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PeopleSoft Configurable Drop Zone – Will it help in reducing the Customizations?

Although PeopleSoft provides rich, flexible and configurable functionality, customization are inevitable part of PeopleSoft implementation.

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PeopleSoft Configurable Drop Zone – Will it help in reducing the Customizations?

Although PeopleSoft provides rich, flexible and configurable functionality, customization are inevitable part of PeopleSoft implementation. Keeping a track of customization in a delivered PeopleSoft page is a challenge, not to mention retrofitting the same during PUM updates.

What is Drop Zone

Oracle has introduced a new feature in PT 8.57 – Configurable Drop Zone, which allows users to add fields to pages without actually customizing the component of page definition. The newly injected fields are considered and processed as a part of the main page. This ensures minimum life cycle impact.

Several delivered fluid pages of PeopleSoft application will have drop zones configured where customers can add custom objects. Customization made via drop zones will automatically be handled by future upgrades. The feature will be made available in classic pages in near future.

Pros

  1. Reduced maintenance cost for customers having multiple customization in delivered pages.
  2. Customization can be included or excluded by using configurations, no technical involvement needed.
  3. Greatly reduced or zero effort involved in retro fitting customization.

Cons

  1. Only components which have configurable drop zones delivered are taken care during upgrades, whereas other components which have configurable drop zones added needs to perform retro fitting and maintenance activities
  2. Currently feature is available only for selected fluid page, however this can be overlooked since this feature will soon include more fluid as well as classic pages.

Steps to Create and Configure Drop Zone

Creating and configuring drop zone in a 3 step process which involves:

  1. Create configurable drop zone
  2. Create dynamic subpages
  3. Configure drop zone

1. Create Configurable drop zone

Typically, PeopleSoft delivers one or more configurable drop zones on some fluid pages. However, need may arise wherein customer wants to add drop zones to other fluid pages. Following are steps to add configurable drop zones

  • Insert a group box in the exact position where dynamic/customized content should be displayed. Group box type should be “Related content”

Note: Group box should be tagged to a record field, since it helps system distinguish between multiple drop zones in a single page. Each drop zone is identified

Occurs level.RECORD_NAME.FIELD_NAME.Field ID

  • Insert subpage PT_ERCSUBPAGE_STUB – which is setup in people tools options. Navigation: People Tools > Utilities > Administration

Ensure the subpage appears

    • below the group box in page order tab
    • Upper left corner of the subpage is located within the group box

2. Create dynamic sub pages

Procedure for creating a dynamic sub page is no different from a normal fluid sub page, except for the following considerations:

  • Select PSL_SIMPLE_SBP layout during creation of new subpage.
  • Records and fields will be loaded into the component buffer during run time along with the main field and will not be available in component search – Analyse and design the structure of the dynamic subpage so that it doesn’t hinder the existing structure
  • Page activate people code (if any) associated with the dynamic subpage gets executed. In case of customizations involves scenarios that need other events please refer to Kovaion’s blog on ‘Event Mapping Framework’

3. Configure Drop Zone

Navigation: People Tools > Portal > Configure Drop Zones

All components containing configurable drop zones are searchable and configurable at this navigation.

When a component is accessed all configurable drop zones are listed. The tab order, drop zone (title) are picked up from the app designer.

If no subpage is configured to a drop zone it is considered to use related content by default. The ‘Used by Related Content’ value is reset or set based on if subpage is tagged or not.

Eileen Franklin
Principal Consultant
Kovaion Consulting

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