The July updates for Financial Consolidation and Close in the Oracle EPM Cloud are here. This is the first set up updates since Oracle changed the structure of the EPM Cloud and pricing plans. In this set up updates, you can look forward to tracing users in Task Management Workflows, exporting expanded reports to Excel, and much more.
The monthly update for FCCS will occur on Friday, July 19 during your normal daily maintenance window.
Financial Consolidation and Close Updates
New Version of EPM Automate
A new version of EPM Automate is available with this update. These new commands are now available:
exportAppSecurity and exportAppAudit
- exportAppAudit Command
This command exports data audit records into a ZIP file, which you can download for local storage. - exportAppSecurity Command
This command exports the date related to artifact-level access assignments (ACLs) to a ZIP file, which
you can download for local storage.
Changes to Provisioning Terminology
With a view to standardizing the terminology around assigning roles to users at the identity domain,
application, and artifact levels, EPM Cloud has changed such labels in the user interface to "Assign". Because of this change, the labels of Provision Roles tab and Provisioning Reports tab in Access Control have been renamed to Assign Roles and Role Assignment Report respectively. Similar changes have been made to the access control screens displayed in business processes and EPM Connections.
Removal of Support for Transport Layer Security Protocol 1.0 and 1.1
As announced in previous readiness documents, Oracle supports only Transport Layer Security protocol
version 1.2 (TLS 1.2) to communicate with EPM Cloud. To ensure the highest level of authentication and data
encryption security, support for TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 have been removed.
Because most modern operating systems and browsers support TLS 1.2; users of such systems and browsers are not affected by the deprecation of TLS 1.0 and 1.1.
You cannot use client operating systems that do not support TLS 1.2 (for example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Microsoft Windows 2002) to run operating system-specific commands (for example, code to run cURL tools to transfer data and custom code that integrates with the REST APIs) against EPM Cloud. Additionally, Smart View and EPM Automate installed on such systems will also fail to communicate with EPM Cloud. Similarly, you cannot use browsers that do not support TLS 1.2 protocol to access EPM Cloud environments.
Ability to Export Metadata Validation Results
When you validate metadata, you can now export all error messages to a CSV file. The members are
displayed in [Parent].[Child] format.
Export Expanded Reports to Excel
Now you can include expanded rows and columns when you export a Financial Report to Microsoft Excel.
- From the Home page, click Reports, and then click the report you want to see.
- Select an export option for the report, and expand your choice of rows and columns.
- Click the Export to Excel toggle on the top left of the page.
Using Calculation Manager in Standard Mode
Oracle has introduced two new Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud services: Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Standard Cloud Service and Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Enterprise Cloud Service.
Changes introduced with the new services mainly affect new customers only; current customers will continue using their existing, familiar EPM Cloud environments. Users will notice some changes to certain naming and terminology used in documentation, videos and other collateral as we adopt the new Cloud Services (Standard and Enterprise).
These changes impact the following Calculation options:
- If you are using Standard mode, you cannot launch Calculation Manager from the Advanced
Consolidation card. - If you are using Enterprise mode, Calculation Manager will launch from Advanced Consolidation.
Configuring Consolidations Rule-set Source Dataset
For Configurable Consolidations, when you create a rule-set and select the Source Dataset for the
Elimination data, you can now select a different Scenario, Year, Period, Consolidation and Currency member than that currently being processed. The destination to which processed data is written will not change and will remain as the Scenario, Year, and Period currently being processed.
Viewing and Filtering Jobs
When you view the list of Task Manager Jobs, you can now use the POV bar to filter the list and find a specific job. You can filter by Job Name, Status, Created by (or Modified By), Start Date and End Date.
Use REST API to Generate Reports
Using REST API, you can generate either a single predefined Financial Consolidation and Close or Tax
Reporting report, or generate a custom report.
STEPS TO ENABLE
Only Service Administrators can run REST APIs against EPM Cloud environments.
Email Generated Reports Using REST API
You can now email generated Task Manager and Supplemental Data Manager reports using REST API.
Support for Comma Separated Value (CSV) Format for Reports
You can now generate a report in Comma Separated Value (CSV) format. This is available for predefined or
custom reports.
Tracing Users in Task Manager Workflows
In Task Manager workflows, a new attribute is available for each workflow stage showing the actual user for
the completed workflow, for example Assignee (Actual). In the workflow, the Actual column will show who did work on the task, regardless of the user status.
Add or Remove Users When Working with Teams Using REST API
You can now add or remove a batch of users when working with teams using REST API.
New EPM Cloud Features Tool
Oracle has released an EPM Cloud Features tool. Use this tool to quickly find features released each month
for your EPM Cloud business process. Click a link to learn more about each feature in the What’s New
document and the EPM Cloud user assistance.
New Domain Option in Smart View (Mac and Browser) Manifest File
There is a new option to add a Domain URL in Smart View (Browser and MAC) when creating the manifest file. Smart View will extract the domain from the Server URL and will add it to the App Domains list as the default. Smart View also supports adding multiple domains.
Upcoming Changes
Classic Dimension editor
With a view to allowing customers more time to familiarize themselves with the Simplified Dimension Editor,
Oracle has decided to defer the removal of support for Classic Dimension Editor to a future update in 2019.
Oracle will notify you at least two months prior to the removal of the feature.
EPM Cloud's New Look & Feel
In a future update, there will be a revised interface with enhanced navigation and a new theme called Sky Blue.
The following services will adopt this new theme as their default interface:
- Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud
- Oracle Enterprise Planning and Budgeting Cloud
- Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud
- Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud
- Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud
- Oracle Account Reconciliation Cloud
- Oracle Strategic Workforce Planning Cloud
- Oracle Sales Planning Cloud
The revised interface retains existing functionality and enhances your Home page experience with a more responsive design. The Welcome panel and the global header readjust after resizing, which means less scrolling. Clearer announcements and notification areas are added to the Welcome panel, as are arrows to help you navigate easily between the Home page and your infolets. A bigger Navigator menu has improved usability, more themes for customization are included, and a bigger work area has more space to maneuver and provide better visibility. The interface is more consistent with other Oracle products, such as Fusion Applications.
After the interface is released, all new customers will use the new lighter-colored Sky Blue theme, and existing customers will keep their current theme. You can switch themes using Tools, and then Appearance.
Removal of Instance Name from Predefined Role Names
Currently, the predefined role names displayed in the Access Control screens of EPM Cloud environments
prefix the instance name to the role name in INSTANCE_NAME ROLE_NAME format. They are also stored in this format in the snapshots, making it difficult to migrate snapshots from one instance to another.
To facilitate the migration of security across EPM Cloud environments, Oracle plans to rename predefined role names displayed within EPM Cloud applications by removing the instance name prefix in the August update. For example, if the instance name is Planning1, predefined role names are Planning1 Service Administrator, Planning1 Power User, Planning1 User and Planning1 Viewer. The new role names will be Service Administrator, Power User, User, and Viewer.
NOTE: This change does not affect how the role names are displayed in the MyServices customer portal.
This change will affect customers who use the predefined roles for managing application-level provisioning and access to artifacts; you will need to reassign such assignments using the updated role name after the roles are renamed. This change makes it easy to migrate EPM Cloud artifacts across environments.
Additionally, all predefined role names; Domain Administrator, Service Administrator, Power User,User, and Viewer will be treated as EPM Cloud keywords, which should not be used in the name of any custom artifacts that you create; for example, group name in Access Control. If you have any group with these keywords, rename them before this change comes into effect.
Considerations
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.
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.
Editing Data 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.
Adding Shared Members in Smart View
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.
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.
Horizontal Scroll on a Non-tabular Form
In Supplemental Data forms, the horizontal scroll does not work on a non-tabular form, which is intended only for use on a single record. Do not use non-tabular layout if the form is meant for more than one record.
Unable to Refresh the Cube
A Cube refresh will not complete if a level 0 currency dimension member has the "Label only" data storage property, but this is not currently detected in the Dimension Editor or Metadata Validator.
Viewing Members on Seeded Forms
If you are using an Extended Dimensionality environment, on seeded forms, use the View members, such as Periodic, QTD and YTD, instead of using functions to ensure the _RULE members are not accidentally added to the forms.
Viewing the FCCS_View_System_Members
If you are using an Extended Dimensionality environment, users other than the Administrator can view the FCCS_VIEW_SYSTEM_MEMBERS and its hierarchy in the data form and Intercompany reports.
Translation Override Rule Redirection
When you create a Translation Override rule, redirection does not work properly when you use a shared Parent account for the Source. The workaround is to specify the primary Parent account.
Simplified Dimension Editor and Metadata Validation
Some of the Simplified Dimension Editor errors (cells outlined in red) are false-positive errors (that is, 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"
If you are using an Extended Dimensionality upgraded environment, the Simplified Dimension Editor does not show Dynamic Calc as an allowed value for Custom dimension parent member Data Storage. This issue does not occur in a newly-installed Extended Dimensionality environment. You can use the Classic Dimension Editor, Import Metadata, or Smart View to change the Data Storage value.
In addition, the Metadata Validator incorrectly shows validation errors for the following:
- Shared level 0 Scenario dimension members
- Parent members of the Scenario dimension
Entity Member Name/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.
Setting the Data Collection Period
In Supplemental Data, when setting the Data Collection Period (DCP), the Start, End, and Close dates must be inside the valid range.
Errors When Importing Accounts
Sometimes when importing an account, error messages may be generated because there are several accounts that reference an intercompany account in the Plug Account column but that account has yet to be encountered in the account file.
Try to reimport the account.
Working with Metadata
You should not make metadata changes that result in the following:
- Changing a base member to which a journal has been posted into a parent member If there are journals or Supplemental Data posted to those members, these changes can cause problems when accessing Journals or importing existing journals.
- 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 Remove Only 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.
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.
Smart View Summary Dialog Display
In Internet Explorer, you may experience issues using the Open Summary dialog in Smart View. Workaround:
- 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
Extended Dimensionality Performance Consideration
For an Extended Dimensionality application with Ratios enabled, consolidation performance may be slower. When you create an Extended Dimensionality application, you should not enable the “Include Ratio Calculations” feature.
Equity Pickup - Different Currencies for a Holding Company and its Immediate Parent
In Ownership Management it is generally assumed that the Holding Company and the immediate parent (which represents the consolidated results of the Holding Company) have the same local currency. You may encounter an issue with the EPU calculations if the Holding Company does not have the same currency as its immediate parent.
