Anyone using E1 Pages exclusively across their 9.1 install sites? (No usermenu/tasks)

ArenaRed

Member
I would be interested in community feedback on this concept - the good, bad and if we are ready at a point to discard menu/tasks. Are there security ramifications that are not immediately evident? Maintenance and deployment overhead vs task/menu promotion? M

Any experiences appreciated!
 
ArenaRed,

We use E1 Pages to contain the most commonly-used applications, organized into separate E1 Pages by functional department. These are what we want our users to go to first. Beyond that, users can create favorites, and then can use the menu. I guess whether or not you go E1 Pages only depends on how many programs/versions you have and how many E1 Pages you're willing to maintain. With the newer tools releases, you can call out an application/UBE by just listing the task ID, which greatly reduces the amount of work to maintain E1 Page data files. If you decide to go with E1 Pages only, it would be interesting to know how it works for you. Thanks.
 
Funny you should bring this up because I've been wondering the same thing. I've been doing a number of upgrades to 9.1 and so far I haven't had a client who wanted to jump into E1Pages. I think for upgrades since old menus come across most companies don't see the value add in re-visiting menu/navigation design and training. Little to no training is needed for an upgrade to navigate especially since most users utilize "Favorites".

The part I've been wondering is for a "New Install" would a company choose to go E1Pages. While it is a more "Cool" interface the issues I see are:
1. Creating custom pages require more technical knowledge including some HTML coding experience.
The existing menu/task creation is very intuitive and can be learned quickly and done via mostly point and click.
2. Separate set of Security, roles and administration.
This just adds more complexity to the administration and troubleshooting.
3. Separate promotion, deployment.... (not managed using OMW)
Again adding to the complexity of administration, testing and change control.
4. Upgrade support unknown???
I can't find any statements from Oracle on how-if e1pages are going to be handled for an upgrade. (Anyone remember "AdtivEra"). I have similar concerns for "One View" reports.

I realize that these concerns are purely selfish since I often get stuck supporting and upgrading the new "cool" things from Oracle.
 
We had these dreams, but they died out to a simple lack of functionality.

IT - Administrators have a E1 page with common apps (user profiles, security workbench, etc). Users do not however because of one feature.. they do not let you have a "Default" E1 page to stack.

So if you have a manager with procurement, he/she does not have <default tab> / <procurement>. Someone from HR might have <default> / <HR>. But E1 pages cannot default a page.

That default page would allow us to first deploy it and then customize the tabs based on their role. So as they say.. maybe 'next release" for us..
 
Well here's my opinion.

E1 Pages are much MUCH friendlier and more productive for the End User compared to the Navigator. Navigator needs to be thrown away and redesigned - its ugly. They should go back to pre-navigator menu navigation for an example of how to do it better.

E1 Pages have warts also:
1. Unfinished (creating and editing ...)
2. Only partially integrated into JDE Security (if user unable to run app then it shouldn't be shown)
3. Not part of promotion process (I believe?)

Despite all that our users really like the E1 Pages and its not hard to understand why. 90% of users will use less than a dozen apps 90% of the time. Why not make it extremely easy to find/launch those common apps? OK - its more work for the Admins ... Yay! Another reason for the company to keep us around!

ShippingPage.jpg
 
We had these dreams, but they died out to a simple lack of functionality.

IT - Administrators have a E1 page with common apps (user profiles, security workbench, etc). Users do not however because of one feature.. they do not let you have a "Default" E1 page to stack.

So if you have a manager with procurement, he/she does not have <default tab> / <procurement>. Someone from HR might have <default> / <HR>. But E1 pages cannot default a page.

That default page would allow us to first deploy it and then customize the tabs based on their role. So as they say.. maybe 'next release" for us..

You can assign E1pages via roles but you would need to then manage multi role security. So you can have a default role with a default E1page and add on roles with their own pages based on what is needed. Works well from what I can see.
 
I was/am going to look at E1 Pages, I haven't had the time (as yet). Our users use the favourites (Aussie spelling) functionality.
 
Hi David,

Thanks for that tip. I don't think we'd use it however- we're consolidated to a one role per user setup although that role would be just cosmetic I guess. I did contact Oracle and they had an enhancement request to order the pages per role so we can try that again later.

Malcolm
 
Well here's my opinion.

2. Only partially integrated into JDE Security (if user unable to run app then it shouldn't be shown)
View attachment 17799

FYI, E1 pages does support not showing an icon if the user doesn't have permission to the application, this has been addressed in the last year, I'm not sure what tool release fixed it but when we went live on E1 in Thanksgiving 2013 the fix was just literally just released and we are using it. E1 pages leaves a blank space on the page and the icon doesn't show. The only down side is if you have flow arrows pointing from one application to another the arrows still display, but not the icon. (If that makes sense?)

We are 99% on E1 pages and no looking back. A couple of our extreme power users have menus but everything we do day in and day out was migrated over from to E1 pages when we upgraded from 8.0. Up until the release of the tool set to fix the security icon issue we weren't going this way but once that was released we pulled a team in to convert almost everything to E1 pages, got it done within a month or 2 and our user base loves it.

No regrets at all...
 
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Hi, Mike.

Just a quick reply to your point # 1. While you can get into HTML coding if you wish, if you use the E1 Page Generator utility from Oracle, there is absolutely no HTML coding required -- just a simple text data file that gets generated into the finished product.

And, yes, it does take some (but not a lot) of time to create E1 Pages (especially if you use Task ID's to do most of the heaving lifting), it's well worth it for an easier, more modern interface for our users. And it can help with training new users, too.

Cheers!
 
Thanks for the response Don and it was nice to hear from you. I think it was about 15 years that I did work with you at Wagstaff!

As I mentioned I haven't had an upgrade client want to spend the time "re-inventing" the menus so I haven't use the Generator. I know that being a "consultant" makes my view of the world a little different than someone who works for a single company and "owns" a single implementation of JDE but I get a really uneasy feeling about E1 Pages. Mostly this comes from the fact that it feels "Bolted on" and not fully integrated with the rest of the product. It makes it feel that Oracle is not fully committed to the product. Secondly as many have mentioned the majority of the "End Users" that I've dealt with just use favorites to go to the small number of programs that they use on a regular basis.

One of the most disastrous upgrades I ever performed was one where the company had full bought into "Web Portal". They had created the most gorgeous, "modern" web interface to JDE that included every imaginable "widget". Of course when it came to upgrading none of it came across. To make matters worse everyone who was involved in the original development had since left the company. They spent months and thousands of dollars redesigning just how users got to the JDE programs while for most upgrades this task was absolutely ZERO.

I'll admit that I'm kind of a simple guy. For example I feel the new "modern" interface in Windows 8 is frustrating and a total waste of time. All I want to do is click "Start" -> "Programs" and be on my way ;-)
 
... I get a really uneasy feeling about E1 Pages. Mostly this comes from the fact that it feels "Bolted on" and not fully integrated with the rest of the product.

I hear you Mike about new features being "bolted on" to JDE. However this is the trend of a lot of Oracle's add-ons to JDE. They're add-ons - not grown organically from within JDE. Granted - E1 Pages look like something that was quick and dirty and never finished - like Table Conversions - but TCs are still around and I think E1 Pages will be also. They will be improved if we (the customer base) insist on improvements. Good news is they have been improving incrementally.
 
I always viewed E1 pages as kind of a requirement for any upgrade to TR9.x given how the new menuing functionality works. I am not a consultant so I am kind of surprised to learn that a lot of people opt out of E1 pages. I think for my company it will basically be a requirement given our existing menu structure. Either E1 pages or completely re-work all of our menus and then promote the hell out of favorites to our users to prevent all out revolt.
 
using TASKIDs within the page is the easiest way to be able to maintain what appears in the page, however, you do have to have the Task created in the traditional task View for this to work, so you will never truly be a pages only installation. The change control/promotion for pages is pretty simple and straightforward though it doesn't make sense why they didn't include pages as an object type within OMW for simplicity sake.
The biggest issue I have seen so far is in 'editing' the pages. Once a page is loaded in JDE, there is no way to change it (that I have found anyway). The change is made outside of JDE and the page gets re-loaded.

Make use of multiple roles per user and assign a page to the role so when a user gets the role they also get the page. The issue with not all pages displaying for a user has been fixed in more recent TR.
 
Hi guys,

Does anyone have a good set of documentation or a presentation on E1 pages please?

I'm a developer but I've been on an end user training session to see a business process in action. I know what pages are but not much much about them.

We are on 9.0 and don't have the correct Tools Release as yet (only in DV) but I want to push for our business to start using Pages. So I guess I'd need some sort of demo in order to try and get the ball rolling on my suggested approach.

I think I'd also need some documents on how to build a page from scratch, as i'd probably be asked to create a demo process.

Thanks

John
 
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In my experience the community is interested in using pages but are often unsure if enough value is created over the long-term to justify the effort required. For what its worth, we at ALLOut have seen enough interest to create a product to convert solution explorer menus into tab pages automatically.
 
An update and thank you to all who chimed in on the topic. As our E1 Page deployment has played out, the lessons learned:

1. E1 Pages are a great compliment to existing navigation techniques and may override them in the future....but not quite yet
2. What was controlled design was embraced to the point of E1 page overpopulation and associated maintenance
3. Linking the tasks to the E1 Page vs Object / Version association created the most efficient and predictable method of ensuring E1 page integrity
4. We have two E1 page design camps - one based on department pages, another based on roles. That's another posting topic, I see department pages as "one stop shopping" a +
5. Creation, change control, upload, role assignment and environment deployment requires process vision and a clearly communicated approach
6. Consider your global template in E1 page design, naming and approach now rather than later. Segregating and managing will organize and enable adminstration quite effectively at the onset
7. Third party tools are most helpful and will help save time and shorten the curve.

Enjoying the ride and the role of E1 pages in the overall Enterprise solution.........
 
"Consider your global template in E1 page design, naming and approach now rather than later."

I'll repeat this for emphasis! Make sure to carefully check all aspects of your initial template design *before* you use it to create 10 or 20 E1 Pages.

Have at least 2 people look it over and ask the following questions: Does the template look good? Is the image format optimized for web and screen use? Are there any spelling mistakes?

It's one of those things that pays off to just have done right the first time.
 
Hi All,

How can we achieve SECURITY over E1Pages?

Is it possible to Control Security of E1Page on *PUBLIC/User/Role?

Thanks,
Aniket Pawar
E1 9.1, OVM, Weblogic 12C, TR 9.1.3., Database Oracle 12C
 
Sure you can, Aniket. From P982400, take the form exit Admin.Publish and this will allow you to grant security by *PUBLIC, role or user. Note that if a user has multiple roles, you will likely have to grant them access to their appropriate E1 Pages at the user level, or else they will only see the E1 pages for one of their roles. By the way, don't forget to also take the form exit Admin.Activate to activate E1 pages, which is done per environment.
 
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