Well, I was just on Oracle Support and was downloading the new Finance Image 7 for 9.2 and it is now 9 separate files. This process is just going to grow more and more painful as time goes on, but it is what it is (for now).

So, I started to download each file and when I got to the 8 file, it will download no more. This is because the first download was complete and the other six was the maximum number of open connections allowed within the Firefox browser. However, a little searching revealed a quick fix to this maximum number of open connections per server:

Open up firefox – type about:config in the Firefox address bar
Look for: network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server
I changed mine from 6 to 10, and was able to download all the files for the Image 7 at the same time.!

Oh the little things that make life easier.

Okay, the website might be called TheSmartPanda, but every now and then I stumble over stupid easy things that would have made my life so much easier, if I had just thought to inquire. Yesterday was one of those days. At The Smart Panda we have contracts being signed all the time, some of these contracts can be very long and require multiple signatures.

Before yesterday, I would print the contract, sign the contract, scan the signed contract and resend the scanned contract back to the client. This requires me to be at the office so that I can use the document scanner, and I use paper, toner, time and large data storage to do all of these steps. Yesterday, I received a contract signed back to me but it was digitally done, and it dawned on me there just might be an easier way. Sure enough in Adobe PDF, on most of your readers the third icon is the “Signature” button. I just never noticed it because most times the PDF opens in the web browser not the actual reader.

If you download your PDF and open it in the reader, select the signature icon the signature navigation pane will open and you can create your initials and signature for PDF documents. Then select the place initials and/or signature along with text for items like dates, printed names, etc.

I figure this will save me 10 hours a year which makes this a huge cost saving tip, not to mention the frustration of using the document scanner and large scanned document files no larger being used. win-win-win!

Since the migration from the old PeopleSoft support site into MOS (My Oracle Support), I have been finding it very hard to find the upgrade home pages. I am not sure why they don’t have a link right in the patches area, but they don’t, or I haven’t found it yet.

However, the other day I was wondering around on the PeopleBooks site and I found something very interesting:

www.oracle.com/pls/psft/homepage

Down at the bottom there was this:

PeopleSoft Install and Upgrade Resource Site
Use this link to access the site for documentation and related files to help in your install and upgrade project.

All the upgrade home pages are listed here and are easily accessible.

I was reading case notes earlier today and found this note:  638613.1 which explains how PeopleSoft gets datetime.

Prior to PeopleTools 8.46 we had an issue with the way %DateTime retrieved the datetime value. The information below is not a direct solution to the behavior described above. This is an explanation of how the
%DateTime function worked prior to PeopleTools 8.46, and how/why it was changed.

When the Process Scheduler or Application Server is started, the host server’s system time and the time from the database is retrieved.  The difference between the server’s system time and the time from the database is stored as permanent value.  From this moment forward, whenever the Date/Time/or DateTime is requested we get the system time from the host server, and apply the difference that was originally calculated between the system time and the database time. The was done to avoid the overhead of going to the database for every request. The problem with this approach was that over time the clocks on the database and the process scheduler/appserver might not be ticking at the exact same rate.  If your process scheduler and/or appserver have not been rebooted for a long time, you could possibly see a difference of up to 5 minutes or more between the database time and the server’s system time.

The change that was made in PeopleTools 8.46 was to call a function that will retrieve and save the time from the database. When the function is called (it is called whenever someone logs on through PIA or a new batch process starts), and it has not issued the SQL to get the time from the database for over 20 minutes, the process scheduler and/or appserver will issue the SQL to retrieve the time from the database. If it has been less than 20 minutes, then a calculation similar to the one described above is used.

Sometimes you just need to do things in an RDC session that would appear simply, but its Windows!

If you want to hit Control + Alt + Delete to get options to lock/logoff/password change/task manager in an RDC session (remote desktop session), you need to use the key combination:

Control + Alt + End

Don’t ask me where that one came from, but it works! 🙂