PeopleSoft Upgrade Contribution

Oracle’s ideas on FUSION are headed in the right direction, thanks to its acquisitions. PeopleSoft PeopleTools/Application development worked so closely with the upgrade teams, which resulted in a good upgrade path (I would not call it Best! I still think PeopleSoft could have automated the process of Reapplication of Customizations – at least to a certain extent. With only one programmer at my disposal (which is me!) I was able to automate reapply customizations for records, fields, record fields, indexes, components, menus, indexes and translates (whew!)). They (The Upgrade Development Team) worked closely with the PeopleTools/Application development and ensured that the New Release does not put too much effort requirement into the Upgrade. Can't really take the credit away from PS because a single developer could not have achieved this had they not worried about the Upgrades.

Let me give you a clear pointer to this, PeopleSoft PeopleTools development wanted to remove Menus, but the Upgrade Development team identified the complexity which this would have brought to the upgrade. Although, attaching components to Menus involves a bit of effort it does provide us with the much needed grouping of related business processes. If I remember correctly, it was my mentor who put me this question “Why do we need Menus?” and digging into somebody told us it is for compatibility with Older PeopleSoft releases. We did agree upon this because we thought the advantage of Menus could easily be over-ridden by allowing the user to optionally attach these components to a Menu – This is what we thought the PeopleTools development wanted to achieve with the replacement of Menus. I have always wanted to ask somebody in PeopleSoft development whether this was actually a plan or a Myth! But this being a Myth or reality doesn’t really change things here; the Upgrade development played a critical role in PeopleSoft. Looking into the way Upgrades were presented in PeopleSoft, we really know that this did happen.

I’ll get back to the first line of this post; “Oracle’s ideas on FUSION are headed in the right direction, thanks to its acquisitions”. During my recent conversation with x-colleagues I heard them say that the Upgrade development team is involved with the FUSION development in pointing the challenges which FUSION will have on PS upgrades.

Another important aspect of this post is, I’m not trying to underestimate the capabilities of other Application products. ORACLE could have done it (But doesn’t look like it to me, when I was introduced to ORACLE application upgrade, it did not look like I would have understood it in 2 days. This was the amount of time required to understand PS upgrades.). If there is another company (other than PS) in FUSION whose contribution I wouldn’t doubt it is definitely SIEBEL.

Small note here, another of those useful information which I came across recently is, a Customer of ORACLE migrated from ORACLE applications to PS. One of the senior members in PS had this to say, “PS HRMS 8.9 is easily the best product available in the market currently. Did you ever hear about a Customer moving from the parent company to the acquired company?” Of course heard about this from x-colleagues. I was not successful enough in getting this information from the internet, and I'm not able to recall the name of the Customer. Probably give it to you in a later post.

Disclaimer: The thoughts mentioned here are strictly mine.

Oh! blogs are so much easier to write (No flashy marketing lingo required), White Papers are not!!! I really have miles to go before I could finish the White Papers assigned to me. I'll try finishing atleast a couple before I could return to the blogspot.