PeopleSoft and RSS feeds

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!