Finding Tiles

Fluid Homepage Tiles are Content References just like all other content references, with one exception: They are really hard to find! Fluid tile definitions exist in a subfolder of Fluid Structure and Content > Fluid Pages. The question is: Which folder?

PeopleTools 8.60 added a new feature that may help: groupletid. Tile HTML now contains a custom attribute called groupletid. You may read more about this new feature in PeopleSoft PeopleTools 8.60 New Features Overview (Doc ID 2897533.1) on My Oracle Support.

As stated in the support document, the Grouplet ID is the Content Reference ID (CREF ID). Fantastic! What that means is you and I can capture the CREF ID directly from the HTML!

Once I have the CREF ID, I can visit Enterprise Components > Find Object Navigation to find the tile's Portal Registry folder and path.

Are you interested in printing a list of all tile CREFs for a particular user? Fire up your browser's JavaScript console and type (or paste) the following:

document.querySelectorAll("div[groupletid]").forEach(function(el) {
  console.log(el.getAttribute('groupletid'))
});

All tiles from all homepages exist in the HTML as soon as the homepage loads. They are just hidden. Want to just see the tiles for the active homepage? Try this derivative:

document.querySelectorAll(".lptab-cont:not(.psc_invisible) div[groupletid]").forEach(function(el) {
  console.log(el.getAttribute('groupletid'))
});

At JSMpros, we teach PeopleTools tips like this every week! Check out our class schedule to see what we are offering next. Want to learn on your own time? Become a subscriber to access all our courses anytime from anywhere!

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!

Announcing PeopleSoft Fluid Day 2022!

Announcing PeopleSoft Fluid Day 2022 with all new Content! Join us online Thursday, May 19th for a full-day PeopleSoft education experience. Filled with Fluid development tips and best practices, we designed this opportunity to help you build better solutions faster. Space is limited so register now!

Register Now!

With the rapid pace of change in the IT industry, it is imperative that we keep our skills sharp. That is why I'm inviting you to reserve May 19th, 2022 to sharpen your PeopleSoft skills so you can develop better solutions faster and with less effort. Save time and money while increasing customer satisfaction by learning new techniques for building intuitive, mobile and desktop-friendly solutions. Learn how to use responsive and adaptive design to make the best use of screen real estate regardless of device type. Discover new ways to present information that communicates effectively with our users. Reduce the amount of time spent training users by creating intuitive experiences.

Here are some of the topics we will cover:

Fluid Page Design

• Experience the key development differences between Classic and Fluid
• Learn adaptive versus responsive design techniques
• Understand Fluid Search Strategies
• Leverage the PeopleSoft Fluid style library to create solutions without writing CSS.

Extending Oracle-delivered Solutions

At Fluid Day 2022, we will show you some fantastic examples of using Drop Zones and Event Mapping to isolate customizations.

Testing Strategies

Learn strategies for testing mobile and desktop solutions. With Drop Zones and Event Mapping, regression testing is more important than ever!

JavaScript and CSS

PeopleSoft wrote all the JavaScript and CSS required to build Fluid solutions, which means you don't have to write your own! We'll show you how to leverage Oracle's web assets. If you want to write your own, this session will give you some great ideas. We have examples that show you how to incorporate custom CSS and JavaScript into your Fluid designs.

Data Visualizations

A modern, intuitive user experience is an experience that communicates effectively. Learn simple CSS and JavaScript techniques to build an effective user experience.

Register now to reserve your seat for this dynamic one-day event on Thursday, May 19th. Registrants receive 60-days access to the recording, a copy of the Q&A roster, and sample code downloads.

Take advantage of this opportunity for only $447 per person. If you have a group of 10 or more, contact us at info@jsmpros.com for a quantity discount.

Register Now!

A Simple Classic to Fluid Conversion

Oracle published a fantastic document describing how Oracle converted from Classic to Fluid. This very educational document is available at Doc ID 1984833.1. Oracle's solution makes sense for Oracle because it offers customers a choice: migrate to Fluid or stay Classic. As customers, do we need to offer that same flexibility? If so, then Oracle's approach is fantastic. I find most customers are either Fluid or Classic (or some derivative thereof), and when we convert a component to Fluid, it stays Fluid. We don't, for example, have part of an organization using a Classic version while another part of the organization uses the upgraded Fluid version. With that in mind, we developed a simpler approach to Fluid conversion: the in-place conversion. This stands in contrast to the clone-and-recreate approach. We put together a playlist with several videos describing our approach:

Be sure to subscribe to our channel so you don't miss future updates!

Want to learn more? Check out our vast Fluid training library, including recorded and live virtual events, online!

Where is that Content Reference?

New user 'X' needs access to 'Y.' Piece of cake, right? At least it was in Classic. The entire PeopleSoft navigation model stems from Content References. The classic "Navigator" and bread-crumb menus rendered the "Structure and Content" hierarchy. Finding content references under the classic model was trivial because the online visual rendering matched the "Structure and Content" portal registry hierarchical model. After finding a Content Reference, we could review the menu/component combination as well as existing permission lists to derive a solution.

What about Fluid? Most Fluid components exist somewhere in "Structure and Content." The question is, "Where?" The Fluid navigation model consists of homepages, dashboards, tiles, navigation collections, activity guides, and WorkCenters. And we can add any Content Reference to any one of these definitions. There is no structure. We use two tools to help us find Content References:

1. Enterprise Components > Find Object Navigation
2. SQL

If you know the menu/component combination or the CREF ID, you can look up the path using Enterprise Components > Find Object navigation. This is very helpful.

Unfortunately, many Fluid content references share the same component, a framework component such as PT_FLDASHBOARD or PT_AGSTARTPAGE_NUI. Everyone has access to these components. Let's consider the Personal Details tile on the HCM Employee Self-Service homepage. The menu/component combination is exactly the same as Payroll. Both use a framework component. What differentiates one tile from the next is the additional URL parameters. So we put together a SQL statement to help us locate content references by URL fragment. The following SQL is Oracle-specific. Notice the URL in the WHERE clause. Replace that URL with your own. Since this SQL uses regular expressions to filter CLOB data, be sure to regex escape special characters.

There is one other way to find a CREF ID. If the target is a Fluid Dashboard, then you may visit PeopleTools > Portal > Dashboards > Manage Dashboard Pages. The properties link shows both the parent folder and the dashboard's CREF ID.

Are you interested in learning more about PeopleSoft Fluid administration and development? Check out our website for live virtual and on-demand recorded PeopleSoft Fluid training.

Hiding Tiles

At a conference several years ago, a friend and I were discussing PeopleSoft Fluid. Fluid was new at the time, so my friend was sharing his vision for making Fluid better. One of his ideas was to dynamically hide tiles. For example, if an employee has an Onboarding event, show the onboarding tile. Likewise, if a student has holds or "To Do's," then show a tile. I thought this was a fantastic idea and came up with a few ways to make this happen. If you are using PeopleTools 8.54 through 8.58, here are some options:

• Use Dynamic Role Rules to add/remove a role that grants access to the target tile. This is the easiest approach and the most adopted method for dynamic access to tiles. For this to work properly, a tile should be marked as required.
• Use Event Mapping to hide a tile. The PeopleSoft tile homepage is a cleverly formatted Fluid DIV Grid. Each tile represents one row in a grid. Through PageActivate Event Mapping, we can selectively show or hide rows by setting a row's Visible property. As you iterate over the list of rows, evaluate criteria and set the row's visbility accordingly.

What about 8.59? Why did I recommend these strategies for 8.58 and earlier and not 8.59? There is a new PeopleTools 8.59 feature that lets you configure a tile's visibility. Tammy Boyles from Oracle Product Management shared about how HCM uses this new feature last month. Here are the steps:

1. Create an App Class that extends PTGP_APPCLASS_TILE:API:TileAppFilter.
2. Put your conditional logic in the IsTileVisible method, returning True to show or False to hide.
3. Add the content reference attribute TILEAPPFILTER to your tile's content reference.
4. Open the appropriate homepage content reference and mark the tile as required.

Once you configure a TILEAPPFILTER attribute, the tile will no longer show in the "Personalize Homepage" list of available tiles, so users may no longer add or remove this tile. Therefore, a tile that has a TILEAPPFILTER attribute must be marked as required.

Do you want to see an example? Join us on November 18th, 2021 for Configuration Day 2021 to see this and many other new 8.59 features in action.

At JSMpros, we teach PeopleTools topics like this every week. In fact, this specific topic is part of our continuously updated Configure, Don't Customize course. Be sure to check out our website for more information about this and many other PeopleTools topics.

Campus Solutions: Which Navigation Collection?

When Campus Solutions built their business process-based navigation, they did something interesting: they wrapped Navigation Collections in the Master/Detail Framework. Rather than hard-code a list of links (like the original HCM Personal Details), Campus Solutions chose Navigation Collections. The flexibility is incredible. This design decision allows you and I to add new links to Campus business processes without modifying delivered code (unlike the original HCM solution).

That's fantastic! But here is the problem: which navigation collection should you update? Some of them are easy to find because they have the same label as the tile itself. But others don't. Fortunately, the navigation collection name is in the URL:

&scname=CS_SSR_ACADEMIC_RECORDS_FL

Wait... did I say the Navigation Collection name? I apologize. There seems to be some confusion about the "name." When creating a Navigation Collection, the Navigation Collection tool asks for a name. The "name" we supply is actually a label. PeopleSoft dynamically generates the name from our label. Since a Navigation Collection is a Portal Registry folder, the real "name" is the CREF Folder ID. So in the example listed above, the CREF ID is CS_SSR_ACADEMIC_RECORDS_FL, but we don't know the label. To maintain the Navigation Collection, we must know the Content Reference's label. The good news is we can find the label with a simple query. The SQL to find the label for the example above would be:

SELECT PORTAL_LABEL
  FROM PSPRSMDEFN
 WHERE PORTAL_PRNTOBJNAME = 'CO_NAVIGATION_COLLECTIONS'
   AND PORTAL_NAME = 'EMPLOYEE'
   AND PORTAL_OBJNAME = 'CS_SSR_ACADEMIC_RECORDS_FL'

Fluid is PeopleSoft's mobile and modern rendering engine. Through a few simple techniques, we can show you how to build better Fluid solutions faster. Are you interested in learning more? Check out our Fluid course offerings at jsmpros.com.

PeopleTools 8.59 new feature: Independent "AddTo" Security

Imagine having a PeopleSoft Favorites feature and no way to add Favorites. After 8.54, many customers found themselves in this situation. Fluid introduced "Add to Homepage" and "Add to Navbar" as fantastic personalization options. Our users love them. For example, I can "pin" my favorite classic components to my homepage for quick and easy access. For power users, this is terrific! And for self-service users? Every component a self-service user visits should already be represented through a Fluid homepage tile. For the casual self-service user, offering an "Add to Homepage" feature often causes more problems than it solves. With that in mind, customers often disable the "AddTo*" feature for self-service users. My friend Simon Chiu explains how in Section Four of his post PeopleTools 8.55 Features: How to Deploy Homepages, Tiles and Branding. From 8.54 to 8.58, disabling Add to Homepage also disables Add to Favorites, which is unfortunate. Favorites are the domain of the user. Nobody questions a user's favorites. Our friend Sasank Vemana shared a solution to "decouple" the AddTo options so we could disable these features independently. Likewise, My Oracle Support published Doc ID 2143709.1, showing how to customize the AddTo* features so customers can remove Add to Homepage while keeping Add to Favorites. Unfortunately, through 8.58, retaining Add to Favorites requires a customization.

What about PeopleTools 8.59? Oracle basically applied this customization to the base PeopleTools code. This feature is now built into PeopleTools. With PeopleTools 8.59, PeopleSoft added the following new roles:

• DisableAddToFavorites
• DisableAddToHomepage
• DisableAddToNavBar

To remove access to Add to Homepage, assign the role DisableAddToHomepage.

Here are a couple of interesting observations of this new feature. First, access seems logically inverted. To remove access, you must assign a role. Normally, we assign roles to grant access. In this case, we assign a role to remove access. Second, we noticed user PS has these roles in the latest HCM PUM, which means out of the box, user PS can no longer add to favorites, homepages, or Navbar.

What are your observations of this new feature? Share your thoughts in the comments. We would love to hear!

Are you interested in learning more about PeopleSoft security or fluid? Check out our latest course offerings at https://www.jsmpros.com/courses/ and events at https://www.jsmpros.com/events/.

Configuring Fluid Job Data Drop Zones

The new Fluid Job Data component is incredibly configurable. I love the four new Drop Zones right in the middle of the page. But there is just one problem: they are labeled Drop Zone 1, Drop Zone 2, Drop Zone 3, and Drop Zone 4. And they are collapsed, so a user would have to expand each one to find out what is inside. Wouldn't it be great if we could use Page and Field Configurator to change the labels or hide unused regions? The Drop Zone labels come from Group Boxes, and today, Page and Field Configurator doesn't support Group Boxes. Since the code is trivial, we believe this is a simple oversite the development team could remedy. If you agree, please up-vote our idea Page and Field Configurator: Add Group Boxes fields list.

The good news is Event Mapping supports any record and field combination. If we can locate the record and field associated with any group box, we can use Event Mapping to hide it or change its label. This brings us to another challenge. At this time, none of the Drop Zone group boxes are associated with fields. We put in an idea for this: Make Drop zone 1-4 on Fluid Job Data Configurable through PFC and/or Event Mapping. If you think this is a good idea, please up-vote it as well.

While we wait for a proper Oracle-delivered configurable solutions, I want to share with you how we used Event Mapping, JavaScript, and CSS to solve this problem:

The "Unable to get image extents" Error for SVGs

At JSMpros, we love Scalable Vector Graphics! Fluid loves them because they resize (scale) well. We love them because they are just XML documents describing an image. And since they are XML, we can recolor them with browser developer tools or even a simple text editor. In fact, We have videos showing how trivial it is to clone and alter the colors of Oracle-delivered Fluid icons through browser inspector tools (watch online Manipulating SVG Images).

Since we usually just change colors, we prefer to edit Oracle-delivered SVG images through Chrome's inspector and then copy the entire document to a new SVG file. We can then upload the new file through App Designer and use it anywhere. But we discovered an interesting issue. It appears PeopleSoft's internal code doesn't like our new images. When using the Navigation Collections image inspector or uploading a modified SVG through the online branding module, PeopleSoft throws an "Unable to get image extents" error message. What we didn't realize is that copying XML out of Chrome's inspector doesn't copy the XML prolog. All XML documents begin with an XML prolog

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

Since SVG is XML, it is required to have a prolog. Browsers are forgiving and will ignore the missing prolog, but PeopleSoft's internal code doesn't.

So what's the solution? We still edit SVG using Chrome's inspector tool, but now we manually insert the XML prolog as the first line. It appears we aren't the only ones to hit this issue. Check out MOS document 2426154.1 for more details.

Are you interested in learning more about PeopleSoft Fluid and Fluid development? Check out our latest live virtual and on-demand offerings.

PeopleSoft Fluid Accordion: Default to Open State

The Fluid Accordion is fantastic for organizing information. My favorite place to use it is in the left sidebar (Side Page 1, Master/Detail, and PSL_TWOPANEL). But it has one interesting quirk: it defaults to closed. Wouldn't it be nice to have PeopleSoft default one of the accordion headings to expanded? We haven't found a property or delivered approach, but we do have a workaround. Check out the 10-minute video below for details. Here is our solution in a nutshell:

1. Add a custom style class to the accordion heading group box you want to be expanded (we named ours jsm_expanded). This CSS style class acts as an identifier or selector.
2. Add JavaScript to locate the selector and invoke the click action of the chosen heading.

Here is what that JavaScript would look like:

document.querySelector('.jsm_expanded .ps-link').click();

You can use this JavaScript as-is with the AddOnloadScript PeopleCode function but as the video demonstrates, Master/Detail requires a slightly different approach.

I love the flexibility of Fluid. It is so much easier to inject JavaScript and CSS into Fluid. Are you interested in learning more? We cover the Accordion and related challenges and workarounds in our Fluid 2 course. Be sure to check out the details and register for our next offering.

Did enjoy this PeopleTools Sound Byte? There is more where that came from! Check us out on YouTube and be sure to subscribe for more content!

Announcing PeopleSoft Fluid Day! A one-day Fluid Webinar

Announcing PeopleSoft Integration Day! Are you ready to learn Fluid? Or, do you already know Fluid, but want to learn more? Join us online Thursday, May 20, 2021 for a full day Fluid Development Experience! Space is limited so register now!

Register Now!

Here are some of the topics we will cover and questions we will answer:

Classic versus Fluid

Both Classic and Fluid use App Designer to create solutions. Both support drag and drop page design. So what are the differences? And if you know Classic, what do I need to learn to be proficient with Fluid?

Mobile

Isn't Fluid mobile? If so, why aren't my grids responsive? What mobile-friendly options exist for grids?

Drag and Drop

PeopleSoft homepages allow us to drag and drop tiles. AWE allows us to drag and drop fields. How can I implement Drag and Drop on my own Fluid pages?

Branding

What does it take to create a branding theme for a PeopleSoft instance? How do you brand both Classic and Fluid? Do I have to use Branding Macros with Fluid? Are there alternatives?

Drop Zones

Where can I use Drop Zones? What can I do with them? What if a component doesn't have Drop Zones? Are there limitations with Drop Zones? Since Drop Zones and Event Mapping don't appear in compare reports, how do we know what to review after a system update?

PeopleSoft Test Framework (PTF)

How do you implement PTF? Are there any challenges to using PTF with Fluid? Are there special considerations for PTF with Event Mapping and Drop Zones?

Do you have a group of 10 or more? Contact us at info@jsmpros.com for a quantity discount!

Register Now!

Is PeopleSoft Fluid Mobile-ready? Grids

Flex Grid on Fluid page on an iPhone

Vertical scrolling on mobile is perfectly acceptable. But horizontal scrolling is an absolute no-no! So if Fluid is mobile, why is my Fluid grid so wide? Why doesn't it reflow into a vertical rendering? Great question! A Flex Grid is the Fluid version of the plain-old Classic Grid. The only difference is the Flex Grid stretches to fill its container, whereas a Classic Grid's width is fixed. The Flex Grid is likely the most common Grid type for desktop, but it doesn't fit well on smaller form factors, as you may have experienced. So what can we do? The most common solution is to use PeopleCode to change the grid type. In the post Is PeopleSoft Fluid Mobile-ready? Setting the Browser Viewport, we said that Fluid + PeopleCode = Mobile, which holds true for grids. We can use PeopleCode to transform a Flex Grid into a mobile-friendly type, such as a List Grid, Div Grid, or Data Grid. Here is an example:

If %Request.BrowserDeviceFormFactor = %FormFactor_Small Then
   /* change to LIST grid */
   &grid.Layout = %ListGrid;
End-If;

PeopleCode alternatives include:

• Stacked Grid Group Boxes,
• Stacked Grid Group Boxes with Suppress-on attributes, and
• Custom CSS with breakpoints

With this in mind, let's extend our Fluid development formula to: Fluid + PeopleCode + Style Classes + Attributes = Mobile.

We cover grids in great detail in our Fluid 2 course, including Flex, List, Div, and Data grid types, and how to transform grids using PeopleCode and CSS. Checkout fluid.jsmpros.com to see when we are offering it next. Do you have a group of developers to train? Contact us for special group pricing!

Is PeopleSoft Fluid Mobile-ready? Setting the Browser Viewport

Zoomed-out Fluid page on an iPhone

Have you created a Fluid component yet? Have you tested it on mobile? What did you see? Did it work as expected? When I created my first Fluid component, what surprised me was the zoom factor. My mobile device rendered Fluid content as if it were Classic. Sure, it had nice big Fluid buttons, but my mobile browser zoomed out so much that I thought I was looking at Classic, not Fluid. My first question was, "Why? Why is it doing that?" Without contrary instruction, a mobile browser will scale to fit a page. You would think a responsive page would scale accordingly, but it doesn't. It scales at large form factor, which is zoomed out. My next question was, "Isn't Fluid mobile?" Actually, Fluid has the potential to be mobile, but no. Fluid by itself is not mobile. The Fluid framework seems to be missing the meta Viewport tag, the tag that tells a mobile browser how to scale content. So how do we set the Viewport? At its core, we set the Viewport using the AddMetaTag PeopleCode function, and you are welcome to use it, but I don't recommend it. Instead, use PT_PAGE_UTILS:Utils.SetDefaultViewport. This App Class method handles the Viewport meta tag for us, including known operating-system issues. With that said, a basic Fluid component without a Flex grid is fully mobile if we set the Viewport. So is Fluid mobile? The correct answer is Fluid + PeopleCode = Mobile.

With which event should we invoke SetDefaultViewport? I've seen it in a lot of PageActivate code, but let's think about that for a minute... every time you switch between pages within a single component, PeopleSoft invokes PageActivate. Do we need to call SetDefaultViewport with every page change? No, just once per component. Meta tags exist in the head section of the rendered HTML, downloaded on the first component load, and subsequently updated upon request. So which event then? I prefer component PreBuild. Either PreBuild or PostBuild will work just fine. PostBuild triggers after the component buffer loads and usually contains a lot of component buffer manipulation logic. Setting the meta tag has no impact on the component buffer, and I hate to clutter a messy PostBuild with unrelated PeopleCode 😉.

How does Oracle handle this meta-issue? Any new component uses PT_PAGE_UTILS:Utils.SetDefaultViewport almost exclusively in one of those three events: PageActivate, PreBuild, or PostBuild. But if you review original Fluid components (early HCM, for example), you will find a mixture of AddMetaTag and SetViewPort Function library calls.

Setting the Viewport is a fundamental principle we teach in our Fluid Basic (Fluid 1) course. Checkout fluid.jsmpros.com to see when we are offering it next. Would you prefer to learn at your own pace? We cover this topic in our one-day on-demand training course Fluid Basic Development. Or, purchase the Fluid 1 Bundle and save! Do you have a group of developers to train? Contact us for special group pricing!

Fluid Navigation Collection Tile Parameters

The Fluid navigation paradigm starts with role-based homepages and usually finishes with business process-based tiles. And, the most common way to build a business process-based tile is with a Navigation Collection published through Tile Wizard. Now I'm going to ask a question with an obvious answer. OK, so here goes, Do you build them in Dev, Test, or Production? And, I'm sure you answered, "Development, of course." Nicely done! What about migration? Here's the really cool thing: Navigation Collections are just portal registry structures, so we can migrate them just like any content reference: add them to a project. I've seen several comments and posts discussing this.

Now, perform a quick search for PTPPB_GROUPLET. Did you find anything interesting? Here, let me summarize: PTPPB_GROUPLET is an ADS used to migrate Tile Wizard metadata. Next question: Do you need to migrate Navigation Collection Tile Wizard metadata? There is a bit of debate around this one, but the real answer is: It depends. Many Tile Wizard data types depend on Tile Wizard metadata at runtime, but Navigation Collections do not. Tile Wizard is just a tool we use to create the Navigation Collection's content reference. A Navigation Collection Tile Wizard tile is actually processed through a special Activity Guide template, not through a Tile Wizard runtime. So to answer the question, no, you don't need to migrate Navigation Collection Tile Wizard metadata for a Navigation Collection Tile to work properly.

I'm going to ask you another question: Do you think you might want to use Tile Wizard to maintain your Navigation Collection tile? If yes, then you may want to think about migrating Navigation Collection Tiles through PTPPB_GROUPLET. Why? Most of us periodically copy Production over Dev. If we want our Dev resources to persist, we must migrate them to production. Otherwise, we'll lose the ability to maintain Tile Wizard metadata post copy. So no, you don't need to copy Navigation Collection Tile Wizard metadata for Navigation Collection tiles to work. But Yes, you should copy Tile Wizard metadata if you want to be able to maintain your Navigation Collections going forward.

OK, so maybe it is too late, and you now find yourself with Navigation Collection Tiles with no Tile Wizard metadata. Can you still maintain them? While reviewing CS PUM 16, I found myself in this exact situation. It appears that CS includes several Navigation Collection tiles in a "demo" category, but no Tile Wizard metadata. Fortunately, all Navigation Collection Tile metadata is stored with the content reference. All we have to do is manually update the content reference. Here is a list of the parameters, values, and descriptions of each. First, let's start with a sample content reference Portal URL:

c/NUI_FRAMEWORK.PT_AGSTARTPAGE_NUI.GBL?CONTEXTIDPARAMS=TEMPLATE_ID:PTPPNAVCOL&scname=ADMN_TILE_ADMINISTRATION&PanelCollapsible=Y&PTPPB_GROUPLET_ID=JSM_TILE_MAINT&CRefName=ADMN_NAVCOLL_1

This URL starts pretty normal, listing the Fluid Activity guide component as the starting point. Next, like any Activity Guide, we see the Activity Guide template ID. Everything after that is the domain of the Tile Wizard. Here is a list of URL attributes we can change to alter the behavior of our Navigation Collection tile:

TEMPLATE_ID

PTPPNAVCOL for "optimized" and PTPPNONOPT for "non-optimized"

scname

Navigation Collection ID (the real "name", a folder CREF ID)

PanelCollapsible

Y: Include the collapsible button beside the left panel.

The rest of the URL doesn't seem to matter.

Each week, you can find Jim Marion teaching a PeopleTools class somewhere on planet earth. Register for one of his upcoming classes at jsmpros.com.

Announcing Fluid 3!

At jsmpros, we teach Fluid training courses several times a month. PeopleTools Fluid is by far our most popular course. Through our Fluid 1 and 2 courses, we teach an incredible amount of material including:

• Fluid navigation,
• Fluid page development strategies,
• Oracle-delivered style classes and layout
• External CSS libraries,
• Fluid grid layouts
• Fluid Group Boxes
• Dynamic Tiles
• Responsive and adaptive mobile design concepts, etc.

The feedback from our Fluid 1 and 2 series is overwhelmingly positive. What we are announcing today is our next level Fluid course: Fluid 3. Through this course you will learn how to:

• Use Master/Detail to build business process based solutions,
• Build effective secondary headers similar to PeopleSoft's self-service headers (including Related Actions),
• Use Scroll Areas and Fluid alternatives,
• Extend Fluid with JavaScript libraries such as d3 and Oracle JET,
• Leverage the DataGrid to create compelling solutions,
• Add Fluid Related Content,
Convert Classic components to Fluid,
• Extend Fluid Pages with 8.57+ Drop Zones,
• Construct robust, business-centric dynamic tiles and Fluid navigation, and
• Learn additional PeopleSoft CSS classes not covered in the Fluid 1 and 2 courses.

To register for our upcoming August Fluid 3 session or any of our live virtual training courses, please visit our Live Virtual Training online catalog.

Has it been a while since your last Fluid training course? Are your Fluid skills a little rusty? Use our Fluid 3 course as a refresher to get you back into shape.

Note: If you have taken Fluid from other trainers, feel free to start with our Fluid 2 course. Even though we do not monitor prerequisites, we do encourage attendees with Fluid experience to attend our Fluid 2 training before continuing to Fluid 3.

Adding a Fluid WorkCenter to a Navigation Collection

Oracle has done an outstanding job converting Classic Self-service to Fluid to promote the modern, mobile user experience. But what about back-office functionality? We certainly can't predict the future, but it seems that back-office transactions will remain Classic for a very long time. Rather than change the appearance of the back-office user experience, I believe our best strategy is to build back-office, business process-based navigation. Our users don't seem excited about the NavBar and Navigator and we can nearly eliminate its use through properly constructed business process based navigation. Here are a couple of business process based navigation tools:

• Navigation Collections
• Master Detail
• Dashboards
• Activity Guides
• WorkCenters

Because of its simplicity and ease of maintenance, we often recommend customers start with Tile Wizard-based Navigation Collections. Oracle, on the other hand, is providing business process based navigation by converting Classic WorkCenters to Fluid WorkCenters.

In a recent attempt to provide a segue from one business process to another, I added a Fluid WorkCenter to a Navigation Collection. Both a Tile Wizard-based Navigation Collection and a Fluid WorkCenter contain a left-hand sidebar. Embedding one in another creates a Left-panel Collision. To avoid this collision, I marked the Navigation Collection item Replace Window property. Unfortunately, trying to launch the Fluid WorkCenter from a Navigation Collection generated an SQL error. This prompted me to try launching the Fluid WorkCenter outside the Navigation Collection. To my surprise, this also generated an SQL error. The WorkCenter worked before adding it to a WorkCenter, so this was clearly unexpected. After reviewing the app server log, I discovered a single-row subquery within the Fluid WorkCenter framework was returning more than one row. It didn't do this before adding the Fluid WorkCenter to a Navigation Collection, so what changed? One thing: I added a Fluid WorkCenter to a Navigation Collection. The SQL that caused the problem looks for any CREF that uses the WorkCenter's target component and is marked as a Fluid Workcenter (contains &FLWC=Y in the CREF additional parameters). By adding a Fluid WorkCenter CREF to a Navigation Collection, I created a CREF Link to the original CREF. The end result was a second matching row in the portal registry table (PSPRSMDEF).

Lesson learned: Don't add a Fluid WorkCenter to a Navigation Collection or any other structure that will result in a second CREF with the same (or similar) target. This makes sense because Fluid WorkCenters are business process-based navigation. Adding business process-based navigation to business process-based navigation may not make sense.

Is there a workaround? Absolutely! Instead of adding the Fluid WorkCenter directly to a Navigation Collection, create a redirect iScript. The PeopleCode in the iScript will send the user to the existing Fluid WorkCenter content reference rather than duplicating the existing content reference in the Navigation Collection.

Is the workaround worth the effort? That is an entirely different question. First, the effort is minimal and will require just a few lines of PeopleCode and a Permission List update. But what is the savings and user experience impact? Fluid WorkCenters are designed to be launched as homepage tiles. To launch a homepage tile, you must be on a homepage. The user savings, therefore, is the user won't have to return to a homepage to launch the next business process but can transfer directly from one to the next. Returning to the prior business process is as simple as clicking the Fluid header back button.

Configuring productive Business Process navigation is critical to successful Fluid implementation. Are you ready to learn more? Register now for our Fluid 1 course online. Do you have a whole team to train? Contact us for group pricing and delivery options.

Launching into the middle of a Fluid Navigation Collection

One of the greatest challenges to a successful Fluid deployment is Classic navigation and one of the most common solutions to this challenge is the Tile Wizard-based Navigation Collection. Tile Wizard-based navigation collections allow us to build business process-based navigation for our back-office users (back-office pages are primarily Classic). Let's say you have built some amazing Navigation Collections for your back-office users and now you want to drill from one collection or page to a specific target page in another Navigation Collection. You know you can easily craft a URL to a Tile Wizard Navigation Collection, but can you load a specific target component from that Navigation Collection? This is a great question that my PeopleTools Fluid course students ask me often. The answer is Yes!

When using the Tile Wizard to publish a Navigation Collection, PeopleTools uses a special Activity Guide template to display the Navigation Collection. This means that every Tile Wizard-based Navigation Collection is viewed as an Activity Guide. Each link is considered a step in the Activity Guide. Fluid Activity Guide steps have an id attribute called ptgpid. Once we find the ptgpid of a step, we can use that ID in a URL. When the Activity Guide is a Navigation Collection, the step ID is the Navigation Collection CREF Link ID. Note: this is not the base CREF ID, but the CREF link that was created by the Navigation Collection utility. If we inspect the HTML for a Navigation Collection, we can find the ptgpid in the HTML. Alternatively, we can find it in the portal registry under Portal Objects > Navigation Collections. Here is an example from the HTML:

To launch the highlighted item, copy the ptgpid and add the following to the end of the URL:

&ptgpid=<the id goes here>

For example, in the Portal Navigation Collection that is part of the PeopleSoft Developer homepage, appending the following to the URL will navigate directly to the Find Object Navigation item:

&ptgpid=HC_S201604180146095689166800

At jsmpros we believe that navigation is a critical component of a successful Fluid implementation, which is why we devote the first day of our Fluid 1 course to Fluid navigation. To learn more or to schedule a course, visit us online at jsmpros.com.

Do I have to use the Navigator?

Navigator exposed from the NavBar

I have seen several very clever Navbar customizations including:

• Auto-expand the Navigator when expanding the Navbar and
• Showing the breadcrumb path in the Navigator.

These customizations seem quite valuable to anyone that uses the Navigator. And who doesn't use the Navigator? It is the primary delivered navigation method for Classic content. But are we really supposed to depend on the Navigator? If so, should these customizations be incorporated into the product? Or are we missing the point of Fluid navigation? Does Fluid provide an alternative?

Let's start with a review of Self-Service. With a complete Self-Service Fluid rollout, do you need to use the Navigator to launch any Self-Service functionality? No. Every Self-Service transaction is available from a tile. Consider Personal Details. When an HCM Self-Service user launches Personal Details from a tile, PeopleSoft opens a WorkCenter-like experience, allowing the user to navigate through the Personal Details components using a left-hand sidebar. Again, did we need the Navigator for any of this functionality? No. But that was Fluid. What about Classic? In PeopleSoft HCM PUM 29 there are 400+ Fluid components and nearly 7,000 Classic components. How would you navigate to those 7,000 Classic components without the Navigator? Classic components predate Fluid and therefore aren't represented by tiles. Imagine if they were? How many homepages would you need to house 7,000 tiles? How many tiles would you have per homepage? Too many! So we use the navigator... but wait!

Let's review the list of Fluid navigation options:

• Homepages
• Tiles
• Navigation Collections (published as tiles)
• Related Actions
• Activity Guides (Fluid, optimized as well as HCM ESS Activity Guides with categories)
• WorkCenters (Enterprise Components Fluid WorkCenters or Classic WorkCenters)
• Master/Detail
• Side page 1
• Two-panel layout

Many of these options are configurable and do not require Application Designer (Developer not required).

Fluid WorkCenter (Master/Detail) with Classic+ Components

Here is how I believe Fluid navigation should work. Keep in mind that Fluid navigation spans both Classic and Fluid components. Fluid navigation is not just for Fluid Components.

Role-based homepage with business process-based tiles

1. Homepages should be role based. My homepage collection should depend on the hats I wear in my organization.
2. Within each homepage, I should have business process-based tiles. These tiles should launch WorkCenter-like Navigation Collections, Activity Guides, and so on. For example, if I am a PeopleSoft developer, then I should see a tile for managing security. When launched, that security tile will display a left-hand panel for navigating within the Security business process. If I manage payroll, then I might expect to find a tile labeled "Payroll WorkCenter USA" that includes navigation for all of the components associated with the Payroll business process. Remember, the items in the left-hand sidebar of a Navigation Collection or WorkCenter may be a combination of Classic, Classic +, and Fluid.
3. From certain transaction pages, I should see Related Actions that allow me to drill from one transaction to a related transaction.

Related Actions that drill from one component to another

Done right, 95+% of my work will launch from tiles. The Navigator becomes my safety net. I reach for the Navigator once a year or every few years to complete some obscure configuration task reserved for implementation.

What about the Navbar? We often think of the Navbar as an intermediate step used to launch the Navigator, but the Navbar is a homepage of tiles. Instead of a container for the Navigator, the Navbar is an always-present homepage with tiles I can launch from anywhere in PeopleSoft. Let's say you work in Procurement and often answer questions about Purchase Orders. You have your regular buyer and procurement duties, but you must be ready at a moment's notice to answer a question or solve a problem. To prepare for the inevitable interruption, you add your most common inquiry business process tiles to the Navbar. You are now two-clicks from the answer to any question.

Now I ask you, "if you never use the Navigator, do you still desire a customization to automatically expand the Navigator when opening the Navbar?" I think not.

How did we get here? I believe we are in an intermediate navigational state. Classic used breadcrumbs. Fluid uses business processes. I believe the problem is that our Classic content was moved into the Fluid navigation paradigm (PeopleTools 8.55) without usable business process maps (Navigation Collections, WorkCenters, and so on). We, therefore, must build our own business process maps using Fluid navigation tools to align Classic content with Fluid navigation.

Building navigation is a critical phase of any Fluid implementation. Get it wrong and you may find yourself rolling back Fluid in favor of Classic (no joke, I have seen this before). When implementing Fluid we often focus on Self-Service, and rightly so. Self-Service comprises the majority of our headcount. But often Self-Service users are a minority of our actual time spent using PeopleSoft. Oracle has done a great job of building Fluid navigation for Self-Service users. What's missing? Fluid navigation for Classic. Today that is our job. As developers and business analysts, we must build that missing business process based navigation for our back office users.

We believe that navigation is a critical component to a successful Fluid implementation and that is why we devote the first day of our Fluid 1 course to Fluid navigation. To learn more or to schedule a course, visit us online at jsmpros.com.

Where is My New Optional Default Tile?

Navigation is critical to any business application. Classic used breadcrumbs for navigation. As I'm sure you noticed, Fluid is different, using Tiles and Homepages as the starting point for application navigation.

"In Fluid, tiles and homepages represent the primary navigation model, replacing Classic's breadcrumb menu."

In Classic, breadcrumb navigation is managed by administrators. It is fixed, not variable, not personalizable. Users cannot personalize Classic navigation (other than creating favorites). Did I say Fluid is different? Yes. Fluid gives users significant control over their navigational view by allowing them to personalize tiles and homepages. This can cause significant problems, with users removing tiles that represent critical business functions. There are a few solutions for this problem (disable personalization, mark tiles as required, etc, see Section 4 of Simon's blog post for ideas). What I want to focus on is confusion regarding optional default tiles, where an optional default tile doesn't default onto a homepage. Here is the scenario:

• A homepage already exists
• As an administrator, you configure a new tile as Optional Default

After configuring the homepage, all users that have NOT personalized will see the tile. Put another way, any user that has personalized the homepage will not see the new tile (and a simple accidental drag and drop will result in a personalization). Here is what users that personalize will see:

If it is optional default, what happened to the default part? When users personalize their homepages, PeopleSoft clones the current state of the homepage into a user table. Let's say Tom and Jill both personalize their home pages. Tom will now have a personalized copy of the default configuration and Jill will have an entirely different personalized copy.

Administrators will continue to insert optional default content into homepages, but Tom and Jill will not see those optional default tiles. Tom and Jill's homepages are now detached from the source. We can push optional default tiles into Tom's and Jill's copies by using the Tile Publish button available to each homepage content reference (in the portal registry). This App Engine program inserts a row for each optional default tile into each user's copy of the homepage metadata.

Pretty clear and straight forward so far? OK, let's make it more complicated. Let's say an administrator adds a new optional default tile to the default homepage described above and presses the Publish Tile button. After the App Engine runs, the administrator notices Tom sees the tile, but Jill does not. What went wrong? If Jill doesn't have security access to the tile's target, Jill won't see the new tile. Let's say Jill is supposed to have security access so we update permissions and roles. We check Jill's homepage again. Does Jill see the tile? No. Why not? When we published the tile, Jill did not have security access so PeopleSoft didn't insert a row into Jill's personalization metadata. How can we make this tile appear for Jill? We could publish again. If we recognize and resolve the security issue immediately after publishing, this may be reasonable.

Let's play out this scenario a little differently. Some time has passed since we published. Tom has seen and removed the new tile from his homepage. One day Tom is at the water cooler talking about this annoying new tile that just appeared one day so he removed it. Jill overhears Tom and logs in to look for this annoying tile. After some searching, however, she doesn't see it on her homepage. She calls the help desk to find out why she doesn't have access to the annoying tile (that she will probably remove after seeing it). This is when you discover the security issue and make the tile available to Jill. For Jill to see this tile as a default, however, you will need to republish the tile. When you republish the tile, what will happen to Tom's homepage? Yes, you guessed it. Tom will see the tile appear again and will likely call the help desk to complain about the annoying tile that just reappeared.

What's the solution? At this time there is no delivered, recommended solution. The App Engine is very short, containing a couple of SQL statements. Using it as a guide, it is trivial to write a one-off metadata insert for Jill and all others affected by the security change without affecting Tom. When writing SQL inserts into PeopleTools tables, however, we must consider cache, version increments, and many other risk factors (I probably would not do this). I would say it is safer to annoy Tom.

--

Jim' is the Principal PeopleTools instructor at JSMPROS. Take your PeopleTools skills to the next level by scheduling PeopleTools training with us today!