Using Enterprise Integration Points

This chapter provides an overview of enterprise integration points (EIPs) and discusses how to:

• Set up PeopleSoft Integration Broker message subscriptions.

• Review PeopleSoft Component Interfaces.

Understanding Enterprise Integration Points

EIPs use a variety of PeopleSoft integration tools to integrate data across your enterprise.

Among the PeopleSoft integration tools used in the design of Pay/Bill Management, you will want to have a firm understanding of:

• PeopleSoft Integration Broker.

• PeopleSoft Component Interfaces.

PeopleSoft Integration Broker

Integration Broker is a middleware technology that facilitates synchronous and asynchronous messaging among internal systems and trading partners, while managing message structure, message format, and transport disparities. Using a publish and subscribe protocol, dynamic data external to Pay/Bill Management is published by the application, such as PeopleSoft Human Resources Management (HRMS), to be picked up by other PeopleSoft applications such as Pay/Bill Management, the subscriber to the changes in data. Integration Broker provides integration that is close to real-time, which means that the publisher need not be connected to the subscriber when publishing data. This is similar to the way that email works.

Note. You must activate the Publication/Subscription feature on the Financials and HCM application servers.

See Also

PeopleTools PeopleBook: PeopleSoft Integration Broker

PeopleSoft Component Interfaces

Every organization depends on real-world business objects, such as assignments in Pay/Bill Management or invoices in Receivables, to conduct its business. In PeopleSoft applications, components represent real-world business objects. For example, an invoice component is a way to capture, store, and display all the essential information related to any given invoice—the general billing and shipping information, plus details about each line item. While online, a user can view, enter, and manipulate data about a business object through the use of a component and its associated pages.

Components have keys that enable navigation to a specific instance of a business object, and also include the essential information that describes the object (the fields in the component). Additionally, a component includes an organization's business rules associated with whatever type of business object the component represents.

The PeopleSoft Component Interfaces integration tool exposes the rich functionality delivered in the hundreds of components that make up PeopleSoft applications. A component is a transaction that implements a business process or function. A component interface provides real-time synchronous access to the PeopleSoft business rules and data associated with a business component. A component interface is a PeopleTools object created in PeopleSoft Application Designer. It exposes a PeopleSoft component for synchronous access from another application.

Pay/Bill Management primarily uses the component interfaces technology within the framework of the order, assignment, and employees pages.

See Also

PeopleTools PeopleBook: PeopleSoft Component Interfaces

Setting Up Integration Broker Message Subscriptions

PeopleSoft delivers all Pay/Bill Management enterprise integration points with settings enabled for full functionality, with the exception of PeopleSoft Integration Broker messages. When you integrate Pay/Bill Management with PeopleSoft HRMS, you must activate Integration Broker messages.

This section describes how to:

• Set up incremental synchronization messages.

• Set up full table synchronization messages.

• Activate full table publish rules.

Note. PeopleSoft recommends that you not change the delivered values for Create Message Header and Create Message Trailers. Special logic on the PeopleSoft full message subscription to delete the existing application records occurs when a header message is encountered. Some applications use the trailer message to indicate that all data messages have been received and that it is time to start the validation process. The documentation for the individual message should note if headers and trailers are not supported. Please check that the subscribing process does not need the header or trailer process before clearing those check boxes on a Full Sync message publish.

See Also

PeopleTools PeopleBook: PeopleSoft Integration Broker

PeopleTools PeopleBook: PeopleSoft Integration Tools and Utilities

Setting Up Messages: Incremental Synchronization

Pay/Bill Management uses the PeopleSoft Integration Broker tool to integrate Pay/Bill Management tables with PeopleSoft HRMS and PeopleSoft Financials (FSCM) application tables. The messages are delivered with a default status of Inactive. You must activate each message before you attempt to publish messages or subscribe to messages between databases.

Note. You must activate these messages in the HRMS and FSCM databases.

To begin using Integration Broker, you need to enable publishing of several messages in HRMS and subscribing to those messages in Pay/Bill Management. For some PeopleSoft systems, the direction of the publish/subscribe rule for messages may be bi-directional or uni-directional; however, in Pay/Bill Management, the model is uni-directional so that data can be synchronized. For a given set of data there is only one source for add and one source for update. The publish and subscribe rules may also be incremental or full table synchronization for each message.

Note. The source for publishing departments must be HRMS because Pay/Bill Management requires that the Company and Location fields are populated.

This table contains the incremental synchronization messages that update the Pay/Bill Management, HRMS, and Financials applications every time a user changes data that is relevant to Pay/Bill Management. These messages are published from Pay/Bill Management or HRMS and subscribe to some or all of the same databases.

After you activate these messages, every subsequent change to data in any of the records associated with these messages triggers the publication and subscription of the new or deleted data. The result is that Pay/Bill Management reflects the change within a few seconds.

If you use Pay/Bill Management with Staffing Front Office, you must also activate these incremental synchronization messages:

Setting Up Messages: Full Table Synchronization

Full synchronization is a much more data-destructive activity than incremental synchronization. Incremental synchronization messages modify, delete, or add only the data that a user has affected in performing an individual transaction. Full synchronization messages first delete all of the data in the target record and then load a copy of the source record.

When using full synchronization messages, your primary concern is that you do not inadvertently overwrite valid data. To prevent this problem from occurring, you generally should not activate full synchronization messages for any record that receives input from multiple databases.

The messages in the following table are full synchronization messages. Carefully consider the effect of activating any of these messages.

Warning! You should not activate any of the messages identified as FULL_SYNC or FULLSYNC unless you are absolutely certain that you want to overwrite all of the data in the records associated with the message in the database. Understanding how full synchronization messages work is especially important if the list of values in the Pay/Bill Management database differs from the values in the HRMS database. For example, synchronizing the locations from HRMS using a FULLSYNC message would overwrite all of the Financials locations with the HRMS locations.

If you use Pay/Bill Management with Staffing Front Office, you can also activate these full synchronization messages:

Activating Full Table Publish Rules

The Integration Broker full table messages are delivered with a status of Inactive. The publishing rules must be activated. Information shared by the FSCM and the HRMS databases for Pay/Bill Management is updated properly when the appropriate messages are activated.

For example, PeopleSoft publishes data from the HRMS table CM_CLUSTER_ACMP. This table is populated with new data from PeopleSoft HRMS, and old data is deleted. The data from this table is published into a CLUSTER_ACCOMP_FULLSYNC message.

Reviewing Component Interfaces

Pay/Bill Management uses the Business Component Interface tool to share data within Pay/Bill Management tables or between Pay/Bill Management tables and other application tables, such as HRMS and Financials. The component interfaces used by Pay/Bill Management are: