Staying classic in PT 8.55 (for now)

As it is common with any drastic usability change, home page and navigation defaults in PeopleTools 8.55 has come as surprise to many customers. Support forums is awash with discussions and queries, which reminds me of ‘start menu in windows’ fiasco.

For those who are not familiar, PeopleSoft applications version 9.2 running on PeopleTools 8.55 will use new fluid navigation standards,

• Fluid Homepage is default for all devices
• Drop Down navigation menu is NOT available – Replaced by combination of homepage tiles, navigation collections (NAV BAR)

As queries come in from customer who wish to upgrade to PT 8.55 while retaining classic navigation, look and feel, Oracle has discussed following options.

Change default home page from Fluid to Classic on PT 8.55

Reference – Doc ID 2095010.1

Override the fluid homepage defaults for desktop(PCs) and tablets using the PeopleTools Personalization page

HPPC applies to laptop and desktop computers and HPTABLET applies to mobile devices. If you want to change the default homepage displayed for a device, click the Set Option Default Value link, and select the desired homepage.

Enable Drop Down Menu on the Home page for PT 8.55

Reference – Doc ID 2094458.1

There are two ways to do this,

Method 1 – Switch back to older tangerine or tangerine_alt theme

1. Go to PeopleTools >> Portal >> Branding >> Branding System Options;
2. Change the system default theme back to the old tangerine or tangerine_alt DEFAULT_THEME_FLUID to DEFAULT_THEME_TANGERINE_ALT

Method 2 – Un-hide the drop down menu in default fluid theme

1. Go to PeopleTools >> Portal >> Branding >> Define Headers and Footers;
2. Search and open the DEFAULT_HEADER_FLUID header definition;
3. Copy the following styles into the “Style Definitions” field at bottom of the page, and then save;

.desktopFluidHdr .ptdropdownmenu {
display: block;
}

Important: Though Oracle has provided these options to customers who want to continue the ‘classic’ way of doing things, they have reiterated time and again that fluid is the way forward and strongly encourage customers to start using fluid navigation and homepages as it simply is the intuitive and faster way to use the application.