A standard requirement when doing PeopleSoft maintenance is to change the normal sign in page. When the system is offline, we often like to display a maintenance page that informs users that the system will be down and prevents them from logging in. This is done easily enough by changing the signin.html page, adding a message and removing the login form.
However, there is one more requirement that is a little tricky. Once the maintenance is complete, there are often tasks that need to be completed before handing the system back to the end users. These can be configuration changes, running batch processes or simply completing validation that everything was applied correctly and is in working order. How can the core team sign on to the system and complete these tasks, all while preventing end user access?
I recently came up with a bit of JavaScript that gave us a backdoor to the system during our last PeopleTools upgrade. What the script does is hide the login form on the sign in page, preventing login. The trick was that our core team knew the key to the backdoor. After the sign in page would load, when they pressed Ctrl+Space the login form would be reveled. The combination of keys was only known to the team, so they were the only ones able to get in. Keep in mind if you had some crafty end users this could obviously be worked around, but it did the trick for us.
The JavaScript and HTML to accomplish this is listed below. Adding the script and HTML changes to your signin.html page is pretty straight forward. First include the file containing the JavaScript, or write it inline. You then need to wrap your login form elements in a <div> with an id=loginbox. I would suggest starting before the <div> containing ptLabelUserid and ending after the <div> containing the submit button. Lastly, you need to add hideLogin(true); to the body onload attribute.
Keep in mind the key doesn’t have to be Ctrl+Space, it can be any key combination really.You will see in the comments of the script a link to information about other keycodes that can be used.
Updated: 10/11/2016
Instead of hard coding a true value for your hideLogin() parameter, why not use a Custom Property set in the Web Profile? You can create any Custom Property you would like, for example: login.isLoginHidden and set to true. Then reference the property in your signin.hmtl page like this: hideLogin("<%=login.isLoginHidden%>"). This will allow you to toggle the hide login functionality by updating the web profile and bouncing the server.
Click here to see a working demo. Enjoy!