Event Mapping (managing customizations)

Event Mapping is a PeopleSoft delivered framework that helps applications and customers adapt PeopleSoft to meet their business needs with minimum upgrade impact. It introduces business logic as a configuration instead of customization. Event mapping allows the user to develop reusable code and artifacts and ensures that the customer’s code will not be overwritten by PeopleSoft delivered code during an upgrade.

Following is what I have tried in PeopleTools 8.56.07 and 8.57.08 on HCM 9.2 (PUM 31 and beyond). For this POC I am going to call my custom application package peoplecode on SavePostChange event on the DEPARTMENT_TBL component to perform something like sending out a notification. In the absence of the event mapping functionality I would have written this code in SavePostChange event of the DEPARTMENT_TBL component thus customizing the delivered object.

So, step one is to build the application package peoplecode. Import of PT_RCF:ServiceInterface is the key. The class name can be anything but the method name has to be "Execute".

import PT_RCF:ServiceInterface;

class FoundationDataNotify extends PT_RCF:ServiceInterface
   method Execute();
end-class;

method Execute
   /+ Extends/implements PT_RCF:ServiceInterface.execute +/

   /* custom logic to send out notification goes here */
end-method;
  
Once the package is developed navigate to PeopleTools > Portal > Related Content Service > Define Related Content Service. Create a new definition and select "URL Type" as application class and then provide the package details. For this POC I selected "Public Access" under security options. Save the service definition.

Then navigate to PeopleTools > Portal > Related Content Service > Manage Related Content Service, Event Mapping tab. Click on the "Map Application Classes to Component Events" link and then navigate the portal tree to find the component on which this event would be based on or associated with. In my case it would be the department table component located under Set Up HCM > Foundation Tables > Organization > Departments.

Under "Component Level Event Mapping" section, select "enable" check-box, event name would be SavePostChange and select the Service ID created in the earlier step. Set sequence number to 1 and processing sequence as "Post Process". Save the page and that is it. 

Navigate to the department component make a change and save the page and verify that the custom application package peoplecode fires.


The PeopleCode Editor provides an Event Mapping button in the dynamic Application Designer toolbar. For an application developer, the Event Mapping button is a visual indicator of custom PeopleCode programs mapped to events of a component, component page, component record, or component record field. This button is not available for page level event mapping.

So opened component peoplecode of component DEPARTMENT_TBL and clicked on the button to produce the following output.

Right-clicking on the application package code and selecting "Event Mapping References" in the pop-up menu as shown below should display the component but that did not work.

"Event Mapping References" tab is empty as shown below.

So I guess this might work in future releases or maybe I don't have something configured correctly for this to work.

Query Transformations

I rarely do much work in PS Query, but while doing some other troubleshooting for PS Query related issues, I noticed the "Transformations" tab in Query Manager. I am running PT 8.56.x in HCM 9.2, but looks like this has been around since 8.53 or 8.54. 

So decided to do a quick test to see what this does and how it works. So the benefit here is that the output can be transformed to create reports right out off the output delivered by PS Query.

So as part of this POC used any existing query. Transforming the output to HTML and using a XSL transformation to highlight the row when a certain condition is matched.

On the Transformation tab within Query Manager, click on Add XSLT which opens a window to key in free-form XSLT text. It would have been nice if there is a wizard of some sort to build the XSLT. 

Gave it a Name and in the "Output File Type" lookup selected HTML. Following are the available choices - 001, A01, ABA, AET, APC, CSS, CSV, D01, DAT, DTD, DTL, ERR, GIF, GIR, HTM, HTML, IDX, JCD, JS, LIS, LOG, MDL, MT9, N01, NVT, NXT, OUT, PS, SQL, STDOUT, SYS, TMP, TRC, TRN, TXT, XLSM, XLSX, XML, XSD, ZIP

Not sure what is the difference between HTM and HTML, but I selected HTML. My sample XSLT is designed as follows.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0"> <xsl:template match="/"> <html>
<!-- defined a style for the row that is going to be highlighted -->
<style type="text/css">
tr.redRow td {
font-size: 100%;
font-family: calibri;
font-weight:bold;
background-color: #FF2626;
padding-right: 10px;
color:#000;
}
</style>
<body>
<!-- in the html body defined a html table --> <table border="1">
<!-- Added a heading --> <font color="blue"> <h2>Sample Transformation test</h2> </font>
<!-- defined column headers --> <tr> <th>Employee ID</th> <th>Last Name</th> <th>First Name</th>
<th>Location</th> </tr>
<!-- Here I am selecting the data from PS Query --> <xsl:for-each select="query/row"> <tr>
<!-- defined a if condition to check if -->
<!-- value is McLean then highlight the row --> <xsl:if test="L.DESCR='McLean'"> <xsl:attribute name="class">redRow</xsl:attribute> </xsl:if>
<!-- Output the PS Query results --> <td> <xsl:value-of select="A.EMPLID" /> </td> <td> <xsl:value-of select="C.LAST_NAME" /> </td> <td> <xsl:value-of select="C.FIRST_NAME" /> </td> <td> <xsl:value-of select="L.DESCR" /> </td> </tr> </xsl:for-each> </table> </body> </html> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet>

So saved this and hit the preview button to preview the results. My query uses runtime prompts so those pop'ed up first, provided values for them and results are displayed in a new window (disable pop-up blocker or allow pop-up for this site).

Sample Transformation test

Employee ID	Last Name	First Name	Location
12345	Doe	John	Madrid
13244	Doe	Jane	Egypt
43423	Hufton	Abcde	London
42343	Fleming	Jill	McLean
34423	Tibold	Jozsef	London
67554	Farrell	William	Johannesburg
43556	Myers	Tony	Ireland
75757	Kramer	Nicole	McLean
27341	Wada	Mark	New York
27045	Roger	Wai	McLean
27098	Wayne	Jessica	New York
27125	Garcia	Guillermo	New York
75688	Deepak	Shirguppi	Maryland

If this query is scheduled using Query Scheduler option then a new format of XFORM is available and then I can pick any transformations (can define n number of transformations) that I have defined on the query.

PeopleSoft web service response namespace issue

Running PT 8.53.x, wrote a simple custom web service "Hello World". Service works fine but saw one issue where the namespace returned by the response message is not defined in the WSDL. So any other 3rd party solution like a .Net program when they consume and execute this service it fails to receive the response due to the unidentified namespace.

Request 

<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:wsa="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2003/03/addressing/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance/">
  <soapenv:Header xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  </soapenv:Header>
  <soapenv:Body xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
    <HelloWorld xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/Enterprise/Tools/schemas/HELLOWORLD.V1"></HelloWorld>
  </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

Response via PeopleSoft SOAP message template

<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:wsa="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2003/03/addressing/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance/">
  <soapenv:Header xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  </soapenv:Header>
  <soapenv:Body xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
    <HelloWorldResponse xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/Enterprise/Tools/schemas/HELLOWORLDRESPONSE.V1">
      <HelloWorldResult>XYZ</HelloWorldResult>
    </HelloWorldResponse>
  </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

Actual response via SOAPUI or Postman

<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
   <soapenv:Body>
      <HelloWorldResponse xmlns="http://peoplesoft.com/HelloWorldResponseResponse">
         <HelloWorldResult>Success</HelloWorldResult>
      </HelloWorldResponse>
   </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>


As you see the the problem is the namespace value returned for the root tag "HelloWorldResponse".

<HelloWorldResponse xmlns="http://peoplesoft.com/HelloWorldResponseResponse">


PeopleSoft puts the default value (not sure where this is stored)
http://peoplesoft.com/HelloWorldResponseResponse
instead of what is defined in the WSDL which is 
http://xmlns.oracle.com/Enterprise/Tools/schemas/HELLOWORLDRESPONSE.V1

I have a very basic synchronous service operation, with a request and response message and the handler OnRequest peoplecode is doing all the work.

Following was my application package peoplecode initially.

&response = CreateMessage(Operation.HELLOWORLD_SVCOP, %IntBroker_Response);
&xmldata = "<?xml version='1.0'?><HelloWorldResponse/>";
&xmlresponsedoc = CreateXmlDoc(&xmldata);

&HWResponseNode = &xmlNode.AddElement("HelloWorldResult");
&HWResponseNode.NodeValue = "Success";
&response.SetXmlDoc(&xmlresponsedoc);
Return &response;


So when creating the XmlDoc I was not specifying any namespace and I was hoping PeopleSoft will add it based on the schema definition. 

Instead following is what I had to do to correct the issue. (only displaying the change, no change to rest of the code)

&xmlresponsedoc = CreateXmlDoc("");

&docTypeNode = &xmlresponsedoc.CreateDocumentType("", "", "");
&rootNode = &xmlresponsedoc.CreateDocumentElement("HelloWorldResponse", "http://xmlns.oracle.com/Enterprise/Tools/schemas/HELLOWORLDRESSPONSE.V1", &docTypeNode);

&xmlNode = &xmlresponsedoc.DocumentElement;

So I have to use the CreateDocumentElement method of CreateXmlDoc in order to define the namespace. In order to use this method I had to first initialize the &docTypeNode variable by using the CreateDocumentType method.

After making the above change the response comes back correctly.

<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
   <soapenv:Body>
      <HelloWorldResponse xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/Enterprise/Tools/schemas/HELLOWORLDRESSPONSE.V1">
         <HelloWorldResult>Success</HelloWorldResult>
      </HelloWorldResponse>
   </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>