sjones[.]blancandotus.com.

Oracle upgrades PeopleSoft FSCM 9.1 with Feature Pack 2

Offers new applications for financial governance and control, healthcare materials management and enterprise service automation

Oracle has released PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management (FSCM) 9.1 Feature Pack 2, said to have been designed to help improve employee productivity, automate compliance and financial controls and deliver industry depth.

PeopleSoft FSCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2 offers new applications for financial governance and control, healthcare materials management and enterprise service automation.

The new financial governance and control features are designed to streamline integration by combining Oracle Enterprise Transaction Controls Governor with PeopleSoft Procure-to-Pay to allow customers to audit transactions according to their industry and organisation policies.

It also increases employee productivity by introducing new capabilities, which allow customers to approve multiple general ledger journals at one time, while providing visibility into the graphical approval chain and access to attachments and comments.

New healthcare materials management streamlines the inventory management by updating PeopleSoft Mobile Inventory Management.

New enterprise service automation features are designed to optimise contract revenue management, enhance project management by integrating PeopleSoft Program Management and Oracle's Primavera P6 Enterprise PPM 8.1 and to deliver increased productivity and effectiveness of staffing.

Oracle PeopleSoft Applications group vice-president Paco Aubrejuan said the new applications and features delivered in Oracle's PeopleSoft FSCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2 are designed to help customers streamline and enhance financial governance and control, healthcare materials management and enterprise service automation.

Oracle Again Waives Extended Support Fees for E-Business Suite

Oracle has given customers running version 12.0 of its E-Business Suite software a reprieve from extended support fees, which would have kicked in this month, increasing the maintenance payments they were already making.

The waiver runs through January 2015, according to a recent post on an official company blog. Customers are still required to meet minimum patching baselines, according to Oracle.

Last year, the vendor previously waived first-year extended support fees for E-Business Suite 12.1, covering June 2014 through May 2015. It also granted a waiver on extended support fees for EBS 11i for the period spanning November 2010 to November 2013.

Extended support kicks in on Oracle products after an initial five-year premier support window expires. It retains most of the features found in premier support, such as bug fixes and regulatory updates, but Oracle may not certify that the product being supported works seamlessly with most new Oracle and third-party products.

Full article here.

PeopleSoft Mobile Inventory - YouTube

PeopleSoft Mobile Inventory Management enables users to perform tasks using handheld ...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFqQI2ahiaI

Oracle Delivers New Release of Oracle's PeopleSoft PeopleTools

Enhanced Search Capabilities, New Dashboards and iPad Certification in PeopleTools 8.52 Improve End User Productivity and Usability

News Facts

Reinforcing its commitment to help customers maximize the value of Oracle’s PeopleSoft applications, Oracle today announced a new release of Oracle’s PeopleSoft PeopleTools.

PeopleSoft PeopleTools 8.52 includes valuable enhancements to the user interface, search functionality and reporting capabilities designed to improve end user productivity and reduce the total cost of ownership for PeopleSoft customers.

As part of the upgrade, all versions of PeopleSoft are now fully supported on the iPad, enabling customers to access any version of PeopleSoft applications anywhere and at any time through the intuitive iPad user interface.

Functionality Updates Drive User Adoption and Productivity

Oracle’s PeopleSoft PeopleTools is a comprehensive development toolset that enables application developers to build and customize PeopleSoft applications quickly and easily.

Enhancements within PeopleSoft PeopleTools 8.52 include:

Intuitive keyword search: PeopleSoft Application Search simplifies the navigation of application content, business objects and business processes. This version of PeopleTools provides simple, familiar searching capabilities, similar to a common search engine, enabling users to quickly and easily find critical information. In order to provide even greater levels of productivity, the new PeopleTools search includes an integrated related-action framework that enables users to take contextual actions directly from the search results.

Mobile access on the iPad: Certification for the iPad gives PeopleSoft users an intuitive and safe platform with functionality targeted to optimize their dynamic business needs. Oracle is the only enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendor that offers a comprehensive enterprise suite on the iPad.

Interactive user interface: Updated, interactive pagelets and inter-pagelet communication features in Workcenters and Dashboards enable the configuration and deployment of functionally rich, highly usable applications.

Integrated reporting functionality: Data retrieval and reporting enhancements for Oracle BI Publisher, PeopleSoft Query, Pivot Grids, Oracle Essbase and nVision improve user productivity.

The release of PeopleTools 8.52 is the latest update Oracle has delivered to extend the value of PeopleSoft applications between major releases. This new release of PeopleTools powers Oracle’s recently introduced Oracle’s PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2, which delivered key updates to user experience, navigation and search.

Supporting Quotes

“Oracle delivers once again with PeopleTools 8.52! The functionality in PeopleTools 8.52 harnesses all the features that end-users need with an intuitive interface,” said Lawrence J. Bastianelli III, Global Director – HRIS, Covidien.

“Thousands of customers around the world depend on Oracle’s PeopleSoft to help run their organizations, and any way we can improve user experience and adoption directly supports their business success,” said Paco Aubrejuan, group vice president, Oracle’s PeopleSoft. “With the release of Oracle’s PeopleSoft PeopleTools 8.52, we have delivered improvements to user interface, search and mobility to extend the value of PeopleSoft to our customers.”

SAP Leads, Oracle Lags In Enterprise Apps

The results are in from most of the top names in on-premises ERP software, and the results are clear: SAP is leading, Infor and Epicor are doing well, but Oracle is lagging big time.

SAP on Friday released preliminary numbers for its fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, 2011, that showed software revenue increased 16% over the year-earlier period (17% in constant currencies) to 1.74 billion Euros ($2.2 billion). Software and software-related services revenue were up 12% over Q4 2010 to 3.72 billion euros ($4.7 billion), handily beating analyst's estimates of 3.6 billion Euros.

By contrast, Oracle's software sales for its fiscal second quarter ended Nov. 30 were up just 2% compared with the year-earlier quarter, whereas analysts expected at least a 7% increase.

The contrast is even sharper if you separate software revenues by type. Oracle's new-license revenues for databases and middleware were up 4% while applications revenue--primarily ERP and CRM--actually declined by 2%. Oracle blamed the overall shortfall on purchase delays tied to new internal approval requirements at customer firms.

Read the full article here.

User Experience Enhancements Available Today in PeopleSoft 9.1 and PeopleTools 8.52

You’ve heard it from the Oracle Applications User Experience team before – one key way Oracle is continuing the commitment to applications customers is through user experience enhancements.

At OpenWorld 2011, in October in San Francisco, we got to hear it straight from the executives. The Group Vice President for PeopleSoft, Paco Aubrejuan, and the Senior Director of PeopleSoft Development, Jeff Robbins, spoke directly to both the applications improvements as well as the user experience enhancements in the tools.

Read more about how you can create a cleaner, more modern look with new user experience features available in PeopleSoft and PeopleTools. This screenshot shows the type of website-centric approach that is possible with today’s PeopleSoft.

This is a smart strategy. Improvements in the application translate into immediate value for a customer. But what happens when that same customer wants to extend the experience, to customize, or to add new components? With a tool set that is just as focused on user experience, Oracle delivers a complete experience to customers.

To read more about what is newly available in PeopleSoft, visit Usable Apps.

Oracle to confirm commitment to non-Fusion applications

Oracle will reconfirm its commitment to upgrading its non-Fusion applications at the UK Oracle User Group conference on Tuesday.

The company first announced its 'applications unlimited' policy back five years ago, its pledge to continue investing in and developing the applications that existed before Fusion indefinitely. These include E-Business Suite, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft and Siebel.

In his keynote presentation at the conference, Rajan Krishnan, VP of applications product development and product management for EMEA at Oracle, will review the upgrade releases for the applications over the past few years and provide a technology roadmap for the future capabilities of the applications.

Krishnan will also outline different approaches that users could take to adopting Fusion technologies.

For users who want to keep their existing applications, for example, he will explain how they can take advantage of Fusion middleware to create a standardized platform on which to run the different applications.

"If you have PeopleSoft or Siebel and you want to standardize the user interface, you can take the WebCentre [the user engagement platform] of Fusion middleware and create a UI [that sits behind all the different applications]," Krishnan said.

In addition, Krishnan will explain how Fusion Applications can be deployed either on-premise, in the cloud or as a mixture of both.

He will illustrate Fusion apps deployment cases with examples from Boeing and Principal Financial Group.

Source: http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=1E600A91-0CEB-0738-162E707585D1944A

IT User Adoption Survey - UPK Users we need YOU!

Oracle UPK is teaming with Neochange, a recognized user adoption leader, to produce the 4th IT Adoption Insight Report

Complete the following survey for a chance to win an Apple IPad!*

Help develop insight into the challenges and trends occurring in IT Adoption by participating in the 2012 survey. The information gathered is used to prepare the 2012 IT Adoption Insight Report, used by industry leaders to understand challenges and trends in IT Adoption. This year the report focuses on understanding the business impact of various end-user strategies and adoption barriers.

This survey should take no more than 15 minutes of your time and each participant will receive a complimentary copy of the report:https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2012_Adoption_Insight_Report

To view the prior report: IT Adoption Insight Report

Thank you in advance for your participation!

*One Apple iPad will be given away to a randomly selected survey participant who completes the survey by January 15, 2012. The winner will be notified by email by January 31, 2012.

Oracle's PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2 Delivers New HR Self Service User Experience

Oracle has introduced PeopleSoft HCM (Human Capital Management) 9.1 Feature Pack 2 which provides a consumer-like self-service user experience to improve the way employees and managers perform their day-to-day activities. Oracle's Feature Packs enable a quicker response to PeopleSoft customer requests, while enabling customers to choose how and when to deploy the new functionality to their users.

A new search-based, menu-free navigation capability allows users to locate and navigate to relevant information quickly and in context from any page. Using a global search capability that goes beyond simple transaction based search, PeopleSoft delivers search results have filtering and specific related actions based on defined roles and security of the user. For example, a manager can now simply type in part of an employee's first or last name and receive meaningful results from documents related to performance, compensation, learning, recruiting, career planning and more. Key HCM data is indexed to speed the search process and improve search relevancy.

A new design provides greater personalization using pagelets that make PeopleSoft HCM easier to use, with a more appealing user interface, as well as reduced click counts on key transactions. The feature pack includes a new Manager Dashboard, Talent Summary, Matrix Organization, and Pivot Grid functionality, among other new capabilities.

"Oracle's PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2 delivers a new navigation paradigm for our HCM community," said Paco Aubrejuan, group vice president, Oracle's PeopleSoft. "We listened to our HCM customers and focused on delivering features like Manager Dashboard and Talent Summary to help managers be more productive at managing their resources, better utilize and reward their employees, and gain valuable insight into their organization and talent pool."

For more details, go here. 

Repeating first item in XMLP reports

n an XMLP report, I was finding that the first item (first data entry) was being repeated in the report. The remainder of the items in the report were displaying as expected. After some investigation, a colleague pointed out that this was caused by the root element and data tags having the same value:

For example:

 <?xml version='1.0'?> <DATA> <DATA> </DATA> </DATA>

The key is that the tag <DATA> is both the root level element and the tag used by the data elements.

The XML format actually required is this:

 <?xml version='1.0'?> <ROOT_ELEMENT> <DATA> </DATA> </ROOT_ELEMENT>

What was causing the issue in this case was the XML file layout field tag. This is set in the file layout properties in the use tab. There is a field there called File Definition Tag. This is where you set the root element tag:

       

Full article here.