Hi Everyone,

I was also impressed with the UPK ability to additionally and automatically create primitive user guides with basic sentences like "click here, now click on window x" automatically created and scripted for you.

Callout bubbles are also automatically created and positioned for you on the exact screen/button position they refer to. (So very little post-capture editing /manually creating screen by screen callouts is needed. All done for you...)

However, you are NOT allowed to create any non-Oracle training topics/simulations using UPK software. Eg you can't make a simulation about how to use MS Outlook using the UPK as a recorder. (MS Outlook not being an Oracle application)

You can however use UPK to create simulations about Peoplesoft, Oracle Databases etc...

When I asked the vendor, they said you are contractually obliged to NOT use UPK for anything other than Oracle training topics. This may depend on the contract you have though...

On Demand Personal Navigator is almost the identical software you would need for all other training topics/sims.

I think they even mentioned you could get an error message when you try to use UPK for non-Oracle software simulations...

Confused much? Yes, I certainly was...

That is not necessarily true. I have used UPK on other non-Oracle applications without a problem. A nice feature of UPK is the content-sensitive help menu integration into PeopleSoft or other Oracle apps. If you are not going to be using the help menu integration, you may want to consider other tools as well, such as RWD uPerform, which is a similar tool without some of the development and end-user restrictions UPK has. The development process is more user friendly with uPerform. They are both powerful tools but the best option depends on your needs. For example, simulations in UPK are windows based. If you have non-windows users, they will not be able to access the simulations. uPerform has flash-based simulations, so end users will need to have flash installed, but it is not platform dependent.

I have used the PeopleSoft off-the-shelf content and it is a very nice feature with UPK. If you are delivering a vanilla, or near vanilla version of PeopleSoft, I would go with this. It will save you a lot of development time. If you are highly customizing PeopleSoft the content will all have to be re-recorded, it is generally too time consuming to edit the pre-developed content to fit customized processes. This is all dependent on how customized your application will be.

Hi Paul,

Are you absolutely sure about this? I got info straight from the horse's mouth (the vendor)that this was strictly against the standard UPK contract, so stepping out of Oracle apps necessitates using the Ondemand sim software.

Unless of course this was underhanded sales ploy, which you shouldn't expect from such high profile vendors...

For sure, there is no way to "police" how the end user uses UPK for non-Oracle software simulations. Or whether they "turn a blind eye" especially in one-off situations to breaking contracts. I was very wary of this statement, hence my warning to others.

Maybe it is different in Europe than in US, but this was my experience and my warning to people who think they can just march ahead buy loads of UPK licenses, only to figure out that there are restrictions on what training topics can be created using the tools.

I did not read our sales contract word for word, I left that to the legal department, but we did have the Oracle UPK team onsite. We developed a hand full of non Oracle apps and the UPK sales team didn't care. They may have been turning a blind eye. You are correct in warning about this. If it is in the contract I wouldn't recommend it. (That may be a hypocritical statement). My point is that UPK does function with non Oracle apps.