PeopleSoft and RSS feeds
Since PeopleSoft is an Internet architecture one suspects that it should support the commonly used RSS feeds that are available through internet. And guess what: it does!
Let me show you by adding the RSS feed of my favorite soccer club (http://rssfeeds.headliner.nl/rssfeeds/az/feed.xml).
Go to PeopleTools > Portal > Pagelet Wizard and add a new value. In the first step, specify a title and a meaningful description (might be the hardest part):
In the next step, specify URL as the data type of the pagelet and enter the URL to the RSS feed:
Step 3 lets you configure some specific parameters; take a look at PeopleBooks to see if there’s anything useful for your situation. For this example I’ll take the default settings:
Next specify Custom, so we can change the look and feel a bit:
In Step 5, select the XSL template of the RSS feed and press Generate:
If everything went well, you’ll see that the RSS feed appears! If you want to, you can additionally specify a header, footer and additional text. You can add your own images via PeopleTools > Portal > Pagelet Wizard > Define Headers / Define Footers.
I had some issues getting this part to work. One issue was to find the correct XSL template. I found it by putting the RSS feed URL in a browser and examining the XSD file that appears:
You can also do a little trail and error, since there’s not much choice in templates ;-).
Another issue I had is that I could not get through our proxy. Since we are using WebLogic 8.1, I changed the proxy settings in the setenv.cmd and after that it worked fine.
Back to our wizard. Step 6 let’s you decide how the pagelet can be accessed. For now, I’ll make it a homepage pagelet with public access:
Now press save and it’s finished!
To actually show the result, go to the homepage (home in the taskbar at the top) and select the link Personalize Content:
Select the new AZ RSS Feed and save. Select the Personalize Layout link and move it to the correct position:
And here’s the result!
