Shelby Klingerman, Content Curator |

The new release of PeopleTools 8.57 was recently announced, and it is currently available to customers who are on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. PeopleTools 8.57 will be available for general download for on-premises environments in January 2019. There is no difference between the Cloud version and the on-premises version of the release.

A recent article from David Bain, Senior Director of PeopleTools Product Management at Oracle explains the decision to release PeopleTools in Cloud first, citing the most significant reason as building awareness of the benefits of running PeopleSoft applications in Oracle Cloud. For more information about why PeopleTools 8.57 was released in the Cloud before on-premise, check out the full article from Oracle.

David Bain and Matthew Haavisto also gave a presentation that provided an overview of what new features to expect in the new release of PeopleTools 8.57. The pair explained that the goal for PeopleTools 8.57 is to allow customers to continue to improve their system and processes through:

• Optimizing the User Interface to make users more productive
• Isolating customizations to make applying changes easier
• Migrating to the Oracle Cloud to lower capital expenditures
• Automating lifecycle processes to make adoption of new features easier
• Preparing to adopt new technology

To help break it down, let’s focus on isolating customizations.

 Isolate Customizations

There are several features that already exist in PeopleSoft that help customers reduce or eliminate the need for customizations. Some of these tools include Event Mapping, Page and Field Configurator, and Page Composer. For information about enhancements to these features, check out the full presentation.

Drop Zones

One feature that is new in 8.57 is Drop Zones, which are areas on Fluid pages that will be bypassed by standard LCM compare processes. This new feature allows you to inject a custom subpage onto a delivered page. With Drop Zones, you can make changes to the system to meet your unique requirements without making customizations. This means the changes will not be affected at the time of upgrades. Here’s a breakdown of some of the benefits and challenges of Drop Zones:

Benefits

• You can have customer added fields with no lifecycle impact
• Drop Zones utilize the full power of PeopleTools
• This will reduce LCM time for pages with custom fields
• It works on Fluid pages

Challenges

• It does not eliminate work for developers (App Designer)
• It will not minimize implementation or customization time
• Some pages don’t and won’t work
• There is no support for Classic pages as of now

Application teams can add Drop Zones to components that can support the feature. In the future, new Fluid components will be built with Drop Zones in mind, and the feature may be enhanced to support more pages.

Approach to Isolating Customizations

There are two approaches that customers can take when working to isolate customizations: Expresso or Slow Drip.

The Expresso Approach is a one-time effort to isolate as many customizations as possible. It might occur during an Image upgrade when a customer is trying to “true up.” To do this, you can use Event Mapping, Drop Zones, or Page and Field Configuration to the fullest extent possible. With this approach, success rates tend to be around 80 to 90 percent of PeopleCode removed from a system.

With the Slow Drip Approach, customers migrate customizations when they show as a conflict in a Change Assistant compare report. Over time, the product areas will return to generic. You’ll need to plan time to do this in each PUM application cycle.

Learn More

For more information about what you can do with the new features in PeopleTools 8.57, check out the full presentation: PeopleSoft PeopleTools 8.57 Overview.