Beginning January 2017 IntraSee is proud to announce that all IntraSee products will be available as components that can be dragged and dropped into Oracle Sites Cloud. What this means is that data and applications from multiple systems can now be fully embedded into Oracle Sites Cloud, providing world class usability solutions out of the box. Systems included will be: PeopleSoft, Taleo, Oracle HCM Cloud, SuccessFactors, salesforce.com, Kronos, and many more. These components will also be available in multiple UI styles, and also as composite components that consolidate from multiple systems.
So why is this big news? Remember June 2007? That was when the iPhone was launched. Remember July 2008? That was when the app store was opened, and that’s when things got really interesting. All of a sudden you could just drag and drop whatever you needed onto your phone, creating instant usability without the need to be a tech guru.
The concept was very simple and summarized with the phrase, “there’s an app for that”. At the time this was a revolutionary, and out of character, move by Apple. Instead of assuming that they knew best what their customers wanted, they decided to embrace the concept of a market, and the idea that if vendors could compete in that market that the ultimate winner would be everyone who owned an iPhone. This would be a key differentiator and what would lead the iPhone to be the most successful electronic product of all time. All they had to do was create a framework that vendors could use to publish their products and then allow demand and supply to turn it into a massive success.
Oracle has now fully embraced this concept and has provided the same kind of feature for their PaaS suite. There is now a vendor catalog inside Oracle Sites Cloud that will take it to the next level, and will bring commercial-like features and ease of use into the Enterprise software market. Something that has long been coming. The days of lengthy and expensive implementations, IT bottlenecks, poor usability, and failed projects will be coming to an end. Now, configuring your ERP system will be like organizing your phone. Just grab “widgets” from a vast array of UX options and drag and drop them into a fully functional ERP or Campus solution.
And this is what our announcement brings to Oracle Sites Cloud. It’s the app store you always wanted for your ERP applications. Fully configurable and designed to be implemented by the business community.
Oracle Sites Cloud with IntraSee Usability Cloud
Even better, because these are plug and play components within Sites Cloud, it also means that as you transition from one application to another (ex: PeopleSoft to HCM Cloud or Cornerstone to Taleo) that all you need to do is replace one component with another (remember when you ditched MapQuest and went with Google maps?). This is how we support what we call our Usability First methodology, and how we can facilitate a smooth transition to the Cloud.
Also, to ease any transition, we will also be providing REST API’s for PeopleSoft, and any other systems you may need, that can then be accessed via the Oracle PaaS suite. This will mean that you can now start building your own applications using Oracle’s Application Builder Cloud Services (ABCS). Which will allow you to protect your technology investment dollars by using a UX Tool that will be the basis of all your future Cloud development.
Contact us to setup your personal demo and learn more about Sites Cloud and how you can take advantage with our Usability First methodology.
As we learned at OpenWorld 2016, many application pages will not be converted to Fluid. The focus for Fluid will be self-service pages needed on mobile phones. Also, during OpenWorld, Oracle announced Classic Plus. Classic Plus (or “Classic+”) would be a style sheet that makes classic components look more like Fluid components. The buttons would be green, padding would be increased, the fonts would match and so on. Classic Plus is all done by way of a stylesheet. This is a great way to unify the look and feel within PeopleSoft. More details have since emerged that are important to understand for your 8.56 planning in 2017 and beyond.
Classic Plus Example from OpenWorld
In PeopleTools 8.56, there will be a global option to enable the Classic Plus stylesheet. Once that option is enabled, each component will have a new flag within Application Designer which tells it to use the Classic Plus style. You can elect to roll out Classic Plus to a subset of components with this flag. If you would like to apply this setting in mass, there will also be a script delivered for that purpose.
Once a component is switched over to Classic Plus, that component will need to undergo some basic testing. Because the new stylesheet changes sizes and padding, it can disrupt the alignment on the page. Elements may no longer line up, they may start to wrap below other elements or the page may start showing scrollbars. Each component will then need to be adjusted to fix these issues.
PeopleSoft plans to deliver vanilla pages with Classic Plus support and eventually reach 100% Classic Plus or Fluid support. This conversion will happen over time. It is important to understand this transition and that Classic Plus is not magic where upgrading to 8.56 will change every page in your system. The applications will release updates to add support for Classic Plus for each component.
You should plan to convert your custom components to support Classic Plus as well. To do this, allocate time after the 8.56 PeopleTools upgrade. The process of adopting Classic Plus should follow these steps:
Step 1: Upgrade to PeopleTools 8.56.
Step 2: Turn on global Classic Plus setting.
Step 3: Open the component and turn on “Apply Fluid like theme for Classic” for that component.
Step 4: Test the component’s layout and adjust the page(s) where necessary.
Step 5: Go to Step 3 for the next component until complete.
Once Classic Plus and Fluid components are fully implemented, the entire PeopleSoft experience will be using the updated styles. At IntraSee, we are experts in the user interface, so if you have questions, please contact us below. You don’t need to stop at PeopleSoft either. IntraSee can help you create a one-stop shop utilizing Oracle PaaS to unify the user experience between all your PeopleSoft pages, your on-premise applications and cloud applications using our Cloud Adapters.
Editorial note: March, 2019, at Alliance HEUG 2019 Oracle announced that delivered Campus Solutions’ Classic Plus pages were no longer being planned for release. This means customers are able to covert vanilla pages to Classic Plus on their own, but they are not currently planned for a future PUM.
We will be back at Alliance/HEUG this year for the 2017 show in Las Vegas! This year we have an exciting session on our new collaboration with Oracle. Come learn all about how to inject some Cloud and usability into your PeopleSoft implementation.
Session Details: https://www.heug.org/p/es/sx/esid=13194&rd=1
Update: our presentation is now posted.
Also, don’t miss your chance to win an Amazon Echo! Just stop by our booth on the exhibit floor and ask us about our drawing.
Enter our Alliance 2017 Giveaway!
Oracle has now added support for Elastic Search starting in PeopleTools 8.55.11. Elastic is an open source search platform built for scale, adaptability and extension. That is music to our ears at IntraSee and is welcomed by those having struggles with the current SES search. We learned a lot more about the search transition this year in San Francisco. In short, Oracle Secure Enterprise Search (SES) is deprecated and will no longer be available starting in PeopleTools 8.56. Oracle assures us there will be at least an 18-month transition period for clients who want to remain on SES – though staying on SES any longer than you need to isn’t something we would recommend.
Updates since original posting (revised September 2017)
Oracle SES is officially out of support April, 2018. See: https://t.co/JsxvCOLNDp
Start making plans to implement Elastic #PeopleSoft— IntraSee (@IntraSee) May 12, 2017
New Blog post: More Resources for Elasticsearch with PeopleSoft: https://t.co/KeWXc3RrtK
— PeopleSoft Support (@PSFT_Support) June 10, 2017
Elastic brings a vast number of features. There are too many to go through here, but there are some notable ones we will mention. The entire Elastic infrastructure is built for distribution providing greater performance and scalability. In fact, Wikipedia uses Elastic and they index a whole lot of content and serve a massive amount of search requests.
Elastic is API driven and its API relies on a RESTful model. This will make the integration between PeopleTools and Elastic much faster as it won’t have the overhead of SOAP like SES did. This is in line with Oracle’s overall strategy in going with a REST model across their entire technology stack as opposed to SOAP.
The last feature we want to mention that has us most excited is the search query capabilities of Elastic. You can even control relevance and tie into geolocation. These features will allow IntraSee to take search up another couple of levels 😄 Imagine search results sorting based on your physical location. This could be handy for a multi-campus institution or a global corporation where you don’t want to omit global content, but you do want the local stuff to be at the top.
Oracle has now made Elastic available with the 8.55.11 release! They have not yet announced general availability of 8.56.
Oracle is continuing to support SES, albeit not performing new development on the platform, for the next 18 months. That is good news as it likely means Elastic integration would have time to go through three major releases. The first on 8.55, the second on 8.56 and the third on 8.57. That allows customers to wait until 8.57 if they choose to.
When SES came out, it took a couple major releases before customers started widely adopting the new search technology. It has to be noted, however, that SES came with an entirely new PTSF. Now that PTSF has matured, the change to Elastic should be far more rapid. 2017 should be the year of preparing for Elastic and especially so if you make heavy use of search like many of our clients.
We believe search is a critical part of a good user experience and many of our products take advantage of search. We will be adding Elastic support to our products so that we can take advantage of all the enhanced capabilities.
Oracle did a great thing with Search by creating a search API built into PeopleCode. This is known as the PeopleTools Search Framework or PTSF for short. This provides an abstraction layer to search and it allows Oracle to more easily plug in Elastic without disrupting existing code lines.
Our products all use the PTSF. Oracle has stated that existing indexes on the PTSF will port easily. We will be testing this and ensuring all of our indexes port well. Beta customers have called the switch to Elastic, “a walk in the park…” so we do not expect major problems.
It’s been said that it’s not the destination that matters, it’s the journey. At IntraSee we understand the complexities of your ERP environment and how overwhelming it may appear to be to get to the final destination of your choice, which is: a world class user experience running in the Cloud.
That’s why we offer usability solutions at every step of the way:
IntraSee is here to help get you to your ultimate goal in a way that is both simple and effective. It involves dealing with the two unavoidable realities that stand in your way.
The first reality is that you can’t ask your employees, managers, students, faculty, and line of business to wait another five years before you can provide them with the User Experience (UX) that they are demanding now.
The second reality is that your current ERP systems are a mix of multiple applications and technology stacks that stand in the way of your ability to resolve the first reality. Resolving this expensive and time consuming concoction is not something that can easily be achieved overnight.
For many organizations this is seen as the ultimate Catch 22. Fortunately, it isn’t.
At IntraSee we have many years of dealing with this conundrum, and have come up with a methodology that allows you to deal with the realities of ERP life, while also responding to the needs of your user base. We call it Usability First (UF).
Like all the best principles, this one is simple. And, even better, if executed it’ll make you a very popular person in your organization.
How you do this is by selecting a Usability Cloud solution. This allows you to immediately address the usability needs of your user base, while also opening up access to all the tools and techniques that being a full adopter of the Cloud would give you. And, along the way, you become acquainted with your Cloud future. This can be a 9-12 week process. Which is a lot shorter than 5-10 years! And yes, you can do this even if your PeopleSoft applications are all still on-premise. And yes, your Usability Cloud can fully integrate with any other Cloud applications. Both Oracle and non-Oracle. The list is endless: Taleo, Fusion, Salesforce.com, Office365, SuccessFactors, SumTotal, Kronos, etc. etc. etc.
Now that you’re in a better place you can start using the power of PaaS (you’ll now already be using SaaS with your Usability Cloud).
We do this via our industry leading Oracle Cloud Platform Adapter (OCPA) that plugs directly into the Oracle PaaS ecosystem.
Learn more about the OCPA and our collaboration with Oracle in our Blog post.
At this point your user base is happy, and you’re building things on the platform of your future. So now you can start turning off your on-premise solutions and start turning on alternative Cloud solutions. Not happy with PeopleSoft Talent Management? Just turn on Fusion Talent Management Cloud. The adjustment will be clean and simple. Your Usability Cloud will manage the UI change seamlessly, and now you’ll be running more stuff in the Cloud. One day you’ll be running everything in the Cloud. But you’ll do it at your pace and within your own level of comfort. Also in the full knowledge that you made your user base happy on day one!
That’s the power and value of the IntraSee Usability First (UF) approach. Contact us to discuss your personalized Usability First strategy.
