Oracle routinely announces significant future changes for EPM customers in each month’s cloud readiness documentation. If you’re not aware, Oracle EPM cloud updates are published monthly. If you read the details within the ‘Important Actions and Considerations’ section (located at the bottom of each readiness release), you will notice several very interesting announcements that we’ve highlighted below.

Infolets Discontinuing

Starting sometime later in 2024 the Infolets functionality will no longer be supported by Oracle. The ability to create Infolets will cease to exist for Enterprise Profitability and Cost Management, Financial Consolidation and Close, FreeForm, Planning, and Tax Reporting applications. Nothing specifically has been announced about existing Infolets, however any issues with them will not be addressed by Oracle support once support ends.

To many of us here at Perficient, the removal of Infolets is not surprising as we’ve seen many customers prefer to use Dashboards 2.0 instead.

Smart View Native Mode Option Deprecation

Continuing with the theme of eliminating functionality not widely used, the Native Smart View option will no longer be supported later this year. Standard will continue to be the ad hoc mode for development of enhancements by Oracle. The announcement contains two additional aspects customers need to note:

• The expectation for existing Native-mode worksheets is that they will work “as is” when the setting is changed to Standard.

• Smart Forms are not supported in Standard mode and there is no plan to support them in Standard mode.

In order to avoid any negative experience by end users, administrators need to proactively start testing all mission-critical ad-hoc sheets using Standard mode. If the results of the testing results in any issues, customers need to log the issue as an enhancement request on Customer Connect.

Removal of Data Management Job Scheduling

Data Integration now has the ability to schedule jobs. This means that Oracle will soon be removing the job scheduler within Data Management. The change is expected to occur sometime in Q4 this year. This means customers need to start migrating their scheduled jobs to the EPM Job Scheduler console immediately! To help faciliate the migration, Oracle is providing a script (“Migrate Schedules to Platform Jobs Scheduler”) within System Maintenance Tasks in Data Management. This change is applicable to the following solutions: Enterprise Profitability and Cost Management, Financial Consolidation and Close, Planning, and Tax Reporting.

Have a question about the above changes, or want to understand more about Oracle EPM cloud updates, drop us a comment!

Oracle EPM cloud customers who utilize solutions which using non-hybrid Essbase versions will be upgraded to hybrid version soon. According to Oracle’s March release notes, this upgrade will occur in the next 2 months. It’s important to note that this upgrade does not force non-hybrid configured cubes to now become hybrid. It’s simply updating the Essbase version within the application as part of Oracle’s effort to upgrade all environments to an Oracle Essbase version which supports hybrid cubes. Quoting Oracle “…if the application is configured to use non-hybrid cubes, this update will not change it to use hybrid cubes.” I know, I know.. Whew!

Now, if you’re not sure if your application is hybrid Admins can easily find this by checking the Activity Report in each application. If you find a “Yes” value in the Essbase Version supports Hybrid Block Storage Option field, then the application is hybrid enabled (see below image for where to find this information).

Non-hybrid Oracle EPM cloud customers who have concerns about potential issues – have no fear. Oracle provides a new utility to validate the outlines in your cubes. The utility can be found under the Actions menu in Application Overview. Select the “Pre validate Outline” option, then select Outline Pre-validation Report to view a list of incompatible member formulas. Customers with hybrid capable applications will not see this option.

This upgrade applies to the following application types: Financial Consolidation and Close, FreeForm, Planning, Planning Modules, Tax Reporting

Have questions about this update or need help with fixing incompatible formulas – contact us today! We’d love to help!

Oracle’s release notes for the March update includes a very important feature for Oracle EPM Cloud customers. The Daily Maintenance can now be configured to any minute within any hour (i.e. HH:MM format). Previously, the window could only be configured to start at the top of the hour. This allows customers to have more control over the maintenance processes. See below for an example of the this new format in use.

Additionally, the release notes include the following notice…

“Starting with the April Update (24.04), the daily maintenance start time of EPM Cloud environments will be updated by assigning a random minute at which the maintenance process will start. Currently, the daily maintenance starts at the top of the hour, for example at 2:00 p.m. UTC (14.00 on a 24 hour clock). This change will modify the start time by adding a value for minute (for example, 2:24 p.m. UTC (14.24 on a 24 hour clock) so that the daily maintenance load on EPM Cloud infrastructure is distributed throughout the hour.”

The start time can be changed by Oracle EPM cloud Admins after the update is applied. Therefore, we recommend that customers review their Daily Maintenance settings for all EPM applications after the April updates have been applied.

Oracle’s product development team for EDM (Enterprise Data Management) continues to provide highly valuable new features each quarter, and the release earlier this month is no different. With 30 enhancements on the list all providing immense benefits to customers, it’s a challenge to narrow it down to the top 3. However, after some debate by our Oracle EDM specialists, we were able to agree on the following!

Node Name Calculation

This feature is easily the one that sticks out. The inability to auto-populate node names for simple uses cases (such as using the next logical sequential number for Accounts) has been an annoyance. Not to mention a huge time waste for many users. I personally can recall numerous clients expressing grief about having to rely on manual intervention for something so trivial. Can’t say I don’t agree with them. But that changes this month!

Now, node names can now be automatically generated. The automation can be configured based on node properties or hierarchical relationships (such as using the name of a parent node to derive the name). Customers who rely heavily on custom validations to enforce naming standards can now use this new feature to further enhance the user experience by removing manual (and many times frustrating) involvement in simply naming nodes.

Validation Severity Enhance Workflows

Not every violation of a validation rule can be resolved by users submitting a request. This could be due to users not having enough information, or it may be sensitive information for which they are not privy to based on their role. However, for many Oracle EDM customers these situations should not deter the users request from advancing. For these situations, validations can now be configured as Warnings. The user is still notified of the issue, but the request can be submitted and the violation can be resolved in later workflow stages. Additionally, the validations can be outright ignored for certain workflow stages if needed.

Providing the flexibility of how/when validations are enforced greatly enhances the user experience. We are excited to see customers using this new feature in the coming months & years!

Select Multiple Nodes for Moves and Inserts

Starting this month users can now select multiple nodes when performing Insert or Move. Nodes can be from a single parent or multiple parents. This removes many many “clicks of the mouse” to perform mass changes. Plus, the feature enhances the user experience while leading to an increase in efficiency.

Want to learn more about Oracle EDM’s latest features, or have questions about the solution’s capabilities? Contact us or leave a comment and we’ll be happy to answer!

Earlier this month Oracle released a long list of new features for EDM (Oracle Enterprise Data Management). The enhancements address several areas that great improve the tool for both administrators and business users. Follow below as we take a look at a few of the features which we believe are most beneficial.

Customized Navigation and Information

Since the initial release of EDM, the home page has contained been the same layout and options for both administrators and business users. But now, Oracle is providing the ability to customize the home page to specific users to help reduce confusion and streamline efficiency in navigation. This now puts EDM on par with the other Oracle EPM cloud offerings in regards to tailoring the user experience. Existing customers should note the presence of a new card named “Information Model” that will now contain the Node Types, Hierarchy Sets, Node Sets, Properties and Lookup Sets cards within the default layout.

Additionally, EDM now provides Announcements to be displayed on the home page. Administrators can create announcements to communicate various information to the user community. Users view announcements from the welcome panel on the home page. Announcements can include hyperlinks and can be effective dated as well.

Oracle Financials Cloud General Ledger Integration Processing Gains

The pre-built integration with Financials GL now allows for only the specific trees and tree versions contained in EDM to selected for processing . This results in for a reduction in processing time for Financials GL customers with multiple tress/tree versions.  The ‘Process Segment Values and Hierarchies’ task and the ‘Publish Hierarchies to Cube’ task are limited to process only the trees/tree versions managed in EDM (export options in EDM control these tasks).

Test of Expressions Reduces Time-to-Build

The ability to customize properties and validations within EDM through derived expressions is a major benefit to all EDM customers. However, unit testing the expressions has always required the developer to navigate away from the expression builder screen and view the data. But that is no longer the case! EDM now has the ability to test the expression directly in the expression builder. Talk to any EDM developer and they will undoubtedly give you an earful of just how much this streamlines their ability to build custom derive properties and validations.

In the image below, the Expression Tester tab can be viewed on the right. The result of the expression is displayed to the right of the ‘Evaluate’ button at the bottom.

If you’ve been following Oracle’s monthly updates for Cloud EPM, then you are aware that they had previously announced that the Data Management user interface was slowly being replaced with the newer Oracle Data Integration screen (found under the Data Exchange tile). The move does not mean the deprecation of functionality overall, but rather an enhancement to the user experience overall. The Data Management UI is largely a tribute to the on-prem equivalents. And to be honest, looks just as antiquated… and boring. Yes, I know I can hear all of you long time Oracle EPM techies yelling… it works, why mess with it?!  But in response, I’ll say what I was once told by an old girlfriend …. looks matter. Or maybe a saying from the sports world is better fitting – “look good, feel good, play good”. Jokes aside, the newer interface is better and is much more intuitive for users in my opinion. And September’s Cloud update contains a few key items to note regarding this change.

First, the following Data Management screens are no longer available. And are now accessible via the corresponding Data Integration page.

Second, the update notes state that all Data Management features will eventually move to Data Integration except the following:

• The batch feature will be replaced by the new Pipeline feature. The Pipeline feature was available in the June (23.06) update.
• The Report Definition feature will not be migrated, only the Report Execution feature.
• The ability to create new Custom Applications in Data Management will no longer available, and customers should use the “Data Export to File” application type instead.

Regarding the last bullet, for customers still using custom target applications, Oracle recommends using the Upgrade Custom Applications option to migrate the custom target application to a data export to file application. Additional documentation on topic can be found here. But don’t worry, this change doesn’t need to happen immediately as “Existing integrations that use a custom target application will not be impacted, and will still run without any changes” according to the release notes.

Are you already using Oracle’s Data Integration interface? Have you familiarized yourself with the new interface? Or have questions about it? Comment and let us know!

Oracle’s list of new features for EDM (Oracle Enterprise Data Management) in the September release are quite long. It seems they’ve really place focus on a few key areas to ensure an improved experience for the business user. Follow below as we take a look at three of the features which we believe are most beneficial to most organizations using EDM.

Validation Warnings vs Errors

Validations in the EDM application have long been a “line in the sand” type of approach. Either the item being requested passes the validation or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, then the update being cannot be applied. However, in practice there are plenty of customers who need to instead provide a warning to allow the request to proceed for an initial submission and approval, but enforced before the update is finally committed. EDM now provides the ability to configure whether a validation produces a warning or an error. Warnings allow requests to proceed to the next stage in the workflow, while errors prevent this. The configuration is defined on the validation itself (see below image). It should be noted that this functionality applies only to custom validations.

Approval Policy Visualization

Business users need to have visibility to workflow models defined by approval policies within EDM. The new Policy tab within the Request inspection window in EDM provides users with a visual diagram of all the approval policies for the request once submitted. Additionally, the tab displays the progress of in-flight requests in relation to the stage and policies. This feature will greatly help customers who have complex approval policy models to reduce confusion when trying to understand the approval paths of requests.

Chart of Accounts Redesign Enhanced

EDM has been used extensively to support mappings between all kinds of applications. One common use case is chart of accounts redesigns as part of ERP modernization projects. Oracle is now providing a specific node type (Legacy GL Node Type) for customers to use for mapping the legacy accounts to the new chart of accounts. This node type has a limit on properties that cannot be customized. However, the node type does have flexibility in how it is used. Customers can either create a new application to store the legacy nodes, or create a separate dimension within the registered ERP application in EDM, or even use the node type within the same dimension as the new chart of accounts.

A nice added touch for customers looking to use this new approach is that nodes assigned this new node type do NOT count against subscription record counts for EDM.

The following screen shows the configuration screen for how to utilize the Legacy GL node type.

Jobs are organized into Stages within a Pipeline. Stages are “containers” for the jobs and allow for the addition, managing, and deletion of job(s) contained in each stage. Stages be configured to execute jobs serially or in parallel. Below is an example of a Pipeline with several Stages and Jobs.

As you can see, Pipelines provide an advancement in daily job processing. The ability to manage jobs across applications is a huge plus for organizations with multiple applications. Additionally, the visualization that Oracle is providing within the Pipeline screen helps customers to easily understand what processes are occurring and in what order! It will be interesting to see what new job types are added over the next few months.

The June 2023 update for Oracle EDM (Enterprise Data Management) contains several new features that greatly enhance the current user experience within the solution. Continue reading below for an overview of the features which we are most excited about here at Perficient.

Security Enhancements – New Roles Provide Improved Segregation of Duties

Two new roles are now available for EDM. The Access Control Manager role permits the managing of groups and application role assignment for users. The Migration Administrator role addresses the ability to import and export migration snapshots as well as the cloning of environments. Many times organizations have strict policies to segregate these types of activities for all applications. Now, EDM provides that ability!

Additionally, EDM now contains a new Metadata Manager permission. This permission allows users to create and modify objects without allowing visibility to the actual data in the application. The permission can be assigned to users and/or groups at the application and dimension levels. Node Types, Hierarchy Sets, Custom Validations, etc. are all able to be managed by users who have this permission.

Downloadable Compare Results

The ability to quickly and easily compare data between different applications, time-frames, hierarchies, dimensions, etc. is a huge benefit of EDM. Organizations use EDM to compare to identify and troubleshoot differences as well as similarities quite often. Starting this month, the results of compares can now be downloaded to file for sharing with others… with the click of a button (see image below).

Extracts for Every User

Extracts enable users to retrieve data from a viewpoint into a formatted file or a global connection. They can be configured for any viewpoint and for any properties. Extracts can provide full data sets or incrementally between two different dates. EDM now offers the ability for any user (with the Participant permission) to create and run an extract for the viewpoint. No longer do users have to collaborate with Application Owners/System Admins to create simple report!

Require Request Reasoning

An organization’s master data needs to be managed with scrutiny to avoid many pitfalls associated with unregulated data. It’s not uncommon for organizations to require an explanation of the reasoning behind a request to modify master data. EDM’s product development team understands this and has enabled a feature within EDM to help capture this upfront. EDM requests have a description field, which can now be configured to require input from users before submission of the request. The field can also be configured with default instructions to help guide users appropriately.

Inefficient manual processes. Lack of data integrity. Untrustworthy and cumbersome reporting. Complex mapping for chart of accounts between ERP applications. These are the greatest challenges regarding managing & aligning financial master data per Oracle’s 2022 “Value of EPM” survey. The issues result not only in frustration across organizations, but also contributes towards significant financial loss. Organizations with an environment that is inefficient in adapting quickly and accurately due to the before-mentioned issues are at a real disadvantage when comparing to competitors which have evolved to prioritize managing financial master data.

Oracle EDM

Oracle’s EDM (Enterprise Data Management) solution can directly address many of these challenges and more resulting from inefficient master data management practices. EDM empowers organizations with a best-in-breed solution encompassing data governance workflow, change visualization, data integrity validations, and pre-built integrations. Not to mention EDM’s ability to seamlessly synchronize master data changes across unlimited numbers of applications. These capabilities all combine to allow faster and more efficient adaption to changes in master data by organizations. This is evident in the responses to the Value of EPM survey conducted by Oracle.

• An astounding 78% agreed that “EDM improved productivity and change management efficiency” and 65% reported a “reduction in time for business change management“!
• Almost 40% realized these benefits in 3 months or less; 65% realized benefits in 6 months or less
• Customers who used EDM within their Chart of Account initiatives reported 30% reduction in time for the Chart of Accounts design
• 35% reported an accelerated deployment of cloud applications where EDM was included. 25% observed a reduction in data conversion cycles.

The survey included over 500 finance professionals. The gains in efficiencies by utilizing EDM described above translate into actual savings:

• 15% reported a reduction in audit costs
• 39% observed a decrease in overall cost of data governance change management

Critical Component

EDM is a critical component in the Oracle cloud offerings. It’s role in ERP, EPM and MDM initiatives cannot be understated. And these survey responses provide clarity on just how much customers who have embraced the solution are gaining in savings for both time and money.

If you are interested in learning more about EDM or have questions on the survey, leave a comment or contact us today!

Each month Oracle provides “What’s New” publications describing new features across the EPM Cloud stack. Within this publication, Oracle also provides notices about important changes either applied to that month’s release or planned for the future (the intent being to give customers ample time to plan for & address the change). We highly recommend service administrators reviewing these each month to mitigate any negative impact to normal operations. April’s release contains numerous items, but we thought it best to provide a synopsis of those which are key for customers to be aware of.

Support for Non-Redwood Themes is Ending

Oracle plans to no longer support non-Redwood themes across the EPM applications starting around the end of this year. This means that future new features on Oracle’s roadmap will only be supported within the Redwood theme.

Some important aspects to note include the following once support officially ends:

• Service Requests will only be addressed for applications using the Redwood theme.
• If customers submit a SR without using the Redwood theme, Support will require the issue to be reproduced on the Redwood theme before taken additional action.
• Once existing customers make the switch to Redwood, they will not be able to switch back to non-Redwood themes
  
• All EPM solutions are affected- Planning, Close, Tax, Profitability, FreeForm, Account Reconciliation, Narrative Reporting, Enterprise Data Management

For those unfamiliar with the theme, we highly recommend spending a few minutes watching Oracle’s YouTube overview on the Redwood Theme.

Next Generation of Forms and Dashboards is Coming

In the very near future (within next 6 months per Oracle), new Forms and Dashboard functionality will be available for Enterprise Profitability and Cost Management, Financial Consolidation and Close, FreeForm, Planning, Planning Modules, and Tax Reporting. Oracle is referring to this future enhancement as “Forms 2.0” and “Dashboards 2.0”. Oracle’s goal is to utilize Oracle JET technology and provide performance enhancements along with expanded visualization features.

Note: Redwood theme is required for using new features within Forms 2.0 and Dashboards 2.0.

While the specifics aren’t yet widely available, below are a few key aspects of this new generation of Forms & Dashboards:

Forms 2.0 features:

• Forms runtime-only improvements
• Usability improvements
• Better scalability and enhanced performance
• Greater consistency between Web forms and Smart View forms
• Easily switch from Forms 1.0 to Forms 2.0 and back using an application setting

Dashboards 2.0:

• Introduces a new Grid chart type which renders Forms 2.0 inside Dashboards 2.0
• New URL and Commentary types of Dashboard objects
• Custom formatting of titles and support for background colors in URL, Commentary, and Grid objects
• New user interface for associating business rules
• Ability to display multiple Gauge, Pie, and Doughnut charts inside one Dashboard object
• New menu options for opening and editing forms directly from the Dashboard
• New Information icon for the Dashboard and all Dashboard objects
• Ability to easily convert 1.0 Dashboards to 2.0 individually and at the folder level on the Dashboards listing page

Errors and Warnings Diagnostics Will Be Required

Business rules within Financial Consolidation and Close, FreeForm, Planning, Planning Modules, and Tax Reporting can make or break an application. Oracle’s Calc Manager feature provides a great ability to troubleshoot rules with Errors and Warnings diagnostics. But it’s not uncommon for users to ignore errors/warnings when working with new rules. In an upcoming release, the Calc Manager will require the execution of the Errors & Warnings diagnostics prior to launching, validating, or deploying a new rule (existing rules will not be impacted). This will be quite a change in behavior for those of us who are great at writing rules, but is definitely a benefit to help ensure we all optimize rules and avoid errors!

Valid Intersections Enforcement on Financial Reporting

Beginning with May’s update (23.05), Valid Intersections will apply to FR reports resulting in users receiving an error message. Users will need to select a valid selection of members in the POV to avoid the error. It should be noted, that since FR will eventually being end-dated, there are no plans for filter POV members based on valid intersections. We suggest that customers review their Valid Intersections and inform the business users of this upcoming change in order to avoid issues when running reports (and to make any necessary modifications to existing Valid Intersections definitions).

Have questions about these or any other upcoming changes to Oracle EPM? Contact us or comment below!

Can you believe it?… January is behind us and February is here! And with February comes Valentine’s Day… (just a friendly reminder for those of us who tend to mistakenly overlook this holiday ). But lucky for customers, Oracle is not getting distracted by Cupid and is instead providing a laundry list of enhancements for their EPM solutions. Continue reading below as we highlight a few of the items to top the list.

Enhanced Options for Migrating Data Management Artifacts

Starting this month, customers now have the ability to export and import snapshots with setup artifacts or all data. The options available are described below.

• Individual Artifact Setup Only – Use this mode to select the individual artifacts to migrate such as locations and mappings. When importing the snapshot in the target system, the data is merged with the existing data in the target system. Pleas note that this mode does not include Workbench data.
• Single Snapshot Setup Only – Importing the snapshot in the target system results in all the existing setup data being deleted and replaced with the data from the snapshot.
• Single Snapshot Setup and Data – Data in the target system is completely deleted and data from the snapshot is imported. Please note that the import duration time is dependent on the volume of the Workbench data. Additionally, this may affect the performance of the LCM backup.

These options can be set within the Data Management System Settings page and is applicable for the following solutions: Enterprise Profitability and Cost Management, Financial Consolidation and Close, FreeForm, Planning, Planning Modules, Profitability and Cost Management, and Tax Reporting.

Ability to Set Data Management Import and Export Modes

Running data load rules in Data Management has always required users to ensure selection of the correct import/export modes. “Replace” and “Merge” have long been the native defaults for import and export modes, respectively. Now, these options can be set as default within the Application Options page in Data Management: Default Import Mode and Default Export Mode.

Activity Report Expanded to Help Troubleshooting

New performance insights are available for Account Reconciliation, Financial Consolidation and Close, FreeForm, Planning, Planning Modules, and Tax Reporting applications. The Maximum Number of Calculation Threads provides customers with the exact number of Essbase threads during any specific hour. Application administrators can combine this report with the other information within the Activity Reports to proactively troubleshoot performance challenges.

Additionally, for Account Reconciliation apps, the report also now provides the Top 10 Job Types by Execution.

An example of each report is displayed below.

New Drill Down Capability

Drill down to source data is a common requirement for EPM customers. And until now, that ability was not available for summary members in Forms and Reports. Customers using the EPM Integration Agent will now have to ability to drill on summary members. The application essentially passes descendants members back to the queries used by the Agent.

Click here to read more on the Direct Drill feature available for Enterprise Profitability and Cost Management, Financial Consolidation and Close, FreeForm, Planning, Planning Modules, Profitability and Cost Management, and Tax Reporting solutions.

Smart View continues to get better and better each release, expanding on the fact that it is the best spreadsheet add-in within it’s class. The latest version (available within the coming weeks) will now allow users to perform the following: