The much-awaited release of PeopleTools 8.61 has generated a lot of buzz among the PeopleSoft community! 

It comes packed with many exciting new features, seemingly revolutionizing the user experience. With support for sectionalized homepages and enhancements for accessibility help, navigating and using PeopleSoft has never been easier. 

Additionally, the new release brings significant updates to PeopleSoft insights, allowing for embedding insights in both Fluid workcenters and application pages. Users can now also take advantage of advanced features like the ability to support containers, improved search functionality, and configurable search options. These are just a few of the many updates and improvements that PeopleTools 8.61 has to offer, making it a highly anticipated and valuable addition to the PeopleSoft system.

Now, let’s take a closer look at some of these new features delivered in PeopleTools 8.61. 

User Experience

With the release of 8.61, administrators now have the ability to sectionalize a fluid homepage or dashboard. These sections are comprised of multiple tiles and are labeled based on their function, allowing for a more organized and user-friendly display. As a result, this new feature not only enhances the page's overall layout but also improves the end user's usability. Admins can easily set up and customize these sections through the Content Ref Administration page.

The upgraded PeopleTools 8.61 boasts improved Fluid prompt page capabilities through search criteria functionality. The system-level and user-specific settings give administrators greater control over and personalization options on how the Fluid Prompt page behaves. 

PeopleTools 8.61 also includes an accessibility help icon, easily accessible through the quick access bar. This feature is only available with Fluid mode and provides options for screen reader mode, keyboard shortcuts, and additional customizable accessibility help features set up by administrators.

PeopleSoft Insights

In PeopleTools 8.61, analyzing insights and taking action within PeopleSoft has been greatly enhanced.  By embedding insights into Fluid workcenters and pages, users can quickly and effortlessly access these valuable analytics in context, resulting in improved productivity and better decision-making. 

The Insights tab in Fluid workcenters allows for the creation of content references that can be accessed directly within the workcenter. This streamlines the process of accessing insights data and eliminates the need to navigate to a separate page or application. 

The new Configure Insights Dashboards - Page Level tab also enables users to embed one or more PeopleSoft Insights on specific application pages. This allows for easy and convenient access to insights data while working within the application, making analysis and action more efficient than ever before. 

Container Support

You asked, and they listed with support for containers in PeopleTools 8.61! Containers provide an easy way to standardize environments and ease troubleshooting. By utilizing DPKs, along with updated API and scripts, users can now create a podman container for middle-tier, opensearch, and application updates. This exciting upgrade has been met with overwhelming positive feedback from developers, and more exciting features are on the way.

Search

The latest release of PeopleTools, version 8.61, has a new feature that enhances the search experience for users. When conducting a search, the results now include content reference descriptions as additional details. This provides users with more information and context for the search results. This feature is available in both search suggestions and advanced search results. 

In cases where the content reference information is not available, the system will display the parent folder as an alternative detail for users. This ensures that users still have some context for the search results, even if the specific content reference is not accessible. 

In addition, the PeopleSoft search framework now allows for the partitioning of application data indexing. This can be done by utilizing the "Index by Data Partition" option in the "build search index" process. By specifying a date range and the number of partition fields, the search framework will divide the data according to the provided parameters. This enables more efficient and targeted searching, resulting in a better user experience.

Configurable Search

With the release of PeopleTools 8.61, keyword search errors are handled more seamlessly. Should you encounter an error while using keyword search, the system will automatically switch to the standard search page and display a notification informing you of the switch. This new feature also includes detailed information about the specific issue, allowing administrators to quickly and effectively address it.

The ability to customize search settings in PeopleTools options has also been enhanced, providing the option to set separate values for the number of search results displayed for keyword and standard searches. By default, the standard search will display 100 rows, while the keyword search will display 50 rows. 

These are just some of the many enhancements and new features available with PeopleTools 8.61. With this release, PeopleSoft continues to evolve and improve, providing users with a better and more efficient experience. PeopleSoft customers can easily leverage Cloud Manager Image 17 to take advantage of these exciting new updates and more.

Interested in seeing how Sentinel can support your PeopleSoft systems with updates and migrations?

‍Contact a member of our team to learn more. 

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