PeopleSoft 9.2 FMS testing continues
Implementation date is October 13, 2017
User testing on PeopleSoft 9.2 Financial Management System (FMS) continues ahead of an October 13, 2017 release. This change primarily impacts administrators of PeopleSoft applications such as financial management reports, contract accounting, and travel accounting.
PeopleSoft upgrades of this scope are measured in months (sometimes years). Success owes to a broad collaboration between UIT and hundreds of IT and business professionals on campus.
Phase one testing is about to begin, according to Marv Hawkins, Associate Director of Product Management for Finance Systems in University Support Services (USS). Hawkins noted that a recent round involved 20 subject matter experts testing 500 individual process tasks in an effort to omit unnecessary actions and redundancies. Test subjects represented more than a dozen offices across the University – Financial and Business Services (FSB), the Office of Sponsored Projects (OSP) and the School of Medicine, among others. Several additional testing integration phases will involve smaller groups of “super SMEs” leading up the October go-live.
Coordination of testing efforts, Hawkins said, is considerably more focused than five years ago when PeopleSoft FMS was last upgraded.
The catalysts to this upgrade are continuing vendor support (ending in December 2017 for the current version) and playing catch-up with PeopleTools, which is two versions behind. But these are far from the only benefits.
One of the key features of the new platform is a new strategy called PeopleSoft selective adoption. Oracle will not release another new version of PeopleSoft, opting instead to offer functionality that customers can selectively add to their environment. In addition, the ability to target the scope of maintenance to meet specific needs will result in cost-savings and less disruptive maintenance.
"I think one of the most exciting things is that we won’t have to do an upgrade of this extent again," said Kori Wetsel, director of Business Analysis & Support Services in FSB. "We will have an entirely different platform for making upgrade decisions."
Added Hawkins, "Ultimately, we will be better positioned to take advantage of targeted upgrades, and adopting the features that make the most sense for the University."
Here's a look at what's new for PeopleSoft 9.2 FMS and PeopleTools 8.55:
PeopleSoft 9.2 FMS
- Global, free text search
- Mobile responsive design optimized across multiple platforms, e.g., smartphones, tablets, and laptops
- Ability to target the scope of maintenance to specific needs and apply current feature function regardless of prior maintenance
- New "Work Centers" (dashboards)
- Single, secure, role-based, customizable command centers consolidate tasks, exceptions, alerts, links, reports and queries
- “Out of the box” solution boosts productivity of back-end PeopleSoft administrators
- General Ledger Journal mass upload and approval
- Improved reporting
- Enhanced workflow
- Improved processing for accounts receivable and billing
- Security enhancements
PeopleTools 8.55
- Fluid enhancements
- Activity Guide interface seamless across devices
- Master Details Structure feature allows developing components that contain multiple pages
- Interactive tiles
- Application Designer
- "Find In" filter allows additional parameters
- New classes methods/properties added to PeopleSoft APIs
- New chart types
- People Code Event Mapping
- Oracle Policy Automation Integration allows users to define business rules in English that will be automatically translated into the code language
- Automated Configuration Manager automates several configurations, e.g., integration settings and Node configurations
- Security enhancements
Node 4
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