Fluid Experience and Open Search

Fluid is a new capability for PeopleSoft that can add modern and intuitive experience to company operations. Without Fluid, an organization is likely to use outdated and unsupported versions of PeopleSoft applications. Over the last decade, additional, new PeopleSoft functionalities have been developed to improve enterprise experience, including Open Search capabilities in PeopleSoft. Read more to learn about the recommended upgrade benefits and details for PeopleSoft Fluid and Open Search applications.

Fluid is a modern, responsive user interface that is utilized in the latest versions of PeopleSoft. Oracle worked diligently over the last decade to upgrade PeopleSoft applications to Fluid, starting with self-service applications and proceeding with other modules. Once the Fluid applications were released, the old (Classic) application was not supported after three years.

Fluid has several beneficial features that will likely drive you to implement the new application:

Responsive design is the capability to adjust to different screen sizes and device types, allowing PeopleSoft to work across desktop computers, tablets, and phones. Fluid uses modern web technology navigation techniques (like websites). This similarity improves upon prior Classic applications by reducing adoption time and training requirements after new implementations.

The capability allows for integration into company portals or mobile applications. After solving single sign-on requirements, you can easily incorporate your PeopleSoft pages into the portal or mobile application to allow for remote transaction processing. Touch-optimized interaction on Fluid pages further simplifies mobile application integration.

Fluid offers tile-based navigation, where users navigate by selecting tiles in the tile-based navigation structure. The users will only see the tiles to which they have access. Tiles are usually arranged into one or multiple Homepages providing different experiences for each user. For example, you may have a Homepage for your employees where they can do all their Self-Service tasks (Personal Information, Absence Management, Time & Labor activities, Benefits Self-Service, and more). Another homepage may be available for managers, offering self-service capabilities.

Users may personalize their interface with permission from their administrator. Users can edit the tiles in their homepages with permission to simplify their work and adjust to a specific device.

Fluid Work Centers are a construct that can be used to better organize company work, especially for a specific department. Fluid Work Centers are accessible across devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Normally, Work Centers include navigation for all the areas needed for processing (links to pages, queries, reports, etc.). Employees would not need to navigate to menus or tiles since they work from the Work Center. For example, one could implement a Work Center for the Benefits Department, where team members could easily visualize and work on different pending exceptions and approvals in the system. They could also access necessary pages like Health Benefits or On-Demand Event Processing (using Automated Benefits). Finally, users may access different benefits reports or PS Queries without leaving the Benefits Work Center. A similar approach is available for other applications and departments (e.g. you may decide to implement a Buyer Work Center for your Purchasing Department).

The Open Search integration adds modern search capabilities to PeopleSoft applications, including a new global search feature. This enables quick application functionality searches, instead of browsing through the menus.

Another important functionality is the capability to search data using keywords. For example, you could configure the system to allow a keyword search for specific employee records based on employee names, addresses, phones, and other information. The search is like internet search capabilities (e.g. Google) for fast user adoption.

PeopleSoft Insights allows analytical capabilities to be directly embedded into the application. Normally, dashboards provide visualizations, reports, filters, and more that enable simple presentation, access, and digestion of the system information. For example, you may want to implement Workforce Insights to provide easy access to your workforce. It would allow you to have a good understanding of your company's demographic information (counts, education, age, gender, diversity) or geographic/organization characteristics (regions, locations, offices, divisions, departments, and more). Also, Insights allows you to filter out the available datasets and extract the details you need (e.g., the members of the IT staff that are the flight risk based on identified criteria like excellent performance reviews and significant under-market compensation).

Moving to the latest Fluid-based PeopleSoft applications is an important step towards modernizing your application footprint. The upgrade ensures your employees, associates, and students are using the newest functionality that conforms to the prevalent Internet experience.