Our upgrade from PeopleSoft 8.53 to 8.54


Since this article: we have upgraded to tools 8.55, Image 2. Check out the updated Tools 8.55 post.

We upgraded from 8.53.06 Peoplesoft Financials and Interaction Hub to 8.53.10 a couple weeks ago, and I'd like to share some of the additional changes we had to make to ensure both systems continued to work as they did before.  Our main business requirement was for the change for the new 8.54 tools environment to be identical to how it functioned on 8.53, as a number of our other environments (Campus Solutions and HRMS are still on 8.53).  We plan on taking advantage of the fluid design concepts at a later date.  Update March 2017: We have since fully embraced a fluid design: see the document here.

The most important thing to note between 8.53 and 8.54 functionally is that 8.54 introduces a new Fluid Home page which is intended to be run by mobile devices.  It is now very important to test 8.54 using different devices, in addition to different browsers.

Security

As we have in the past, the delivered security roles: PeopleSoft User, PAPP_USER and EOPP_USER are the roles that oracle recommends are needed to get you into the system.  There are a number of iScripts in 8.54 that will need to be added to any basic access permission list you have custom created..

Access to the NUI_FRAMEWORK.PT_LANDINGPAGE menu.component is also required by default in 8.54.


Testing

We tested our 8.54 implementation with the following devices:

PC Tablet Mobile
Win7 - Firefox iOS8 - Safari iOS8 - Safari
Win7 - Chrome iOS9 - Safari iOS9 - Safari
Win7 - IE Android L - Chrome


And noted unexpected results in the Tablet and Mobile tests.  


Using an iPhone 6 or an iPad to sign into an 8.54 environment by default revealed the empty blue screen shown below: 




Within the Web Profile, there is a 'catch all' method to disable this screen:

  • Main Menu - PeopleTools - Web Profile - Web Profile Configuration
  • Search for the Web Profile you are using, and uncheck the: Disable Fluid Mode checkbox.  You will need to reset your web server for this to take effect.
I found this approach a little too broad, as we would like eventually configure and release this screen to our mobile devices when we are ready.  To more surgically disable it, there are a few other options for both mobile and tablet (without any outages):

To disable the fluid home on a Mobile Device:

  • Main Menu - PeopleTools - Portal - Structure and Content
  • Root > Fluid Structure Content > Fluid Homepages
  • Click Edit on My Home Page
  • Click the Tile Content Tab, and disable all the options.

Additionally, if you are using a custom sign-in page (either a pagelet on the home page, or one hosted elsewhere), you can also 'deep link' your regular home page to ensure the fluid one isn't rendering either.  For example:

<form action = "yourserver/psp/ps/EMPLOYEE/NODE/h?tab=CUST_HOME&cmd=login">

When you sign back into the system with your mobile device, you shouldn't see the empty fluid screen.

To disable the fluid home on a Tablet:


You can default your homepage on a tablet via the following settings:
  • Main Menu - PeopleTools - Personalization - Personalization Options
  • Search for Option Category Level: PeopleTools
  • Click 'View All' and Click the Format Tab 
  • Search for HPTABLET
  • Click set Option Default Value
  • Change the Option Default Value to 'Classic'
  • Save

Signing back in with a Tablet (iPad) should render your view back to classic.


Changing these settings back can easily be done, once you are ready to display the Fluid HomePage in PeopleSoft again.

8.54 and Unified Navigation


Our PeopleSoft Interaction Hub had some issues with Unified Navigation after we upgraded to ptools 8.5.4.10 
  1. Folders to other remote content providers (for example HCM 8.5.3.6) would not appear
  2. The 'Fanning' of the Main Menu on FSCM 8.5.4.10 would take you out of IH.  For example, you click Main Menu - Finance (the yellow folder icon to 'fan the menu').  Any subsequent links in the fanning list would log you out.

For the first issue, there was a workaround involving modifying the PT_NAV2 application package available from Oracle: see https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocumentDisplay?id=1957232.1  
The suggestion would be to ensure all your enviroments are at the same tools level: once this is the case, the workaround can be removed.

For the second issue there the suggestion was to upgrade to 8.54.12 ~ we were able to get a hotfix for this bug on our 8.54.10 environment.


Other technical things to watch out for:


signin.html is completely new in 8.54: it looks very blue ~ we customized it to change the look / feel to be more suitable for our organization.  Other pages to consider customizing: expire.html and exception.html as well: this will help keep the system looking consistent.  All these can be found in around:

$PS_CFG_HOME/webserv/$ORACLE_SID/applications/peoplesoft/PORTAL.war/WEB-INF/psftdocs/$ORACLE_SID 

weblogic.xml are also files that could change during an update: ensure the cookie names are correct to the domain, else you could face some instability in browser sessions.