2000 was an interesting year to be a PeopleSoft consultant. That was the year that PeopleSoft released their 8.0 product line.  8.0 was a special release because PeopleSoft had moved their entire architecture from a client-server application to a no-code-on-the-client HTML-based web application.

PeopleSoft had managed to convince their customers that their implementation partners wouldn't be effective if their consultants didn't have web development experience - which at the time only PeopleSoft's consultants had.  So without 8.0 experience, there was a good chance you'd be on the bench until you were able to get some type of experience in a web-based version. 

In reality the platform change wasn't that big of a leap for developers because App Designer essentially worked the same way and the learning curve wasn't all that steep.  So after a few months both PeopleSoft customers and consultants had made the transition to 8.0 and the rest is history.

But unlike PeopleSoft release 8.0, the Oracle Fusion applications are going to require drastically different skills to maintain and support.  There's not going to be an "Application Designer" in the new world.  There won't be any PeopleCode.  SQR will disappear.  App Engine?  Forget about it!

So where does a PeopleSoft developer start in learning about the development tools that Oracle Fusion will be built on?  Well, one place is Oracle's PeopleSoft and Oracle Fusion Middleware Best Practice Center.   Right now the Fusion information is slightly out of date and it seems like a half-hearted effort.  But the contributers to the Oracle Fusion Middleware for PeopleSoft blog seem strong so I'm hopeful some good results will come out of this. Start with the PS to Fusion Quick Reference Guide, then check out the Tutorials and you'll be on your way.

As you start learning about Fusion technologies, take every opportunity to build and deploy Fusion-based applications in your current environment.  That'll not only give you the experience you'll need after the Fusion upgrade,you may be able to develop bolt-on solutions that will survive the Fusion Apps upgrade unlike your PeopleTools-based bolt-ons which will have to be re-written.

As slow as the Fusion applications are progressing, us old school PeopleSoft developers still have time to retool and get ready.  From what I heard at the conference, I wouldn't expect Fusion applications to be generally available before 2010.

I took a video of the HCM portion of the Oracle Fusion demo Steve Miranda and Chris Leone presented on September 24.  I apologize for the poor quality, but it does show some of the cool stuff that Fusion HCM has.  The Org Chart functionality is nice.

You can find the video here.

With a session called "Caching and Timeouts" late in the day in the middle of the week, my expectations of paying attention were pretty low.  But Graham Smith from Oxfam gave the most practical and complete presentation of the topic that I’ve heard.

Oxfam is one of those rare companies that runs PeopleSoft all over the world.  Not just in nice urban centers with reliable fiber-optic networks, but in places like Afghanistan where the only power comes from a diesel generator and the network is a small satellite dish on the roof.  In such situations, it’s absolutely critical to get caching and timeouts optimized, or the user experience will be non-existent.

I had a client in Switzerland once with the challenge to operate in similar environments, and although it’s been over 10 years I’m still interested in how companies do computing in hostile environments.

It’s not that the subject matter was difficult, or that I didn’t know most of it already, but the completeness of the presentation and the additional insights to the process made the session worthwhile.  Here are the points I came away with:

Steve Miranda, SVP of Fusion Application Development along with Chris Leone, Group Vice President, ERP Application Product Strategy walked through the Fusion Application features that will be in place for version 1, and gave a live demo of functionality within Financials, HCM and CRM.

As much as I liked the PeopleTools 8.5 and the PeopleSoft 9.1 preview I saw, they can’t quite match the elegance and efficiency of the Fusion UI.  Relevant business intelligence is pervasive at every level.  Dashboards are used not only to present an intuitive view of your data, they also serve a functional role to drive navigation throughout the application.  Collaboration functionality is so integrated and intuitive that you quickly take it for granted.  Graphics slide across the screen as intuitively as a power-point slide.  The work Oracle did in their usability studies has paid off substantially.

But the UI is just the surface.  Fusion is packed with new features to drive productivity.  The navigation model is still there, but it’s de-emphasized as the dashboards present users a role-based view of what needs attention, and navigation from the dashboards is easy and intuitive.  A single, role-based universal worklist is accessible from the app, and it is accessible from outside of the application via RSS.  Configurable “activity guides” walk you through the steps to complete semi-structured processes like on-boarding or period closes.