psLens for Business Analysts

The Gap

You need to understand how something works in PeopleSoft. Maybe you are writing requirements for a customization. Maybe you are trying to understand why a process behaves a certain way. Maybe you need to know what data a page collects and where it goes.

But the tools for answering these questions — App Designer, SQL Developer, PeopleSoft’s technical pages — are built for developers. They require licenses, training, and technical knowledge that is outside your role. They are also fragmented: object definitions in App Designer, security in one set of PIA pages, process schedules in another, integrations in a third, each with its own access grant. Nobody hands an analyst all of that just to answer a question. So you ask a developer. They look it up and get back to you later. Or you wait.

How psLens Changes This

Self-Service Research

psLens gives you a web browser interface to explore PeopleSoft configuration without needing developer tools or database access. Search for any object by name and see its definition, structure, and relationships.

You don’t need an App Designer license, SQL skills, or a developer’s time.

This also means you do not need App Designer access just to research metadata. App Designer is a full development tool: it can modify objects, run SQL, and connect directly to the database. Granting it for research gives people far more access than they need. psLens provides the research capabilities without that risk. See Reducing App Designer Access for the full picture.

See the Parts App Designer Never Showed

Analyst questions usually cross tool boundaries: what data does this page collect, who can see it, and where does it go? Even a developer with full App Designer access cannot answer all three from one tool, because security, scheduling, and integration configuration live in separate PIA administration pages. psLens puts them in one place:

• Security: trace User > Role > Permission List > Component without access to any PIA security pages
• Schedules: see process definitions, recurrences, and run history to answer “when does this run, and did it?”
• Integrations: follow nodes, service operations, and routings to answer “where does this data go?”
• Queries: read a query’s SQL without Query Manager access, which would also let you run queries against live data

Understand Page and Component Structure

Need to know what fields are on a page? What record drives a component? Which menu path leads to it? Search for the component or page name in psLens and see:

• The pages within a component
• The records and fields on each page
• The menu navigation path
• The security (permission lists and roles) that control access

Research Security Configuration

When you need to understand who can access what:

• Search for a user and see their roles
• Search for a role and see its permission lists
• Search for a permission list and see what it grants access to
• Trace the full chain without asking anyone for help

Share What You Find

psLens deep links let you share a direct URL to any PeopleSoft object. Include links in your requirements documents, Jira tickets, or emails. When someone clicks the link, they see exactly what you are referencing, no instructions needed.

Export to Markdown for inclusion in documentation, presentations, or analysis.

Bridge the Communication Gap

One of the hardest parts of working with PeopleSoft is the gap between business needs and technical implementation. psLens helps bridge that gap by giving non-technical team members visibility into the technical side:

• Understand what fields exist on a record before writing requirements
• See how components are structured before requesting changes
• Review security configuration before requesting access changes
• Cite “PS_PERSONAL_DATA, field BIRTHDATE” in a Jira ticket and paste the psLens deep link, so the developer does not have to guess which page you meant

Common BA Tasks in psLens

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