PeopleTools 8.60 Component Search Framework


I recently made an amazing discovery while researching the new PeopleTools 8.60. Well I thought it was amazing anyway.  Maybe you will too.

Oracle continues to add new features allowing customers to configure PeopleSoft rather than to make potentially invasive and high maintenance customisations.  

Features like:-

  • Event Mapping
  • Drop Zones
  • Page & Field Configurator
  • App Engine Plugins
A new addition to this game changing collection of tools is a new Search Framework which includes  a powerful Configurable Search.  You can watch the Video Feature Overview covering the new Search Framework enhancement here.

One of the first things you're going to notice when you start using PeopleTools 8.60 is that all the component search pages look different.
New PeopleTools 8.60 Component Search Page

Using Configurable Search Framework there's a whole ton of changes you can now make to both Classic and Fluid search pages without the need to make a customisation including
  • Change the search record
  • Change the Heading Title
  • Change the results field labels
  • Hide fields from search
  • Set default values
  • Execute custom code on Add
  • and much much more.
This feature is amazing in itself and a big shout out to the PeopleTools team for engineering this level of configurability into PeopleTools.  I hope to dig deeper into the whole configuration side of search pages and share what I find in the coming weeks.

But, back to the "amazing discovery".  Here it is....

The new Classic and Fluid search pages
are actual Page Definitions 
that you can see (and change) in 
Application Designer.

This is a classic example of the power of PeopleTools meta data driven domain specific language. PeopleTools is being used to extend and enhance PeopleTools.

So why is this so amazing?
  1. Fluid pages now have a standard search page experience just like Classic Components have.  It can be set in the Component  Properties by setting the Search Page Type = Standard and ticking ON the Enable Configurable Search.   This is long overdue and, in my experience, has been one of the reasons why PeopleSoft customers have struggled to make the transition to Fluid.


  2. Fluid and Classic now have the same search page experience as each other.  Pivot Grids, Elasticsearch and custom search pages are all still supported but now Fluid Component search can look and behave consistently with Classic.  The example below is the same Search Page for a Fluid and Classic component Standard search.



  3. Updates in the form of enhancements and bug fixes and style changes can all be done with a simple App Designer Project as it seems all the underlying code is just PeopleCode and Page Definitions.  Nice!
Great work PeopleTools team.  Really excited to see this amazing innovation take hold as customers start to adopt 8.60.

Checkout my short video below to see some this in action.





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