Wednesday, December 16, 2015

PeopleTools 8.55 is Out!

Oracle recently released PeopleTools 8.55. PeopleTools 8.55 offers users valuable enhancements in functionality as well as new features.
“Customers are asking for more of what we have already done,” said Paco Aubrejuan, Senior Vice President of PeopleSoft Development.
Through the release of PeopleTools 8.55, Oracle enriches the PeopleSoft User Experience while lowering the total cost of ownership as well as providing a platform to those organizations who would like to transition some or all of their infrastructure to cloud. With PeopleTools 8.55, even on-premises customers will enjoy the benefits of cloud without having to move their datacenter.
PeopleTools 8.55 continues to utilize the PeopleSoft Update Manager (PUM) in conjunction with Selective Adoption, providing customers with the flexibility to roll out or opt out of features whenever the organization would like. Features in this release focus on continued improvements to the PeopleSoft User Experience while providing additional technology options that will help you take advantage of datacenter innovations, proven to reduce ongoing operating costs and assist in developing a cloud deployment strategy.
PeopleSoft introduced the Fluid User Interface with PeopleTools 8.54, allowing applications to be accessed on a mobile device, tablet or desktop. In 8.54, users had the option as to whether they wanted to deploy Fluid pages or remain with classic. Now with 8.55, Fluid is the default with the Fluid Style Sheet being applied all transactions. Users will be able to transition back and forth between classic and Fluid pages within applications without any hassle. The PeopleTools 8.55 release will also make Fluid UI available to a wider community of users.
1-Fluid Enhancements:
PeopleTools 8.55 dramatically extends the investment in the Fluid User Experience: Fluid Dashboards, Fluid Master/Detail pages and the new Activity Guide Framework. PeopleTools 8.55 extends Fluid capabilities to include functionality required by power users, making the overall application experience as intuitive as possible.
Fluid Dashboards:
Fluid Dashboards augment the existing Fluid Home Page structures. The Dashboards can display tiled content just like home pages, but also allow tiles to display external, non-PeopleSoft content, such as information from a BI system or an external website or application system.
Tile Wizard
PeopleTools 8.55 introduces a new Tile Wizard that makes the creation of navigation elements and process “building blocks” much simpler. Tiles automatically resize based on the content they display, the size of the device being used and the orientation of the device.
Company’s Branding
PeopleTools 8.55 extends the Branding Framework to include the ability to easily apply your company’s brand to Fluid pages and components. Oracle developed PeopleTools 8.55 using a “Mobile First” strategy, taking all Fluid transactions and developing them on mobile devices first to ensure compatibility.
2- New PeopleSoft Cloud Architecture (PCA)
Many customers are looking to cloud offerings as a strategic opportunity to achieve improved leverage and efficiency. As a response to that need, PeopleTools 8.55 offers PeopleSoft Cloud Architecture (PCA) as a Platform as a Service (PaaS), providing new levels of automation to reduce operating costs and allow organizations to migrate their business processes to the cloud. On-premises customers will still be able to enjoy the features of the cloud without transitioning to a hosted environment. However, for those organizations who want to begin moving parts of their infrastructure to the cloud to reduce overhead costs and increase efficiency, the PeopleSoft Cloud Architecture sets organizations up for success. PeopleTools 8.55 presents PeopleSoft users with increased levels of flexibility and customization, creating tailored solutions that work best for them.
The PCA and incorporated features such as Deployment Packages (DPKs) work with the Application Configuration Manager (ACM) and PeopleSoft’s virtualization capabilities to provide customers a near fully automated process to install and configure PeopleTools. The new functionalities help customers to leverage server and datacenter innovations, such as market-leading resource virtualization solutions with the choice of virtualization platform vendor as well as dynamic deployment of solutions to public and private cloud platforms. More information can be found on PeopleTools patches deployed using DPKs on MOS on the new PeopleSoft PeopleTools Patches Homepage.
Please review the Technology tab on MOS for PeopleTools 8.55 Features and Enhancements where you can optimize your planning.
Happy upgrading!

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Compensation in PeopleSoft

Every organization compensates its employees in exchange for their time and labor. It is critical that organizations can not only track compensation, but ensure that employees are properly compensated based on their performance. PeopleSoft Compensation 9.2 makes it easy to track and interpret compensation data through Pivot Grids. The pivot grids can help administrators and management interpret an employee’s current compensation and compensation history.
HCM 9.2 delivers a number of out-of-the-box pivot grids linked to compensation through the PeopleSoft eCompensation Manager Desktop. The delivered Compensation pivot grids include the following:
·      Compensation Peer Analysis
Managers can compare compensation level for their direct reports by department, job level and position.
·      Compensation Distribution
View the range of employee salary distribution—minimum, maximum and midpoint range.
·      Compensation by Performance
Average salary increase by increase in performance rating.
·      Variable Compensation by Performance
Total cash-type variable compensation by increase in performance rating.
·      Cycle Guideline Alert
Number of approved compensation changes that are inside/outside of the recommended salary increases.
·      Cycle Tracking
See the status of open proposals in open compensation cycles. 
It is easy to create new pivot grids leveraging the data within PeopleSoft. You can ask for your how-to guide on pivot grids by clicking here.
Pivot Grid's basis is PS Queries, which displays the gathered data into easy-to-use grids and charts. There are delivered pivot grids in Compensation, which can be configured based on specific needs.
You can also watch other pivot grids delivered in HCM 9.2 in the video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlloVD3NixE&index=11&list=PLF7C41402A8BA9D1A
In addition to Compensation pivot grids, the Compensation History page is improved in 9.2. The Compensation History page in 9.2 is modernized for an enhanced user experience. Users can review compensation history and can review details of any compensation changes, filtering by all job positions held and reviewing the data in a chart by selecting the chart icon.
One defining enhancement in 9.2 is eCompensation on cycle job changes. Up until PeopleSoft 9.1, PeopleSoft did not support any job changes in an open cycle. Now, transactions can be completed at any time without blackout periods. Now, 9.2 sends managers notifications when an employee has a job change during an open cycle.
Another enhancement to the eCompensation pages in HCM 9.2 is an enhanced ad hoc salary change process. Approvers can change the salary for a single employee or a group of employees. The salary change process is simplified and intuitive, completing the transaction in a matter of clicks.
HCM 9.2 makes compensation easy and streamlined. Save your organization time and money as you are able to track and interpret compensation and employee performance.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Oracle in the Cloud

Oracle CEO Mark Hurd opened Oracle OpenWorld’s first full day of sessions on Monday with a keynote on transformations in the cloud. Hurd presented a vision for 2025, outlining how businesses will be transformed by the cloud within the next 10 years and how organizations can prepare with a cloud strategy. Hurd predicts a boom in organizations moving their business processes to the cloud, with Oracle leading the way in cloud innovation.
Mark Hurd opened with the state of the industry, providing an overview of how most corporate CEOs are thinking today. He shared that growing the business, increasing performance and offering short-term gratification on a quarterly basis is critical for today’s CEO. Then, Mark Hurd highlighted that the economy, between 2008 and 2015, has only been at one percent revenue growth and that there is only one solution: Cut costs.
Hurd stated that the current on premise systems are 20 years old on average. Installed before the dawn of Internet, search, mobile, social media and cloud, these systems need upgrading, and the driver for any IT expense is security and compliance.
Hurd envisions a decade-long transition to the cloud motivated by the X Generation, changing the way business works.
“The demographic shift is causing a technology shift,” Hurd said.
The future for Oracle is building best-in-breed applications that run on all three layers of the cloud and on premise. Mark Hurd stated that Oracle was already ahead of the curve with its latest offering. He also stated that Oracle was ready for the next decade to come.
Hurd also made predictions on environment security, presenting cloud as the most secure environment an organization will be able to have. He predicted that all data will be stored on cloud environments versus on premise by 2025.
By 2025, 80 percent of production apps will be in the cloud.
Hurd cited that public cloud SaaS makes up 24 percent of the applications market today and that 85 percent of all new applications are built on architecture today for SaaS.
“Eighty percent of all production apps will be in the cloud. Today it’s about 25 percent,” Hurd said.
According to Hurd, one hundred percent of software development/testing will be done on the cloud. “The days of having servers and operating systems and databases and doing all this on premise are gone,” Hurd said.
·       By 2025, two suite providers will have 80 percent of the SaaS apps market.
Hurd commented, “There will be two suite providers in the cloud.” Mark Hurd said that “One hundred percent of Oracle’s portfolio has been rewritten and rebuilt for the cloud.”
·       100 percent of Dev/Test will be in the cloud by 2025.
According to Hurd, the days of testing on servers and databases are over.
·        All enterprise data will be stored in clouds.
Tens of billions of devices will generate massive amounts of new enterprise data using modern cloud-based applications.
·       Enterprise clouds will be the most secure IT environments.
Hurd stated that with Oracle’s out-of-box solutions and Engineered Systems, the data security switch is always on because it resides in the silicon and the key to the data sits with the customer. Additionally, as security levels increase and compliance needs changing, the system will tell you and offer you solutions.
AIG CTO Mike Brady reflected the same movement, underlying the need to link both worlds, as he can't move to the Cloud without connecting the Data stream coming from the Enterprise.
To get additional insight on Mark's Keynote, I invite you to also read the following article: "Oracle CEO Mark Hurd Lays Out the Future of the Cloud".