March 23, 2020 - Blog

Exploring the Future Direction of Peoplesoft: Robbin Velayedam, Oracle’s PeopleSoft Senior Director

Karl O'Doherty, Principal Microsoft License Consultant, Version 1

A Chat With Robbin Velayedam

Last month, Oracle’s largest European event, Oracle OpenWorld Europe took place at the ExCeL in London. Oracle’s PeopleSoft Senior Director, HCM Product Management, Robbin Velayedam, flew over from the US to speak to the European PeopleSoft user community. Robbin took a moment to speak to Version 1 about what is the future for PeopleSoft, with a couple of the answers he gave us below.

What are the key messages from Oracle to PeopleSoft users?

Get to 9.2, stay on the latest tools and have a selective adoption strategy in place – this is how you take advantage of the new features coming through such as Chatbots, Configuration Framework, Fluid and of course staying secure. Oracle is recommending that clients get current (Image installation and PeopleTools upgrade) every 12-18 months. Leaving it any longer will result in bigger change management.

PeopleSoft users should embrace the Fluid user interface – it helps with end-user adoption and opens up a whole new set of configuration tools that are not necessarily all available in classic like Page & Field Configurator and Event Mapping. Besides, nearly all new enhancements are delivered in Fluid.

What are the key items on the roadmap at the moment?

Kibana

Kibana is a data visualisation tool, providing heatmaps, time series, doughnuts etc.

  • Kibana is delivered through Tools 8.58, with no additional license needed
  • Kibana works directly within PeopleSoft
  • There will be delivered dashboards for Headcount, Recruit and Accounts Payable, but these will all need configuring for individual organisations

Chat Bots

  • An additional license will be required for this, as it is a Cloud product
  • However, Oracle is delivering a ChatBot for Absence Management, Company Directory and Requisition Inquiries (more to follow).
  • They are rules-based (unlike Alexa), so it will need some setting up… but it is supposed to be easy to do!
  • You are also able to interface ODA with TEXT and Alexa

Configuration Framework

  • This is part of the big push to isolate customisations and neutralise the impact of them. So more configuration = a lower cost of ownership for users.
  • Major improvements will be coming in future Tools releases

Visual Refreshes

  • You might have noticed that in the latest image there have been a few style sheet changes. In the future, Oracle is going to be doing small visual refreshes… to keep it fresh.
  • Oracle feel customers would like this, considering Fluid came out 5 years ago. This is all part of the PeopleSoft and wider Oracle UX teams continuing to evolve the user experience.

Job Data

  • As mentioned, everything in the future is going Fluid. A big component Oracle will be improving is ‘Job Data’ with Fluid. Oracle will be re-designing this so users only see what they need to see, getting rid of any noise. You will be able to use Page and Field Configurator to control what users can see. For example, this will help users focus on the required fields for a Transfer Employee transaction or a Promote Employee transaction, rather than having to sieve through all the Job Data fields & pages.

Version 1: PeopleSoft Experts

The Version 1 PeopleSoft team are one of the most experienced teams in Europe. Please do not hesitate in reaching out us if you would like to talk about any of the above or about our wider services in PeopleSoft HCM (HR) & Global Payroll, PeopleSoft Financials, PeopleSoft Training, PeopleSoft Managed Services and PeopleSoft in the Cloud.

Version 1 Named PeopleSoft Partner Of The Year at Oracle OpenWorld Europe 2020