Mapping Unfamiliar Territory
Help your users cope with the new navigation paradigm introduced in Tools 8.4
Posted on 1/28/2007 (originally published in print on 3/1/2004)
by Cayce Balara
One of the more difficult challenges of an upgrade to PeopleSoft 8 these days is the change in navigation. The first release of PeopleSoft 8 had a simple web-based version of the tried-and-true Go-based PeopleSoft menu of old. However, with FSCM 8.4, HCM 8.8 and any other PeopleSoft product delivered on the PeopleTools 8.4 platform, the navigation menu has been changed to a left-hand pane of hyperlinks based on the PeopleSoft Portal infrastructure. At the same time, PeopleSoft has changed the content of the menus, renaming everything from minor menu options to major menu groups.
This presents a couple of major problems for your upgrade project. First and foremost, this version of PeopleSoft is going to look like an entirely different application to your users. It will seem like nothing is where they expect it to be and the question you're going to hear over an over again is “Where do I find…?” Needless to say, this will not be good for project morale, for either your users or your technical team.
The second problem comes when your security administrators start fooling around with things and they realize that the security in PeopleTools 8.4 is still based on Menus, Components and Pages. The only information available to a security administrator showing the underlying Menu/Component for any particular Portal hyperlink is via the Portal Structure and Content component and constantly drilling around in that application looking for the answers gets old fast.
What you need is a nice roadmap, showing the links between the new and old navigation on one side and connecting the new navigation to the underlying Menu security structure on the other. Unfortunately, building that roadmap is not a completely intuitive task. The data you need is buried in a host of PeopleTools tables and when you do manage to find it there are a couple of technical obstacles in the way, preventing you from getting at it easily. But, have no fear - this article will demonstrate how to build a PeopleSoft 8 Portal Map.
One important note: the word Portal can mean several different things at PeopleSoft. When I use the word Portal in this article, I am referring only to the Portal structure and content that is delivered with a PeopleSoft 8 application for purposes of navigation. The information in this article will generally not apply to the more robust Portal structure and content delivered with the Enterprise Portal or the Portal Pack products from PeopleSoft.
Menu Navigation Tools Tables
First, let's look at the PeopleTools tables involved and get an idea of what data we're after and where it is stored. The old navigation paths were based on Menus, Panel groups and Panels, and though the terms have changed in PeopleSoft 8 (Panel Groups and Panels are now Components and Pages), the critical parts of the PeopleTools tables where these object definitions are stored have remained largely static. The primary Menu object definition tables are PSMENUDEFN and PSMENUITEM. As you might expect, these tables have a parent-child relationship – the link between them is the MENUNAME field. The primary table showing the relationship between Components and Pages is PSPNLGROUP, which can be linked to PSMENUITEM via the PNLGRPNAME and MARKET fields.
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