PeopleTools 8.56 - Branding Review

PeopleTools 8.56 has been out for a few months now. This is a review of what is new in the Branding Framework pertaining to the 8.56 release.

Review Environment Details:

- HCM 9.2 PUM Image 23
- PeopleTools 8.56.01

Branding Framework:

Not much has changed with the Branding Framework. I was expecting some improvements to the Theme Macro Set functionality which was introduced in 8.55. There are still some hard-coded references to images in javascript which would have been nice to move to Theme Macro Set CSS functionality. For example:

The delivered macro set, PT_DEFAULT_MACROSET_855, still contains 117 macros (same as in 8.55) with no changes in 8.56.

As you can see, there is a new Color Picker on the Theme Macro Set page which is a nice productivity enhancing feature! This Color Picker is based on HTML5 'color' input type element.

Icon Changes:

A notable change that we have already seen in demos prior to the release is the new 'Action Menu' icon. This has changed from the old 'hamburger' menu to a 'pea' (?) menu. Graham Smith thinks this is a healthy dietary change! We cannot argue with that. :)

Using Theme Macro Sets:

Since the framework has not changed, it was pretty much the same set of steps to use Theme Macro Sets to override Branding elements. One thing to note is that we definitely want to clone the 8.56 objects (style sheets, headers, themes, etc.) instead of moving objects from an 8.55 environment. This will make sure that we have the most current versions of the object in question.

We can follow the steps detailed in my previous posts describing how to use Theme Macro Sets to override Branding Elements:
PeopleTools 8.55 Branding - Theme Macro Sets - Part 1
PeopleTools 8.55 Branding - Theme Macro Sets - Part 2

One of the issues I noticed was the position of the 'Pea' icon was a little off after applying the Theme Macro Set overrides. This issue occurred only on the Classic Pages. For example:

I fixed this by adding the following a top property to the #pthdr2ActionList:after style selector which is part of the Classic Theme Style Sheet.

Using Oracle JET:

I noticed that Oracle JET version 2.1.0 is available with PeopleTools 8.56. I found that the JavaScript Injection Framework that I built using Oracle JET in 8.55, works without any issues in 8.56 as well. Only thing to note is that, due to the version change, we may need to review the requireJS configuration to make sure the javascript library paths are pointing to the correct version.

Resources:

JavaScript Injection Framework
Framework is based on my experience with Oracle JET - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4
GitHub Project: https://github.com/SasankVemana/PeopleTools-JavaScript-Injection-Framework

Using Classic Plus:

I wanted to test the delivered Classic Plus pages that were available in this PUM image. But when I navigated to the Process Monitor page - which is in the list of PeopleTools Components delivered as Classic Plus - I was still seeing the good old Classic.

To activate Classic Plus, we must update the Branding System Options to use "Fluid like theme for Classic" as the "Theme Style Type". This is the system level setting that enables "Classic Plus".

Process Monitor after setting 'Theme Style Type'.

More information on Classic Plus:
PeopleBooks - Classic Plus

Related Branding Posts:

Fluid UI - New Window Feature - Workaround
Using Different Branding Themes for Different Portals
Using the Logo as a Hyperlink
Fluid Global Search - Setting Focus on the Search Box
Adding Userid to 'Sign out' Action Menu Item Label 

PeopleTools Branding - Adding Userid to Sign out Label

In this post, I want to share how we can add the current userid to the 'Sign out' action menu item which is part of the branding.

Fluid:

Classic:

What is the benefit?

The reason I find this useful is because we can quickly hover over the action menu on any page and find out who we are logged in as (particularly when we are testing with multiple userids). Further, in the past we had a lot more real estate in the Branding header and we could add a greeting message to provide some flavor of personalization/user identification. But with the New User Interface (NUI) navigation and branding, it is not ideal to use up the Branding header to display a lengthy (space consuming) greeting. This 'Sign out' customization will provide a user specific label.

Implementation Details:

Environment:
- CS 9.2 PUM Image 4
- PeopleTools 8.54.12

Project on GitHub:
https://github.com/SasankVemana/Branding-Signout-Label-Customization

'Sign out' label customization in Fluid:

Record: PT_WORK
Field: PT_BUTTON_LOGOUT
Event: RowInit

Note: Add the peoplecode to PT_WORK.PT_BUTTON_LOGOUT.RowInit

'Sign out' label in Classic:

In Classic, we can update the 'Sign out' label without any customization using the Branding Framework.

App Package Implementation for Custom Sign out:

Note: This App Class was cloned from PTBR_BRANDING.SystemElement.SignOutLink and updated to include the %operatorid on the label.

App Package:

Create New Branding Element Type:
PeopleTools > Branding > System Data > Define Element Types

Remove delivered 'Sign out' from the Custom Branding Header:

Note: This is assuming we used a custom branding header to define our Branding Theme. In my case, I used the following approach: PeopleTools 8.55 Branding

- Delete 'pthdr2signout' element from the custom header (CSK_HEADER_FLUID).
- Save the custom header (CSK_HEADER_FLUID).

Add Custom 'Sign out' element to the Branding Header:

Fluid UI - Responsive and Mobile-Friendly Tooltip

A good friend asked me if we can add a descriptive tooltip to Fluid UI elements. This reminded me that adding tooltips to page field elements has not been very straight forward with PeopleTools. In Classic, we had a few  options (there may be more):

1. Use the field class - HoverText property. This has many limitations - only works for push buttons or hyperlinks, maximum length of 100 characters, to name a few.
2. Use the page field property (use) - Mouse Over Popup settings. This again is limited to push buttons or hyperlinks. It also involves creating Popup page object.
3. Use application delivered Mouse Over Popup Pages. For example, HCM delivers some configuration that can be used for setting up mouse over popup fields.
4. Custom approach: http://peoplesoftdotnet.blogspot.com/2015/06/hovertext-in-to-edit-box.html

Needless to say, these options may not be very flexible to use with Fluid.

The good news is that in Fluid, we could use the HtmlAttributes field class property to add/update attributes to the page field element. This allows us to add/update the text attribute which is used to display the tooltip. Let us try this and see how it may work.

Test Environment Details:

Application: CS 9.2 PUM Image 4
PeopleTools Release: 8.55.12
Test Component/Page: AV_OUTR_SRCH_S_FL/AV_OUTR_SRCH_FL
Navigation: Fluid Home > Contributor Relations Homepage > Donor Prospects

Using HtmlAttribute to update the text attribute:

The page activate code for AV_OUTR_SRCH_FL page is written the following App Package Method:
App Package Class: AV_OUTR_FL.COMPONENTS.AV_OUTR_S_FL.OnExecute
Method: pageActivate

Let us add some custom code to update the text attribute for page field AV_SRCH_FLDS_WK.LAST_NAME_SRCH.

Delivered Tooltip on larger viewport:

Delivered Tooltip on smaller viewport:

With the hoverover text overflowing the smaller viewport, we can see that the tooltip is neither user-friendly nor responsive.

In a quest to find a user-friendly/responsive option, I stumbled on this resource:
https://osvaldas.info/elegant-css-and-jquery-tooltip-responsive-mobile-friendly
Demo: http://osvaldas.info/examples/elegant-css-and-jquery-tooltip-responsive-mobile-friendly/

The steps provided in Osvaldas's blog are very simple. We just need to load the CSS and javascript provided in the blog and then add the rel="tooltip" attribute to the target page field element. I wanted to take this idea and apply it to PeopleTools (using the above example).

Responsive and Mobile-Friendly Tooltip:

I updated the previous custom peoplecode and added the rel="tooltip" property. Further, I added a javascript object that is improvised on Osvaldas's code.

Custom Tooltip on larger viewport:

Custom Tooltip on smaller viewport:

Implementation Details:

I shared my code - which is based on the blog post by Osvaldo Valutis - on GitHub.
https://github.com/SasankVemana/Fluid-UI-Responsive-Tooltip

PeopleCode:

In the sample peoplecode provided above, you can see that along with the text attribute we have also added the rel="tooltip" attribute to the page field element using the HtmlAttributes property.

CSS:

I modified the CSS provided in Osvaldo's blog to update the tooltip text and background colors. You can make additional modifications if necessary based on your requirement. Create a Free-Form Style Sheet object in App Designer using the CSS (CSK_TOOLTIP_CSS) in the GitHub project.

JavaScript:

I extended the javascript provided in Osvaldo's blog to wrap the code in a require block to facilitate the loading of jQuery using requireJS - which I have detailed in the past as part of a javascript injection framework. You could use an alternate approach for the javascript injection but you need to make sure that jQuery is loaded prior to execution of this javascript. Additionally, this javascript also takes care of loading the CSS (CSK_TOOLTIP_CSS) using helper functions - again part of the javascript injection framework. Create a JavaScript (HTML) object in App Designer using the javascript (CSK_TOOLTIP_JS) in the GitHub project.