Oracle has added UPK’s for PeopleTools 8.52 Reporting Tools besides the already available UPK’s for PeopleTools 8.51 Reporting Tools and Test Framework. Available for download on Oracle Software Delivery Cloud (formally known as eDelivery).

When any nVision report is run via the web, it result in errors such as:

‘Excel interface exception E:\pt84918b-retail\peopletools\src\psnxl\gridapp.cpp:2048 Microsoft Office Excel cannot access the file ‘pshome\nvision\LAYOUT\F_allocations_2.xnv’.

But  the same report can be run in 2 or 3 tier client workstation.

Upgrading from Windows 2003 to Windows 2008 caused this issue to appear.

PeopleSoft Development has provided a workaround to be implemented on the affected process scheduler machine:

1) Take a backup of the registry before proceeding

2) Associate AppID of “Microsoft Office Excel Application” to its Class ID under the Wow6432Node registry node.

2.1) Create a new String Value by name “AppID” under the following registry key.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{00024500-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}

This posts is a part of the PeopleTools 8.50 Hints & Tips series on BAOA regarding PeopleSoft 8.50 tools upgrade.

Configuring Report Manager – List/Explorer – PeopleTools 8.50

Report Manager is a utility in PeopleSoft to view reports from another place than Process Monitor. It has fours pages: List, Explorer, Administration and Archives.

Setup of Integration Broker needs to be done and PUB/SUB App Server Processes are required to be up and running.

Configuration steps

Service Operation configuration

IB needs to be configured for four services

• PSRF_FOLDER_CREATE
• PSRF_REPORT_CREATE
• PSRF_REPORT_DATE _CHANGE
• PSRF_REPORT_DELETE

Navigate to PeopleTools -> Integration Broker -> Integration Setup -> Service Operations

Open Service Operation  PSRF_FOLDER_CREATE

In the General tab:

• Be sure that  the Service Operation  active
• If the Routing status from Local-to-local is “Does not exist”, check “Generate Local- to-Local” and click the Save button.

In the Routings tab, verify if there is only one routing definition active.

Repeat this step for the other  three services.

Clean cache and restart the application server.

As of version 8.1, Oracle BI Publisher (formerly known as XMLP Publisher) has replaced Actuate as report generating tool for Siebel. During a Siebel Case Management implementation, I got some insights which I’d like to share.

The first step was a rather smooth installation and configuration process. We had BI Publisher up and running within no-time, and only very minimal configuration was required to integrate it with Siebel. By pointing the web services to the right URL’s and adjusting some BI settings, we could start making the first reports.

Siebel ships with a large number of out-of-the-box reports, and it’s easy to create your own. The reports combine RTF-templates from the BI Server with XML data from Siebel into various document types, such as PDF. The templates are easy to maintain using BI Publisher Desktop, a simple plugin for MS Word. XML data is composed by Siebel Integration Objects.

Did you ever had to revise custom reports? DId you ever try to move the address a few millimetres to the right because off the introduction of new corporate stationery? Did you ever get headaches because the reporting tool Oracle Reports Developer was crashing once more destroying your recent modifications?

There is a new kid in (reporting) town…

With the introduction of the reporting tool BI Publisher (formerly XML Publisher) these problems are history. Using the tool introduced by Oracle in 2004 as XML Publisher the main disadvantages of the classic reporting environment become outdated:

1. No open standard
2. Not a user-friendly interface
3. No automatic report translations
4. No support for all formats
5. Extraction of data from a non-Oracle DB is problematic
6. Extensive tool training
7. High development costs
8. ‘Eternal’ maintenance
9. High upgrade costs