PeopleSoft 9.2: Dashboards vs. Workcenters
(Note: Jack Kochie, a MIPRO Senior Principal Consultant, contributed to this post.)
Over the course of a few presentations we’ve watched as well as several discussions we’ve had, we’ve come to notice there is some confusion between Dashboards and WorkCenters in PeopleSoft 9.2. So, we’d like to clarify to make sure these two terms don’t get conflated or swapped. It’s the old adage: if one person has a question about something, rest assured others do too.
So, Dashboards vs. Workcenters.
Dashboards let a user build a customized home page by selecting pagelets from a predefined list. A pagelet is a query-based display that provide consolidated transaction information (e.g. most ordered items) or to-do lists (e.g. requisitions awaiting sourcing). The pagelet includes links to transaction components (to the requisitions in the list for example) to assist with navigation.
Workcenters include pagelets but go beyond to provide customized menus, access to a component without changing pages, query results and other PeopleSoft resources. WorkCenters are configured to allow access to all the pages needed to perform a job without needing to navigate to multiple components using menus.
Oracle itself explains it this way: just think of either of these as a “work area” and depending on what the objective of the work area is, then you can decide on what PeopleTools framework to use – Dashboards or Workcenters. Dashboards allow you to consume content and possibly take action on that content whereas Workcenters are for power users who look at them as where they go to manage their day-to-day tasks. So Dashboards for a manager can provide specific content on their team and associated actions on the team such as compensation changes, performance, etc. In contrast, for example, a payroll administrator would have a Workcenter that had their payroll cycle tasks, reports, exceptions, alerts and standard payroll reports.
If you have any further questions about this (and we know there’s some confusion out there), don’t be afraid to drop me a note.
