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EPRCS Updates (February 2018): Drill to Content, Considerations & More

In this blog, we'll cover the February updates for Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud Service (EPRCS) including new features and considerations. 

The monthly update for EPRCS will occur on Friday, February 16 during your normal daily maintenance window.

EPRCS New Features

Saved Member Selections in Management Reports

Saved member selections enable you to define a list of members that can be reused as a member selection within a report. You can save one or more members, functions, or a prompt as your saved member selection, and then use that selection in multiple segments and other grids in a report.

Zooming on Parent Members in Grids in Management Reports

Zoom allows you to expand a row or column parent member to see its children, descendants or bottom level members when you preview a report in HTML. Report designers can enable three types of zooms for end users:

  • Zooming on the entire grid, which enables all parent members to be zoomed into.
  • Zooming on specific row or column segments in a grid.
  • Ad hoc zooming, which allows end users to decide which members they want to be able to zoom into.

Drill to Content in Management Reports

Drill to content allows a report designer to set up content links on grid data cells, rows, columns and member heading cells to enable end users to drill to Management Reporting reports, third-party documents in the Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud Library and custom URL links. When an end user previews the report in HTML, he or she can drill into the content link and execute the specified target linked report (passing the POV where applicable), launch the third-party document, or launch the URL.

Left, Right & Mid Text Functions in Management Reports

Left, Right, and Mid allow you to trim text from the results of other text functions such as MemberAlias and MemberName to keep only the left-most, right-most, or center text.

Set Background Color Property on Management Reporting Charts

You can now set the background color on charts in Management Reporting reports.

Copy and Move Management Report Objects Across Sheets

In a Management Reporting report with multiple sheets (physical pages), you can copy or move report objects such as grids, charts, images, and text boxes from one sheet to another via right click menus.

Create Taxonomies in Disclosure Management

You can now create extension taxonomies by using a Microsoft Excel-based wizard in Taxonomy Designer.

Nest IX:NonFraction and IX:Fraction Elements in Inline XBRL

You can now nest ix:nonFraction and ix:fraction elements when generating inline XBRL (iXBRL).

 

Considerations

Management Reporting

Be aware of the following considerations when working with Management Reporting.

  • When importing a Management Report together with its related data source, the data source needs to be edited to add the data source's administrator credentials. Otherwise, previewing the Management Report without the proper data source credentials results in a service error.

  • When uploaded for use with Management Reporting, Microsoft Internet Explorer requires installable fonts. If custom fonts are not installable, then Internet Explorer will substitute a different font. Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox do not require installable fonts.

  • In a Management Reporting grid member selector with an EPM Cloud data source, if 'Show in Hierarchy' is selected for a shared member, a 'member not found' error will be received before displaying the hierarchy location.

  • In Internet Explorer version 11, you cannot resize text objects. Use Chrome or Firefox instead.

Report Packages

Be aware of the following considerations when working with Report Packages.

  • Previewing a report that has a PowerPoint style sample with a custom slide that has numbering starting at zero will display an error.
    Workaround: Download the PowerPoint style sample document and change the numbering on the Slide Master to start with one, instead of zero. Then, edit your report package properties and select the updated style sample document.

  • Inactive report packages with available content will display an “undetermined content” icon. Once the source file has been refreshed, the proper available content type icon will be displayed.

  • When you add embedded content that contains internal hyperlinks to a report package, if you select Download Preview to view the document, the hyperlinks within the embedded content do not open when clicked.

  • When creating embedded content, if you use the horizontal text alignment format Center Across Selection in Excel, the selection does not carry forward into the embedded content when the doclet is embedded in Word. The text remains within the original cell.
    Workaround: To achieve the same visual layout, use Merge cells and Center align to align the text in the merge cell.

  • When you insert a reference variable value that references a document that was created using Word 2007, a line break is inserted in the text, creating an extra line.
    Workaround: If you encounter this issue, delete the extra line.

  • If an Excel worksheet uses a double-line bottom border on the last row of a named range, an extra row appears in the embedded content within a consuming doclet.
    Workaround: To work around this issue, try one of the following options:

    • 1. Do not use a double line bottom border in the last row of a named range, but select an alternative bottom border.
    • 2. Navigate to a cell that is below the named range, and add dummy text or a blank space. You can then upload and check in the reference doclet. When the embedded content is generated, the empty row is no longer included.
    • 3. Resize the row below the row that contains the double-line bottom border. You can keep the double line border in the last row intact, but resize the next row to be very small (but not hidden). Click any cell in the relevant row and choose Home, then Format, and then Row Height and enter a small value such as 2 or 3. The extra space is included in the embedded content, but it has a minimal impact.
  • If a PowerPoint slide is created from a layout that contains placeholders for tables, charts, smart art or media files, those objects seem to disappear when uploaded to the service. The content is not lost however. After downloading the files, a reset on the slide will cause the content to reappear. Workaround: To work around this issue, create the slide by adding the content directly to the slide rather than use a layout with place holders.

  • If the user enters a simple URL format (for example, www.oracle.com) within the Rich Text Editor, a service error will be displayed when the link is executed.
    Workaround: If a user enters a fully qualified URL format (for example, http://www.oracle.com) within the Rich Text Editor, the URL link will open within a new browser tab.

  • When using an iPad with the Safari browser to preview a report package, Safari stops responding when you magnify the screen and tap preview.

  • When downloading files using Safari 9, any spaces in the filename will appear as special characters.

  • When performing a review of a PowerPoint report package using Safari, a service error is displayed if the user places the comment anchor in the blue area outside slide.

  • After updating to Java 8, the embedded content controls more accurately reflect the column widths within the source excel documents. This may result in existing embedded content being resized when you refresh the document.

  • When you open a review instance within Smart View, add a comment, switch to another review instance, and then switch back to the first review instance using the Content Selector, the comment is not updated correctly.
    Workaround: Click “Refresh Comments” or click the Content Selector refresh button to display the comment correctly.

  • When adding doclets as subsections in a report package, the heading numbering in the table of contents may not be updated correctly.
    Workaround: Check out and download the affected doclet. Then, change the heading style of the heading that was numbered incorrectly to a different style, and then change it back again (for example, from Heading 3 to Body Text and then back to Heading 3). Then, upload and check the doclet back in.


Smart View

Be aware of the following consideration when working with Smart View.

  • A connection created in one language cannot be used if Smart View is changed to a different language.
    Workaround: Create multiple private connections using the Add Connection Wizard. Before creating each connection, change the Smart View language display (in the Options dialog box, Advanced tab, Language drop-down list).
    .
  • When downloading a new Smart View extension from Microsoft Internet Explorer, the filename extension defaults to .ZIP instead of .SVEXT. This prevents you from being able to double-click to install the extension.
    Workaround: When Internet Explorer prompts you to save the file, choose “Save As”, change the Type to “All Files”, and then change the extension from .ZIP to .SVEXT. Then, double-click the downloaded file to install the extension.

  • When any of the allowable special characters are used in a report package name (such as commas, semicolons, or ampersands), there may be a discrepancy between how the name displays in the library tree and how it displays in the Report Center panel.

  • If you have open or close bracket characters in an Excel reference or supplemental doclet, Excel changes the brackets to parentheses when you save the file.

  • When you upload an Excel reference doclet with many named ranges, not all of the named ranges are listed as available content. Workaround: Upload the doclet and then go to the web and add the embedded contents within the doclet inspect dialog.

  • Using Firefox ESR 52.4.2 with Smart View:

    Future releases of Mozilla Firefox will be phasing out support for XUL-based add-ons such as Smart View. Starting in mid-November 2017, only add-ons and extensions built with new web extension technology will work in Firefox. Therefore, Smart View 11.1.2.5.710 only supports Firefox versions up to ESR 52.4.1. If you want to continue using Firefox with Smart View 11.1.2.5.710, do not upgrade your Firefox browser.
    If your Firefox browser is set to automatically install updates, Oracle recommends changing the setting to “Check for updates, but let me choose whether to install them.” Check the Firefox help for instructions on changing this setting.

Be aware of the following considerations when working with Smart View for ad hoc analysis.

  • When users sign in to the service for the first time, they will be prompted to change the password. Oracle recommends that users sign in first to the web to change their password before connecting through Smart View.

  • An error occurs if an Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud Service ad hoc grid created with Smart View release 11.1.2.5.600 is opened with Smart View release 11.1.2.5.520.

Disclosure Management

Be aware of the following consideration when working with Disclosure Management.

  • Bidirectional language functionality is not supported in Disclosure Management for this release.

  • When publishing a taxonomy in Taxonomy Designer, you must enter the full path for the ZIP file when specifying the location to publish to. An error is displayed if you specify the ZIP file name only without the path.

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