PeopleTools Learning Subscriptions

Are you looking to take your PeopleSoft Development skills to the next level? Look no further than our All-access Learning Membership.

With this membership, you'll gain access to a wealth of resources to help you improve your PeopleSoft Development knowledge and skills. From video tutorials to code samples and webinars, you'll have everything you need to become a PeopleSoft Development pro.

The membership also includes access to PeopleSoft experts, where you can ask questions and get feedback.

But what sets the All-access Learning Membership apart from other online learning platforms is its focus on real-world applications. You'll learn how to use PeopleTools to build practical, functional applications that you can use in your own projects.

And with new content added regularly, you'll always have something new to learn and explore.

So if you're ready to take your PeopleTools skills to the next level, sign up for the All-access Learning Membership at https://www.jsmpros.com/groups/all-access/. Your future self will thank you!

HIUG Interact 2023

User group conferences are a fantastic opportunity to network with and learn from peers. And we are just a few weeks away from the Healthcare PeopleSoft Industry User Group meeting Interact 2023! I am presenting my signature session, Getting the Most out of PeopleSoft PeopleTools: Tips and Techniques on Tuesday, June 13 from 9:30 AM - 10:30 AM in room Condesa 3.

See you there!

Eliminate Extra Spacing in JSON

PeopleCode's JsonObject and JsonArray are incredibly important to building a modern PeopleSoft integration, and we teach our students how to leverage them directly. Both have a ToString method that converts the internal object into a String perfect for integration. But the ToString method returns pretty-printed, nicely formatted, human-readable JSON output. This is fantastic for debugging and development! But it wastes valuable bandwidth and disk space with unnecessary characters. Computers ignore those extra spaces. Here is a trick we teach our students to help them reduce their JSON Payloads.

REM ** compress extra space;
Local JsonGenerator &jgen = CreateJsonGenerator();
Local JsonNode &root = CreateJsonNode();
Local string &json;

&root.SetJsonObject(&someJsonObject);
&jgen.SetRootNode(&root);
&jgen.SetPrettyMode( False);
&json = &jgen.ToString();

Got a JSON tip to share? Leave it in the comments. We would love to hear it!

At jsmpros, we teach Integration Tricks like this regularly. Be sure to check our schedule to see what we are offering next! Want to learn more, but at your own pace and in your own time? Check out our on-demand Integration Tools course and All Access Pass!

RECONNECT Live 2023 at Blueprint 4D!

Reconnect Live is just around the corner, and I'm looking forward to reconnecting with you and the rest of the PeopleSoft community. As you plan your schedule, here is a list of sessions I am presenting:

• PeopleSoft Integration Strategies: Tuesday, May 9, 2023, from 3:30 PM to 4:15 PM in Metropolitan
• Getting the Most out of PeopleSoft PeopleTools: Tips and Techniques: Wednesday, May 10, 2023, from 11:15 AM to 12:00 PM in Monet

Are you presenting? If so, share your session details in the comments. See you there!

Fluid Page Naming Conventions

Best practices are an essential part of our curriculum. When creating Fluid pages, we recommend the following page name pattern:

<site-prefix><purpose><page-type>

For example, when creating a Fluid subpage to manage widgets, we would name it JSM_WIDGETS_SBF. Here is a list of page-type suffixes derived from Oracle-delivered pages:

FL

Fluid Page

SBF

Subpage Fluid

SCF

Secondary Page Fluid

SFL

Side Page (1 or 2)

FFL

Footer Page

LFL

Layout Page

But four more page types aren't used enough to have a suffix pattern: Header Page, Search Page, Prompt Page, and Master&Detail Target Page. For those page types, we've come up with our own suffixes:

HFL

Header Page

SRF

Search Page

PFL

Prompt Page

MDF

Master&Detail Target Page

For the most part, the convention is easy to understand. First initial of page type, and then FL. But what about SRF? Where did that come from? There are four page types that start with the letter S. Adding the R after the S looked more like Search than any of the other options we considered.

With Classic already having the suffixes SEC, SUB, and POP, we have suffixes for every page type except Classic standard pages. Should we, therefore, adopt _CL for Classic pages? PeopleSoft uses exception-based design. For example, the page bar is on until you turn it off, and the standard component toolbar is on until you turn it off. Changing these properties would be exceptions. Naming conventions are no different. Our naming conventions document the exceptions. With over 12,000 Classic pages in HCM, Classic is clearly the norm, and everything else is an exception.

What do you think? Do you have different naming conventions you use for page development? If so, share your ideas in the comments!

At JSMpros, we teach PeopleSoft Fluid training and best practices regularly. We look forward to hosting you in a future class!

Does Event Mapping Apply to Content References?

Help! My Event Mapping code isn't firing! Because this happens occasionally, I have a simple debugging process:

1. Insert a "Hello World!" Message Box statement into my code. The point is to prove whether or not Event Mapping is properly configured. If I don't see the Message Box, then I know PeopleSoft ignored my code, and I may have a misconfiguration. If the MessageBox appears, then the configuration is correct, and the problem is in my code.
2. If the Message Box does not appear, the next step is to confirm the correct Content Reference. We apply Event Mapping through Content References. Selecting the wrong Content Reference will keep the code from executing. This is an easy mistake to make because several Content References use the same label. Sometimes the solution is a bit of trial and error, testing various Content References until we find one that works. We can also query PeopleTools metadata to confirm we selected the correct Content Reference.

Those two steps usually identify any issues. But this time was different. First, my "Hello World" Message Box did not appear. Second, I confirmed I was using the correct Content Reference. I was puzzled. What could it be?

As I dug through the metadata, I found something interesting! There were two Content References pointing to the same menu/component combination! The point of a Content Reference is to generate a unique URL fragment. PeopleSoft Component Content References use the menu, component, and market to generate that unique URL fragment. Have you ever tried to create two content references that point to the same menu/component combination? It doesn't work. PeopleSoft won't let you save until you make the URL unique. An old trick that developers use is to add Additional Parameters. A simple "X=X" is usually enough. Or in this case, it was "Tile=Y." (Note: While there may be a reason to create a redundant Content Reference, a better approach is usually to use a Content Reference Link).

Actually, finding redundant Content References is commonplace in today's Fluid Portal Registry. Fluid's framework components, such as Activity Guides, Dashboards, and Homepages require creating Content References that all point to the same menu/component combination, with Additional Parameters identifying uniqueness. We have done extensive research on Event Mapping and found this is normally not an issue. What we found is that applying Event Mapping to any one of those redundant Content References results in Event Mapping applying to all of the Content References. The example we use in our Event Mapping course is applying Event Mapping to Tile Wizard's runtime component.

This is what puzzled me with today's scenario. I already knew there were multiple Content References pointing to the same Menu/Component combination. I've repeated this many times without issue. If I apply Event Mapping to one of those redundant Content References, all exhibit the same behavior. But this time, nothing happened. Or more appropriately, the system didn't do what I thought it should do. Upon further inspection, I found that someone else had used Page and Field Configurator to apply Event Mapping to the other Content Reference. It appears that PeopleSoft properly found Event Mapping for the menu/component combination, but the configuration it found wasn't mine. It seems that Event Mapping queries the database for the first configuration. Mine happened to be second.

I find it interesting that we configure Event Mapping through Content References, not Menu/Component combinations. Based on my experience today, and the fact that we must apply a Menu to a Component Interface to leverage Event Mapping against Component Interfaces, it seems that Event Mapping really applies to Menu/Component combinations, not Content References. What if the Event Mapping configuration asked us to select a Menu, and then gave us a list of Components attached to that menu? What if we configured Event Mapping through Menu/Component combinations, not Content References?

• Redundant Content References would be irrelevant.
• We wouldn't have to create Content References against hidden components simply to apply Event Mapping.
• We wouldn't have to guess if we chose the proper Content Reference based on a label and a root folder.
• We would know for sure that we selected the correct Menu/Component.

With that in mind, I created a new Idea in the PeopleSoft Idea Labs. If you like this idea, please upvote, share, and leave comments.

At JSMpros, we teach Event Mapping regularly. Check out our website to see what we are offering next!

Did Event Mapping Break Your Update?

I love Event Mapping. But I have a concern:

The benefit of Event Mapping is that your customizations no longer appear on a compare report, and the problem with Event Mapping is that your customizations no longer appear on a comapre report.

I know what you are thinking: "Wait, didn't he just contradict himself?" Yes! Let me explain with a scenario:

Let's say you move a customization into Event Mapping. Later you apply an update. You run a compare report and see the beautiful "change/change" with no asterisks. Perfect! You have no customized code, and therefore nothing to retrofit. And then you test the upgraded system. And you find the system is broken. Since you have no customizations identified in the compare report, you should be fine, right? If this happened to me, my first thought would be that something is wrong with the update, and I would file a support ticket. But unfortunately, Oracle support can't replicate the issue. After escalation and further analysis, Oracle discovers that custom Event Mapping is causing the problem.

I share this scenario because it is possible, but it seems like a worst-case scenario. Does it really happen? Do custom, invisible event mapping "configurations" ever break an update/get current? It turns out they do! MOS doc 2798164.1 was posted in 2021 and demonstrates this scenario.

The problem with broken Event Mapping code is that it fails just like any other code, so we can't tell that the failure was caused by Event Mapping. Event Mapping is not a configuration. It is an isolated customization.

Event Mapping is amazing! But until Oracle provides us with LCM tools that identify potential Event Mapping issues, we must perform our own analysis. Here are some options to help you catch troublesome Event Mapping:

1. Use SQL in this blog post to create your own Event Mapping analysis.
2. Use PTF to create Event Mapping and Page and Field Configurator Regression tests.
3. Wrap Event Mapping in a try/catch block to log and notify.

We teach Event Mapping and PeopleSoft Test Framework regularly. Check out our website to see what we are offering next!