In the Past

In previous releases of OSC, if a record needs to update based on custom business logic then we may have to rely on external code that executes the logic and update the records in OSC through web services or update using batch data load. Now with R12 and R13, this approach has changed, we will now be able to schedule business logic code using enterprise scheduler and update records easily.

What is Schedule Business Logic?

An Object function can be called at a scheduled time using enterprise scheduler. This new feature can be used to update a set of records on a daily, weekly basis, asynchronously, in scenarios where the is no need to see the change immediately on the UI. This feature can only be applied to object function.

Creating Object Function

The object function that needs to be scheduled should have the visibility as Callable by External System. This option enables the object function to be called by any external system in our case it will be called by the Enterprise Scheduler.

The object function can contain a groovy script that solves a complex custom logic. The scripts will act on a smaller manageable set of records in batches by breaking the data into smaller chunks.

The object function that needs to be scheduled should have the visibility as Callable by External System. This option enables the object function to be called by any external system in our case it will be called by the Enterprise Scheduler.

The object function can contain a groovy script that solves a complex custom logic. The scripts will act on a smaller manageable set of records in batches by breaking the data into smaller chunks.

Where Can Scheduling Business Logic be used?

This new feature to schedule business logic comes handy for several scenarios, to name a few;

• Mass update of records based on certain criteria
• Used to trigger workflows based on criteria that will occur / will be met in the future – workaround to time-based workflows
• Custom logic with heavy updates that can be scheduled during off-hours

How to Schedule Business Logic?

Creating Object function:

• Activate a sandbox.
• Navigate to Application Composer and select CRM Cloud as the application.
• Expand Standard Objects.
• Select Opportunity and then Server Scripts to go to the Server Scripts Opportunity page.
• Go to the Object Functions tab.
• Click Add to create an object function.
• Enter the applicable values. Set visibility to Callable by External Systems.
• Click Validate and then Save and Close.

Scheduling the Process:

• Go to the Schedule Processes page.
• Click Schedule New Process.
• Search for the Schedule Custom Groovy Object Functions – Developers Preview job.
• Enter applicable information, keep in mind that the entries in this page are Case-sensitive
  • Application Name (required in R12): the name of the application (such as sales, crmCommon, or service).
  • The name of the object that is the REST service name of that object.
  • To get object name see REST API for Oracle Sales Cloud R13 on Oracle Help Centre.
  • The name of the object function you created using Application Composer
• Click Advanced to schedule the process or to run ” As soon as possible”.

Schedule New Process

Process Details

Scheduling a Process

Points to consider

• Object function without parameter is only eligible for scheduled invocation.
• The object where the function is defined must have at least one record. Create records if already not created before the execution. If there are no records found during the schedule then the execution will fail and the schedule Process page would show error in the status of the job. For example, there should be opportunity records created before scheduling the Opty_Update job which will update the existing Opportunity records.
• Object function of the child objects cannot be scheduled for invocation.
• Current release R13(Update 18A and 18B) doesn’t support the following object: Account, Contact, and Partners.
• Break the work into multiple object functions if required due to limitations; object function execution time is limited to one minute. Also, the maximum fetch size, which controls the number of rows returned, is set to 500 rows by default. This number can be changed using the method setMaxFetchsize().
• Values returned by the invoked object function are not reported through the ESS framework.

Oracle Integration Cloud Service is a cloud-based integration platform designed to perform integrations between cloud-based and on premise applications.  It is packaged with a growing list of application adapters which can be leveraged to greatly reduce the development effort and time.  These adapters are pre-built interfaces that can connect to different applications without coding.

Perficient deployed Oracle Sales Cloud and Oracle Integration Cloud Service at Zeus Industrial Product.  Oracle Sales Cloud included the following CRM functionalities: Account, Contact, Lead, Opportunity, Quote, Forecast and Activity Management.  Oracle Integration Cloud Service integrated the key customer, product and pricing data between Oracle EBS and Oracle Sales Cloud.

The integrations consisted of the following –

Oracle EBS – Customer, Products, Price Book/List and Order data are integrated from Oracle EBS to Oracle Sales Cloud through Oracle Integration Cloud Service.

Oracle Sales Cloud – Quotes are generated in Oracle Sales Cloud and are converted to Orders in Oracle EBS through Oracle Integration Cloud Service.

Several benefits resulted from the Oracle Integration Cloud Service implementation including availability of real time data in key applications, information sharing among sales team members which increase the overall sales productivity.

If you are interested in learning more about how Oracle Integration Cloud Service may help your organization, please contact us.

As a CRM consultant that has been working with Oracle Sales Cloud since 2015 and has been actively involved in 8+ projects, here are the top 6 tips that I have learned in driving a successful Oracle Sales Cloud implementation:

1. Requirements – With every project, it is critical to capture the business requirements that the application is going to achieve.  I recommend scheduling face-to-face time with the SME’s (subject matter experts) to discuss and prioritize requirements in order of business importance.  The requirement document will then serve as your baseline for design and build.
2. Project Plan – Develop a project plan that defines the following: tasks, milestones, and key deliverables.  The project plan should be reviewed on an ongoing basis and adjusted as needed.  It is also important to include checkpoints and sign-off for each key milestone.
3. Conference Room Pilots (CRP) – Conference Room Pilots are a great way to validate your design and development work (configuration, workflow, integration, data migration, etc.) with your end users throughout the design/development phase.  Give the users some case scenarios and ask them to go through them in the application and provide feedback.
4. Weekly Status Meetings – A weekly status meeting with key resources to review project progress, budget, tasks, issues, risks, etc. is essential to keeping parties informed of project updates.
5. Change Management – A communication plan should be in place to notify users of important dates (go live, CRP, unit testing, etc.) so resources can plan their schedules accordingly.
6. Training – Proper training is vital for increasing user adoption of the new application.  Users should review different use cases as well as perform hands-on training in the new application.  If there are different user groups, provide separate training sessions for each user group.

I’ve been involved in numerous Oracle Sales Cloud implementations. One of the most requested requirements is adding space between fields on a detail/summary page, for example, adding space below the ‘Account Name’ and ‘Lead Source’ fields.

Oracle Sales Cloud does not currently support this feature. However, after working with our development team, we found a solution by creating ‘blank’ fields and including them on the detail/summary page layout.

The steps are as follows:

1. Go to the Application Composer->Standard Objects->Account object, create the two text ‘blank’ fields with the Display Label set to ‘.’ (without the quotes) and uncheck the Updatable checkbox.

2. The custom fields have been added.

3. Go to the detail/summary page layout and add the custom fields to the layout. One after the ‘Account Name’ and other after the ‘Lead Source.’

4. Go to the Account detail/summary page and validate your changes.

The recent release of the Oracle engagement cloud has introduced many exciting new features to the cloud application enhancing the user experience with new UI features and functionality. Quite a few of these new features available in the engagement cloud application now are enhancements that were requested by many of our clients over the years.

If you are already familiar with the UI Layout and functionality of the Oracle sales cloud application, you will be able to appreciate the improvements made in engagement cloud to address some of the deficiencies in functionality that existed in the earlier versions

Although there are many new features that have been introduced, in this blog I would like to look at a few new features that I think will enhance the user experience and productivity of a user.

Larger display area

The UI screenshot below on the left is a R12 Oracle Sales Cloud User Interface and on the right, is the new engagement cloud User Interface. As you can see the engagement cloud UI Improves the usability of UI by optimizing the usage of vertical and horizontal space on the browser. The application displays optimum content on the landing and detail pages to avoid unnecessary scrolling.

The new format (shown by arrows below) also has named subtabs rather than pictures to identify them. In R12 users had to hover over the pictures to identify the name of the subtab.

Ability to open multiple SRs

A service agent sometimes works on multiple service requests at a time. In order to accommodate for this, multiple service requests can be opened at the same time.

This new user experience pattern was introduced with Oracle Engagement Cloud whereby multiple Service Requests can be opened at the same time, and they are shown as tabs are on the top of the service request page, one for each open service request.
Notice how the first tab always points to the service request list.

Column Management

Prior to engagement cloud users did not have the ability to add /hide columns in the list layout; they only had the ability to reorder the columns in the layout.

Users now have the following additional functionality using the manage columns option to manage the columns displayed in list layouts

• Display new columns
• Hide columns
• Reorder columns
• Save column configurations

In addition, within Application Composer, sales administrators can define the default column order, select the columns that sales reps can manage and can define which columns are available for each object in the list.

Mass update within lists

You can now update one or more fields for multiple records at the same time from the list without having to drill-down on the individual records to make the update. Sales reps and managers can select list rows for update and edit updatable fields for accounts, contacts, assets, activities and custom objects in real time. Mass update for leads and opportunities was already available as part of a previous CX Sales release but this functionality is now available for all objects.

Administrators can enable the Update button for list pages and can configure which fields are available for mass update for each object.

Add search to subtabs – standard and custom

Engagement cloud now provides the ability to search on subtabs both standard and custom. In addition to a single default filter that comes out of the box, you can now add more filters to narrow the set of records displayed on the subtab.

In prior versions, we did not have this filter capability and configurable search for subtabs (sub objects). Users had to scroll the list vertically to find the records.

Please join us as we explore these and other great improvements to Oracle Sales Cloud with the introduction of R13 and Oracle Engagement Cloud.

Webinar Overview

• Key features of Engagement Cloud R13
• Core CX enhancements
• How the new Engagement Cloud helps improve customer engagement and loyalty

We hope to see you online Tuesday, January 23rd for this complimentary webinar.

Recently, Oracle updated Sales Setup Assistant utility that will speed up your initial Oracle Sales Cloud (OSC) implementation by automating core setup tasks. Sales Setup Assistant is a wizard-driven client-side utility with user-friendly interface currently available on windows platform.

The Sales Setup Assistant utility is designed to gather minimal input on the core sales setup tasks through guided page flows and execute the core setup tasks required for initial onboarding and set the instance ready for importing data using the Quick Import Macros.

Sales Setup Assistant tools will ensure that you have completed all the initial setup tasks before proceeding with customization and setup configuration for your business. This utility is designed for one-time execution in a new Oracle Sales Cloud environment prior to doing any setup, customization or even enabling a sandbox.

Gather Customer Inputs

Sales Setup Assistant utility comes with a spreadsheet template to gather input from the customer which can easily then be entered using the utilities guided page flow. See below a portion of the template.

Access Initialization

Upon login (with your user credentials sent by Oracle) to the Sales Setup Assistant, the utility gathers key attributes from your new OSC environment. Also, add necessary job roles like Sales Administrator and Sales Analyst application roles to the logged in user. The collected key attributes will be used in guided pages for setup tasks.

Guided Pages for Core Setup Tasks

Sales Setup Assistant collects inputs required for setup tasks pertaining to Getting Started Setup Tasks included in an implementation project.

With guided pages, you will not have to navigate between Setup and Maintenance work area to search and locate Initial Setup Tasks which could be time-consuming and will definitely require some level of knowledge of setup tasks and profile options to configure.

Below table is an overview of guided pages for core setup tasks and the inputs required to complete the tasks.

All options are selected by default since they are required/recommended setup for OSC but you can deselect any options which are not mandatory for initial setup.

Enterprise Scheduled Service (ESS) Jobs

Sales Setup Assistant tool automatically schedule and activate related ESS jobs for you during the initial setup process.

Overall the execution of Initial setup tasks takes about 30-40 minutes to complete based on the selections you have chosen. Import Geography data may take longer to complete.

Exception Handling

If any issues encountered during the execution, it will be marked as FAILED and the execution will continue with the next task. You can rectify the issue and re-execute that step. Detailed log files are generated in the log folder.

Once the utility completed the execution, you can login to your new Oracle Sales Cloud instance and verify the application.

Summary

Sales Setup Assistant tool will definitely help companies to expedite the initial on-boarding setup tasks and prepare the new Oracle Sales Cloud instance ready for customization and data imports.

With Sales Setup Assistant,  you will never miss any required setup for OSC deployments.

Oracle Sales Cloud Mobile Application has a nice feature in which you can select the Accounts, Opportunities and contacts that are located near your Location.

Here are the quick steps to configure the Around Me Feature on your Mobile App:

1.Enable Geo-coding.

Login to the Application and Navigate to set up and maintenance.
Search for Manage Geographies Task and drill down on the Task.

Search for the Country for which we need to enable Geo-coding and Enable the same by clicking on the arrow below Geo-coding Defined,

Geo-coding will be enabled for the Selected Country.

2. Run Geo-coding Process.

Go to Schedule Process Schedule New Process and search for Populate Location Latitude and Longitude Information process and Submit the Process.

Note: By default, the Geo-coding process batch Size will be 5000. The number of locations for which the latitude and longitude is processed depends on the batch size.

One Geo-coding process will create a maximum of 10 Sub-Process. If you have more than 50k addresses then, the Geo-coding process needs to be submitted multiple times accordingly.
It is a better practice to schedule the Process in specific intervals to process the New Addresses.

3. Enable GPS.

Once the process is scheduled, you are all set to identify all the Accounts/ Opportunities/Contacts near you. But you need to make sure the GPS /Location services is activated in your mobile device otherwise this functionality will not work.

4. Around Me:

After all the Set Up is complete, The Around Me feature will be available for all the objects.

Click on the Around me Icon to view all the Available objects for this feature.

Go to Settings to increase the radius and to change the unit of measurement. By Default, the Radius will be 1 and unit of measurement will be mile. Increasing the radius will increase the number of records available to the user.

The Nearby addresses for the selected object will be shown in the map.

What if the Nearby Address does not show up?
Check is the address provided is valid.
Verify if latitude and Longitude is populated correctly.
To make sure that the Address is geo coded i.e.; Latitude and Longitude is populated, execute the below query. The query given below is specific for Account Addresses.

Select PARTY.PARTY_NAME,PARTY.LAST_UPDATED_BY,LOC.location_ID, LOC.LAST_UPDATE_DATE,LOC.ADDRESS1, LOC.ADDRESS2, LOC.ADDRESS3, LOC.ADDRESS4,LOC.CITY, LOC.POSTAL_CODE,LOC.COUNTY,LOC.STATE,LOC.COUNTRY ,LOC.LONGITUDE,LOC.LATITUDE from HZ_LOCATIONS LOC,HZ_PARTIES PARTY, HZ_PARTY_SITES SITES  WHERE PARTY.PARTY_ID = SITES.PARTY_ID ANDSITES.LOCATION_ID = LOC.LOCATION_ID AND PARTY.PARTY_TYPE = ‘ORGANIZATION’

In the digital age, providing exceptional customer engagement is key to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty. Oracle Engagement Cloud, which combines Oracle’s leading sales and service capabilities, delivers cutting-edge features that support timely high-touch, high-value customer interactions.

Customers can receive 24×7 knowledge and support through a digital device of their choice, and a through a preferred communication channel. Service agents can stay abreast of customer needs and interactions with a unique combination of service request management and knowledge management with the enhanced user experience provided by Oracle Engagement Cloud R13.

Join us as we explore the new and improved functionality of Oracle Engagement Cloud Release 13.

Discussion will include:

• Review of key features
• Leveraging the solution for maximum results
• Implementation considerations
• Advantages of a unified architecture and combined platform

We hope to see you online Tuesday, January 23rd for this complimentary webinar. We’d love to have you attend our live event, but if you’re unable to make it, all registrants will receive links to the presentation materials and a recording of the on-demand webinar post-event.

Introduction

This blog describes the process of importing opportunity revenue lines with the product group and inventory item using file import. In this discussion, we will be importing only opportunity line item and not the opportunity header. We would also discuss on the inventory item and UOM (Unit of Measure) and how to get UOM code from the application. At the end of this blog, we will discuss the common error that might occur during the import process and how to debug them.

New to File based data import?

“Define File-based data import” group of task is dependent on the different OSC and architecture Components such as interface table and application base table. These components help in the process of transferring the raw data from the file onto OSC Objects.

To know more about how file based data works, visit the following Link: https://docs.oracle.com/cloud/farel8/salescs_gs/OAFDI/F1052150AN10265.htm#OAFDI1052150

Before You Start!!

Before you begin import process it is recommended to generate artifacts. To generate the artifacts go to;

Navigator -> Application Composer-> set category as “Sales” Or “Common” (depending on the object you import) -> Under Common setup click “Import and Export” -> Click generate. Wait until the process is completed.

Steps to import File

1. Navigate to set up and Maintenance and Search for “Manage File Import Activities”
2. Create a New import Process and enter the required field with the appropriate value.
3. Select the object as “Opportunity” and attach the file for importing.
4. Click next and map the fields as below. Once done Click next Schedule the import process.
5. Once scheduled click next and activate the import process.

For details on importing a File; read the section Importing Data from a File: Getting Started.

Mapping Template

Sample Import

GETTING PRODUCT AND ITEM DETAILS FROM OSC

The best way to get the product and item related details such as Inventory item Id, item Inventory Id and product internal group Id, is to export the product object.

Steps to export Product object.

1. Go to navigator -> Setup and maintenance and search for “Schedule Export Processes”.
2. Click New and enter the name to export process and click next.
3. Select the object you want to export and click next to schedule the process and finally activate the export process.
4. Wait until the process is completed and then download the export file.
5. The export file contains all the Id related to Product and Item.

GETTING UOM INTERNAL CODE

For Importing Product Item we need the have the internal code for the UOM (Unit of measure) the internal codes are automatically populated when the UOM value and UOM class code is created. We don’t have any control to change the value.
We can create the UOM code from the following setup task:

• Manage Units Of Measure
• Manage UOM classes.

We can get the UOM Internal code for the corresponding UOM value by creating a data model in BI using the below SQL;

select uom_code, uom_class, base_uom_flag, unit_of_Measure, description from inv_units_of_measure_B iuomb, inv_units_of_measure_tl iuomtl where iuomb.unit_of_measure_id = iuomtl.unit_of_measure_id order by UOM_code

Unit of Measure, UOM Classes and Base unit of Measure: How they are interlinked

To understand further on how the Unit of Measure, UOM Classes and Base unit of Measure are related to one another and their use, you can refer to the following document:

Define Units of Measure

Debugging Common Scenarios

Follow the link on How to Debug Common Scenarios / Errors noticed with Product Group file import (Doc ID 2237377.1).

Release 12 of Oracle Sales Cloud is just around the corner and with it comes some great improvements that make it an even more compelling solution for enabling modern sales in the cloud.

Oracle Engagement Cloud is the crown jewel of the release, combining Oracle’s leading sales and service capabilities. From a single screen, users can stay abreast of customer needs with a unique combination of sales automation, service request management, and knowledge management for a comprehensive customer experience.

Join us as we explore release 12 of Oracle Sales Cloud. Discussion will include:

• Review of key release changes
• Upgrade preparations
• Engagement Cloud and what to expect

We’d love to have you attend our live event on Wednesday, March 22nd, but if you’re unable to make it, all registrants will receive links to the presentation materials and a recording of the on-demand webinar post-event.

In a previous post, I described how the Oracle BI Cloud Service (BICS) integrates with Oracle Cloud (Fusion) Apps.  For users of on premise Oracle BI, there are other methods of integrating with Fusion Apps.  The easiest of which is Oracle BI Applications 11g as it comes with prebuilt content, data warehouse and ODI ETL mappings for Fusion Apps.  In the latest release of Oracle BI Applications (OBIA 11.1.1.10.2), ETL adapters are provided for many of of the latest versions of Fusion.  The following table identifies the supported versions based on the BI Application Release.  The main additions for the latest release of OBIA is support for HCM, Finance, Sales, Procurement, Project and Supply Chain version 11.0.  In addition Talent Cloud 15B is now supported.

For more information about BI Applications Release 11.1.1.10.2 please see this Advisor Webcast:

— https://oracleaw.webex.com/oracleaw/lsr.php?RCID=219fd99637cda5414e194a7e0b758bce

as well as the slides exported in PDF format:

https://community.oracle.com/docs/DOC-1006718

Oracle provides multiple ways of reporting from Oracle Cloud (Fusion) Apps.  Oracle HCM Cloud, CX Cloud, SCM Cloud and Cloud ERP all have Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence (OTBI) built into the application.  In addition, Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service (BICS) can also access Oracle Cloud application data and load it into the BICS Database via Data Sync.  While OTBI is real-time, access via BICS must be done through a trickle feed in which Data Sync can update the BICS Database as often as every minute.  Although OTBI provides real time access to data, it is limited in what it can do.  It is for Oracle Cloud Apps only; there are no other third party data sources that can be added to it.  It performs online BI queries against the Cloud Application database directly.  There is no data warehouse with advanced metrics and it lacks historical data which limits the type of analytics that can be done.

BICS meanwhile is a full featured Business Analytics tool that is source agnostic. BICS features not just Dashboarding and Reports that OTBI offers but also BI Mobile and Data Visualization capabilities with the ability to do advanced analytics.  The included Cloud Database allows you to use Data Sync 2.2 to load data from multiple data sources including:

• Oracle Cloud Apps
• Salesforce.com
• Oracle, IBM DB2, Teradata, MS SQL Server, and MySQL Databases
• Flat files (Excel, csv, etc.)
• Big Data technologies such as Greenplum, Hive, and Impala
• Amazon Redshift
• IBM Informix
• MongoDB
• PostgreSQL
• Sybase

This ability to  combine data from multiple sources allows BICS to be used as an Enterprise Analytics platform while OTBI is simply a transactional reporting platform for operational reporting.  The trickle feed capabilities of Data Sync allows BICS to provide near real-time reporting on all of your data.  In addition, Perficient’s pre-built analytics solutions provides metrics, reports and dashboards out of the box, accelerating your Enterprise Business Intelligence projects.  In future posts, I will provide further details and examples of how Oracle Cloud App and BICS integration works in Data Sync.

Learn More

If you’d like to continue the conversation and learn more about BICS capabilities, stop by Perficient booth #1715 at Oracle OpenWorld Sept. 18-22 in San Francisco.