Review: Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management 9.1

I have been working my way through “Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management 9.1 Implementation“, and it has been a great experience for me.  For once, I get a beginner’s introduction to the system rather than trial by fire.  The book does a great job describing how PeopleSoft Financials works and how the modules fit together.  It is a first of its kind in the area of PeopleSoft Financials books.

While this book does not or could not ever give you all you need know about PeopleSoft Financials, it does give you a strong foundation.  No book nor person could contain everything about this system because it is so large, but this book is a definite starting point.  I would recommend it to anyone who is either starting a job where they will use PeopleSoft Financials or anyone going through a Financials implementation.  This book will give you the fundamentals that you need and provide a reference to understand why things work the way they do.

This book is definitely up to date as you can tell by the screen shots.  The book has plenty of graphics to let you know what the various pages look like as you read.  All of the shots reflect the new look delivered by PeopleSoft 8.5x.  The one thing I didn’t see is specific mention of new features delivered in Financials 9.1.  So, the book is geared toward a person new to financials or someone looking for a system overview rather than a person looking for new features after an upgrade from an older PeopleSoft release.

Chapter one did a great job providing an overview and foundation for the rest of the book.  I felt it was a bit long, but there was a lot to cover.  Next the security chapter gives you a good view of how security works in PeopleSoft applications and it also explains the preferences settings that go along with security.  The following chapters walk through the key modules: Billing, Accounts Receivable, Asset Management, Accounts Payable, General Ledger, Expenses, and Commitment Control.  Each chapter tied the module in with the rest of the system, explained the main setup options, and showed the pages used to make it work.

One of the key features of this book was the real-world examples and situations.  The author did a good job of explaining situations in which one would use these features.  You can always go to PeopleBooks and read about what the pages do, but the author provides additional value by showing you how you use the pages of the application to accomplish a business goal.  Throughout the book, you will find “Implementation challenges” where you apply what you have just read in a read-world situation.

The book seemed thorough to me.  It covered many of the functional areas where I have done development work, and I was glad to understand the functional side of those areas much better.  For example, the Expenses module was very interesting to me.  Purchasing and Pay Cycle information was something I was looking for, and while they were mentioned, I learned from a friend that those are more Procurement topics which are outside the scope of the book.  So, the book did a tremendous job at covering such a huge system.

In conclusion, I would highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn the basics of PeopleSoft Financials.  It will give you a great overview of the system and is the best starting place I know. Check it out!

Installing Gobal Payroll Rules

This post is a follow up to this thread that I opened.  Unfortunately, at this point, I haven’t figured out what I am doing wrong.  If you see something, please comment either here or on the thread at Oracle Forums.

I am trying to install the  Global Payroll Rules for 856737 and 857845 (both Non-Rule + Rule).

I found that I do this at this navigation: Set Up HRMS > Product Related > Global Payroll & Absence Mgmt > Elements > Manage Global Payroll Packages > Apply Rule Package:

Applying Rule Package

I found a little documentation in PeopleBooks.

Then, I put in the path to my scripts directory, saved, and clicked process.

Adding Scripts Directory

It said the scripts were not found:

Script Not Found Message

But, as far as I can tell, the scripts are in the directory!

Scripts directory

Just for kicks and grins, I copied the DAT files into the same directory:

Scripts Directory with Dat files

Still no luck!

My next attempt is the try to see if case matters.  The files are in lower case in the directory, but on the page the Package ID is uppercase.

Using Lowercase Package ID

That still doesn’t work because it must be an uppercase field:

Rule Package ID made Uppercase

Update:

My problem was the “/” at the end of path.  Once I added the “/” it worked!

Missing Slash

Then, when I clicked process, it ran the data mover script:

Data Mover Script Running

 

 

How to Edit PTIBUpgrade.DMS

While upgrading PeopleTools, one of the steps you have to go through is running this PTIBUpgrade Data Mover script.  It took me a bit to figure out what the values are for the script.

This ITToolbox Thread helped a little bit.

There are 3 values that you have to change in this script.  These are the values that I used:

  • Specified Default User ID: PSEM
  • Specified Default Service Namespace: <your login URL or:> http://xmln.oracle.com/enterprise/tools/service
  • Default Permission List: PTPT1000

The namespace is the option that confused me the most.  According to PeopleBooks, “The namespace field on the Service pages provides qualification for attributes and elements within a WSDL document.  The value defined in the Service Namespace field in the Service Configuration page is used as the default service namespace on the Services page. The default value is http://xmln.oracle.com/enterprise/tools/service.”

If you have better suggestions for the values to use, please comment!

Resources

 

Finding TNSNames Path

Thanks to this post on StackOverflow, I learned a new trick with diagnosing TNS Names issues.  First, you need to download this tool called Process Monitor from SysInternals.

Installing the program is pretty easy.  Simply unzip the program and place it in a good location such as the Program Files directory:

Process Monitor Installed

I always like to create a shortcut in the Start Menu.  If you right click on the Programs menu in your Start Menu, you can choose the open option to open it.  Then, drag with your right mouse button, and you can drop a shortcut in your start menu:

Shortcut for Process Monitor

Once you have Process Monitor installed, you can use the filter to narrow it down to show where it is looking for tnsnames.  Here is what I found that works:

Process Monitor Filter

Add the process name for the process that you want to check.  Use psdmt for Data Mover.  pside for App Designer.  PrcsAppSrv for the App Server launched by psadmin.

Then, if you put tnsnames in for the Path it will show where it is looking for the tnsnames file.

This tool works great for all kinds of situations.  I have also used it to diagnose other connection issues.  I found it was loading the wrong Oracle client on one installation.  I found it was looking in the registry in the wrong place for Tuxedo settings because I had the wrong version.

So, this is a great tool that will help with troubleshooting.

Resources

SysDBA Connection Woes — Simple Fix

I needed SYSDBA privileges in order to extend a data file, and I could not make that happen for some reason.  I felt rather silly when I figured it out.  I’ve got to write it down in case I ever need to come back to it.

First, I opened SQLPlus without logging in:

sqlplus /nolog

Then, in SQLPlus, I tried to connect using OS authentication with SYSDBA access.  Here’s the command:

connect / as sysdba

The only response I could get was:

ERROR:
ORA-01031: insufficient privileges

I jumped through hoops trying to change the password for sys.  I regenerated the file password file.  Nothing helped.  Finally, I ran across this post that led me to check the OS group. All I had to do was put my Windows User into the Windows group for database administration.

I opened the start menu and right clicked on “My Computer”.  Then, I chose Manage from the menu.  In the Manage utility I went to “Local Users and Groups”, then I clicked on the Groups folder.  In the groups folder I double clicked on the “ORA_DBA” group to open the properties.  On the “Members” tab, I added my Windows username to the list.

From there, the connect worked fine.  To complete the story, here’s the resize SQL that I used:

ALTER DATABASE
TEMPFILE '<path to file>\pstemp01.dbf'
AUTOEXTEND ON NEXT 5M MAXSIZE UNLIMITED

For me, the temp space was causing me trouble.  If you want to use a regular tablespace, the syntax is similar:

ALTER DATABASE
DATAFILE '<path to file>\<data file>'
 AUTOEXTEND ON NEXT 5M MAXSIZE UNLIMITED

Quick Note: Invalid Version of PSORA

These days the 32-bit / 64-bit Windows situation is quite frustrating!  We need everything to be either 64-bit or 32-bit.  This half and half stuff makes things challenging.

This post is just a quick note to remind you (and me) that even though you are running 64-bit Windows and 64-bit Oracle database, the PeopleTools on Windows is still 32-bit.  Data mover and the App Server both require a 32-bit database client to talk to the database.

If you don’t install a 32-bit Oracle client, you may get an error that reads something like this:

PS General SQL Routines: Missing or invalid version of SQL library PSORA (200,0)<

Resources:

HEUG: FIU Mobile Session Review

Again, I did not attend this session, but I did listen to it afterward.  Here are just a few thoughts.

You can view their mobile site here: https://m.fiu.edu.  It worked fine for me even in Chrome on my laptop.

I noticed they said they only supported WebKit-based browsers, which covered 95% of the browsers.  I didn’t catch if they used any HTML5 features.  He mentioned that Blackberry is Webkit, so they are included.  From the statistics, most of their traffic was from iOS devices, mainly iPhones.

Another feature I caught was that there are no graphics involved.  That can’t be totally true because for example on the home page, there is a little icon next to the menu items.  The look and feel is very nice though, and they have done an excellent job with their CSS3 usage.

I thought it was cool to see that they were using Google Analytics to track the usage of the site.  I wonder if anyone else is using Google Analytics in a PeopleSoft scenario like maybe on self-service pages within PeopleSoft.

The fact that they were planning native apps was interesting to me.  The mobile sit seems so robust.  What are the benefits to having a native app that makes it worth the effort?

His steps were very helpful.  Here are the steps he said:

  • Create External Node
  • Create IB Message
  • Create IB Service Operation
  • Configure IB Handler
  • Configure IB Routings
  • Write Handler PeopleCode