Blogs

Page and Field Configurator – An Introduction
Author: Stephen Brawn, Northwestern University

Blog Series Overview:
The Campus Solutions 9.2 Blog Series is sponsored and hosted by the HEUG Campus Community Advisory Group, with the intention to assist and educate the user community on features and functionality specific to Campus Solutions 9.2.  To view other articles in the series, please go to the Article Index for the Campus Solutions 9.2 Blog Series.

Article Overview:
The intent of this article is to introduce the Page and Field Configurator utility and how it can be used, as delivered and without customizations, to configure data field and page properties on any PeopleSoft component.

Article:
As of Campus Solutions 9.2 and PUM Image 8, the Page and Field Configurator utility, delivered as part of PeopleTools, allows customers to configure page and field properties selectively on a page by Role or individual Operator IDs.  This utility allows administrative staff – developers and analysts – to apply basic customizations to pages and fields using only setup, reducing the need to modify the structure of delivered components, pages, records, and fields using application designer.  Using this tool, the structure stays the same and the setup changes are reflected dynamically at runtime based on the user’s security.  This utility allows for the configuration of page and field properties including: hiding a field or page/tab, changing a label of a field, adding a default value to a field, making a field or page read-only, and make a field mandatory (required).

To use this utility, there is a requirement that you are on at least PeopleTools version 8.55.15 or 8.56.02.  A good overview video on this functionality can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbRfdZAERGg.

Steps to Configure a Page or Field Property

The following steps attempt to walk you through the process, at a basic level, of using the Page and Field Configurator utility to configure some basic page and field properties.  For more details and options, please see the Oracle documentation noted in the Reference section at the bottom of this article.

1. Create a new Component to Configure:
   1. Navigate to Enterprise Components -> Page and Field Configuration -> Page and Field Configurator and choose “Add a New Value.”
   2. In the “Component Name” field, put in the component that you want to configure.
   3. You will also need to choose a “Market” value. You can use “Global” as the default, or you can look up the Market value associated with your component using Application Designer and use that value.
2. Define the Fields and Pages to Configure:
   1. Choose the “Page Configuration” tab.
   2. Put in a Description and ensure that the status is marked as “Active”
   3. In the “Configure Field Properties” grid, click the red pencil to choose a page field value to configure. A modal window will appear for you to make your selection.  To narrow down the field selection, you can click on a page in the top part of the modal window first and then click the field that you desire to configure and it will be added to the grid.
      1. For each field that you add a row for, you can choose the following actions: Modify Label, Hide Field, Disable Entry, Required Field, and Default Value.
   4. In the “Configure Page Visibility” grid, if you desire, you can add pages in the selected component to hide or make read-only.
   5. If you would like to make these changes dependent on criteria relative to this component, such as for an individual EMPLID or Career, you can do this by clicking the “Define Criteria” hyperlink at the top of the page. If you want your changes to be in affect globally, without criteria, just leave the criteria section blank.
   6. You will notice an option to add additional sequence values. This is important if you want to have multiple groups of people – or security Roles – have different settings.  If you will only need to have one Role – or group of users – seeing the same configuration changes, then you only need to do setup for sequence 1, otherwise you will need to do setup for multiple sequences.
3. Define the Users – Roles to be Affected:
   1. Choose the “User List” tab.
   2. The first value that you will see on this page is for level, and this option allows you to choose between securing based on “Header Level” or “Sequence Level.”
      1. Header Level means that all users or Roles defined will be affected by the configuration setup in sequence 1 on the “Page Configuration” tab.
      2. Sequence Level allows you to define different configuration settings by sequence number to individual users – or Roles.
   3. The second value that you will see on this page is the “Applies To” value, and this value allows you to choose from three choices to apply your configuration changes.
      1. Options include: All Users with Exceptions, Selected Role with Exceptions, and Selected Users.
         1. “All Users with Exceptions” will apply your configuration changes to all users of the system except those that you specify to be excluded.
         2. “Selected Role with Exceptions” will apply your configuration changes to any users in Roles that you specify except those that you identify to be excluded.
         3. “Selected Users” will apply your configuration changes to only those users that you specify.
      2. Enable the Configuration:
         1. Choose the “Map to Portal Registry” tab.
         2. This page shows you all of the navigation to which this component is associated, and allows you to choose which navigation you want to apply your configuration to. To apply your configuration to certain navigation, choose the values you want and click the “Apply Configuration” button.  Similarly, to remove configuration from a navigation, choose the values you want and click the “Remove Configuration” button.

Security Considerations

It is important to note that the 'Map to Portal Registry' Page (tab,) in the Page and Field Configuration setup, uses the Event Mapping capabilities, so to be able to see this page, you will need access to the Event Mapping Components.  To add this security, you can apply the delivered ‘Portal Administrator’ Role to your applicable user profiles.

References: 

Oracle Video – Page and Field Configurator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbRfdZAERGg.

Oracle Docs – Using Page and Field Configurator: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/F10139_01/ps91pbr11/eng/ps/eccp/task_UsingPageAndFieldConfigurator.html?pli=ul_d29e119_eccp