Revision History

This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates are logged below, with the most recent updates at the top.

Date	What's Changed	Notes
24 JUN 2016		Initial Document Creation

Oracle CPQ Cloud

Oracle Configure, Price, and Quote (CPQ) Cloud enables companies to streamline the entire opportunity-to-quote-to-order process, including product selection, configuration, pricing, quoting, ordering, and approval workflows. CPQ Cloud provides a flexible, scalable, enterprise-ready CPQ solution ideal for companies of all sizes that sell products and services across direct, indirect, and e-commerce sales channels.

Enterprise Excellence

Oracle is continually upgrading the functionality of CPQ Cloud to improve the success of companies by creating value and driving results. New features that reinforce enterprise excellence include:

• Subscription Ordering
• Bill of Materials (BOM) Mapping
• Contract Negotiation
• Secure Data Table Columns

Subscription Ordering

Subscription Ordering, sometimes referred to as Asset Based Ordering (ABO), is used by companies to sell subscriptions for services that are delivered over a period of time with recurring billing. CPQ Cloud 2016 R1 supports Subscription Ordering by recording ordered lines as assets. CPQ Cloud 2016 R1 also provides users with robust subscription management tools that facilitate the review, modification, and renewal of subscription products.

The following are additional Subscription Ordering features available in CPQ Cloud 2016 R1:

• View all instances of purchased assets and filter the assets based on any of the displayed columns including Product, Status, and Service End Date.
• Automatically create or update an asset as of a specific date when an order is fulfilled.
• Modify or terminate service contracts using the Subscription Ordering interface.
• Compare an original asset transaction with an updated asset transaction and reconfigure a service contract to reflect changes, such as changes in the price of the service contract.
• Integrate with an external asset repository such as the Oracle Communications asset repository or the Salesforce asset repository.

Bill of Materials (BOM) Mapping

The new BOM mapping feature allows administrators to import multi-level BOM structures directly into CPQ Cloud data tables, which significantly reduces the amount of time it takes to set up and maintain integration. This feature provides a data driven solution to convert configuration attribute choices into a hierarchical component structure on the transaction. New BOM UIs provide administrators with the ability to easily map and validate complex BOM structures. Included in the BOM mapping feature is the ability to do the following:

• Store bill of materials information imported from ERP systems to allow for effective dates, default quantities, sales/manufacturing BOM differentiation, and parent-child relationships.
• Store related ERP attribute mappings to be used in CPQ.
• Automatic BOM instantiation for Commerce transactions after administrators map CPQ Models/Attributes to ERP BOM Items.
• Map translations for any BOM attributes defined.

Contract Negotiation

CPQ Cloud 2016 R1 supports the negotiation of a contract with a customer using the following Contract Negotiation features.

• Use a single-language Document Designer template as a contract.
• Leverage Microsoft Word to track and approve document changes and prevent users from editing protected sections of a document.
• Generate a list of differences between document versions using a REST API.
• Add, edit, or delete the differences between document versions and merge approved changes into a new document version using a REST API.

NOTE: To facilitate the use of the above Contract Negotiation features, a sample Migration Package is available with the 2016 R1 release.

Secure Data Table Columns

Oracle is continually upgrading the security functionality available in CPQ Cloud to meet the needs of customers who must conform to a variety of security paradigms. In CPQ Cloud 2016 R1, Oracle is introducing a Secure data type option for new columns in both new and existing tables. Secure columns always store the encrypted form of data in the database. The only way to access this data in its original, decrypted form is through BML.

Easy Administration

Administrators are the main force behind keeping a CPQ Cloud site up-to-date. A simple and intuitive administrative experience makes it easy for customers to keep the application up-to-date with a variety of changing requirements.

Designed to make administration even easier, the CPQ Cloud 2016 R1 release includes new functionality in the following areas:

• Single Select Pick Lists in Configuration
• UI Designer
• BML Enhancements
• Document Designer Enhancements

Single Select Pick Lists in Configuration

As part of continuous improvements to Single Select Pick Lists, the following new features are available in CPQ Cloud 2016 R1.

• Apply hiding rules to a Single Select Pick List.
• Display a Single Select Pick List as an image grid.
• Use either a configuration array set or a data table (available in 2015 R2) as the source data to populate a Single Select Pick List.
• Find references made from a Single Select Pick List using the Related Rules tab associated with an attribute.

NOTE: The Single Select Pick List filter now supports 4000 characters. In prior releases, the filter supported 128 characters.

UI Designer

UI Designer is a new drag−and−drop editor that provides administrators with a simple and intuitive way to create and edit Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) pages within CPQ Cloud. Oracle ADF is an end-to-end framework that simplifies application development by providing out-of-the-box infrastructure services and a faster and simpler development experience.

CPQ’s adoption of ADF is part of a larger Oracle effort to provide a seamless user experience across all Customer Experience (CX) applications. In CPQ Cloud 2016 R1, UI Designer is providing the groundwork for establishing a common user interface among CPQ Cloud end−user and administration pages.

The following are some of the UI Designer features available in CPQ Cloud 2016 R1:

• Use drag−and−drop features to edit the Customer Assets List and the Performance Logs List, which are pre-generated layouts available in UI Designer.
• Make customizations to the Performance Log table and the Customer Assets List table. The types of customizations include enabling the Freeze Column feature, adding row numbering, changing the default column widths, and customizing column and button labels.

BML Enhancements

CPQ Cloud’s markup language, BML, allows administrators to create new JSON data types (e.g. JSON, JSON array, and JSON null) and generate, modify, parse, extract, and query JSON data using BML JSON and JSON array manipulation functions. Support of JSON Path expressions in JSON manipulation functions allow advanced users to easily retrieve or modify a node or value in JSON data. In addition to the availability of several new functions, administrators can use the same server authentication to make calls to the same server without repeated authorization using RESTful web services. Using a BML Print Log, administrators can log the output of all BML print statements for easier debugging. Available in CPQ Cloud 2016 R1, these BML enhancements support Subscription Ordering.

Document Designer Enhancements

Document Designer was introduced in 2015 R1 as a drag-and drop tool for creating and administering document templates. As part of continuing improvements to Document Designer, the following new enhancements are available in CPQ Cloud 2016 R1.

• Performance improvements for load and save operations.
• Expand and collapse Document Designer layout objects (e.g. section, header, footer, and Table of Contents) in a Document Designer template in a single click.
• Specify an image to display as the background image in a DOCX output file.
• Use the conditional background image feature to put a dynamic background image on a document and show, hide, or change the background image based on defined criteria.
• Split a single Document Designer section into two or more continuous sections without a page break between each section.
• Leverage track changes in DOCX output files and use Microsoft Word content controls to prevent users from editing protected sections of a document.
• Integrate with DocuSign to place an eSignature tag in the section, table, header, or footer of a Document Designer template.
• Use formatting enhancements to left−align, right−align, or center tables, set header and footer margins, and drag−and−drop one or more column breaks into a section to start the content in the next column.

Integration

Leverage the power of CPQ Cloud by integrating with other software applications. CPQ Cloud administrators can use these point-to-point integration solutions as defined out-of-the-box or enhance the provided integration patterns to meet their distinct information technology landscapes and requirements.

New integration features available in CPQ Cloud 2016 R1 include:

• Salesforce1 Integration
• Process Cloud Service (PCS) Integration
• Rest APIs
• Platform as a Service (PaaS) Integration Sample Applications

Salesforce1 Integration

The Salesforce1 mobile offering from Salesforce was delivered with new mobile standards that are supported by CPQ Cloud 2016 R1. Using the latest Salesforce Commerce Integration Managed Package, administrators can integrate the CPQ Cloud mobile UI with the Salesforce1 mobile UI. This integration supports all of the existing capabilities of the desktop integration between CPQ Cloud and Salesforce but on a mobile device. The Salesforce1 integration changes are included in the Salesforce Reference Application, which contains updated cascading stylesheets (CSS) to make the CPQ mobile experience more aligned with the Salesforce1 interface.

Process Cloud Service (PCS) Integration

CPQ Cloud has approvals as part of its application. However, customers may want to use remote approval systems to consolidate all of their approvals in a central location. This could be using approvals from Oracle’s PCS, or other remote approval systems. These remote applications provide a common configuration and common attributes to manage approvals for an entire suite of applications, eliminating migration of approval data from one system into another. When a customer chooses remote approvals, approval requests are sent to external approval systems for processing. After approval completion, the associated approve/reject action is performed on the remote approval system and the approval history and status are updated on the CPQ quote via CPQ REST Service.

Rest APIs

In 2016 R1, CPQ delivers REST services to enable new functionality for Contract Negotiations and Subscription Ordering. REST APIs are introduced to compare two Contract DOCX documents and return a list of modified clauses, then merge approved changes into a Contract DOCX document. For Subscription Ordering, REST APIs are used to list, query, create, update, delete, synchronize, import, and export assets.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) Integration Sample Applications

PaaS, specifically PaaS-Software as a Service (SaaS) Extension, allows customers to deploy their in-house web services and applications in a managed hosting environment to integrate with and extend the features offered by SaaS Solutions. CPQ Cloud is delivering sample applications to exhibit design patterns that can solve some common use cases for integration between CPQ Cloud and PaaS-SaaS Extension. The following samples serve as models for administrators to develop web service applications and will be available on the Oracle Cloud Developer Portal.

• Excel to CSV Converter Sample Application: Allows users to upload Excel files containing a formatted list of SKUs and quantities to populate the CPQ Cloud transaction.
• Line Item Statistics Sample Application: Displays analytic information for a quote on a UI that is embedded on the CPQ Cloud Commerce screen. Analytic information may include average net total revenue across all quotes for this customer and list of open quotes for this customer.