The August updates for Oracle's Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud Service (FCCS) are here! This blog post outlines new features, including enhancements made to Close Manager, create journals for entities with different parents, and more.
The monthly update for FCCS will occur on Friday, August 17 during your normal daily maintenance window.
New FCCS Features
Incremental Export and Import Behavior Change
In the initial 18.07 update, Oracle changed the behavior of incremental export and import operations to prevent the selection of Essbase Data and a few other artifacts. Due to customer demand, Oracle reverted this change in a later 18.07 patch, which was applied to your test and production environments. The reverted behavior allows you to select all artifacts, including Essbase Data artifacts, during incremental exports and imports.
Due to this change, these artifacts can now be selected for incremental exports. These can also be imported from snapshots:
- All artifacts in the Essbase Data folder located in Planning\Essbase Data
- Text Values in Planning\Relational Data\Text Values
- Supporting Detail in Planning\Relational Data\Supporting Detail
- Cell Texts in Planning\Relational Data\Cell Texts
- Account Annotations in Planning\Relational Data\Account Annotations
- Attachment References in Planning\Relational Data\Attachment References
- Journals in Planning\Relational Data\Journals
Ability to Create Journals for Entities with Different Parents
You can now create and post journal entries for entities that have different parents.
Enabling Auto-Creation of Blocks for Configurable Calculations
When you create configurable calculations, you can enable the Auto Create Blocks option to have the system automatically create missing blocks. This can resolve issues with missing data when you run configurable calculations.
Support for Journal Import and Export Tasks in Jobs
Journal import and export tasks are now available in the Jobs console. The tasks include Journal Import, Journal Export, Journal Template Import and Journal Template Export. You can select to run these jobs immediately or schedule them for a later date. Job status and logs are available from the Jobs console.
Enhancements to Close Manager and Supplemental Data User Interface
This update includes enhancements to the Close Manager and Supplemental Data user interface. Close Manager and Supplemental Data functions that you previously accessed from the Navigator have moved to the Home page under the Applications card.
From the Applications card, after you select Close Manager or Supplemental Data, you then use tabs on the left side of the main page to access functions such as Templates, Task Types, and Schedules in Close Manager, or Data Sets and Forms and so on in Supplemental Data.
Close Manager - List and Gantt Views
The Task List Hierarchy and Gantt Chart views that you previously accessed from the Navigator have moved to the main Close Manager interface. They are available as View types in the drop-down on the right side of the Close Tasks page.
Close Manager Expanded Search Functionality
Search functionality has been expanded for fields on the Worklist. Using the Search field, you can now search on all fields except Date.
Close Manager Drag and Drop Attachments
In Close Manager, you can now add one or more attachments to tasks by using drag and drop functionality from the Add Attachments dialog box.
Close Manager Custom Currency Codes
The ability to create or edit Close Manager-specific currency codes is no longer supported effective with this update. If your application contains a Close Manager-specific currency code, it will remain in the application but will no longer be editable.
Supplemental Data - Power (Exponential) Calculation Added
In Supplemental Data and Close Manager, a new scripted calculation allows you to use POWER(x,y) to raise one number to the exponential power of another. The usage is: POWER(x,y), where x=BASE NUMBER, and y=EXPONENT. x and y can be attributes or calculations, as long as they are numeric.
Supplemental Data - Close Date in Supplemental Data Calculation
In Supplemental Data Manager, Close Date is now available as a selectable attribute for Calculation in Data Sets. It is available from the “Add Attribute” drop-down list on the Calculation tab of Data Set Attributes, and can be used in calculations.
Referential Integrity for Account Types Posted in Journals
To prevent a referential integrity problem with journals from occurring in an application, the system now prevents users from changing the Account Type of an account member that is used in a Posted journal. If you need to change the Account Type of a member used in a Posted journal, you must first unpost the journal.
New Server Setting in Financial Reporting Web Studio
Run Batch With Signed On User Credentials, a new server setting, is available in Financial Reporting Web Studio. When this setting is set to true, there is no prompt for a username and password in the Batch Scheduler; instead, the batch is run with the credentials of the user who is currently signed in.
To set this property, open Financial Reporting Web Studio and select File, and then Mange, and then Server.
NOTE: You must restart the environment to enable the new setting. You can restart an environment using the resetservice EPM Automate command or by modifying the maintenance start time. If you do not restart the environment, the setting will take effect after the next scheduled daily maintenance of the environment.
Financial Reporting Studio Desktop Client
Starting with this monthly update, Oracle will stop distributing the Financial Reporting Desktop Studio installer. The command line utilities associated with Financial Reporting Desktop Studio will also be discontinued starting with the 18.08 update.
NOTE: Existing installations of the Financial Reporting Desktop Studio and command line utilities will no longer work with Financial Reporting starting with the 18.09 update.
New Infolets Designer Properties Panel
A new properties panel on the right side of the Infolets Designer enables you to view and work with various properties of infolets, such as the title, subtitle, chart type, size, and so on. The properties panel displays the properties of the infolet (and its displayed view) which is highlighted by the blue border.
To view the properties panel in the Infolets Designer, from the Home page, click Infolets, and then either create an infolet or edit an existing infolet.
Folder Support for Dashboards and Infolets
The listing pages for dashboards and infolets now support folders. Folders enable you to assign permissions to all artifacts within a folder rather than assigning permissions to each individual artifact. The listing pages for dashboards and infolets will look and behave the same as the listing page for data (forms). All three artifact listing pages (forms, dashboards, and infolets) use the same folder hierarchy and all artifacts and folders reside under a root folder called Library...
- To create a folder, click the Navigator, and then click Forms.
- To assign permissions to a folder in the artifact listing, click the Actions menu associated with the folder.
- To move an existing artifact into another folder, click the Actions menu associated with the artifact, click Move To, and then select the folder to which you want to move the artifact. Search and Filter will also work for dashboards and infolets in the same way as they do for forms.
Search and Filter will also work for dashboards and infolets in the same way as they do for forms.
New Documentation on Optimizing Business Rules
Information on leveraging available EPM Cloud tools to diagnose and address performance issues with business rules is now available in the new "Optimizing Business Rules" section of Designing with Calculation Manager for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud.
Updated Vision Sample Application
An updated version of the Vision sample application is available starting with this update. The updated sample application contains features that were added in recent updates.
INFOLETS
The sample application now supports Infolets, which provide the dashboard capability to enable data visualization. As a Service Administrator, you can create infolets for any cube to provide enhanced graphical data presentation to users using charts and texts.
ABILITY TO ENTER DATA INTO SUPPRESSED ROWS
The updated sample application allows Service Administrators to enable users to enter data in a web form for members on rows that are currently suppressed (because they have no data and the form layout option “Suppress Missing Data – Rows” option is selected).
NAVIGATION FLOWS
Service Administrators can set up connections that enable users to navigate across Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud environments to create unified business process flows across multiple environments. Cross-environment navigation flows allow users of multiple EPM Cloud environments to sign into one environment, and then seamlessly navigate to others without going through additional authentication processes. Service Administrators can create mashups of artifacts from various environments into a single unified business process flow for their users. Clusters, cards, and tabs can be brought together into a single flow. These cards and tabs can contain forms, reports, and dashboards from various applications. Users will not see the clusters, cards and tabs in the process flow unless they are members of the groups to which these flows are assigned.
SMART FORMS
Three Smart Forms: one containing Excel formulas, one containing Excel functions, and one created in Smart View, are included.
REORGANIZED CLUSTERS AND CARDS THAT MATCH THE NEWEST EPM CLOUD INTERFACE
Clusters and cards in the sample application now match the current EPM Cloud interface.
Upcoming Changes
Ability to Create Composite Forms
To allow customers more time to adapt and move from composite forms to dashboards, Oracle will defer removing the ability to create new composite forms (forms that comprise multiple simple forms) to a future release update (January 2019 - 19.01). Oracle had previously announced that this feature will be removed in the June (18.06) update.
All customers are advised to use dashboards in place of composite forms. There will be no more enhancements to the composite forms functionality.
Close Manager Calendar View
For users of Close Manager within FCCS, the Calendar view will not be supported effective with this August, 2018 (18.08) update.
Classic Dimension Editor
To allow customers more time to familiarize themselves with the Simplified Dimension Editor, Oracle will defer the removing support for Classic Dimension Editor to a future update. The current plan is to remove access to the Classic Dimension Editor starting with the 18.10 (October 2018) update to the service.
Considerations
Migration
In 18.08, Lifecycle Management (LCM) migration to 18.07 will not be supported for Close Manager schedules, templates, tasks and task types. You also cannot restore an 18.08 update backup for Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud into 18.07 systems. The Journal artifacts in 18.08 are not compatible with 18.07. This covers the two week window when Test systems are upgraded to 18.08 and production is still on 18.07.
Only for Smart View for Office with Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus
A known issue with Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus patch 16.0.10228.20051 updated through the insider slow channel prevents the use of Smart View for Office with Microsoft Office 365. This Microsoft patch was pushed to users who signed up for monthly channel updates between June 12 and June 14, 2018.
Workaround: Do not update Microsoft Office 365 with patch 16.0.10228.20051 if you are using Smart View for Office with Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus. Instead, use Microsoft Office 365 monthly channel Version 1806 (Build 10228.20080), which contains the fix for this issue.
Financial Reporting User Preferences
All existing customers will be migrated to the new Financial Reporting Repository (implemented in the 18.05 update for new customers). The process does not migrate Financial Reporting user preferences.
Workaround: Each end user must manually set Financial Reporting user preferences when using the Repository for the first time.
Simplified Dimension Editor and Metadata Validation
Some of the Simplified Dimension Editor errors (cells outlined in red) are false-positive errors (i.e. incorrectly reported as errors).
Data Storage errors for the following members should be ignored:
- Data Source -> All children of "FCCS_Source Entities"
- Entity -> "FCCS_Global Assumptions"
In addition:
- The Metadata Validator incorrectly shows validation errors for shared level 0 Scenario dimension members.
- The Metadata Validator incorrectly shows validation errors for parent members of the Scenario dimension.
- The Metadata Validator warning message for the Data Source dimension’s system members incorrectly refers to “Never Shared” instead of “Never Share”.
Importing Tab-delimited Journals
If you create a Journal Job that imports a tab-delimited journal from the server (Inbox), the job fails and journals are not imported. Importing tab-delimited journals works correctly as a Local import.
Consolidation Operator for Children of Dimension Name Members
Seeded dimension members must have the Consolidation Operator set as Ignore. None of the POV members should be set to Dimension member. Rather, always use Top Member to view aggregated values.
Consolidation Rules - Errors in Seeded System Rules
The seeded consolidation rules do not properly cater for disposals of investments in all cases, notably full disposals after acquisitions over several periods.
Calculation Status
When you change Ownership Data that uses a Consolidation rule and then consolidate, the Calculation Status is not correct for the partner and entity.
Metadata Aliases
Ensure that no alias entries are “Equity”. The use of “Equity” as an alias will cause issues with refreshing the database.
Reconsolidating Data After Upgrading
After you upgrade to 18.01, the first time you want to re-consolidate and re-translate any entity for a specific Scenario, Year and Period combination, you must run the Compute Rates task rule. Refresh the database and make sure that that Data Status is SC, showing that the cells are impacted. Then launch Consolidation and Translation. Subsequent re-consolidation / re-translation of the same Scenario, Year and Period combination does not require this step.
The Data Storage property has changed from Dynamic Calc to Never Share for these rate accounts in the Rates Cube:
- FX Rates – Average
- FX Rates – Ending
Additionally, due to a change in calculation for Opening Balance for Retained Earnings Prior, you may require reconsolidation of existing data if Opening Balance Adjustment entries have been made, but not otherwise. Also, enabling the Ownership Management feature requires a reconsolidation of existing data in order to populate the Proportion member of amount in the Consolidation dimension.
Ownership Management Enablement
Enabling the Ownership Management feature entails adding seeded accounts, which causes a restructuring of your application. Depending on the size of your application, the restructuring could take a considerable length of time. This can be expected to take as long as manually refreshing the database after adding accounts.
If there are conflicts with aliases of existing members, an error is displayed that the system cannot enable the feature.
Resolve the member alias conflict, refresh the database and then enable the feature. When the Ownership Management feature is enabled, you will need to reconsolidate all existing data in your application in order to re-populate the Proportion member in the Consolidation dimension.
If you enable the Ownership Management feature, you may not be able to open some existing Financial Reporting reports due to metadata changes for Ownership Management.
Copying Data
When copying an entity with a Calculation Status of No Data, the target should also have a Calculation Status of No Data. The Copy Data process is incorrectly setting the Calculation Status to Impacted.
Self Service Upgrade
It is strongly recommended that you do not use the Upgrade Application Content settings in this update. Although a new Upgrade screen is available in Daily Maintenance, this feature is not fully functional.
Editing Dates in a Data Collection Period
In a Data Collection Period in Supplemental Data, editing Start, End, and Close Dates may result in an error that the date is outside the valid range.
Entity Member Names/Aliases with ICP Property
When you create an Entity with the ICP property enabled, the maximum length of the member name is 76 characters instead of 80, to allow for the ICP prefix.
Working with Metadata
When you use ad hoc grids in Smart View with Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud, do not add a root Period member on the grid. Make sure the root Period member is removed by either clicking or selecting periods that are in the application and selecting Keep Only. If a Period member is left on the grid, then any changes to data that you make will fail to properly set the impact status of the Entities.
Smart View Summary Dialog Display
In Internet Explorer, you may experience issues using the Open Summary dialog in Smart View. To work around this issue:
- Use the keyboard arrow keys to make your selection, then close and reopen the dialog; or
- Minimize and then reopen the dialog; or
- Use a different browser.
