When to Use Activity Guide Composer
A lot of people who build PeopleSoft activity guides wonder whether they should use the original PeopleTools activity guide framework or the newer Activity Guide Composer. And from what I’ve seen, the answer depends on what kind of problem you’re trying to solve.
What Activity Guides Do
Activity guides are basically checklists. You can think of them as a kind of to-do list, except more dynamic. They guide users through multi-step processes such as benefits enrollment, onboarding, life events, anything that has a beginning, middle, and end. What makes them useful is that PeopleSoft can track what step the user is on and show or hide navigation options accordingly.
The Classic PeopleTools Activity Guide Framework
PeopleTools has had the ability to build these for years. The classic activity guide tool lets you set up steps and actions, plug in components, and create templates. And if all you want to do is throw together a workflow from scratch, the PeopleTools framework actually makes that pretty easy. You tell it the menu paths for your components, give it some names, and it handles the rest. It even builds the related content services for you. As tools go, it is exactly what you would want: simple and powerful.
The Customization Problem
But then came the customization problem. Oracle releases delivered activity guides for things like open enrollment. And customers naturally want to tweak these. Maybe your company needs different steps, or wants to remove some steps entirely. The problem is, if you change an Oracle-delivered template using the classic tool, you are stripping the template of its pristine Oracle-ness. You are customizing. And customizations are painful during upgrades.
Why Activity Guide Composer Exists
So Oracle introduced Activity Guide Composer. The clever thing about the composer is that it lets you change things without “changing” them. You do not overwrite Oracle’s original steps, you just add an effective-dated row on top. You preserve the original, but the system only sees your version.
Once you realize what Activity Guide Composer is for, it becomes obvious when to use it. If you are modifying something Oracle delivered, you use the composer. If you are building something brand new from scratch, you probably do not.
New vs Delivered: The Real Split
At first this seems backwards, because the PeopleTools framework is older and feels more technical. But that is exactly why it is still useful. When you are building something new that Oracle does not know about, such as a custom internal process for allocating IT resources, you do not need all the protections against overwriting delivered templates. Composer just gets in the way. It assumes you are starting from something Oracle gave you, and adds layers to protect that thing. But if you are building from zero, there is nothing to protect.
Setup Differences That Matter
There is another difference too. Composer has more setup. You have to build related content services beforehand, assemble them into categories, and only then can you construct a template. That makes sense if you think of Composer as a tool for business analysts managing complex processes built on delivered content. But if you are a developer, and you already know exactly what components you want, the PeopleTools activity guide is more direct.
Most delivered activity guides are in HR, and most HR teams want to tweak those guides. That is Composer’s turf. If you are in that world, you pretty much have to use it.
Safe Boundaries by Design
But the mechanics really matter here. For example, in Composer, you cannot even edit Oracle’s original templates directly. Try to change a step, and you get blocked. You are supposed to insert your own version of the template and make changes there. That is not a bug, that is the whole point. Oracle wants you to stay within the safe boundaries of what they delivered.
This seems like something small, but it is actually a pretty big deal. It means Composer was not made for building new things. It was made for letting you make changes without consequences, or at least without adding risk.
Why the Old Framework Still Works
There is something refreshing about the old PeopleTools framework. It does not try to manage you. There are no categories, no extra metadata constructs. There is just a form where you write down what you want the user to do, step by step.
PeopleSoft is full of levers that exist because Oracle is trying to walk a line between giving you flexibility and preventing you from crashing during an upgrade. At first, Composer seems like just another set of knobs. But once you understand the problem it is solving, the design makes perfect sense.
The Simple Rule
You do not need to choose one over the other all the time. In fact, most shops probably will use both. But you will save yourself a lot of trouble if you start by thinking about the origin.
If the process is delivered and you are altering it, use Composer.
If it is not delivered and you are building new, use PeopleTools.
That sounds obvious. But it is very easy to forget when you are deep in the middle of configuring steps and templates. PeopleSoft gives you a lot of options. Knowing why a tool exists helps you know when to reach for it.
