Setting up WorkCenter for PeopleSoft 9.2

Workcenter is one of the greatest features delivered in PeopleSoft 9.2 release. If you are running on a Tools release of 8.53, you can easily setup a workcenter for your custom or bolt on modules. Compared to the benefits of the workcenter, the coding effort required to create it is minimal.

For those who are not aware of workcenter, it is a central place where you can tag all your major transaction components, processes, queries, reports and dashboards. When working with workcenter, user can pretty much do all the common tasks they do in the daily life without navigating to any other links. With workcenters in place there is no need for user to memorize any links, step by step feature of running process is available handy, workcenters will automatically list the major items of the module that require user action, gives a consolidated view of everything and adds many more advantages.

Now let me come to the main point, setting up a workcenter. I will try to address the steps as briefly as possible. This post will describe the minimal steps required for setting up the workcenter. You can go through the steps and if you require any additional details or information, feel free to post the same in the comments section.

 Step 1: Create a canvas page and component. This will be the landing page when your workcenter is open. All other transactions will open up in this area. Add the subpage FSPC_WELCOME_SBP and the secondary page FSPC_ADM_STRT_SEC to the main page of your component.

Add the following code to the component pre build event.

import FS_WORKCENTER_DASHBOARD:StartingPage;

Local FS_WORKCENTER_DASHBOARD:StartingPage &objWCStartingPage;

&objWCStartingPage = create FS_WORKCENTER_DASHBOARD:StartingPage();

&objWCStartingPage.GoToStartupPage();

Step 2: Register Component. Now you register the new component in the portal navigation where you like to have your WorkCenter. Make sure you’re the template type selected is PTAL_APP_LANDING_PAGE_TEMPLATE in the structure and content.

Step 3: Create WorkCenter Pages. Now go to: PeopleTools > Portal > WorkCenter > Manage WorkCenter Pages

Click on the Create New WorkCenter Page on the bottom of the page.

Add the pagelets required for this workcenter tab.

If you want more workcenter group/tab like reports and queries, create another page.

The pagelets added to a group will come in your workcenter as shown below.

Step 4: Create workcenter pages. Create the pages which you want to display on the workcenter. Try to avoid any transfer functions on these pages. Add these to a component.

Create a new application class to process your links. Make sure the app class extends the class FS_WORKCENTER_DASHBOARD:MyWork:Pagelet:MyWorkLink.  Use the method OnLinkClick to open your component. This method should execute ViewURL() function to open the target component in workcenter. Use the method method GetRowCount to display the count of items pending items in the left side pane along with the links.

Step 5: Register Link. Register the link class you have created in the above step. For that go to: Enterprise Components > Development Utilities > Define System My Work Links and add a new value and provide the details.

Step 6: Configure Pagelets. Navigate to: Enterprise Components > WorkCenter/Dashboards > Configure Pagelets

Add the menuitem name (component created) and the default item and save the page.

Now go to the Work Tab and add the pagelets/links.

There are four different types of links

a.       System-Defined : These are links that can be imported by system administrator.

b.      Worklist: It will directly connect to the PeopleSoft Worklist page

c.       Alert: An alert that is defined by the Enterprise Component’s Events & Notifications framework that when clicked will navigate to the Enterprise Components Notification Dashboard page.

d.      User-Defined: If you wish to control the link behavior by app class peoplecode, use this method.

Click on the Define component and select the link created in the earlier step.

Save the setting and click on Activate My Work Settings button. Similarly you can configure all the other tabs.

Note: Ensure that you are providing proper security to all the new components and links you will be creating. This could save some of your time in troubleshooting about the missing links.

With the above six steps, you have successfully configured a basic workcenter. Now to extend it you can create more components to handle exceptions and add it to My Work link. Also you could create filters to filter out the results. You can create Reoprts or Queries tabs, create dashboards and much more. Start with the simple one and expand your domain.