PeopleSoft Service Pack Application Upgrade Notes
I followed the following steps at one of my client for a service pack upgrade. The way you do the service pack upgrade varies from installation to installation, but the methodology would be same. From my experience whole service pack upgrade usually takes any where from 2 weeks to 4 weeks depending on complexity of target database and size of the team.
Install New Release
Installed New PeopleSoft version to a new file server location and created a brand new demo (DMO) database using PeopleSoft installation document. Configured web server, application server and process scheduler from old code line (This is done because we were at the same PeopleTools release, if you need to do the tools upgrade also then first upgrade the tools).
Note: It is not mandatory to run vanilla compares for a Service Pack upgrades, these might be helpful if you cloned old release programs. But I don’t see a much importance for these reports unless this is a Full application upgrade where these reports are mandatory.
Base Line
We downloaded the base line from PeopleSoft Customer connection and applied the base line to Demo database (DMO).
Required for Upgrade Fixes (RFUF)
Apply required for upgrade fixes by downloading the fixes from Customer Connection. To identify the required for upgrade fixes follow the following steps.
- Go to PeopleSoft Customer Connection.
- Click on Updates + Fixes.
- Click on Required for Install or Upgrade
4. Select Financials from Product line, Upgrade from Product and 8.8 from Release options. Click Required for Upgrade option.
5. Then click Go button, you should see lot of required for upgrade fixes review all the fixes and note down the ones that you need to apply to your upgrade path.
After identifying the fixes, open the Change Assistant and download all the identified required for upgrade fixes and applied them to demo database using Change Assistant tool.
Useful Notes:
- Make sure no one is working on the box when the Data Conversion scripts are running. Based on the complexity of your target database this might take some time and you might have to manually fix the errors.
- We identified that if you are applying a Service Pack and Maintenance Pack, it is always good to apply the Maintenance Pack to Demo database and start the upgrade to Target database. This will save a lot of time because you don’t have to re-apply the customizations twice to the Target database.
Compare Reports
- When you review the compare reports always look at the following combinations and take the appropriate action.
|
Source |
Target |
Action |
|
Unchanged |
Changed* |
Keep Target |
|
Changed |
Changed* |
Copy and re-apply customization |
|
Absent |
Changed* |
Keep Target |
|
All other |
|
Copy |
- You will need lot of effort from technical team to review the compare and re-applying the customizations to target database.
- Always try to upgrade using sand box, so it will not affect other users working on the server.
- If possible try to run the compare reports on the server side this will speed up the process a lot.
- Also create the upgrade template on Server, possibly windows batch server machine.
Approach Followed For this upgrade
- Installed new file server using FSCM 8.8 SP1.
- Created a new demo database using this file server so that it will be at FSCM 8.8 SP1.
- Took a backup of existing copy of production database
- Ran audit reports and gave the reports to technical team to fix the reports.
- Applied baseline downloaded from customer connection to Demo database.
- Applied required for upgrade fixes to Demo database.
- Downloaded upgrade assistant templates from Customer connection (We downloaded Application Upgrade only template because we were not upgrading the tools at that time. If your application is not built on the Tools you are using you need to upgrade the tools also).
- Created a new upgrade job and filtered the documentation.
- Functional team worked on the issues related to setting up country data etc…(Doesn’t take a significant amount of time from functional team).
- Gone through all the steps according to upgrade assistant job and upgraded the database.
- There is a step for chartfield configuration, our functional people verified the report and decided that no changes needs to be made.
- When you run the compare reports it generates 3 different projects and sets the Copy options. We followed the above said options for compare reports.
- Re-applied customizations after the upgrade are completed.
- Ran the audit reports again and cleaned them out.
- Applied the MP3 Cumulative (If the cumulative is available you can apply this maintenance pack directly instead of applying Maintenance packs one by one) to the Demo database and reapplied the customizations.
- Once the upgrade is completed replicated this instance to all other instances.
Other Important Notes:
- If you are applying Maintenance Packs or individual bundles or patches always good to apply them using Change Assistant tool. This will help you not to miss any scripts needs be run.
- To go through the whole process smoothly try to configure Change Assistant and PSEMHUB properly so the change assistant will crawl all the databases and file servers. This will be really useful when it tries to deploy the files to the file server