It has been a while since I had the “WOW-effect” about a new application.

Most internet applications have been set-up with technologies that we find normal nowadays. Technologies like partial page refresh (AJAX), drag and drop layout, WEB 2.0 like wiki, communities etc.

But these rules do not seem not to apply to ERP systems. They are still robust, pretty user-unfriendly en most of all not appealing.

Well, Oracle seems to have done it.

Oracle introduced a new layout with Peoplesoft 9.1 in combination with Peopletools 8.50, with building blocks of today’s technologies.

During this year’s Oracle OpenWorld cool new features in the new release of PeopleTools are unveiled. This new version should become available somewhere in 2009, together with the PeopleSoft 9.1 Application versions.

Look and Feel
One of the big changes in PeopleTools 8.50 is the User Experience. If you look at this screenshot you can see that the layout is still PeopleSoft common, but Oracle’s blue has arrived. Or did the blue arrive with the takeover of PeopleSoft …

Within the new PeopleTools versions PeopleSoft often uses Component Interfaces in PeopleCode to adjust data. These constructions are sometimes very hard to understand. Especially if the update of data goes wrong, the error generated from the Component Interface is tucked away in an array which can only be read when debugging the proces.

There is a very simple way to get around this.

Since PeopleSoft is an Internet architecture one suspects that it should support the commonly used RSS feeds that are available through internet. And guess what: it does!

Let me show you by adding the RSS feed of my favorite soccer club (http://rssfeeds.headliner.nl/rssfeeds/az/feed.xml).

Go to PeopleTools > Portal > Pagelet Wizard and add a new value. In the first step, specify a title and a meaningful description (might be the hardest part):

Imagine this; you open your recently saved project in PeopleSoft Application Designer and…all of your precious code has vanished!
Your first thought might be “Well at last something exciting is finally happening on my (in general boring) office jobs!”. And your second thought should be “What the **** happened to my precious peoplecode!?”.