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This is The Possibility Perspective.
The show where we peel back the layers on enhancing enterprise solutions with Workday magic and PeopleSoft innovation. We’ll sit with real-time customers who've participated in our tailored services.
Whether you're eyeing a smooth Workday transition or modernizing your PeopleSoft with the power of Amazon’s public cloud (AWS), we've got you covered. We’ll dive into topics from cloud migrations to fluid user experiences.
Tune in and empower yourself with the knowledge to optimize your enterprise solutions.
[00:00:00] John Han: Your business strategy can change, or perhaps you are changing your business processes or maybe even you are acquiring another business and each time change happens, it impacts your technical, functional, and even you are in users. So for PeopleSoft, change is not just constant, it is actually inevitable.
[00:00:27] Jeff Miller: Hello, friends. I'm Jeff Miller from ERPA and you're listening to The Possibility Perspective, the show where we talk to strategic-minded PeopleSoft customers who partner with ERPA for a better PeopleSoft experience. I'm Jeff Miller from ERPA. Welcome to all of you. Today is all about change management version control, compliance, and modernization.
[00:00:50] Jeff Miller: And we're pleased to be joined today by ERPA's partner, Phire, and now onto the table of contents or today's topics. We have a lot in store for you today. The welcome and introductions. Well, I'm doing that right now. On the right hand side, you're gonna see a list of our world class presenters, John, Ganesh, and Shawn, who will each in turn be presenting today.
[00:01:11] Jeff Miller: John's gonna cover change and challenges for PeopleSoft customers. Ganesh is gonna do a Phire demo and the capabilities of Phire demonstrated in a few use cases, and then Shawn is gonna wrap it up with what's next in your PeopleSoft roadmap. Thinking about where those use cases and change management may really come in handy.
[00:01:31] Jeff Miller: Now I'm gonna turn it over to Shawn, my ERPA colleague who's gonna frame our discussion before turning it over to our first presenter. John, welcome Shawn.
[00:01:40] Shawn Fournier: Fantastic. Thank you Jeff. And hello everyone. Thank you for joining us. You may likely know who we are, but just to be sure, I just wanna point out that ERPA was founded in 1999 as a PeopleSoft consulting firm.
[00:01:52] Shawn Fournier: Our mission then and still is just to enable our clients and partners to get more out of their PeopleSoft stack. So 25 years later, here we are. We're a managed service provider, a boutique managed service provider, specializing in ERP modernization, both SaaS. Cloud, but PeopleSoft is in our DNA and it always will be.
[00:02:13] Shawn Fournier: We run our own proprietary orchestration layer that accelerates PeopleSoft deployment, modernization, and management. And when it comes to PeopleSoft, I think it's important to note that we support customer initiatives from. Tactical to literally transformational. So on the one end it might be, you know, 9.2 upgrades, fluid implementations, all the way to replatforming, PeopleSoft in the cloud for a SaaS like experience.
[00:02:41] Shawn Fournier: Everything in between. With that in mind, one of the things I feel that we've done really well over the past few decades is identify best of breed partners to not only do we use their tech, we get really excited about how our partners and our technology can enable. Our customers to have a much better PeopleSoft experience, and that's why we're here today.
[00:03:03] Shawn Fournier: So today we're gonna get a little bit closer to the tactical end of that spectrum and for two reasons, right? We're gonna talk about application change management version control and compliance. And really, again, for two very important reasons. Number one is some of the best practices that we're gonna share with you today you could implement today.
[00:03:22] Shawn Fournier: And benefit from tomorrow, right? So very actual real time benefit can be derived from what we'll share with you today. Number two is that if you want to move more to that transformational end of the spectrum. These are critical best practices and foundational building blocks that you have to have in place in order to enable that.
[00:03:42] Shawn Fournier: So really excited about having our partner Phire here with us today. With that, I will turn things over to John.
[00:03:49] John Han: Hello, uh, my name is John Han and I'm the chief designer of the Phire application. So there's an old saying that you may have heard. The only thing constant is change. You probably know firsthand how true the statement is as you implement and support PeopleSoft.
[00:04:07] John Han: Now, there are many internal and external drivers for change. One of the major drivers of change for PeopleSoft is technology. When I first started working with PeopleSoft way back in the early 1990s, PeopleSoft was based on the client server architecture. Few years later, there was a switch to the PeopleSoft internet architecture, and then came the move towards mobile and cloud computing.
[00:04:36] John Han: And now you see this next big technology shift towards artificial intelligence. The second major driver for change is government. I happen to live right outside Washington, DC and you probably heard that there are many changes happening in DC these days. Government is constantly changing existing regulations.
[00:04:59] John Han: They're creating new regulations, or perhaps they might even deregulate nowadays. And of course there are constant changes to the tax laws. Another major driver for change is your business. Your business strategy can change, or perhaps you are changing your business processes. Or maybe even you are acquiring another business.
[00:05:25] John Han: All of these drivers require changes to be made to PeopleSoft, and each time change happens, it impacts your technical, functional, and even your end users. So for PeopleSoft, change is not just constant. It is actually inevitable. The next slide. Shows the challenges these changes impose well, you need to implement and enforce effective change controls, such as testing and approvals.
[00:06:04] John Han: Now, once these controls are in place, you need to be able to report on the effectiveness of these controls. For the development process, you need to have co versioning. Good code promotion process in place to prevent data loss of like development work and to enable rollback of code changes to production and shorten the time to deploy these technical changes.
[00:06:36] John Han: Lastly, you need to be able to automate these task assignments, enable efficient communications. Be able to audit and have visibility into all the change activities Now, the next slide's gonna show you why Phire exists. Phire exists to help you meet these challenges. What is Phire? Phire is an application change management solution that helps organizations track and manage the changes that are necessary for PeopleSoft.
[00:07:12] John Han: Now Phire is very unique in that it is built on the same technical architecture as PeopleSoft, which means that Phire is easy to deploy, easy to support, and easy to use. Phire has a workflow driven change request tracking capabilities, and provides for versioning and migration of PeopleTools code. The Phire application has been around since 2007, and we have over 400 customers in many industries, including higher education, healthcare, public and private sectors.
[00:07:53] John Han: In the next slide, I'm gonna actually walk you through a short use case to really drive home how Phire can help you when you're implementing a major change to your PeopleSoft application. Let's take an example. You decide to embark on a cloud modernization on AWS using ERPA as the manage the risk provider.
[00:08:19] John Han: This major change will present some new challenges 'cause now you'll have many different teams and organizations involved in managing PeopleSoft. Phire has built in features to enable those in efficient communications. Between the various players with the workflow and task routing features, you'll be able to facilitate the assignment of various tasks such as who's gonna do the development, who's doing the testing, the approvals, who's gonna actually do the migration of the code into production and so forth.
[00:08:55] John Han: You also need to make sure to implement segregation of duties. There are a lot of security reasons, and so Phire has built in features to prevent developers from being able to make changes, let's say, directly in production, while allowing them to have read access to the code that is in production. Lastly, Phire is going to enable you to track and audit all the change activities that occurred so that you will be able to report on what change was made.
[00:09:29] John Han: When the change was performed and who was responsible for making that change. So this use case that I just went through really quick, really short, should really provide a good overview of some of the benefits that Phire application can provide to PeopleSoft customers. Now I'll turn it over to Ganesh, who's gonna do a demonstration of some of the features of the Phire application.
[00:09:55] Ganesh Denduluri: Excellent. Thank you so much John, and thank you for this and thank you for also coming up with Phire. Uh, like most of the folks, I'm guessing in this call, they were multiple hats in peoples, so as a developer, as an admin, but we all can agree that the SDLC lifecycle is not streamlined and with Phire, I've been introduced a Phire in 2013, so I an early years of experie with Phire.
[00:10:19] Ganesh Denduluri: You'll have your SDFC streamlined, uh, workflows, uh, properly navigated to each roles. Everything is audited. It's almost like, to give you an analogy, it's like, uh, if you're driving a car moving from stick shift to a automatic car, you have to do everything manually before now everything is done by Phire.
[00:10:36] Ganesh Denduluri: With that, I will provide a quick recap of what I'm planning to present as part of this agenda. I'm assuming the Phire change management itself might be some something new for folks. So I'll give a brief overview of, uh, Phire setup and I will try my best to present three use cases. One is a standard migration everybody knows right now is I have to have a standard migration developer develops those code, uh, in that development database.
[00:11:04] Ganesh Denduluri: It'll request migration to our test. Then, um, admin, he will also log on the app designer and he will move from remove the test, and then they, uh, they talk to each other. Did you come compare? Did you set the flags? And on so on. And then eventually we have to get an approval. And the approval from the manager pretty much will be either in an email or in a Jira ticket.
[00:11:26] Ganesh Denduluri: And then finally the migrator knows it. And he moves it through app designer and then developer. He doesn't know most of them. They don't have access to production, so he doesn't know if it went through or not. And the second use case I'll present is sometimes you don't know you have to run an emergency script in production.
[00:11:42] Ganesh Denduluri: For example, you ran a job. The underlying processes went to success, but the job itself stayed in processing streets. I see that is one of the most used cases. So with that, somebody gives a SQL, A-D-B-R-P statement, has to run it, but you have to have approvals. Again, those approvals will be either on Jira or in the email.
[00:12:03] Ganesh Denduluri: And finally, I want to present version control and how Phire helps this in budget control before I go onto the online page. Quickly. In a typical work atmosphere, we will have multiple users doing different roles. So what I am presenting right now is a quick summary of the users that we are using for this demo purpose.
[00:12:23] Ganesh Denduluri: We'll start with David, who is, who will be developer, and Tammy would be our tester, who is somebody like a manager. And the approve, Sam is the actual Ps. We do the migrators. And uh, we also have a role for Diana who pretty much has a Ps people sub security. Meaning if, let's say, if we provided new roles at security, again, it gets recorded outside of the system.
[00:12:46] Ganesh Denduluri: And finally we have a user, John, we rarely use them, but Phire administrator. We have access to all of them, including, uh, city workload. With that, I'll shift to the demo. As, uh, John mentioned, uh, this Phire is built on PeopleTools, so you would see an environment similar to PeopleTools. Now this version is version 20.1, using 8.61, and Dataset in Fluid.
[00:13:10] Ganesh Denduluri: As you guys can see, everything is set two. Yeah, the fluid homepages and Phire itself probably will provide a lot of customized pages. And, um, as you can see, there are different aspects of homepages that you can use. And one of the aspects that I really like and or we extensively use if a, a client is issue tracking.
[00:13:32] Ganesh Denduluri: Anytime there's an incident, we create an issue and the tissue automatically generates a change request first. So if somebody asks if in auditing, if it comes out that where is the change is coming from, it's based on this issue and the issue is tracked. Sometimes we track the issues in Jira or Salesforce, but this is an option that can be used.
[00:13:52] Ganesh Denduluri: Before that, I'll quickly show you few things here. So with that, uh, what I wanted to show was the role of security. So basically, as John and John mentioned, segregation of DTC is something that is paramount for a proper SDLC, meaning the developer cannot be. And the approver cannot download code and both of them cannot migrate it, and the migrator cannot touch any of the objects as a right.
[00:14:20] Ganesh Denduluri: So all of that is provided in this solution. So in this case, I am providing a basic change request, what this change request is, or somebody created a new roles with PeopleSoft. Um, so we would say new roles with PeopleSoft. This is how your change with screen will look like. Once you hit save, it automatically generates you a change request number, and in the task you would see this workflow and you will also see the different databases that it's going to pass.
[00:14:54] Ganesh Denduluri: So since David is our developer, his job is to make sure he adds all the objects to the cr and he makes sure, uh, the development portion is complete. He has to create what we call a migration set. Migration set is any set that has the actual code. Needless to say, there are multiple migration requests that can be created and then he will request a migration to test that will complete the roles of data.
[00:15:21] Ganesh Denduluri: We'll show you once we get there how the system will make sure this is a gated processes, meaning that once the balling is in migrator code, there is not much David can do in this stage. That way system will make sure paper, paper are properly corralled or, uh, segregated in their links. So with that, for this purposes of demo, I would provide some basic tools.
[00:15:47] Ganesh Denduluri: We have already created some projects. We call it demo rows. As you can see right now what's happening is Phire has its own database. It is now connected to CS development database and uh, it fetched. All the projects in the database, and I'm able to select one project and I can do a quick import. When I do a quick import, it imported all those objects overall to my change request.
[00:16:18] Ganesh Denduluri: Now at this stage, these two are created in development. Now I have these copies in file database. Now, once I have this, which means that I completed development, I added objects to the cr. As a developer, I'll mark this as complete. I'm still in development database Now. Once I have this, I have to create a migration set.
[00:16:41] Ganesh Denduluri: A migration set is, uh, think of it as a folder that has all of your objects. This is the task item for all the things that you do. I will create a migration set. I will call it baseline one. My database ID is database and it is migrated for me, so I click okay. So now it created a change migration sector.
[00:17:08] Ganesh Denduluri: One other thing I wanted to show here is, uh, as you guys can see, you see the statement called locked here. What it is, is these objects are locked. That's one way of doing version controlling. It helps us making sure that one common problem we had with PeopleSoft is if multiple developers work on the same object, they still can work in development database, but this object is locked and only this version of it can move across at this stage.
[00:17:39] Ganesh Denduluri: If somebody changes this role, adding new provision list or so on, this will still be the old copy until we get the new copy it. Um, we are good there. So once this is done, I am going to request a change to migration. I will add a migration notes. This is a streamless, uh, streamlined way up for making sure developers and administrators talk to each of that double over the phone or emails.
[00:18:06] Ganesh Denduluri: I would say a standard, uh,
[00:18:10] Ganesh Denduluri: migration more. And if I require a, a restart, and I will say it is executive change. And I request a restart and hit save, and I have my notes. Creating a migration package is as easy as simply clicking it. I'll quickly show the source source information. The source information is the baseline version that I created, and I can request a backup, which means that for the next environment, first Phire is going to take a backup and then it's going to burn.
[00:18:45] Ganesh Denduluri: And I'm going to hit, say. It is warning me at this stage that all your tasks are complete. It is going to go to the next row and this will make it read. I click yes and I save it. As you guys can see, everything is gated now, so I cannot make any changes, and if I try to add, uh, more objects to it, as you can see, this is greater.
[00:19:08] Ganesh Denduluri: So it made sure that I will not tamper this because already it's bud, you know. So at this stage, the task on David is complete, and since it's at a migrator stage, we'll move on to a migrator. And in my exercise, my migrator is Sam. I'll log onto SA, as you can see in his, my change request and inbox, it popped up clearly.
[00:19:36] Ganesh Denduluri: You can just click it here. Then once he's here, you will see that okay, there is a migrator test. We quickly go to migration notes. It says Standard migration with no goals. So he goes to migration and he simply clicks. The next environment is Cs. Test it. It takes a baseline backup and he, it's migrate.
[00:19:57] Ganesh Denduluri: Boom, count it. Uh, so if I go back to my task set, it says, okay, uh, my request migration is complete. Migrate to test is complete. At this stage even migrated. His role is complete a system, automatically send an email to the next next people. As you guys can see, this is set to a role, meaning every user that's in the role will get assigned.
[00:20:20] Ganesh Denduluri: So at this stage, uh, Sam's job is also done, and my tester is Tammy, or log on as s Tammy. So now that we are here. Tammy comes here. She has to perform system testing and she can attach it at this stage. Documents. I created a simple test. What it is is, uh, just for the purposes, uh, I will just add a note called test testing password criteria provided, but in the actual testing, we are assuming that they will include screenshots and any other documentation that they have to provide.
[00:20:57] Ganesh Denduluri: I will upload it. Senator Tester has completed the tasks, okay? And that my, it has pass. Um, and now tester's job is also complete. Now this is sitting with an approver stage. So the approver is typically your managers or somebody assigned as managers. So in my example, my approve is Anne and I, I'll now love on Anne.
[00:21:25] Ganesh Denduluri: I will come here. I would say, uh, this is a p. So my approval is recorded here. Okay, moving on. I will then if you go back to Sam, Sam has to make sure he compares, and the way he does is
[00:21:45] Ganesh Denduluri: sir objects where he does a compare. He wants to compare merchante production, making sure everything is good. It provides my everything clearly. And, uh, if it's different, it provides you all this. And some of you might remember this screen similar to your competitor works that you use during upgrades or any home fixes.
[00:22:08] Ganesh Denduluri: And once this is done, I go back to my tasks. I have to complete, uh, migration to production. Do a standard migration to production. Okay, great.
[00:22:24] Ganesh Denduluri: Okay.
[00:22:26] Ganesh Denduluri: And, uh, migration is complete. And the last part here is apply security production. So one other aspect that we sometimes miss is, uh, let's say you have some role changes. We will have security admin records. Those role changes, but it's recorded outside. With this example, we have Diana as one of our security admins.
[00:22:47] Ganesh Denduluri: Diana goes and completes the online PeopleSoft security changes. But she comes here and she records her approval saying that it is complete. And now it's back to, so this completes a use case of a standard migration. I want to quickly go back and, uh, show another use case where we have to run a SQL in production.
[00:23:08] Ganesh Denduluri: So for that, I want to. Quickly create an issue. I'll create an issue saying reset job status, right? And I hit, uh, Nik. It created an issue for me, as you guys can see, should clearly have a change request and I can automatically create a change request. And, uh, once it's in the change request, I change this into emergency migration.
[00:23:35] Ganesh Denduluri: And in emergency migration, all I have to do is add SQL script. It changes this, correct. Sorry. I add a script here. It's a SQL script. I'll quickly show what my SQL script is. Some of you might have seen it. It basically updates the process, request table, setting the status to, uh, distributed to PostIt and runs it to complete, um, all at times in this script.
[00:24:14] Ganesh Denduluri: Okay.
[00:24:23] Ganesh Denduluri: Yeah.
[00:24:27] Ganesh Denduluri: So again, if you guys recall what happens typical and is the SQL Script developer writes a SQL script is we have tons of communication, go going over the emails, but here everything gets stream streamlined. Apologies, I have to go back. I created, uh, an emergency migrations I have to do, um, I will trade this and 24 is what I have to work with.
[00:24:55] Ganesh Denduluri: Again,
[00:25:10] Ganesh Denduluri: anytime.
[00:25:14] Ganesh Denduluri: Alright, so if I go back in my task, my development is complete, I've added script to the CR and I have to execute in test to make sure it works. The way I do is developer can themselves do it if I want, I can keep it in their roll back status. And, uh, I can see history on how it executes and, uh, Phire typically does not need, does not need any comments.
[00:25:38] Ganesh Denduluri: I wanted to make sure say this and open it.
[00:25:54] Ganesh Denduluri: Uh, it'll make sure this is how the, the same. Right. So quickly to wrap this up, this is my last three I can present. I have to again, execute it and I have to commit it this time and I go back to my task. This is complete. Somebody has to approve production, and that would be our resource esis. And do, uh. Uh, right now it actually records U Assistant.
[00:26:43] Ganesh Denduluri: Uh, to me I to check a, let me check with, uh,
[00:26:58] Ganesh Denduluri: so in this case, uh, logging with another user.
[00:27:13] Ganesh Denduluri: No, sorry,
[00:27:18] Ganesh Denduluri: sorry. Your, uh, this one. This one.
[00:27:24] Ganesh Denduluri: I approve it and, uh, migrated, executes this in worksheet. I think I went slightly worse with what I want. Technician. At this stage, I take a pause.
[00:27:33] Shawn Fournier: Fantastic. Thank you Ganesh, and thank you, John. I love this and I love your analogy of it's like having a car and moving from a manual transmission to an automatic, right.
[00:27:43] Shawn Fournier: There are definitely benefits to be derived there and it goes so much deeper. There are other things. It could be climate control, that could be cruise control, and that's what we're trying to give you a glimpse of today. Some of the many things that you can do. Tactically to really streamline your PeopleSoft operations today.
[00:28:01] Shawn Fournier: So on the next slide, I'm gonna share with you where we see our customers going in terms of their PeopleSoft roadmap. And um, the first one there is really, it's all about maximize, right? They just, there's PeopleSoft works for us. We're invested, we're committed. We're likely gonna keep it for the foreseeable future.
[00:28:20] Shawn Fournier: So if that's the case, then what are the things that we can do tactically to ensure that we're maximizing our investment in PeopleSoft? And you can see a list there on the right, some of the common things we see our customers doing. Not gonna go through those again, but by far and above, in my view.
[00:28:36] Shawn Fournier: Probably one of the most important is exactly what we've talked about today, right? It's the application change management, the version control, and the compliance start here for sure. The second bucket that we see our customers falling into is really modernize, right? They're saying, again, committed to PeopleSoft, but we want just the application, right?
[00:28:55] Shawn Fournier: We want PeopleSoft to operate in the cloud SaaS like. Where we're leveraging the application to do all the things that we'd like to do, and then you just make it work. And so we help our clients achieve that SaaS experience with PeopleSoft. And another area where we see a lot of our customers moving to is where they're saying, look.
[00:29:14] Shawn Fournier: We just wanna modernize, right? That third path might be, maybe it's PeopleSoft on-prem modernized, maybe it's PeopleSoft in the cloud, modernized. Maybe it's adopting some SaaS platform like Workday, and ultimately a hybrid of both. So we definitely have some use cases that can share with you around customers that have modernized PeopleSoft on AWS for a SaaS like experience and adopted specific Workday modules around it to complement.
[00:29:40] Shawn Fournier: So there's a broad spectrum. I think the key to that is let's just have a conversation. So if we could forward to the last slide connection, if it's available. It's really one of our engagement methodologies. It's just the art of the possible, and that is really just about having a conversation. So whether you're trying to build a better PeopleSoft on-prem today, whether you're hoping to move to a more SaaS like experience, or whether you're looking for Agile Cloud enabled IT ops.
[00:30:10] Shawn Fournier: Wherever you fit along that spectrum is fine. I think as you saw today, whatever that next piece step is in your journey, we're excited about getting engaged and getting deep or to the possible. Let's just, let's have a conversation, right? Describe to us what you're doing and why, and we will definitely help you over help you achieve that.
[00:30:29] Shawn Fournier: I think it's probably safe to say between the, um, more than 50 years of combined experience between ERPA and Phire that whatever it is that you're wrestling with. We've probably helped someone else overcome that. Again, thank you for your time today. Very, very happy about, uh, your, your participation here and thrilled John and Ganesh.
[00:30:50] Shawn Fournier: I wish we had more time. I'd love to go deep. Really appreciate your time. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Jeff.
[00:30:55] Jeff Miller: Awesome, Shawn. Thank you, John, Ganesh. Thank you so much. You guys did a phenomenal job. That's it for now. You can contact ERPA here on this slide. Lots of information there on getting in touch with us.
[00:31:06] Jeff Miller: In the meantime, thank you and have a great rest of your day. Thanks everybody. Thanks for listening to The Possibility Perspective. If you'd like to talk to ERPA about what's next in your PeopleSoft journey, be sure to visit ERPA.com.