Upgrade from 7.51 to 8.1 1

[watsonja]

We are in the process of evaluating the upgrade to 8.1 for the HRMS, Benefits Administration and Payroll modules. Has anyone done the upgrade themselves without using PepleSoft's upgrade lab. If so, I would appreciate it if you could share some lessons learned and best practices.

Thanks in Advance.

 

[Tim1]

Hiya,

I have looked at the upgrade for PS from 7.53 to 8.1 for the HRMS modules for my last company, but the decision made was actually to drop PS altogther....

However, from the work that I did, it seemed possible to do the upgrade without using the PS upgrade lab, but you will need to do a lot of work in designing your tables.

HTH

Tim

 

[jvail]

You definitly CAN do that upgrade in house. The peoplsoft delivered processes should work without much issue unless you have significantly modified/ customized delivered functionality.

My most recent eval and test upgrade from 7.5x to 8.1 went well.

James Vail
jvail@selectconcepts.com

 

[watsonja]

One other quick question. We are being told by the original consultants that implemented V7.51 that there is significant effort involved in updating our V7.51 test scripts for V8. Is this true? My thoughts are that since we are not implemenenting new functionality during the upgrade, their should not be siginificant changes. I would appreciate anyones input.

Thanks.

 

[r2]

While the upgrade from 7.x to Rel8 isn't rocket science, it does require a lot of pre-planning, and a thorough understanding of the Peoplesoft Internet Architecture (aka PIA). Technically speaking there isn't much diff between upgrading on-site vs. the Psoft Lab; that should be dictated more by resources (platforms and personnel) than anything else. Even if you do choose the Lab approach, there's still a lot of work that will have to be done at your site once the "technical" upgrade pieces are done.

There are some "assessment" services out there that can help you prep and decide; use caution, though, as many services/consultancies don't have that much (if any) R8 experience. Look for resources with the Psoft Certification for 8.

 

[crichey]

You will need to perform much more updating of scripts than in previous upgrades. Even though the functionality may not have changed much, there is a big difference in the user interface. Instead of panels, users will now be using pages via a browser to navigate PeopleSoft. The navigation paths you used in previous scripts may no longer be applicable. Some of the changes will likely be confusing to users so an accurate script will be very helpful in testing.