Monday, July 14, 2014

PeopleTools 8.54 is GA!

On Friday the PeopleTools blog announced that PeopleTools 8.54 is now Generally Available (GA). PeopleTools 8.54 brings several usability features including responsive design for mobile devices as well as development features such as Mobile Application Platform (MAP). One of my favorite new features is component specific branding. You can now attach stylesheets and JavaScript to components as described in PeopleBooks Applying Branding to Other Objects. Another great branding enhancement is Attribute-based branding. This is very similar to role based branding, but more flexible and easier to administer. You can read about it in the PeopleBooks entry Administering System Branding.

To learn more read the PeopleTools announcement or visit the hosted 8.54 PeopleBooks. I can't wait for the new demo images!

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Jim,

Our understanding is that in order to upgrade to PeopleTools 8.54 we need 8.54.02 since this patch will include the necessary CA scripts for the upgrade. Can you confirm this is true, and if so do you know when 8.54.02 would be available ?

Thanks.

Jim Marion said...

@Lewis, unfortunately I do not have dates for the upgrade.

Unknown said...

Good Afternoon Jim,

We recently upgraded our tools to 8.54 and have noticed a fairly major change in how the branding tools work. Most of our navigation we had in 8.53 was built around using a jquery call in a custom version of the delivered html layout of the page. We edited that from the Enable HTML Layouts under the Define Elements under branding. This option does not appear to be available in 8.54 are you aware of where these options moved or if they are even still available at all?

Jim Marion said...

@John, Are you using Interaction Hub? I think that is the only application pre-8.54 with enable HTML Layouts. Post 8.54, EVERY application has role based branding. You will find this in PeopleTools > Portal > Branding.

If your purpose is to just add jQuery and some custom JavaScript, then here is another option new in 8.54: PeopleTools > Portal > Branding > Branding System Options. You will see a grid where you can insert JavaScripts on a global level. I am currently using this with require.js and a require.js configuration file so I can manage dependencies and scope so I don't have jQuery and other library conflicts (especially with multiple pagelets all requiring the same libraries). You can read more about it here: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E55243_01/pt854pbr0/eng/pt/tprt/task_AdministeringSystemBranding.html.

Tom Mannanchery said...

Hey Jim,

Would the branding features of Interaction Hub be impacted by People Tools 8.54?

Thanks,
Tom

Jim Marion said...

@Tom, I have an 8.54 Interaction Hub server. It is using the 8.54 attribute based branding, not the older Interaction Hub role based branding. I have not tried to brand it yet, so I don't know about branding migration, etc.

Tom Mannanchery said...

Thanks Jim. I was just asking because we are using Interaction Hub on Tools 8.53 and are planning to upgrade to 8.54. Could our branding possibly break?

Tom

Jim Marion said...

@Tom, great question. The PeopleTools team made provision for customers that already have branding themes. If you file a case, then MyOracle support will point you at the appropriate documentation. I just don't have experience with it yet.