PeopleSoft Applications Portal 9.1 Feature Pack 1

Again Oracle shows its commitment to continue investing in PeopleSoft. This time by changing the release model of PeopleSoft Applications Portal, formally known as PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal, by adding Feature Packs. With these Feature Packs customers do not need to upgrade or re-implement PeopleSoft Applictions to be able to use the new features, as Feature Packs come as patches that can be applied to the current PeopleSoft application using the change assistent.

Saying this I have to note, that you can download this Feature Pack from the PeopleSoft Patches site and apply to your applications, but you can also download it from eDelivery.

This was initially quite confusion. You can download PeopleSoft Portal 9.1 and PeopleSoft Portal 9.1 Feature Pack 1. Why can you download PeopleSoft Portal 9.1 Feature Pack 1 here and why is it  725MB?  After downloading this, you will see that it is in fact the same installer of PeopleSoft Portal, except that this installer includes off course Feature Pack 1 and is delivered on PeopleTools 8.52! This is the first application that is delivered on  PeopleTools 8.52. So customers running on PeopleTools 8.51 or lower, do not download this installer, but use the regular PeopleSoft patches site to obtain the patch for Feature Pack 1.

So what is in the Feature Pack?

Some existing snippets from the RVP.

Unified Navigation

Setting up the PeopleSoft Applications Portal for use with other PeopleSoft applications has been a manual process prior to Feature Pack 1 (FP1). This requires manually setting up the Crefs hosted on a remote node. For example, using Applications Portal to access PeopleSoft HCM and other application pages, an administrator sets up the node and registry entries for each CREF and assigns the security information manually. That can be time consuming. To automate this process in Applications Portal, we are providing a Workcenter specifically supporting Unified Navigation. The Workcenter will guide administrators through the process, and bring all the necessary pages together to streamline the process.
The Unified Navigation framework federates all PeopleSoft application nodes in one place so everything can be managed from Applications Portal. Using the framework, features like Drop down Menu can display the remote PeopleSoft registry without manually copying the remote registry and security synchronization. Administrators will not have to manually copy Permission Lists/Roles.

Related Attachments

Related Attachments is a new feature provided by Portal’s Related Links service. This service can be used by any application using the Related Content Framework, enabling users to attach files to virtually any PeopleSoft page or component. The Related Links service is context-sensitive, so related attachments can be keyed to specific data on a page. Related attachments (the related links service) enforces the same security as the transactional instance and uses the new Authorization as a Service feature.

Calendar Event Aggregation

The 9.1 release provided the ability to merge items from many calendars into a single calendar. With Feature Pack 1, calendars in Portal and Collaborative Workspaces will now support aggregating user tasks, worklist tasks, and action items. This brings all relevant time/date dependent events into a user’s calendar, making them easier to manage and act upon. This consolidated calendar streamlines user event management by enabling users to refer to a single calendar to manage their work. Users also have control over the types of items that appear in their calendars.

Authorization as a Service

A significant advancement in PeopleTools 8.52 is the new Authorization as a Service framework. The framework allows application developers to externalize the row-level or data-level security of PeopleSoft applications and make it available as a service. Row-level security is determined at runtime and is widely used in PeopleSoft applications to ensure that users who really need to access data get the access they need. The Applications portal will use this new service supporting two collaborative services: related discussions and related links. It allows the related actions, related content services, and third-party applications that provide information relevant to a transaction to be secured using the web services.

User Experience Guidance

A new red paper is available that provides guidance on how to brand your portal and build a rich user experience, particularly for self-service. There will also be some sample code available to reuse and help you get started. A must have for all, even if you are not on Feature Pack 1.

To read the full RVP, see here.

In upcoming posts we will handle these features in dept.

Stay tuned.