PeopleBooks and the PeopleSoft Online Library

Using PeopleBooks

This chapter discusses how to:

Navigate the PeopleBooks interface.
Search the Hosted PeopleBooks website.
Search an installed PeopleBooks website.
Display and print graphics in PeopleBooks.

Navigating the PeopleBooks Interface

This section provides an overview of how to access the PeopleBooks interface and discusses how to:

Show and hide the reference pane.
Navigate between books and chapters.
Navigate within a chapter.
Use the table of contents.
Use the index.

Understanding How to Access the PeopleBooks Interface

When you click a product line and release link on the Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise Hosted PeopleBooks homepage, the PeopleBooks Library page appears.

The PeopleBooks are logically grouped by suite, product line, or functional area so that books are easier to find when accessing them online. Select a PeopleBook title on the homepage to display the PeopleBook interface, which includes the following panes:

Document

The pane on the right side of the window displays the document HTML file, which corresponds to a chapter.
Navigation

The pane above the document pane contains display options, navigation controls (breadcrumbs), and the current PeopleBook and chapter titles.
Reference

The pane on the left side of the window contains two tabs: Contents and Index. (A search tab also appears when you use the Hosted PeopleBooks website.) Select these tabs to explore the PeopleBooks or to locate a specific topic. You can hide the reference pane to maximize the size of the document pane.

Note. When you access a topic through the Help link on an application page, through context-sensitive (F1) help, or when you access one PeopleBook from another, the reference pane is always hidden initially.

The following example illustrates the three panes in the browser:

PeopleBook page with panes identified

Note. The preceding example includes the Search tab in the Reference pane. This Search tab appears only when you use the Hosted PeopleBooks website.

Showing and Hiding the Reference Pane

If the reference pane (with the Contents and Index tabs) doesn't appear, click the Show Reference Pane link in the Navigation pane at the top of the browser. To hide the Reference pane, click the Hide Reference Pane link. If you have cookies enabled on your browser, your last Reference pane setting is remembered when you jump between books. Otherwise, jumping to a new book always hides the Reference pane (to speed page loading).

Navigating Between Books and Chapters

Use the Navigation pane to view information about the current PeopleBook and to navigate between PeopleBooks or between chapters in the current PeopleBook. The following example illustrates the Navigation pane elements that are discussed in this section:

Use the following Navigation pane elements for navigating through PeopleBooks:

Breadcrumbs

Click the breadcrumb links at the bottom of the Navigation pane to access the following pages:

Home: Takes you to the PeopleSoft Online Library homepage, where you can navigate to other documentation types, if your company has integrated or customized documentation.
PeopleBooks: Takes you to the PeopleBooks homepage, where you can browse to select a PeopleBook title.
PeopleBook title: Takes you to the preface of the PeopleBook that you are currently viewing.

The final, text-only breadcrumb is the title of the PeopleBook chapter that you are currently viewing.

and

Click the Previous or Next button to go to the previous or next chapter in the book.

Note. These buttons move you to the previous or next chapter in the sequence in which the chapters are organized in the book, not (as with the browser's Forward and Back buttons) in the sequence in which you have opened the chapters.

First and Last

Click these links to go to the first and last chapter in a book, respectively.

Navigating Within a Chapter

Use the following navigation features in the Document pane to navigate within a chapter:

	Click the Top button to go to the top of the current page, which is the beginning of the chapter.
	Click the Previous button to go to the beginning of the parent section within the page.

Click a cross-reference link to go to a related topic. These links typically appear in sentences that begin with the word See or under subtopic headings that contain the words See Also.

Using the Table of Contents

Select the Contents tab in the Reference pane to drill down to topics in the current PeopleBook, as illustrated in the following example:

Use the following elements to navigate within the Contents tab:

	Click a closed folder icon to expand a chapter.
	Click an open folder icon to collapse a chapter.
	Click a section icon to open to the section.
Synchronize	Click to open the Table of Contents to the topic that currently appears in the Document pane.
Expand All	Click to open all of the folders in the Table of Contents.
Collapse All	Click to close all of the folders in the Table of Contents.
Keep table of contents synchronized with document	Select this check box to automatically synchronize the Table of Contents with the page that appears in the Document page.

Using the Index

Select the Index tab to browse or search the keyword index for the current PeopleBook.

To display an index topic, enter a keyword in the text box or scroll to the keyword and click it. The document appears at the associated topic, unless there are multiple topics. If multiple topics are related to the keyword, a pop-up menu appears. Click the link for the topic that you want to access.

Searching the Hosted PeopleBooks Website

This section discusses how to:

Perform a simple search
Perform an advanced search
View search results

Performing a Simple Search

On the Search tab of the Reference pane, enter a word or phrase and click the Search button. This searches all PeopleBooks for the product line and release that you're viewing.

The following example illustrates the Search tab:

Performing an Advanced Search

Use the advanced search if too few or too many results were obtained from the simple search. Enter a word or phrase in one of the first three search fields, select any of the additional optional fields, then click the Search button. The following example illustrates the search options that are discussed in this section:

Use the following options on the Search page:

Search for all the words and Search for any of the words	By default, all search terms longer than 3 characters are surrounded by wildcards on both sides. For example, searching for intermedia also finds intermediate. Searching for sql or aq does not use wildcards, because those terms have 3 or fewer characters. If you include typical wildcard characters, such as %, _, *, and ?, in your search terms, they are interpreted as literal characters rather than wildcards.
Search for the exact phrase	Quotes are not required, and because all searches are not case sensitive, you do not need to enter a word in all capital letters.
Don't show results containing this word or phrase	(Optional) Enter words or phrases to be excluded from the search results (similar to the Boolean search NOT).
Show this many results on each page	(Optional) Expand the number of displayed search results by changing the selection from 10 (default), to 20, 50, or 100.
Show results where the words are	(Optional) Identify whether the search words can be anywhere in the topic or only in the topic title.
Only show results from this book	(Optional) Select from a list of all books within the product line. For example, if you are searching within PeopleTools PeopleBooks, the list contains every PeopleTools PeopleBook title.
Only show results of this type	(Optional) Filter the search results by type of content, such as tasks or concepts. Note. The task and concept types may limit your search more than you expect, since some topics are not labeled as either task or concept. The Examples, Error Messages, and Glossary Terms types do not apply to PeopleBooks and may return unexpected results.

Viewing Search Results

The Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise Search Results page displays information about the current query, the total number of search results that were found, and the number of results on the current page, as illustrated in the following example:

If the results are not sufficient, you can select another product line from the Product Line drop-down list box and perform the search again. If the results contain information that's not relevant for you, you can filter the results by clicking a link in one of the boxes on the right side of the results page:

Refine Results
Filter by Job Role
Top Matching Books

In addition, each topic in the results includes links to show only results from that book or to hide results from that book if the entire book is not relevant.

Searching an Installed PeopleBooks Website

If you use Oracle Secure Enterprise Search as the search engine for your installed PeopleBooks website, your installation documentation discusses how to configure basic full-text search functionality. This section describes how to use that basic functionality. However, if your search administrator has customized the search functionality or installed a different search engine, consult the search engine documentation for details about how to perform searches.

This section discusses how to:

Perform a search
View search results

Performing a Search

Enter a word or phrase in the search field, then click the Search button. The following example illustrates the search options that are discussed in this section:

If the search page contains links above the Search field, as in the preceding example, you can click a link to narrow your search to look within a particular search group. The search group names depend on how Secure Enterprise Search is configured. A typical setup might list links for each product line that you have installed.

Alternatively, you can select a search group by clicking the Browse link and selecting the search group in the pop-up window. To view all documents in a search group, click the View All link to the right of the search group in the pop-up window.

You can also narrow search results by clicking the Attribute Filters link and entering more specific attributes, such as title and last modified date. Depending on how Secure Enterprise Search is set up for your site, the attributes list may include some default attributes that do not apply to PeopleBooks, such as mimetype. When you filter on an attribute that does not apply to PeopleBooks, the filter is ignored. Your search administrator can customize the attribute mappings for each search source using the Secure Enterprise Search portal. See the Secure Enterprise Search documentation for more information about configuring and using these attributes.

Note. If you set attribute filters, they may remain active on future searches during your browser session until you remove them. Therefore, filters that you set on one search may affect other unrelated searches. To remove a filter, click the Attribute Filters link, and click the Remove Filter icon to the right of the filter.

For details on performing wildcard, fuzzy, and other complex searches, click the Help link on the Search page.

Viewing Search Results

The following screen shot illustrates the basic search results with Secure Enterprise Search:

On the search results page, you can use the same filtering tools that you use on the search page, such as the Attribute Filters and Browse links. In addition, the basic search results page includes the following features:

	Click the Show Results Clusters icon on the top, left side of the page to narrow the search results by various terms that appear in the results. For example, in the preceding screen shot, you can click the peopletools (59) link to narrow the results to show only topics that include the word PeopleTools.
Group by and Sort by	Use these drop-down list boxes to reorganize search results on the page.
Cached	Click this link to view a cached HTML version of the document with the search term highlighted throughout the document. The cached document may not be as up-to-date as the source document, but it may be retrieved more quickly.
Links	Click this link to displays the Links page, which lists other documents that link to or are linked from the selected document.

For more details on using the search results, click the Help link on the search results page.

Displaying and Printing Graphics in PeopleBooks

In the Document pane, you can display many of the graphics in Pop-up or Inline mode. The default Pop-up mode provides faster document loading and scrolling speeds because each graphic is represented by the following pop-up icon, which you click to display the full-sized graphic:

In Inline mode, graphics appear at full size in the Document pane. This mode is useful when viewing the PeopleBooks locally (when loading and scrolling speeds are not an issue) and with the browser window maximized.

To activate Pop-up mode, click the Hide Graphics link in the Navigation pane. This link then changes to Show Graphics, which you click to activate Inline mode.

To print the current file with graphics displayed inline in the text (instead of pop-up icons), click the Print link in the Navigation pane.

Important! If you use your browser's Print command, the graphics appear exactly as they appear on the screen: pop-up icons are not replaced with the actual graphics, and graphics are not scaled to fit on the printed page.