Understanding EIPs

PeopleSoft Enterprise Integration Points (EIPs) allow PeopleSoft applications to work smoothly with third-party systems or software and with other PeopleSoft applications. EIPs provide integration details for PeopleSoft applications, including the technologies that are used, technology details, application messaging information, and the relationship of different EIPs. The EIP connects the two systems or applications, enabling one-way or two-way data transfer to accomplish a specific business purpose.

This chapter discusses:

• PeopleSoft integration technologies.

• Application messages that integrate PeopleSoft Resource Management with PeopleSoft Human Resources Management (PeopleSoft HRMS), version 8 or higher.

• Business interlinks.

See Also

PeopleSoft Enterprise Components for PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management Solutions, Enterprise Service Automation, Asset Lifecycle Management, and Supply Chain Management 8.9 PeopleBook

PeopleTools PeopleBook: PeopleSoft Application Designer

PeopleTools PeopleBook: PeopleSoft Component Interfaces

PeopleTools PeopleBook: PeopleSoft Integration Broker

PeopleSoft Integration Technologies

EIPs use a variety of PeopleSoft integration tools to integrate data across an enterprise. The PeopleSoft Enterprise Components 8.9 PeopleBook is a good resource for EIPs, including information about development tools and techniques.

This section discusses:

• Application messages.

• Component interfaces.

• Business interlinks.

Application Messages

Application messaging 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 architecture, an application, the publisher of changes in the data, sends dynamic data. Another application, the subscriber to the changes in data, receives the data. Application messaging provides integration that is near real time.

Resource Management uses application messages to integrate with PeopleSoft HRMS. In the Financials and Supply Chain Management (FSCM) database there is a mirror image of the HRMS tables that are needed for the system, and the application messages are used by Resource Management to keep these tables data synchronized. When data changes in HRMS, a message is sent to PeopleSoft Resource Management to load the appropriate data. The two types of application messages are:

• Incremental synchronization messages.

  These messages kick off when incremental changes are made to the system, such as when a user adds new rows of data or changes existing data.

• Full synchronization messages.

  These messages kick off during implementation to synchronize data between databases. This process deletes the data in Resource Management tables and loads the appropriate data from PeopleSoft HRMS.

Important! Use the HRMS database as the only source database for application setup tables for accomplishments, competencies, and work definitions if you store employee data in PeopleSoft HRMS, and non-employee data in HRMS and Resource Management. Otherwise you must keep the setup tables synchronized in both databases. Full synchronization messages overwrite accomplishment, competency, and work definition information that is stored in Resource Management.

Although application messaging is described as the tool for publishing data from a source database to a target database, you can also use it to publish and subscribe to a data change within the same database. Resource Management also uses application messages to trigger the calculation of Availability fit scores by Resource Matching. The application messages that are used by Resource Matching are discussed earlier in this PeopleBook .

See Also

Understanding Resource Matching

Enabling Resource Matching and Cache Processes

Component Interfaces

A PeopleSoft component interface is an object-oriented, request/reply, component architecture that enables a PeopleSoft or third-party application to synchronously invoke PeopleSoft business logic that implements a business process or function. Every organization depends on real-world business objects, such as service orders in Resource Management or invoices in PeopleSoft Receivables, to conduct its business.

A component interface is a PeopleTools object that is created in PeopleSoft Application Designer. Components have keys that enable navigation to a specific instance of a business object. The keys contain essential information that describes the object, which is made up of the fields in the component. A component also includes an organization's business rules that are associated with the type of business object that the component represents.

Resource Management uses component interfaces to encapsulate the business logic around different business objects. For example, a component interface is built over the Service Order component so other parts of the application can use PeopleCode to update or create service orders while executing the appropriate business logic around these actions.

Component interfaces can be used to integrate with external applications. The component interfaces that are used in Resource Management are discussed earlier in this PeopleBook.

See Understanding Access-Related Features of PeopleSoft Resource Management.

Business Interlinks

A business interlink enables you to perform component-based, real-time integration from PeopleSoft to third-party systems by creating synchronous transactions that allow PeopleSoft applications to pass and receive data from the third-party system in real time. Business interlinks provide a consistent framework for invoking third-party applications across a wide variety of technologies.

The business interlink framework provides for querying data, updating data, adding data, deleting data, and performing specific transactions against objects in an external system. It can process a single transaction in real time, or it can process a batch of data by loading multiple rows of input into an input buffer and then invoking the corresponding method.

Primarily, Resource Management utilizes this technology to integrate with Microsoft Exchange and Outlook third-party applications. With these application interfaces, you can synchronize Outlook calendars with Resource Management resource schedules.

See Enabling Resource Schedules.

Application Message Subscriptions that Integrate with PeopleSoft HRMS

When you use PeopleSoft HRMS as the employee source database, HRMS uses application messages to send selected data to Resource Management data tables, which are used to populate resource profiles. Resource Management depends on the accuracy and timeliness of the information that is stored in the resource profiles. Because HRMS data is subject to continuous change, application messages provide the vehicle to keep the data current across the enterprise.

This section discusses:

• Shared data between PeopleSoft HRMS and Resource Management.

• Incremental synchronization messages.

• Full table synchronization messages.

Shared Data Between HRMS and Resource Management

For the integration between HRMS and Resource Management, HRMS is the publisher of changes to data, and Resource Management is the subscriber. This diagram illustrates the data-sharing process:

Sharing data between PeopleSoft HRMS and PeopleSoft Resource Management

To use PeopleSoft application messages, you must activate the Publication and Subscription services on the Resource Management and PeopleSoft HRMS application servers.

If you integrate Resource Management with HRMS, you must also activate the data synchronization application messages.

If you use Resource Management without an integrated HRMS, the data synchronization application messages should not be activated.

Incremental Synchronization Messages

Resource Management utilizes application messages to integrate Resource Management tables with HRMS application tables. The messages are delivered with a default status of inactive. You must activate each message before attempting to publish messages or subscribe to messages between databases.

The direction of the publish and subscribe rule for each message may be bidirectional or unidirectional. The publish and subscribe rule may also be incremental or full table synchronization for each message.

Bidirectional, Incremental Messages—General Data Synchronization

When you use HRMS with Resource Management, you install two databases, HRMS and Resource Management, and synchronize fundamental, general data records across the two databases. If you update the records in both databases and then make a change in Resource Management, it gets published back to HRMS, and vice versa. This type of data synchronization is called bidirectional incremental messaging.

The following table lists the bidirectional, incremental synchronization messages to activate in the HRMS and FSCM databases, and their corresponding message channel. You must activate and execute the messages in this table.

Note. We recommend that you do not implement the messages as bidirectional. If you set up the incremental messages as bidirectional, you may have data validation issues if you update the same record in each database at the same time. It is better to set up one database as the master so that all updates can occur in one place. The messages can then be set up as unidirectional and published to the subscribing database:

Unidirectional, Incremental Messages - Resource Management-Specific Synchronization

The following table contains the incremental synchronization messages that update the Resource Management application every time a user changes HRMS data that is relevant to Resource Management. These messages are published from HRMS to Resource Management, which means that HRMS is always the source of data. Do not modify data in the FSCM database that is transmitted through these messages from HRMS.

Once you activate these messages in HRMS and Resource Management, every subsequent change to HRMS data in any of the records that are associated with these messages triggers the publication and subscription of the new, modified, or deleted data. The result is that Resource Management reflects the change within a few seconds.

This table lists the unidirectional incremental synchronization messages that you must activate in the HRMS and FSCM databases, and their corresponding message channel:

Full Table Synchronization Messages

Full synchronization is a much more data-destructive activity than incremental synchronization. Incremental synchronization messages modify, delete, or add only the data that changed as a result of an individual transaction. Full synchronization messages first delete all of the data that is in the target record in Resource Management and then load a copy of the source record from PeopleSoft HRMS.

Note. There is an exception to the above statement. If you select the installation option to maintain non-employees (employee IDs with a status of N) in HRMS and FSCM databases, the full synchronization process does not update non-employee data for employee IDs that originate in Resource Management. In this case the process only updates employee and non-employee data that originates in HRMS.

An understanding of how full synchronization messages work is especially important if the list of departments or locations in the FSCM database is different from the one that is in the HRMS database. Synchronizing departments by using a FULLSYNC message from HRMS to Resource Management overwrites all of the Resource Management departments with the HRMS departments. Such an action would damage the FSCM database and require that the Departments table (DEPT_TBL) be restored from a backup that you made prior to the full synchronization.

Warning! We recommend that you only use full synchronization messages during implementation. If there is existing data in the FSCM database records and you use full synchronization messages, you will overwrite Resource Management data that is associated with the message. We also recommend that you only implement full synchronization messages as unidirectional with one database as a publisher and another as a subscriber.

For example, users can add or change values in the Departments table and Location table (LOCATION_TBL) from a page in the FSCM database as well as the HRMS database, but full synchronization messages copy data from HRMS to Resource Management only. Therefore, any changes that a user makes directly in Resource Management are eliminated when a full synchronization message is published from HRMS and subscribed to by Resource Management.

Full table synchronization messages are delivered with a status of inactive. The publishing rules must be activated. Information that is to be shared by the Resource Management and HRMS databases is updated properly when the appropriate messages are activated.

Warning! PeopleSoft recommends that you do not activate full synchronization messages for any record that receives input from more than one database. Carefully consider the impact of activating any of these messages. If you activate a message that is appended with FULL_SYNC, FULLSYNC, or FULLSYNCn, you overwrite all of the data in the FSCM database tables that are associated with the message, other than non-employee data that originates in Resource Management.

Unidirectional, Full Synchronization Messages

This table lists the unidirectional full synchronization messages that you must activate in the HRMS and FSCM databases and their corresponding message channels. When activated and executed, these messages overwrite all of the data that is associated with them in the FSCM database with the data in the HRMS database. Exceptions are preceded by an asterisk (*), which indicates that if you maintain non-employees in Resource Management, the HRMS data does not overwrite the Resource Management data for non-employees that originates in Resource Management:

A Caution Regarding Bidirectional, Full Synchronization Enterprise Messages

You must also activate and execute the messages that are in the following table, but we recommend that you do not implement the messages as bidirectional. The full synchronization messages that you implement in Resource Management should be unidirectional because you only set up one database as a publisher and the other as a subscriber. If you set up full synchronization messages as bidirectional, you may overwrite unique values that are entered in each database and should not be synchronized:

Business Interlinks

The PeopleSoft Business Interlink framework provides a gateway for PeopleSoft applications to the services of any external system. This framework enables any PeopleSoft component (such as a page, an Application Engine program, and so on) to integrate with any external system in near real-time and batch modes.

This table lists the business interlink/XML transactions that are created by PeopleSoft Resource Management: