PeopleTools 8.59

Very excited about the latest PeopleTools 8.59 release.  Available on PeopleSoft Cloud Manager 12 from 8 April 2021 this release is packed with many new features and enhancements.

Cloud Manager 12 was released in March and so I got to work straight away installing this hoping that 8.59 was going to follow soon after.  I didn't have to wait long.

To get your hands on 8.59 you'll need Cloud Manager 12.  The CM12 install is pretty straight forward and there's some good guides out there from Oracle on how to get started.  You'll need an OCI tenancy and a little bit of cloud networking and OCI skills but you won't be able to get your hands on PeopleTools 8.59 without it so, get stuck in.  Give us a call at Version 1 if you need any help.  There's some nice features in CM12 which I've started to test and hope to write up on my experiences soon.

So, how do you get access to PeopleTools 8.59?

1) Use Cloud Manager to provision an 8.58 instance from a HCM, FSCM, Campus, ELM or CRM latest image. When I'm doing tools patches or upgrades I use the Cloud Manager Clone Environment feature to make a replica of an already provisioned Environment.  The Clone process only takes several minutes compared to nearly 2 hours to create a new Environment.  I make as many Clones as I want from the same Environment and that way I can repeat update operations to them over and over again.  This is a very nice feature! 

2) Use Cloud Manager to subscribe to the new 8.59 Linux and Windows Channels. You won't see these channels unless you upgrade to CM12 or install a fresh instance of CM12.  Once the DPKs are downloaded to your Cloud Manager Repository they are available in the \cm_psft_dpks File System mount point so if you wanted to take them on-premises I guess you could. 

3) Use Cloud Manager to perform a PeopleTools Upgrade of your PUM image.  At the time of writing (11 April 2021) the latest images are all delivered on tools 8.58.  I would expect the next HCM 38, FSCM 40, Campus 21, CRM 20 and ELM 22 images to be issued on the latest tools release but it may take a few images for the release cycle to catchup.  Until then we have to upgrade from 8.58 to 8.59 but this is super easy with Cloud Manager. 

This Upgrade PeopleTools step takes about 4 hours and it gives you plenty of time to go and do something useful.  Something like watching your 12 year old son play football in the first match after Covid-19 restrictions were lifted on outdoor sports.  They were losing 1 - 0 after a determined battle only to level it 1 - 1 in a thrilling closing few seconds of the game.  

Cloud Manager is written using Fluid so I was able to check the status of my upgrade during the match half time break.

Looking forward to exploring some exciting news features in 8.59 including 

• Real-time Elasticsearch indexing.  Hoping that I can configure components to update the associated ES index on save.
• Application Services Framework. Hoping to make REST web services and PeopleSoft a little bit easier to use with support for Open API standard.
• Homepage redesign with Search front and centre.  Hoping for some innovation in UI design to shine through here.
• Event Mapping event override feature.  Long overdue ability to have my custom code replace a delivered event code.
• Lifecycle Management enhacnements to the customisations repository and the automatic PRP download and apply.
• And so much more.