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!

Let’s not kid ourselves. Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) implementations are not easy. The complexity surrounding EPM processes and requirements grows by the day (probably an understatement). We can probably all agree that this is the natural evolution of things for one reason or another. Luckily, Oracle’s suite of EPM solutions provide technical features to solve for these complexities. And they are striving to meet the new challenges by adding to the cloud features each and every month. But with all this complexity and change occurring, implementing technical solutions can be nerve racking… there are always a multitude of questions that organizations must answer when facing an upcoming EPM implementation. While there absolutely is merit in these questions, they all add up to one single overarching question… How can we ensure a successful EPM implementation?

Oracle understands this. Perficient understands this. And both are continuously striving to address success on multiple fronts. Whether it be our project methodology, our deep pool of technical expertise, or simply the personal “drive-for-success” of each of our team members – Perficient cares greatly about ensuring successful implementations. But enough of the sales pitch; let’s talk about what Oracle brings to the table and the one thing that every Oracle EPM cloud customer needs in their upcoming implementation…

Many times Oracle gets called into discussions only when there’s a problem. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Oracle provides the opportunity for direct and regular contact with Oracle’s experts throughout the life of a implementation via an initiative named the Implementation Success Program (ISP). The goal of the program is to improve the chance for success by preventing issues before they occur. The program provides some key aspects that definitely provide value by reducing risk, such as design review and performance review.

Once enrolled in the program proceeds as follows:

1.  A kick off meeting involving the customer, implementation partner, and the required Oracle representatives. The meeting allows for the Oracle team to understand customer requirements surrounding the business processes being implemented, milestones, and customer background.
2. Customer provides requirements and design documentation to the Oracle team for review & feedback.
3. Oracle reviews the submitted documents and creates a review document that is made available to the customer (typically within two weeks).
4. Oracle discusses design review feedback with the customer and addresses questions.
5. Based on customer request, Oracle sets up regular weekly or fortnightly meetings to track progress and to address questions. Customer and implementation partner team members, required Oracle representatives , Oracle Support Lead, and the ISP Lead participate in these meetings as needed.
6. When the application is ready for user acceptance testing, the customer follows the process in Requesting Performance Validation and submits all required information to request performance validation.
7. After the customer goes live with the business process, Oracle completes these steps:

• • For a period of one week, monitors user activity in the environment by reviewing Activity Reports. Oracle discusses anomalies, if any, with the customer in an online meeting and provides solutions.
  • Seeks feedback on the program.
  • Closes ISP engagement.
  • Additionally, if help with regression testing is required, the customer can enroll in the Regression Testing Program. See Requesting Automated Regression Testing.

The ISP offering is available for the following applications:

• Planning
• Planning Modules
• Financial Consolidation and Close
• Profitability and Cost Management
• Account Reconciliation

Perficient recommends the ISP for those organizations implementing Oracle EPM cloud. It’s a great initiative that allows for customers to garner more information and perspective before challenges become issues.

Oracle’s EPM Cloud December release contains some exciting new features for EDM. Many of the features are centered on enhancing the capabilities of building Expressions within the solution. For those not familiar with expressions in EDM… Expressions enable developers to define business logic to manage data. Expressions can be used within properties to transform data, derive the property values, or even create custom validations to enforce data integrity. The ability to build expressions is a key aspect of EDM and empowers organizations to customize the application to meet their unique needs.

Ok, so back to EDM’s latest features…

Expression Enhancement: Identify Parents for Node Locations

The parent for each location of a node (a location is simply a point in the hierarchy where the node exists…can be the primary or shared instance) can now be returned in an expression. This can greatly benefit organizations which have special rules for nodes dependent on their location within the dimension/hierarchy.

Expression Enhancement: Return Previous and Next Sibling for Nodes

Sometimes it’s not the parent that is needed for an expression, but rather the ability to identify the siblings of a node. Sibling nodes are those surrounding a specific node. Starting this month, the expression builder now provides new methods for return information for sibling nodes.

• PreviousSibing – returns the sibling node before the current node under the common parent
• NextSibling – method returns the sibling node after the current node under the common parent

Expression Enhancement: Save & Load Expressions

Until now, the migration of expressions between EDM environments has been a tedious and manual process. Oracle has addressed this by now providing the ability to save expressions to a JSON file and upload them into the expression builder in a different environment. All types of expressions (derived properties, property transformations, custom validations, subscription filters, policy filters, and extract filters) are supported.

The file is downloaded to the user’s browser default download location. Be aware, edited or manually created JSON files are not supported.

The steps for loading an expression are as follows:

1. In the expression builder, click Load from File .
2. In the File Open dialog, select the JSON file to load, and then click Open.

   Note: If an expression is already open in the expression builder, the existing expression is overridden. Any unknown object references or syntax errors are omitted when the expression is loaded. Incomplete expression terms are displayed with a red outline, indicating an error.

3. Optional: Click Cancel to cancel the load and retain the current expression

Validation Enhancement: Shared Member Before Base Member Validation

It’s long been a requirement for Oracle Planning and Financial Consolidation & Close applications that shared members are located after base members in the dimensions. This month we see the introduction of a new standard validation for these applications types to ensure this requirement is meant systematically.

The full listing of the standard Planning validations can be found here. And here for Financial Consolidation & Close.

Migration Enhancement: Template Import Preview

The application template feature was introduced in a previous release. Templates allow for the transferring of individual applications and their metadata objects across environments (for example, from a test environment to a production environment). Templates produce an offline file with application configurations. A really important feature for organizations looking to expand EDM’s footprint.

Template files can now be previewed by the user prior to importing into a target environment. The preview provides users the ability to can identify the artifacts in the template, determine which are new, modified, unchanged, or will be skipped by the import process. Artifacts marked as skipped include error messages indicating problems to be resolved before or after the template import.

See below for an example of the template preview feature…

Migration Enhancement: Update Existing Applications During Template Import

This may be the most impactful enhancement listed. Since it’s introduction, EDM has been missing the ability to migrate individual artifacts. Migration has simply been a “all or nothing” path. However, the solution now allows for the migration through the template import feature. The applications in the target environment and their respective artifacts can be modified during the template import. Additionally, new artifacts can be created through this feature as well.

There you have it; Oracle’s most recent new features for EDM customers. Contact us today to learn more about EDM and how organizations across the globe are its reaping benefits daily!

Oracle is introducing major enhancements to its EPM reporting capabilities with the February 2021 update. These enhancements will undoubtedly provide Oracle EPM customers the opportunity to expand their current reporting abilities to meet the challenges facing organizations today. Continue reading below as we touch on three things every customer must know about the new functionality now available.

The Introduction of FR’s (Financial Reporting) Replacement: Embedded Reports

Per Oracle’s readiness release: “Management Reporting within Oracle’s Narrative Reporting offering has been available for the past few years. It is now embedded in the EPM Cloud Platform applications (Planning, Financial Consolidation and Close, Tax Reporting, and Free Form) alongside, and eventually replacing, Financial Reporting.”

The new Reports provides several advantages including an easy-to-use drag and drop interface for designing and editing reports, bundling of reports into Books, and report Bursting (the ability to run a report or book for more than one member of a single dimension for one data source).

The New Embedded Reports Offering Provides a Better User Experience

Customers will NOT have to wait for future releases in order to see new functionality that directly improves the reporting experience. The following lists immediate features/advantages of using the new embedded reports option over continuing to use FR reports:

• • • New Charts – Waterfall, doughnut, scatter, bubble, etc.
    • User Interaction – Selectable alias tables, member label display, ad-hoc zoom mode,
    • Narration – Intelligent Narrative Generation is available

Migrating from FR to the New Reports is Possible

Customers can perform an in-place (on the same instance) migration of existing FR reports . Users can select either all or individual reports to migrate. Not all elements of the FR reports will migrate automatically;  any the errors requiring resolution when opening a migrated report are shown to the users. The error messages will be provided in an easy-to-understand explanation of the issue.

Note: Due to architecture differences, migration from Narrative Reporting is not supported at this time.

As you can see, the next generation is here! Perficient recommends that Oracle EPM customers evaluate their reporting capabilities, experiences, and goals against these new developments.

Contact us today if you have questions, or would like to understand how Perficient can help!

Azure Active Directory (AD) is Microsoft’s directory and Identity and Access Management (IAM) service in the cloud as opposed to ADFS, a Windows on-premise, claims-based Security Token Service (STS). In a Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) federation however, Azure AD and ADFS are functionally equivalent acting as Identity Provider (IdP) for a Service Provider (SP) such as a cloud-based application. Previously, we have discussed SAML federation with ADFS and Oracle PBCS here. In this discussion, we outline the high-level steps to establish SAML SSO between Azure and Oracle Enterprise Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (EPBCS).

IdP configuration:  Since IdP configuration is performed by an Azure administrator and details are dependent on the version of Azure being used, we only highlight the requirements to configure Azure as Identity Provider for EPBCS below.

From Azure portal, add EPBCS application

Continue to configure SSO for EPBCS in Azure. Select SAML protocol for EPBCS

Input EPBCS details

An example of Identifier: https://login.us.oraclecloud.com:443/oam/fed/cloud/adomain. Identifier is known as Sign on URL or Provider ID in EPBCS. An example of Reply URL: https://login.us.oraclecloud.com:443/oam/server/fed/sp/sso?tenant=adomain. Reply URL is known as Assertion Consumer Service (ACS) URL in EPBCS. At this point, these values do not have to be exact; we can update them later.

Continue with EPBCS configuration, generate Azure federation metadata and save as xml file, e.g., IdPmetadata.xml. Save EPBCS configuration in Azure.

SP configuration: configure EPBCS as Service Provider

Logon to EPBCS domain with identity domain admin ID. Navigate to Users->SSO Configuration

Click Configure SSO

Select ‘Import identity provider metadata’ and browse to upload the IdPmetadata.xml file saved earlier.

Leave SSO protocol as HTTP Post and User Identifier at User Email Address contained in NameID. Click Save to continue.

In the screenshot below, step 2 shows IdP information stored in EPBCS. Note EPBCS Provider ID and ACS URL shown in step 3. As mentioned earlier, in Azure update the SP URLs for EPBCS and save.

Also from the portal, an Azure administrator can assign users and groups to EPBCS. The same users or groups must exist in EPBCS, either by manual entry or by uploading from a CSV file exported from Azure. Details of a batch upload process can be found here.

Test and enable SSO from EPBCS

Click Test to initiate federation SSO

Click StartSSO and enter user ID as defined in Azure and in EPBCS, for instance, user’s company email. SSO success message is returned.

Once testing is successful, enable SSO in EPBCS

Enable identity domain (cloud) credentials:

EPBCS domain now presents both cloud and Azure sign on options:

Additional Oracle Resources

Oracle EPBCS / PBCS Documentation

• About SSO

• User Login with SSO

• SAML Identity Provider Requirements

• User Synchronization Requirements for SSO Configuration

• Automated and Manual Configuration

• Testing Your SSO Configuration

• Troubleshooting Your SSO Configuration

This is a continuation of my special blog series. You can read Part 1 here.

Groovy script is basically split into four sections. We previously covered a short description of the sections, so we are getting directly into the script here.

Code Section 1

This section imports the java libraries which help in formatting the payload and reading the JSON Response from server.

import org.json.JSONObject
import groovy.json.JsonSlurper

JSONObject class is used to use the put method which pushes the parameters to payload.
JsonSlurper is a class that helps to convert JSON data into groovy data.

Code Section 2

Setting up user Credentials and other information related to REST API.As per oracle below are the expected format

1. API Version – 3
2. username – domain.username:password
3. authentication – HTTP Requests require Basic Authentication “Basic ” + javax.xml.bind.DatatypeConverter.printBase64Binary

Code Section 3

This section defines the list of common functions which are already developed by Oracle. Readers should have basic understanding of Java language to understand the groovy functions. Below are the list of common functions which are provided by Oracle and used in our example.

 fetchResponse – method used to read the response and convert into lines.

 fetchJobStatusFromResponse – method used to read the job status of business rule submitted.

Below are the custom methods used specifically to call the business rule.

executeRequest
1. Setup the connection using the EPBCS URL.

2. Authenticate user with credentials.
3. Set request properties and Request Type as POST.
4. Invoke the url and read the status code.

5. Status code is expected to be 200 for GET and 201 for POST. If there are any other status codes then please refer to Oracle Error Codes.

executeBusRule
1. Format the URL string to be passed.

2. Split the parameters if there are more than 1 parameter.

Program explained in this blog has only 1 parameter but I have added the code to make sure the method supports No param or more than 1 parameters.
3. Call the executeRequest explained above.

Code Section 4

This is the last main section which actually calls the business rule with parameters. Below screenshot very clearly shows that Push_Data rule  is invoked with a parameter Entity.

Code can be reused with few tweaks in Section 2 and Section 4. Validate and run  the program in the groovy console to invoke the business rule. Additional logic for deriving the parameters can be added in Section 4. Below screenshot shows the email sent by EPBCS on successful completion of business rule.

Whether you are a consultant building reports for a client, or you are a report builder for your own company, chances are you will be asked to create a rolling three-month report. In this blog, I will discuss how to create a rolling three-month report for Planning using FR Studio. As you are probably aware, Planning does not handle year crossovers the same way HFM does. In turn, you will have to get creative in order to have a dynamic report.

In the report example above, the user is able to select a particular Period and Scenario/Version they want to display and then the next two sequential months are displayed as well. In the example above, the Point of View selected for Period is June and the Scenario/Version is Forecast/Working. Therefore Forecast/Working data for June through August is displayed.

This report also has a column for QTD which totals up the three columns displayed. The issue is when November or December is selected and either one or two of the additional months rolls over to the next year. As mentioned above, Planning does not handle year crossovers the same way HFM does so Advanced Suppression has to be used in order to display the proper months and years.

The first column in the report is driven by the Point of View selected by the user. I have added Advanced Suppression to the column that states if the Member Name for Period Equals Nov or The Member Name for Period Equals Dec, the column should be suppressed. I have a second column, B, which is always hidden, but this column is also used to be able to include the Member Names in the header area.

The next two columns represent the offset value to dynamically attain the rolling three months. In this example June is selected. Therefore column C is June + 1, or July. Column D is June + 2, or August. Columns E and F are hardcoded to Nov and Dec and are suppressed based on the suppression result of columns C and D.

Columns G and H display if the report requires the result to cross years. And lastly, columns I, J, and K provide QTD values and of course have their own suppression scenarios.

The following table lists the selections for each column – Actuals:

In addition to the first grouping of columns, Budget columns are displayed as well for the same months selected for the Scenario/Version POV. And lastly, a variance column is displayed between the Scenario/Version POV and Budget for the QTD columns.

The following table lists the selections for each column – Budget:

The following table lists the selections for each column – Variance:

Unfortunately, creating a report which crosses years requires several columns, but what the user is left with when running the report is quite clean; they are none the wiser to the effort required to create a dynamically, rolling, monthly report.

Introduction
PBCS/EPBCS has some built-in FDMEE Reports that can be executed by the user. One of the most common reports are the Process Monitor Reports, which can be executed on-demand from Data Management > Other > Report Execution.

The FDMEE report output can be a PDF, XLSX, HTML, or Excel, and the same can be determined before running the report from data management.

The FDMEE Report output ran on-demand from the data management are not stored in the server. The EPM Automate utility provides a command that can be used to generate the FDMEE report and gets stored in /Outbox/reports/Process_Id.PDF.

EPM Automate has commands to download the file from /Outbox/reports but the issue is the file number is dynamically generated and the file name is process_id.PDF.

Consider a scenario in which the user wants to run a Data Rule and needs to know the status of the load without logging into the PBCS/EPBCS. EPM Automate has commands to run the data rule and download the status reports but to download the PDF file without knowing the latest file name will be little tricky to use the EPM Automate.

Can we override the Manual task of downloading the file? Considering the file name is generated dynamically? Yes!

Below is the list of EPM Automate commands to get the required task done:

1. rundatarule – Runs the FDMEE data rule
2. ListFiles – List the files in the FDMEE Folder
3. Downloadfile – Downloads the file from FDMEE Folder
4. runDMreport – Runs the FDMEE Reports.

Data management provides a easy option to generate the script for runDMReport.

1. Navigate to Data Management > Workflow > Report Execution>.
2. Select the request group as Process Monitor reports.
3. Select the report and click on Create Report Script .
4. Enter the category,Accounting Period and Location.
5. Click Ok

The EPM Automation script shown below can be directly used with a couple tweaks on the login credentials and FDMEE Folders. EPM Automation script can be split in four steps:

1. Run the data load rule
2. Run the FDMEE Data report
3. Generate the list of files and get the latest file.
4. Download the file.

***********************************************************************************************************************

SET url=https://fastforward-test-perficient.pbcs.us2.oraclecloud.com
SET domain=perficient
SET user= don.ford@perficient.com
SET password=xxxxxxxxxxxxx

REM Login into Test URL

CALL epmautomate login %user% %password% %url% %domain%

REM Execute the data load rule

CALL epmautomate rundatarule Budget_load Jan-18 Jan-18 REPLACE REPLACE_DATA export_entity.csv – Step 1

REM Execute the FDMEE process Monitor report

CALL EPMAUTOMATE runDMreport “Process Monitor (Cat, Per)” “Category=Budget” “Accounting Period=Jan-18” “Location=EPM” “Report Output Format=PDF” – Step 2

REM Delete old files

del C:\Projects\Blog\ListFiles.csv
del C:\Projects\Blog\l1.csv

REM List out the files

CALL EPMAUTOMATE listfiles > “C:\Projects\Blog\ListFiles.csv” – Step3

REM Remove the lines from csv file

findstr /i “outbox/reports/” “C:\Projects\Blog\ListFiles.csv” > “C:\Projects\Blog\l1.csv”

REM Get the last file generated by runDMReport

for /f “delims==” %%a in (C:\Projects\Blog\l1.csv) do set lastline=%%a

CALL epmautomate downloadfile %lastline% – Step 4

CALL epmautomate logout

***********************************************************************************************************************

Run the batch script in Admin mode to call the business rule and download the process monitor output of the file.

After successful completion of Batch script, go to Data Management > Process Details to make sure the data rule and FDMEE report run was successful.

The PDF file is downloaded in your local machine and can be opened using Adobe or any PDF reader. Below is the screenshot of PDF file:

Our client is a leading healthcare provider with 13 clinical departments, each with multiple entities and varying degrees of complexity. They implemented Hyperion Planning in 2012 and experienced significant growth since then as a result of expansion into the community and in their main campus. There was a growing need to provide the executive office with greater insight into financial performance and more flexibility in budgeting. Too much time was being spent processing data rather than analyzing it.

On-premises challenges included various spreadsheets generated and distributed by corporate, which caused bottlenecks getting data into Hyperion. The provider didn’t have “real-time” budgeted bottom line. Instead, business rules were bundled into one all-inclusive rule set only run twice a day during the budget cycle as it took 2 to 3 hours to complete. A complicated matrix of forms for user input resulted in inconsistent naming conventions and unused forms and business rules among other things. In addition, the finance team received little support from IT to keep the environment current.

Oracle PBCS Delivers Results

We implemented Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS), delivering a single integrated platform across corporate and practices to streamline the planning process as well as centralized common reporting and administration. The new planning system improved the user experience, refined labor planning processes, and allowed for a flexible driver-based budget. Read the full story to learn how Oracle PBCS can enhance financial and workforce planning.

Oracle Enterprise Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (EPBCS) is a significant differentiator for Oracle. Lacking the challenges inherent in on-premises software and building on best practices in the industry, EPBCS offers companies a head start on finance transformation like no other.

One clear lesson from the field is that a good financial planning process is not judged by how painstaking it is. It is judged by how repeatable it is and whether the participants are truly invested in the process. There are best practices when it comes to managing a global, multi currency forecast and EPBCS delivers these practices ready for personalization not reinvention.

Another lesson is that integrated planning is paramount. The strategic plan must include the latest forecast. Then, targets from the strategic plan should drive the annual planning process. Even better, this “feedback loop” should be monthly, rolling, automated, and reviewable.

Lastly, the financial planning system must contain enough detail to evaluate how and why goals were not met. EPBCS solves the integrated planning problem. Actionable information is not just stored somewhere. It’s immediately available.

CFOs and VPs of financial planning who are deploying the latest digital tools are indeed making the data available, and gaining competitive advantage in the process. 24×7 cloud, automation, and out-of-the-box solutions are the tools that return financial insight in hours, not weeks, and where every constituent – not just finance – finds value in the process. And that truly is modern finance.

In Part 1 of this blog post series on Enterprise Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (EPBCS) deployment considerations, I covered key topics such as change management, education and training as well as upgrades and maintenance.  I’ll pick up where I left off and share my thoughts on support and migrations.

Support

In the event an error or defect is encountered, a “Provide Feedback” option is available within the EPBCS service. Submitting feedback provides Oracle Support technicians with environment details at the time of error. Then, customers proceed to create a service request in the “Cloud Support” subsite of support.oracle.com.

In addition to Oracle software support, many customers opt for application-level support with third-party vendors. The contracts come with a variety of terms and service level agreements. For example, Perficient’s managed service offering, SupportNet, offers:

• Flexible service-level agreements
• Dedicated customer service manager
• Help desk tickets for defects/issues
• Scheduled support hours for custom development
• Monthly or quarterly sizing options
• Variable length contracts

Regardless of support provider, it’s crucial to begin knowledge transfer early in the project. The post implementation support team is the final pillar of change management, ensuring business continuity and user satisfaction after the EPBCS application is put into service.

Migrations
Customers converting from on-premises Hyperion Planning will be happy to know that that EPBCS is an evolution of Hyperion Planning, not a complete revolution. Life Cycle Manager extracts from the current on-premises application and can accelerate the conversion to the cloud. That said, migrations are not a push-button process.

One key difference is that cloud customers are limited to one application per instance. Customers that have several planning applications will need to consider consolidating applications or licensing multiple cloud instances and integrating them.

Another key difference is that not all artifacts are supported for migration. Items like Essbase business rules, substitution variables, and data load rules can’t be imported to EPBCS.

For customers with a single Planning application, it should be straightforward to map to the “standard” plan types. If the on-premises application also has the on premises modules, customers will want to consult with implementation partners to adequately plan and execute the conversion. Oracle also publishes guidance on data, metadata, and feature mapping between the two editions.

The simplest case of all is migrating a finished EPBCS application across cloud instances – DEV to PROD, for example. For this, EPBCS customers will use the “Migration” cluster. This leads to a screen where you select from five application components: Planning/Data Management/Calculation Manager/Groups and/Reporting. These create snapshots from the source cloud instance which can be transferred to the target cloud instance and imported.

Oracle/Hyperion has long been the standard-bearer for ease-of-use with financial reporting and analytics. Oracle Enterprise Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (EPBCS) carries on this legacy with three main presentation components:

Reports
Print-quality reports are designed using Financial Reporting (FR) Web Studio. It is a web-based design tool that looks much like the current Financial Reporting Studio desktop client. The URL to connect the tool to the EPBCS instance is slightly different than the URL to the simplified interface. However, the process for authoring reports remains the same as the old FR client.

Reports built with the Financial Reporting tool can be output in a variety of formats. Reports can be grouped into books, scheduled in a batch job, and distributed via email. Interactive features in HTML format allow users the ability to refresh data in real-time, drill down on data, and even export the finished product to Excel.

Dashboards
Dashboards provide visual information useful for decision-making throughout the planning and forecasting process. Each business process module comes with standard dashboards, and more can be added. They are designed to be intuitive and interactive.

Dashboards are comprised of forms and charts. Upon changing the selections in the Point-of-View, users see immediate results in the forms, multiple chart types, and tiles on the dashboard.

Depending on the dashboard’s design, the following options are available:

• Drill down to more detail
• Dynamically link to URL or add a place for comments
• Change chart types on the fly
• Access form options to filter data row sets
• Customize charts in dashboards

Smart View
Microsoft Office integration is provided via the Smart View Office add-in. Once installed, Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint receive a new ribbon with context-sensitive options. Connecting to EPBCS is similar to on-premises applications, however the URL is SSL-enabled and points to the Oracle cloud.

An ad-hoc grid can be launched from an existing data entry form and modified in Excel. Grids also can be started in Excel and saved back to the EPBCS instance (with formatting) for use by other users. There are a variety of drill/pivot/filter options that make data discovery extremely easy for finance users. Plans also can be entered into Excel grids in real-time and saved to EPBCS.

The many features of Smart View are beyond the scope of this post. But the integration between Excel and EPBCS is so feature rich, many users opt-out of using web browsers entirely unless on a mobile device.