When doing an upgrade or any kind of patching you will often times want to compare the object you are importing with what is currently housed within your database.  PeopleSoft standard compare will generate a list of everything that is different between the data being imported and the data within the database.  You can get creative with these settings, but one thing that is SUPER helpful is to generate the output so that the compare reports can be viewed via the internet browser.

When in the compare options, if you select the Report Options tab you can select Generate Browser Reports, and the compare reports will be generated to the Report Output Directory which in the example is d:\temp\compares\{PROJECTNAME}.  If you want to change this directory you need to cancel out of the compare and going into the Tools Menu -> Options, and change the output directory.

After the compare is complete you will have a full set of output files in your output directory which you can put onto your PIA webservers public html document home directory:

%PS_CFG_HOME%/webserver/{domain}/applications/peoplesoft/PORTAL.war/

I typically make a compare folder here and insert the various compares there and then in the compare folder make a basic index page to link to the CompareViewer.html that was originally in the compare reports output folder root.

Lastly, you might find these reports don’t show up in the browser,  I find they are best viewed using Firefox, but IE works however, your security settings may cause you some issues.

I ran into a weird problem where I was unable to install PIA (PeopleSoft Internet Architecture) through the delivered install tools (PsMpPIAInstall or PSADMIN).  It kept getting about 90% complete and then drop out and report an error saying PIA failed to install.

I was not able to find out much about the error, but what I did find was that I was missing a bunch of libraries specifically in my case WLST classes.  As it turned out I had been cleaning up a bad install of another product and deleted the utils directory from the BEA home.

I re-installed the weblogic 10.3.0.4 version on the server into a new BEA home, and everything worked fine after that.

I found several cases that report multiple reasons for the failure but in the end the only thing that remained constant was re-install and everything works again.  There are several directories that weblogic installs with that are necessary in order to make PIA install work.

Error:  java.lang.RuntimeException: Could not find the OffLine WLST class

When doing the install you can issue the parameter: -debug -DDEBUG=true and that will issue thousands of information rows, but it does give some idea where the issue is.

Currently, I am working at a client and they have people using the Chrome browser, which is now supported in the 8.52 Toolset, however, the browser check still reports that the Chrome browser is not compatible.

The simpliest way to fix the problem is to modify the signin.html file.  In 8.52 this file is located in the {webroot}/WEB-INF/psftdocs/{piasite} folder.  You need to remove or comment out the HTML code line:

<h2 id=”browsercheck_error” class=”psloginerror” style=”text-align: left;”></h2>

It should be noted that the code delivered in signin.html will be changed back to delivered code with the installation of an additional PIA site or the configuration of a new domain.  This file would need to manually changed after any codeline changes. If you are using multiple web server instances each instance will need to manually edited in order to make it universal.

I believe with release of PeopleTools 8.44, they introduced a new feature that requires a user id for internal web server communication to load web profile information from the database and also performance agent information.

By default PeopleSoft delivered the product with the default userid PTWEBSERVER.  Which uses a default delivered role of “PeopleTools Web Server”, which links to the delivered permission list “PTPT1500”.

When you build your PIA (PeopleSoft Internet Architecture) you will be asked to enter a userid and password for this internal web server communication.  If the information is incorrect you will often see the error: “CHECK APPSERVER LOGS. THE SITE BOOTED WITH INTERNAL DEFAULT SETTINGS, BECAUSE OF: bea.jolt.ApplicationException: TPESVCFAIL – application level service failure”.

This user information is stored in the configuration.properties file, which is located in the:

<webserv root>/applications/peoplesoft/PORTAL.war/WEB-INF/psftdocs/<piasite>/ folder (for weblogic)

You will notice that the userid/password are encrypted.  This encryption is done using the PSCipher utility that is delivered with the pia.  I haven’t verified this but in past releases you could enter the userid and password unencrypted and it worked fine, however, I always encrypt them now, so I have tested this against 8.5x.  It should also be noted that the userid and password are both case-sensitive.

To encrypt the password use the PSCipher script located at <webserv root>/bin. PeopleTools 8.51 moved utility files to the folder <webserv root>/piabin. I usually run the setENV first (however, it usually does it for you now) and then run PSCipher <newpasstoencrypt>.  It will return an Encrypted password in the form:   {V1.1}xxxxxxxxxxx= copy this password and place it into the configuration.properties file.

If you are still experiencing a problem, make sure that the user you are trying to connect with has the correct password entered into the user security screens, and that the account is unlocked.

With the release of the 8.51 Tools they also introduced a password for the domain.  You set this password in the configuration of the application server, and you have to enter it for things like integration broker and also in the PIA web configuration.  This password is encrypted the same way in the configuration.properties file.

Happy Configuring!