When Should You Refactor Your Customizations to Use Event Mapping, Drop Zones, and Page and Field Configurator?

Event Mapping, Drop Zones, and Page and Field Configurator are features designed to reduce the cost of staying current. These features move customizations into a separate, isolated layer so you may apply maintenance with fewer retrofits. In other words, these features remove customizations from the PeopleSoft-delivered codebase.

When should you refactor your customizations to use Event Mapping, Drop Zones, and Page and Field Configurator?

The answer is case-specific, but here are some guidelines to help:

1. Stop Customizing

For new change requests, look for ways to leverage Page and Field Configurator, Drop Zones, and Event Mapping (in that order).

2. Between Maintenance Cycles

If your system is running PeopleTools 8.55 or later, you can begin leveraging Event Mapping immediately. To apply this approach, identify all of your PeopleCode modifications and ask:

Is this a good candidate for Event Mapping?

"Good Candidates" for Event Mapping are PeopleCode changes that can run before or after PeopleSoft-delivered code. With a list of "Good Candidates," refactor each change to use Event Mapping.

The benefit of beginning this process between maintenance cycles is that it sets you up for success during the next maintenance cycle.

The challenge can be motivation. As they say, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Which leads to the next guidance:

3. During a Maintenance Cycle

This may be one of the best opportunities to apply Page and Field Configurator, Drop Zones, and Event Mapping for several reasons:

• Applying maintenance will automatically identify customizations through the Compare and Report process. This is your "isolation strategy" worklist.
• The maintenance process forces you to retrofit and/or refactor your customizations.
• Application updates will include new Drop Zone locations and updated features in Page and Field Configurator.

The challenge of adopting these isolation strategies during a maintenance cycle is the added risk of introducing new concepts on an already-stressed timeline.

4. All of The Above!

The best strategy may be a combination of all three. First, stop customizing and adopt isolation strategies for all new requests. Second, look for customizations you created that you can isolate through Page and Field Configurator, Drop Zones, and Event Mapping. This will give you the experience necessary to comfortably retrofit additional customizations during the maintenance cycle.

PeopleSoft Test Framework

Isolating customizations does not eliminate the retrofit step. It reduces the amount of retrofits required per maintenance cycle. Embedded customizations must be retrofitted with every maintenance cycle. Isolated customizations, such as Event Mapping, Drop Zones, and Page and Field Configurator, however, only require a retrofit when they break. And this is the challenge created by Isolation Strategies: Customizations become invisible. They do not show on compare reports. They don't appear on lists of impacted customizations.

If retrofitting shifts from every customization to just broken customizations, how do we find what is broken? PeopleSoft Test Framework regression tests. Every time you isolate a customization, you create a regression test. Regression tests are usually short and trivial to create. When applying maintenance, you run your regression test library to identify what broke, and that list of broken customizations becomes your new, shorter retrofit list.

Want to learn more? We offer on-demand training for several of these isolation strategies:

• Event Mapping
• Drop Zones
• PeopleSoft Test Framework

Or join us for our next Configure, Don't Customize live virtual course!

Page and Field Configurator or Event Mapping?

Which tool would you use if someone asked you to hide a PeopleSoft field? We asked our LinkedIn audience that same question. Here are the results:

85% of respondents chose Page and Field Configurator, which is fantastic!

Both tools can hide a field, but is one a better option? I use a decision matrix to help me decide which one to use:

Decision Matrix

	Event Mapping	PaFC
Can the solution be configured with PaFC?		✔
PaFC cannot provide the expected result.	✔

If you can use Page and Field Configurator, then choose it for these two reasons:

• Page and Field Configurator contains a "Validate Configuration" feature to verify the configuration is still relevant after applying maintenance and
• Functional business analysts may manage Page and Field Configurator (Event Mapping is a developer-only solution).

When should you use Event Mapping? For everything else. For example, Page and Field Configurator does not yet work with Group Boxes. Likewise, complex logic may require Event Mapping (or might be easier to read and write if written in Event Mapping).

We teach both topics in our three-day Configure, don't Customize course. Check it out to see when we are offering it next!

"Find Definition References" for Page and Field Configurator

A student recently asked:

Is there an Edit | Find Definition References equivalent for Page and Field Configurator?

Great question! In Application Designer, we can open a field and choose Edit | Find Definition References to find all usages of that field. Unfortunately, Page and Field Configurator does not have an equivalent. The good news, however, is Page and Field Configurator is metadata driven. In other words, we can create our own "Find Definition References" equivalent by writing SQL. Here is a short example to get you started:

SELECT *
  FROM PS_EOCC_CONFIG_FLD
 WHERE FIELDNAME = 'DESCR'

The EOCC_CONFIG_FLD record contains the Component name, Record name, and Field name, allowing us to effectively "Find Definition References" for any of those three items.

At JSMpros, we teach PeopleTools Tips like this every week. Be sure to check our website to see what we are offering next!