Where is My Menu Item?

When you're learning about a PeopleSoft page, and especially if you are providing backup support for a customized pages, it is not very intuitive how to actually navigate to that page.

It's pretty easy, using App Designer, to figure out which menu a page is located on.

1. Bring up the page in App Designer.
2. Click Edit -> Find Definition References on the menu to find out which component it belongs to.
3. Bring up the component in App Designer
4. Click Edit -> Find Definition References to find out which menu it belongs to.

But if you're trying to find out how to navigate to that page, you've hit a dead end.

However, once you know what the component name is, navigate to PeopleTools -> Portal -> View Menu Item Detail. Type in the name of the component as the "Portal Object Name" to find out not only how to navigate to it (Menu Path), but what permissions are required to access it, and who actually has access to it.

That was easy.

Free Wireless in Red Rock Country

We just arrived in gorgeous Moab, Utah. Tomorrow we're heading over to Mesa Verde National Park near Cortez, Colorado, and then Saturday, we'll take in Arches NP just outside the north end of Moab.


I was excited to find that our hotel has high-speed wireless internet access. What I was surprised to find out was that it has no security.

So if you happen to be in Moab and need to check your e-mail, pull your car into the parking lot of the Moab Valley Inn, and as long as you have a wireless card, you're "in like Flynn"!

Peoplesoft Financial Aid: BYU Institutional Application

For about the past 4 months I've been working on BYU customizations to the PeopleSoft-delivered financial aid module. Most of the time has been spent on what we call the Institutional Application. I'm not sure why Peoplesoft doesn't already have something like this!

Students will be able to apply online for various forms of Financial Aid. The Institutional App displays different options based on whether the student is an undergraduate, law student, etc. Based on the various options the student selects on the page, various To-Do List items are created.

Many To-Do list items contain a message that says something like 'Please take a copy of your 2006 Federal tax forms to the Financial Aid Office.' However, in certain cases, the information can be provided online; therefore, some of the To-Do list items are custom pages as well. A custom cross-reference table identifies the custom pages and, with the help of about 10 lines of code, which checklist item codes will transfer to the appropriate custom page. Some of the information a student can provide online include other schools attended, other sources of financial aid, or whether the student served an LDS mission.

The greatest complication to the Institutional Application is the fact that a student can make an additional request for financial aid if any of the loans or grants for his or her initial request has already been originated.

I spent most of the day working on this functionality, and I think it's ready to go--but what do I know? We'll see what the users think.