In a previous blog, I tried to answer the question, is the Forms and Approval Builder really what it is said out to be? With a quick overview of the functionality, I could not.  Therefore, today I am going in depth and have set out to answer the question: is the Forms and Approval Builder easy to use from a business analyst perspective?

A short recap: the Forms and Approval Builder allows a Business Analyst and/or developer to build and configure an electronic form and specify the approval process they need to follow. For a short demo of Forms and Approval Builder, please view the Oracle PeopleSoft You Tube channel.

As a business analyst, is the Forms and Approval Builder easy to use?

I would say yes, the form design wizard is absolutely intuitive and easy to use. However, there are a few guidelines a business analyst needs to know before designing a form. These guidelines have been written in the order of the steps a business analyst would use to create a form. For a short overview, please read the conclusion.

The guidelines are:

With the release of PeopleTools 8.52, you will be able to do all your PeopleSoft Business via the Ipad. Yes,  PeopleSoft applications is able to run in the Safari Browser on an iPad. However, some PeopleSoft applications operate better on iPads than others. PeopleSoft is not constrained by technology like Adobe Flex/Flash, therefore no problems there. For more information regarding the Ipad certification, click here.

One of the new functionality in PeopleSoft 9.1 is Forms and Approval Builder. According to Oracle in a recently posted blog ‘Finally a paperless office with PeopleSoft Forms & Approval Builder’ the Forms and Approval Builder will help to make paper and e-mail based forms a thing of the past. After reading the blog, I was excited but also wondering what is this Forms and Approval Builder and is it really what it is said out to be?

Remember the last time you had to fill in a form? It first took you forever to find the form you needed. And once you filled in the information, you put the form on your managers desk, but you actually have no clue if he/she has signed it or if it is still lying there on the desk between all his/her papers. As well, you can’t find the copy of the last form you submitted so that you could check what you have previously requested.  Or your form is lost somewhere and you have no clue what the status is.   I believe this happens in many organisations. Even though self service and manager self service has become a standard in most companies, there are still some paper based forms that support certain business processes. One of the reasons these forms still exist is because the amount of requests are minimal a year, so why create a customized solution if the process doesn’t happen often?;  Or the business process happens often and the functionality still needs to be created; Or a business process  is only temporary. For all these reasons, PeopleSoft has created the Forms and Approval Builder.

Forms and Approval builder is a common definitions tool that helps organizations to replace paper forms with electronic forms that are

PeopleSoft Setup Manager has replaced the manual table loading sequence since PeopleSoft version 8.9. However, there are still some people reluctant to use it. For this reason, I will give a short recapitulation of what the setup manager is, how it works and why you should or shouldn’t use it.

What is the PeopleSoft Setup Manager?

The PeopleSoft Setup Manager is a tool for automating PeopleSoft application configuration. In other words, the Setup Manager helps you implement PeopleSoft modules by selecting configuration sets as a project and producing a step-by-step list of setup tasks that is specific to succesfully setup your PeopleSoft system.

How does the Setup Manager work?

The words one must remember when explaining the setup manager are implementation project and setup task list.