Get in control of your HTML Pagelets

With PeopleTools you have the ability to create pagelets using the Pagelet Wizard. Pagelet Wizard pagelets, also known to the rest of the world as portlets, are small pages that provide display-only snapshots of applicable content which can be placed on the PeopleSoft Homepage. With the Pagelet Wizard you can create a variety of pagelets:

• HTML
• IB Connector
• Integration Broker
• Navigation Collections
• OBIEE Report
• PeopleSoft Query
• Rowset
• Search record
• URL

This post describes how you can get more control in formatting and setting up your HTML pagelets.

When you start the Pagelet Wizard via menu PeopleTools - Portal - Pagelet Wizard - Pagelet Wizard, you have to choose the type of pagelet you want to create. When choosing HTML you will see the following screen where you can create your custom HTML Pagelet.

You can see that you have a toolbar which enables you to create Rich Text, whereas I would have expected you could write HTML code. With the Rich Text toolbar you can still change things like fonts, colors, links, images, but you are stuck with these limited features. Fortunately PeopleSoft is so accessable that we can enable full HTML coding.

As of Peopletools 8.50 RichText toolbars have been added to Long fields. To enable HTML coding, you must first change the Configuration Setting of the Rich Text Toolbar for this page. This page is called PTPPB_WIZ_DATASRC. This is a restricted PeopleTools page, which is by default not open for editing in Application Designer. We will have to remove the restriction first.

Open Application Designer and choose Go - Definition Security from the menu bar. After the Definition Security application is started, choose File - Open - Group

In the popup screen choose group PEOPLETOOLS.

In the top drop down list select Pages and select page PTPPB_WIZ_DATASRC from the left pane. Using the right arrow move this page to the right pane (Excluded Pages)

Choose File - Save from the menu to save the changes.

Now restart Application Designer and open page PTPPB_WIZ_DATASRC. You are now able to make change to the page. Scroll down to the HTML object on the page and double click to view the properties.

Select tab Options and change Configuration Settings Id to PT_RTE_CFG_PTPPB and save the page.

Note that PT_RTE_CFG_PTPPB is a PeopleTools HTML object which defines the Rich Text toolbar behavior.

When you open PT_RTE_CFG_PTPPB HTML object in Application Designer you will see all toolbar buttons.

The first button Source will enable us to actually change the Rich Text editor in a HTML Editor.

Now when you open the Pagelet Wizard, you will see a new Source Button. When you click on the Source button you have full control of the HTML code.

Anyone with (basic) HTML coding knowledge can now create great appealing HTML pagelets.

For more information about adjusting the Rich Text toolbar see Oracle Support document E-PIA: How to Enable Rich Text Editor or Customize Text Editor Tool Bar in PeopleTools 8.50? [ID 1069154.1]