Introduction
Once upon a time, in a not too distant past, knowledge workers entered information into large stationary computers connected to even larger super computers. As time passed, computing power increased while physical size of computers decreased. Computers are now so small they fit inside your shirt pocket, or even in your eyewear. If you are holding this book, then chances are pretty high that you carry an Internet-connected computer in your pocket. In fact, you may even be reading this introduction on a smartphone (if you are, I hope you have an excellent vision health plan).
We live in an always-on, connected world and we expect our enterprise systems to be a part of our connected ecosystem. If your organization has implemented PeopleSoft 9.2 applications along with PeopleTools 8.54, then you already have mobile-ready transactions just waiting for a smartphone or tablet connection. On the other hand, if your company hasn’t upgraded and you need to make the most of what you already have, then you may be investigating ways to mobile-enable your PeopleSoft applications. Whether your organization uses the latest PeopleTools toolset or struggles to maintain a much older 8.4x release, this book will help you free your PeopleSoft Enterprise system from the confines of a desk, making important features available to your mobile workforce.
What’s Inside
The content of this book is divided into three parts:
PeopleSoft Mobile Tools
Building Mobile Applications with HTML5
Constructing Native Applications
PeopleTools Mobile Tools
PeopleTools 8.54 represents a dramatic shift in the PeopleSoft user experience. Prior to 8.54, Oracle focused on delivering a world-class desktop environment. With PeopleTools 8.54, the PeopleSoft user experience strategy shifted to mobile-first, which means, “First develop for mobile, and then progressively enhance pages as the form-factor and device capabilities increase.” To deliver this mobile-first user experience, PeopleTools added two very important development features:
Fluid pages
Mobile Application Platform
In Chapter 1, you will learn how to configure your desktop development for maximum mobile development productivity. Chapter 2 will teach you how to build responsive and adaptive mobile-first PeopleSoft transaction pages using PeopleTools new fluid page definitions. Chapter 3 finishes up this first section of the book by showing you how to use a PeopleTools online mobile application designer called Mobile Application Framework.
Building Mobile Applications with HTML5
HTML5 is the latest iteration of the HTML specification. This new specification contains a significant number of features designed to improve the mobile user experience. In this section of the book, you will learn how to build HTML5 applications using standard web development tools such as NetBeans, git, and npm. You will combine well-known development libraries, such as jQuery Mobile (Chapter 5) and AngularJS (Chapter 6), with PeopleTools integration technologies, such as iScripts (Chapter 7) and REST services (Chapter 8). This section of the book is very critical because it introduces PeopleTools developers to common web development practices. Chapters 5 and 6 stand in contrast to each other in that Chapter 5 attempts to show the simplest way to build mobile applications: let the library do the work. Chapter 6 demonstrates flexibility and control through the libraries AngularJS, Topcoat, and FontAwesome. The point of these two chapters is to show that development can be as simple or as complex as you desire. Chapters 7 and 8 complete this section by demonstrating two different data-delivery mechanisms: iScripts (Chapter 7) and REST (Chapter 8). If you are using PeopleTools 8.51 or an earlier version of PeopleTools, which doesn’t support REST, then you will find Chapter 7 valuable because it offers an alternative to REST.
Constructing Native Applications
The first two segments of this book describe methods for mobile-enabling the PeopleSoft web application. The third part, Constructing Native Applications, shows you how to build native applications. In Chapter 9, you will learn how to build a native Android application using the Android SDK and PeopleSoft REST services. Chapter 10 will show you how to convert the AngularJS application from Chapter 6 into a hybrid on-device application that can access native device features. The final chapter, Chapter 11, demonstrates how to build Oracle Mobile Application Framework hybrid applications using JDeveloper and PeopleTools REST services.
PeopleTools Versions and Naming Conventions
The examples in this book were built using PeopleTools 8.54.05, the latest version available. All examples were compiled and tested against a PeopleSoft HCM 9.2 Update Manager image. The examples in this book reference employee tables that exist in PeopleSoft HCM.
Each custom object described in this book is prefixed with the letters BMA to help you distinguish your organization’s custom objects from the custom objects in this book (unless, of course, your organization also uses the prefix BMA). This prefix is an abbreviation for Building Mobile Applications.