Change Assistant and Update Manager

Change Assistant is an administration tool designed to automate the process of installing software patches, updates, and upgrades, reducing the time required for application updates. With Change Assistant, administrators can manage changes to their PeopleSoft applications—from the smallest patch to a major update. PeopleSoft Change Assistant uses Customer Connection to retrieve only those patches that are needed for a specific PeopleSoft environment, thereby improving administrator productivity. Change Assistant uses the Environment Management Framework to store, retrieve and distribute system configurations across PeopleSoft implementations. Change Assistant helps to assemble and organize all of the steps necessary to complete your upgrade. It runs some of the steps automatically, while others may require you to make changes manually. The Change Assistant provides the relevant documentation for the steps included in your upgrade process.

Update Manager is a lifecycle management process that is used with the PeopleSoft Update Manager PIA application, which runs on the PeopleSoft Image database.PeopleSoft Images are Oracle VirtualBox virtual machines that you download locally. There is one PeopleSoft Image per product family (database instance) and they will be released periodically according to the image schedule posted on the PeopleSoft Update Manager Home Page. The PeopleSoft Image is the master source environment from which you will pull the updated objects, create a custom change package, and apply updates to your environment. The PeopleSoft Image for your application is cumulative so you will download the most current PeopleSoft Image and get all of the updates that you need. The PeopleSoft Update Manager PIA Application and the PeopleSoft Image work together; the PeopleSoft Image contains the updates and the PeopleSoft Update Manager PIA Application is the searching tool and custom change package definition generator. PeopleSoft Change Assistant orchestrates the entire process flow. Change Assistant is the tool used to analyze and compare changes, to apply the changed objects to your environment, to add in your customizations, and to generate custom change packages.