Peoplesoft Hrms Reporting - Softcover

Bromwich, Adam

9780130216120: Peoplesoft Hrms Reporting

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0130216127 ISBN 13: 9780130216120

Publisher: Prentice Hall, 1999

Make your company's PeopleSoft investment pay off! Create the accurate, insightful reports you need, first time, every time, with PeopleSoft HRMS Reporting-the only complete guide to PeopleSoft reporting.

The Complete and Authoritative Guide to Retrieving Data from PeopleSoft's Human Resource Management System

PeopleSoft specialist Adam Bromwich presents authoritative guidance on the successful design of PeopleSoft HRMS databases and reports for superior performance, ease of use, and value. Learn how the PeopleSoft database is organized-functionally and technically; review its key tables; and understand how PeopleSoft's online capabilities are linked to the relational database beneath them.

Discover how you can:

Access your data directly, using Structured Query Language (SQL) and via PeopleSoft's powerful Structured Query Reports (SQR) language
Design better tables and reports for HR, Payroll, and Benefits
Construct more comprehensive queries
Avoid expensive pitfalls in PeopleSoft table design

Bromwich reveals the hidden decisions PeopleSoft HR developers must make. How does calculating a payroll affect paycheck data? When does an effective dated table cause major headaches? Where is the accurate data stored and which tables should be left alone? You'll find common routines for retrieving functional data, techniques for slashing costly debugging and maintenance, and much more.

PeopleSoft HRMS Reporting is the only independent guide to real-world PeopleSoft reporting. And it's based on the unmatched experience of one of the world's leading PeopleSoft experts.

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Review:

Adam Bromwich's objective in PeopleSoft HRMS Reporting is to synchronize the perspectives of technical people (PeopleSoft designers and administrators) and functional people (managers who use PeopleSoft). If technicians know what managers need and managers know what technicians can do, more productive enterprises will result. Bromwich succeeds admirably, explaining the human resources, payroll, and benefits aspects of the PeopleSoft HRMS database. Taking a table-by-table approach to the information PeopleSoft stores, the book explains each field in many of the most useful tables and details unusual formatting where it's an issue. He also explains how various pieces of data relate to one another and how best to access them. In one sense, this is a guided tour of a great big relational database.

What's neat about Bromwich's style is his frequent inclusion of workaday tricks and shortcuts for getting things done quickly and easily. These aren't the contrived "hints and tips" that characterize so many software books. Rather, they're practical procedures that the author has learned on the job as a consultant. He's also quick to clarify confusing aspects of PeopleSoft's interface, explaining, for example, that a pay run ID is not the same as a user run ID or a run control ID. He's also careful to explain how PeopleSoft has changed through its revisions, documenting how what used to be a straightforward record of U.S. Social Security numbers is now a more complex facility for handling many countries' citizen-identification systems. --David Wall

Topics covered: The structure and contents of three major PeopleSoft databases: human resources, payroll, and benefits. Detailed attention goes to dates, control tables, personal information tables, department trees, payroll runs, tax issues, and query design with the SQR language.

From the Inside Flap:

Preface

All too often individuals are not aware of what is going on at the other end of an implementation. Programmers do not understand the reasons behind requirements, and human resources professionals (the users) do not understand the limitations of the application. When PeopleSoft users and programmers understand each other's concerns, a better product results every time. This book bridges this gap. The material in the chapters that follow answers questions related to specific human resources issues, and then goes on to explain how to implement real solutions. The philosophy is simple — technical and functional individuals should be exposed to as much of the other's viewpoint as possible. You cannot separate the two without generating greater confusion.

As a result, this book is organized by function: human resources, payroll, and benefits. Within each function the structure, features and pitfalls of the PeopleSoft database are explained in detail.

There are many items that are not covered in depth. The online application, where users enter transactions and process data, is better left to PeopleSoft's documentation and online PeopleBooks literature. The PeopleTools, which assist in one-time tasks such as modifying a panel or uploading converted data, are also well-documented elsewhere.

Why are these items not covered in this book? Because they have little to do with the issues that truly make or break an implementation. The PeopleSoft online application and tools are important skills, but they do not reveal the underlying data structure — if anything, they conceal it. And this creates misunderstandings between those who interact every day with the online application, and those who report on the data directly.

This book also does not provide detailed explanations of standard reporting languages. You will note, however, that examples of reporting code are often shown to clarify an important issue or provide a solution. These examples assume a basic knowledge of how a relational database is organized. A rudimentary understanding of Structured Query Language (SQL) is also useful, even if it is limited to the basic meanings of the SELECT/FROM/WHERE terminology.

Knowledge of basic Structured Query Reporting (SQR) language, a language provided with PeopleSoft, is only necessary for the final chapter, Chapter 26. This final chapter demonstrates some advanced SQR techniques and also details many of the advantages and pitfalls of using SQR.

In sum, this book contains a great deal of information, much of it garnered from experience. It does not contain everything — to do so would occupy volumes and volumes. Instead, this book is a detailed guide to the PeopleSoft database, concentrating only on the areas you will encounter the most. It explains how the underlying database relates to the core PeopleSoft functions, such as payroll calculation and benefits administration. It explains each table and field, and how they relate to one another. This book is not simply a reference tool — it is a critical guide to how PeopleSoft works behind the scenes.

To help you derive benefits from this book long after you've purchased and read it, go to the Prentice Hall PTR ERP Series Companion Website. This website is designed to keep you up-to-date with the latest tools, techniques, information, and data on Enterprise Resource Planning technologies. You'll find this Companion Website to be a great information kiosk, one that you may go back to again and again and again. So go to: phptr/erp

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