April 2020 Update

Revision History

This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates appear in the following table:

Date	Feature	Notes
26 MAR 2020		Created initial document.

Overview

This document outlines the upcoming Enterprise Performance Management Cloud update.

Feature Summary

Enterprise Performance Management Cloud

Monthly Update Schedule

Oracle will apply the latest monthly updates to your Test environments during the first daily maintenance that occurs at or after 22:00 UTC (15:00 Pacific time) on Friday, April 3, 2020. Oracle will apply the latest monthly updates to your Production environments during the first daily maintenance that occurs at or after 22:00 UTC (15:00 Pacific time) on Friday, April 17, 2020.

The Oracle Help Center provides access to updated documentation. The updates will be available in the Help Center on Friday, April 3, 2020. Some of the links to new feature documentation included in this readiness document will not work until after the Oracle Help Center update is complete.

NOTE: Backing up the daily maintenance snapshot and restoring the environment as needed are self-service operations. Oracle recommends that you download the maintenance snapshot every day to a local server.

Please Join Oracle Cloud Customer Connect

Please take a moment to join the Cloud Customer Connect forums for EPM Cloud services. Oracle Cloud Customer Connect is a community gathering place for members to interact and collaborate on common goals and objectives. This is where you will find the latest release information, upcoming events, or answers to use-case questions. Joining takes just a few minutes. Join now!

https://cloud.oracle.com/community

NOTE: The Settings and Actions menu now contains a link to Cloud Customer Connect. To access this link, from the Home page, click the down arrow next to the user name (in the upper right-hand corner of the screen), and select Cloud Customer Connect.

Give Us Documentation Feedback

We welcome your comments and suggestions to improve the content of the What's New document and the product documentation. Please send us your feedback at EPMdoc_ww@oracle.com. In the body or title of the email, state that you are inquiring or providing feedback, and indicate for which EPM Cloud service and the monthly update cycle.

Follow Us on Social Media

For the latest updates and information about EPM Cloud, follow us on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn at Hyperion EPM Info.

Defects Fixed and Considerations

Software issues addressed each month and considerations will be posted to My Oracle Support.

EPM Cloud Common

This section contains announcements related to the common EPM Cloud components such as EPM Automate, Migration, Access Control, Data Integration, and Smart View for Office.

New EPM Cloud Interface

Available in this update, there is an enhanced interface with improved navigation and new themes including the default Sky Blue.

EPM Cloud New Look and Feel Video

The following EPM Cloud business processes will adopt the new themes and enhanced interface:

• Planning
• Financial Consolidation and Close
• Tax Reporting
• Profitability and Cost Management
• Account Reconciliation
• Strategic Workforce Planning
• Sales Planning
• Narrative Reporting

NOTE: The new theme will be adopted by Enterprise Data Management in the May 2020 update.

The enhanced interface retains existing functionality and enhances your experience with a more modern look and feel and responsive design. The Welcome Panel and the Global Header readjust after resizing, which means less scrolling. An updated Welcome Panel features Announcements and Notifications. Arrows are available on the Home Page to help you navigate easily between the Home Page and infolet dashboard pages. 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 also more consistent with other Oracle products, such as Fusion Applications.

After this release, 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 the Appearance card in the Tools cluster. After switching to the new look and feel, customers using a custom background image might need to ensure that the color contrast for icons and labels is appropriate. To remedy, consider choosing a different theme or a suitable background.

Watch this Cloud Customer Connect Webcast replay session to hear more highlights of important upcoming enhancements to EPM Cloud, including an updated user experience and other platform updates that are coming soon.

NOTE: If you are using automation software to run regression tests on EPM Cloud, you may need to reassess, reconfigure, and retest your software’s test flows.

Key Resources

• About the Home Page

New Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud Operations Guide

The new Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud Operations Guide is now available. This guide discusses common customer reported problems and the procedures to correct them. Use this guide to self-diagnose the reason why some EPM Cloud issues occur and the steps involved in correcting them. If the suggested steps do not solve the problem, this guide lists the information that you must provide while seeking help from Oracle. This guide also details what information you must provide for different requests to Oracle.

In addition to many new topics, this guide contains the troubleshooting information that was previously available in Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Administrators.

Key Resources

• Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud Operations Guide

REST API to Review Rejected Metadata After Import

While using a REST API to import metadata, you can now specify an error file that captures the metadata records that are not imported for each dimension. If an error file is specified, a separate error file is created for each dimension. The error files are then zipped together and the zip file is stored in the Outbox where you can download the file using Inbox/Outbox Explorer or tools like EPM Automate or REST APIs.

NOTE: This applies to Planning, Financial Consolidation and Close, and Tax Reporting.

Key Resources

• Import Metadata in REST API for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud

Role Information

• Service Administrators

REST API for Partial Clear

You can now use REST APIs to do a partial clear for an ASO cube. You can clear the cube, members, a valid MDX query, supporting details, comments, and attachments. You can also do a physical clear on Essbase. This gives you more flexibility and granularity when clearing the cube.

NOTE: This applies to Planning, Financial Consolidation and Close, and Tax Reporting.

Key Resources

• REST API for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud
  • Clear Cube
  • Clearing Data from Specific Regions of Aggregate Storage Databases

Role Information

• Service Administrators

Action Menus Now Support Launching a Form in Member Context

Using an action menu, you can now launch a form in the member context of the original form. Previously, EPM Cloud users could only launch forms in the dimension context of the original form.

This feature applies to these EPM Cloud business processes: Planning, Financial Consolidation and Close, and Tax Reporting.

Service administrators set up action menus in Planning, Financial Consolidation and Close, or Tax Reporting, where they define the dimension or member context and the forms that can be selected for launch.

• When the service administrator sets required members for a dimension, then this right-click menu will be available only for those members.
• When the service administrator does not set required members for a dimension, this right-click menu will be available for all members of that dimension.

Users then sign in to their EPM cloud business process, either in the web or in Smart View, and launch a form. From the form, when they right-click a dimension or member on which form launch has been defined, they can select to launch the form from the context menu.

Steps to Enable

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Key Resources

Administering Planning:

• Creating and Updating Action Menus
• Working with Action Menu Items
• Defining Action Menu Items

New Flex Forms in Smart View

Flex forms are a new form type that provide flexible row management in Smart View. Flex forms retain all regular form properties and features, such as running business rules attached to the flex form. However, using flex forms, you can rearrange row members and sort or move rows. You can also open a flex form in ad hoc mode and use ad hoc analysis to modify the grid layout and submit data. Flex forms are supported for Planning, Financial Consolidation and Close, and Tax Reporting.

NOTE: Flex forms are used only in Smart View and not in the Planning web interface.

Steps to Enable

A Service Administrator performs these steps from the EPM Cloud web interface:

1. From the Navigator, under Create and Manage, click Forms.
2. Select an existing form to edit or, in the Form and Ad Hoc Grid Management page, click the Actions drop-down menu and click Create Simple form.
3. In the form definition page,  under Smart View Options in the Layout tab, select Enable flex form.

Key Resources

• "About Flex Forms" in Smart View for Office User's Guide

Support for Microsoft Edge Browser

Starting with this update, Microsoft Edge browser version 80+ is now supported.

Account Reconciliation

ImportTmPreMappedTransactions EPM Automate Command Change in Behavior

The ImportTmPreMappedTransactions EPM Automate command, which imports transactions from a CSV file, now displays the import status and the name of the import log file. You can download the log file from your Account Reconciliation environment using the downloadFile command.

Key Resources

• EPM Automate Commands in Working with EPM Automate for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud

Financial Consolidation and Close

Ability to Use Amount or Rate Overrides in On-Demand Rules

In On-Demand rules, you can now specify “FCCS_Amount Override”, “FCCS_Rate Override” or “Entity Input” as valid Consolidation members for run-time prompts.

Key Resources

• Guidelines for On-Demand Rules in Administering Financial Consolidation and Close

Configurable Calculation Rules

If the Ownership Management feature is enabled for an application, you can write to a Proportion member in the following Configurable Calculation insertion rules.

• FCCS_50_After_Opening Balance Carry Forward_Consolidated  (for multi-currency applications)
• FCCS_60_Final Calculations_Consolidated (for multi-currency applications)
• FCCS_130_After_Opening Balance Carry Forward_Consolidated (for single currency applications)
• FCCS_140_Final Calculations_Consolidated (for single currency applications)

Key Resources

• Configurable Calculation Rules in Administering Financial Consolidation and Close

Configurable Consolidation Rule-Sets

The following features apply to Configurable Consolidation Rule-Sets:

• When you create a rule-set for Configurable Consolidations, for Source data, you can now use the results of Opening Balance Carry Forward, Proportionalization, Standard Eliminations and Opening Balance Ownership Change system rules of the current entity. To do so, select the “Contribution” Consolidation dimension member instead of the default “Entity Total”. This will then apply the consolidation rules to the post-proportionalized net data set, including the results of the system rules.

• When you create a rule-set for Configurable Consolidations, you can now select a View dimension member for the source data-set. The default View member selection is “FCCS_Periodic”, but you can change it to “FCCS_QTD”, “FCCS_HYTD” (if enabled), and “FCCS_YTD”. The source data will reflect the View member selected, but the rule will still write the calculated results to the Periodic view.

Key Resources

• Creating Consolidation Rule-Sets in Administering Financial Consolidation and Close

New Configurable Calculation Rule in Translation Sequence

A new Configurable Calculation rule named “Before Foreign Exchange (FX) Calculations” is now available for the consolidation process. The rule executes after translations, but before the Foreign Exchange/Cumulative Translation Adjustment (CTA) calculations. This allows you to create rules that modify previous system translation calculations, but are still subject to the “balancing” effects of the system Foreign Exchange and CTA calculations.

Key Resources

• Creating Configurable Calculations in Administering Financial Consolidation and Close

Task Manager Alerts

In Task Manager, the Alerts feature has been enhanced to now include instructions, questions, attributes, and expanded workflow.  Alerts Types can be defined as a stored procedure that captures critical information and assign key personnel for issue resolution.

Alerts can now be associated with more objects in Task Manager such as Schedules and reporting periods. Individual Alerts can be associated with multiple objects. The new Alerts List allows centralized management of all Alerts.

Key Resources

• Managing Alert Types in Administering Financial Consolidation and Close
• Working with Alerts in Working with Financial Consolidation and Close

Task Manager Global Integration Update

In Task Manager, the System Attributes tab has been removed, and Global Integration Tokens is now part of System Settings.

Key Resources

• Creating a Global Integration Token in Administering Financial Consolidation and Close

Task Manager Reassignment Notifications

In Task Manager, when tasks are reassigned, email notifications are now sent immediately to reassigned users.

Key Resources

• Managing Task Reassignments in Administering Financial Consolidation and Close

Task Screen Enhancements

The Task screen has been enhanced to include a new Summary ribbon within the header of the task. This summary bar quickly informs the user how much time remains on the task, its priority, and the number of new comments, required questions and attributes, and open alerts.

Applying the Solve Order Metadata Property

For Extended Dimension applications, a new Configuration task enables you to easily apply the Solve Order property for all the Dynamic Calc members of a dimension. The Solve Order metadata property defines the order of member evaluation and the order in which calculations should be resolved.

Key Resources

• Applying Solve Order for Metadata in Administering Financial Consolidation and Close

Seeded Net Income Ownership Rules

In the “Net Income (Subsidiary)” and “Net Income (Equity)” seeded Ownership rule-sets, the Movement dimension has been added to the scope of the rule-set, with the “ILvl0Descendants(FCCS_ClosingBalance)” member and with exclusion: “FCCS_OpeningBalance”. This will bring all level 0 movement members into the scope of the rules. Without the movement dimension defined in the scope, only members of the Movements Subtotal are in scope by default (excluding the FX members).

Key Resources

• Net Income (Subsidiary) Rule-Set in Administering Financial Consolidation and Close
• Net Income (Equity) Rule-Set in Administering Financial Consolidation and Close

Performance Substitution Variables

The EnableSimpleAggregation, OptimizeDBRefresh, OptimizeYTDCalculation, and OptimizeConcurrency substitution variables can be enabled to improve performance:

• EnableSimpleAggregation

This Substitution Variable improves the way that child entities are aggregated into parent entities. This Substitution Variable should be used in conjunction with the OptimizeYTDCalculation to improve consolidation performance.

• OptimizeDBRefresh

This Substitution Variable improves the way that exchange rates are pushed to the consol cube during the database refresh.

• OptimizeYTDCalculation

This Substitution Variable avoids redundant and repetitive calculations. This Substitution Variable should be used in conjunction with EnableSimpleAggregation to improve consolidation performance.

• OptimizeConcurrency

This Substitution Variable improves concurrency of the consolidation process by executing some of the calculations at the very beginning or at the end. The degree of improvement depends on the entity structure of a given customer. Customers with deeper entity hierarchies will benefit the most.

In order to enable the Substitution Variables, set the parameter Cube = Consol, in addition to setting Value = true.

NOTE: The degree of performance improvement varies widely across different applications as it is purely driven by the application design and data distribution.

Top 5 Consolidation and Translation Jobs by Duration in the Activity Report

The Activity Report now contains a table that lists the top 5 consolidation and translation jobs by duration.This table contains information available in consolidation performance diagnostics logs to help troubleshoot consolidation issues. By enabling consolidation rules logging, you generate the consolidation performance diagnostics logs. The Top 5 Consolidation and Translation Jobs by Duration table contains information available in consolidation performance diagnostics logs. Specifically, it reports on a maximum of five jobs that takes the most processing time. For each of these jobs, this table identifies the rule template that takes up most processing time and the number of entities being processes by each rule.

NOTE: This table appears in the Activity Report only if consolidation diagnostics logs are available in the environment.

Top 5 Consolidation and Translation Jobs by Duration Table

Steps to Enable

A Service Administrator should enable consolidation rules logging for the application. To enable consolidation rules logging:

1. On the Home page, open the Application card and select Settings.
2. On Application settings, under Other Options, select Yes as the value of the Enable Consolidation Rules Logging option.
3. Click Save.
4. Run Consolidation.
5. Restart the environment using the resetService EPM Automate command.

Key Resources

• About the Activity Report in Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Administrators

New Calculate Movements System Rule from Closing Balance Input

Financial Consolidation and Close currently provides for “Closing Balance Input” data entry. However, any calculation of movement amounts based on the Closing Balance Input entry have required user-created Insertion Point or On-Demand rules. With this release, a new system rule: “Calculate Movements” has been added. This rule will calculate movements from Closing Balance Input based on new metadata Account and Movement dimension attributes. Once metadata attributes have been updated, and the system rule is enabled on the Local Currency tab of the Consolidation: Process screen, any “Closing Balance Input” entry will generate a calculated movement amount that will be posted to the designated movement. A global default movement for all level 0 accounts can be selected and different movements can also be selected for each individual level 0 account.

NOTE: At present, seeded movement members cannot be used as the designated movement member. This shortcoming will be addressed in a subsequent release.

Key Resources

• Calculate Movements from Closing Balance Input in Administering Financial Consolidation and Close

Narrative Reporting

Updated Narrative Reporting Extension for Smart View

An updated Narrative Reporting Extension for Oracle Smart View for Office is now available. This update includes general accessibility improvements and bug fixes. Download and install the latest Narrative Reporting extension for Smart View to get these changes.

Key Resources

• Installing the Narrative Reporting Extension in Working with Oracle Smart View for Office.

Updated Narrative Reporting Extension for Disclosure Management

An updated Narrative Reporting Extension for Oracle Disclosure Management is now available. This update includes general improvements and bug fixes. Download and install the latest Narrative Reporting extension for Disclosure Management to get these changes.

Key Resources

• Installing Disclosure Management Client in Working with Disclosure Management for Narrative Reporting

Planning

New Tutorials

The following tutorials are available on the Help Center.

PLANNING

Want to learn how to perform the essential tasks in Planning? Want hands-on practice? Our new set of tutorials (Oracle-By-Example or OBE) is ideal for those looking to get up to speed fast. This content covers the important aspects of Planning and explores the user interface, typical planning processes, and the flow of data from source systems. Learn the methods in which plan data can be adjusted, translated and aggregated in Planning before being analyzed with reporting tools such as Financial Reporting Web Studio or Smart View.

Solution Overview

• Planning Overview
• Planning Process Overview
• Navigating Planning

Administering the Business Process

• Creating the Planning Business Process
• Managing Dimensions in Planning
• Setting Up Security in Planning

Loading and Entering Data

• Entering Planning Data
• Loading Data in Planning
• Loading Data into Planning using Data Integration

Creating and Approving Plans

• Performing Top-Down and Bottom-Up Planning
• Performing Driver-Based Planning
• Comparing Budget Versions in Planning
• Adjusting Forecasts in Planning
• Analyzing Plan Data using Smart View
• Automatically Translating Data to Reporting Currencies in Planning
• Managing Approvals in Planning
• Designing Forms and Managing Task Lists in Planning

Creating Reports

• Planning Reporting Solutions Overview

GROOVY

The Groovy EPM object model provides a way to call internal (cross-POD or other Oracle Cloud Services) and external REST APIs. These tutorials show you how to call a Data Management REST API to execute a data load rule and how to call the Google Places REST API from a Groovy script to add or update employee address information in Planning.

• Calling an Internal REST API Using Groovy
• Calling an External REST API Using Groovy

New Video

Planning With a Thirteen Period Calendar in EPM Cloud

Planners in the retail, consumer goods and hospitality industries can use the new, out of box thirteen period calendar to plan and evaluate data - particularly data gathered over weekends - more consistently and comprehensively, without year-over-year discrepancies.

Capital Supports IFRS 16 for Lease Assets

Capital now supports International Financial Reporting Standards 16 (IFRS16) for lease assets, which changes how lease assets are handled on the P&L and on the balance sheet, for the lessee’s point of view. Other local GAAP have similar provisions. For example, US GAAP ASC 842 provides similar guidelines for the treatment of lease asset calculations.

Note: Capital Planning in EPM Cloud is a planning solution; the intention of supporting these calculations is to cover the treatment that best reflects the impact of lease on Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet planning. Capital does not cover the entire accounting treatment, such as retrospective effect and other accounting related treatments.

Highlights of the scope of the IFRS16 rule and what has changed:

• Handles IFRS16 lease assets Capital asset planning from a lessee point of view
• Removes the distinction between operating leases and financial leases
• Recognizes all leases on the balance sheet except for low value or low tenure leases
• Supports depreciation for all leased assets
• Includes a calculation to consider ownership transfer conditions for depreciation
• Includes indexation of lease cost
• Moves low value and low tenure lease assets to the P&L. You define low value and low tenure in Assumptions, after you enable IFRS16 - Standard.

You can incrementally enable IFRS16 support by selecting IFRS16 – Standard under Lease Assets on the Capital - Enable Features page:

Capital - Enable Features

When you enable IFRS16-Standard, the following changes occur:

• The Calculate Leased Assets rule is updated to use the new standards for calculating lease assets. (If you don’t enable IFRS16-Standard, the rule is not updated.)

• Two new members are available in Depreciation & Amortization Assumptions – Low Value Lease Term (in Months) and Low Value Lease Amount. For low value assets, you can choose to write off the asset on the P&L rather than carrying the asset value on the Balance Sheet. For example, lease assets of 12 months lease term or $5000 value are considered low value assets, however you can change the values for each asset type. Lease assets that meet the low value threshholds you entered are calculated using the IFRS16 standard for low value assets, and are charged off on the P&L rather than being treated like other assets.

Depreciation & Amortization Assumptions

• A new asset account - OCX_Index Rate – is created. You can set an Index Rate when you create a new lease asset. When you set an Index Rate, the next period’s lease is based on an index of the previous period’s lease, which allows lease amounts to increase for inflation. The Calculate Leased Assets business rule takes the index rate into account when calculating the NPV of an asset. If you don’t set the index rate, the lease payments are the same for each period.

Add Leased Asset

• For existing assets, you can enter the Index Rate on the New Leased Assets form in Investments, Leased Asset Planning.

• Lease asset depreciation varies based on the ownership of the lease. If ownership is with the lessor, depreciation is charged for lease term or until the end of useful life of the asset - whichever is earlier. If ownership is with the lessee, depreciation is charged for useful life of the asset.

• 13-period calendars are now available for lease assets in Capital. 

• The alias for account OCX_Operating_Lease_Payments is changed from Operating Lease Payments to Lease Payments.

Steps to Enable

To enable IFRS16:

1. From the Home page, click Application and then click Configure.
2. From the Configure list, select Capital, and then click Enable Features.
3. Under New Capital Investment, select Lease Assets if it’s not already selected, and then select IFRS16 – Standard.
4. Click Enable.

Key Resources

• Enabling New Capital Investment in Administering Planning Modules
• Managing New Capital Investments in Working with Planning Modules

New Status Indicator on Forms

A new Status Indicator on forms now displays icons to indicate "busy" and "idle" server activity.

Any client-server action performed in a form grid (for example, clicking a button to fetch or save data, executing a rule, launching a popup, and so on) will cause a status change. If the status is active, the "busy" icon is displayed, otherwise the "idle" icon is displayed.

Key Resources

• Viewing Server Status on Forms in Working with Planning

Reviewing Rejected Metadata After Import

While defining the Planning metadata import job, you now have the option to specify an error file which captures the metadata records that are not imported for each dimension. If an error file is specified, a separate error file is created for each dimension, then the error files are zipped together, and the zip file is stored in the Outbox where you can download the file using Inbox/Outbox Explorer or tools like EPM Automate or REST APIs.

Key Resources

• Loading the Import File in Administering Planning

UI Option for Creating Free Form Application

You can now use a wizard to create Free Form applications based on your own models using custom dimensions. During this process, you can map the custom dimensions that you want to use as Entity, Period, and Account dimensions. You can also add other custom dimensions to support your model.

Key Resources

• Creating an Application Using a Wizard in Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Administrators

Import Data from a Flat File Into a Strategic Modeling Model

You can now import data from a flat file into a Strategic Modeling model. Only .csv format files are supported.

Key Resources

• Working with Import Data in Working with Planning Modules

Calculation Manager Option to Disable Flash

In this update, Calculation Manager provides an option to disable Flash.

Key Resources

• Enabling/Disabling Flash in Designing with Calculation Manager for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud

Profitability and Cost Management

There are no new Profitability and Cost Management specific features in this update. Note that there is an enhanced interface with improved navigation and new themes including the default Sky Blue that applies to Profitability and Cost Management, as described in the EPM Common section of this document.

Tax Reporting

Ownership Management

Ownership Management consists of managing global consolidation settings and the application of those consolidation settings to each entity hierarchy on a scenario-by-scenario, year-by-year, and period-by-period basis.

Ownership settings are applied to each Entity parent and child combination for each Scenario, Year, and Period combination.

Two new forms have been added:

• TRCS Ownership Detail
• TRCS Weighted Ownership Detail

Additional columns have been added to the following forms to support Ownership Management:

• Tax Loss and Tax Credit
• Tax Loss and Tax Credit Regional
• Temporary Differences
• Temporary Differences Regional
• Deferred Tax
• Deferred Tax Regional
• DTNR
• TAR
• TAR Regional
• Current Tax Payable
• Current Tax Payable Reginoal
• Fixed Assets

Key Resources

• Working with Ownership Management in Administering Tax Reporting

Changes to Movement Dimension

When Ownership Management is enabled in Tax Reporting, a number of reserved system members are created upon upgrade, and must not be used for data input.

Key Resources

• Movement Dimension in the Administering Tax Reporting guide

Updates to TAR Automation

For Administrators and Power Users, the TAR Automation form has been updated to enable you to set multiple Accounts, and single selections for Scenario, Year, and Period using the POV Member Selector. You can change any POV members.

For each Account selected, the name of the Account selected is displayed on Level 1 of the header. On Level 2, the following details are displayed:

• Source Account National
• Exclude Account National
• Source Account Regional
• Exclude Account Regional
• Data Source
• Movement
• Switch Sign checkbox

For each Account selected, scroll right to see the complete set of information for that Account.

TAR Automation

Key Resources

• Generating Default Mapping in Administering Tax Reporting
• Generating Custom Mapping in Administering Tax Reporting

Task Screen Enhancements

The Task screen has been enhanced to include a new Summary ribbon within the header of the task. This summary bar quickly informs the user how much time remains on the task, its priority, and the number of new comments, required questions and attributes, and open alerts.

Task Manager Reassignment Notifications

In Task Manager, when tasks are reassigned, email notifications are now sent immediately to reassigned users.

Key Resources

• Managing Task Reassignments in Administering Tax Reporting

Task Manager Global Integration Update

In Task Manager, the System Attributes tab has been removed, and Global Integration Tokens is now part of System Settings.

Key Resources

• Creating a Global Integration Token in Administering Tax Reporting

Task Manager Alerts

In Task Manager, the Alerts feature has been enhanced to now include instructions, questions, attributes and expanded workflow. Alerts Types can be defined as a stored procedure which captures critical information and assigns key personnel for issue resolution.

Alerts can now be associated with more objects in Task Manager, such as Schedules and reporting periods. An individual Alerts can be associated with multiple objects. The new Alerts List allows centralized management of all Alerts

Key Resources

• Working with Alerts in Working with Tax Reporting

Upcoming Changes

INTERNET EXPLORER BROWSER SUPPORT

For Internet Explorer browser users, Microsoft recommends using the new Microsoft Edge as your default browser. With this guidance in mind, EPM Cloud will no longer support Internet Explorer starting with the 20.07 update.  If you have any questions regarding de-support, please create a Service Request.  For additional guidance on Internet Explorer Lifecycle, please reach out to Microsoft.

APIS BLACKLISTED FROM THE EPM CLOUD GROOVY RULES JAVA API REFERENCE

In an upcoming update in mid-2020, the following APIs are being blacklisted from the EPM Cloud Groovy Rules Java API Reference:

• TimeZone.setDefault(TimeZone zone)
• Locale.setDefault(Locale.Category category, Locale newLocale)
• Locale.setDefault(Locale newLocale)
• EPM Cloud Groovy Rules Java API Reference

EPM Cloud Groovy Rules Java API Reference

CALCULATION MANAGER DE-SUPPORT FOR FLASH

In an upcoming update, Oracle will disable Flash by default in Calculation Manager. You will still, temporarily, be able to enable Flash, if desired.

By the end of 2020, Oracle will disable Flash in Calculation Manager, and options to enable it will be removed. This change is in response to Adobe’s decision to stop updating and distributing Flash at the end of 2020. See https://theblog.adobe.com/adobe-flash-update/.

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. 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 won't impact customers who currently use predefined roles for managing application-level provisioning and access to artifacts. Oracle will ensure that all application role assignments and artifact security assignments are automatically updated after the roles are renamed. This change makes it easy to migrate EPM Cloud artifacts across environments.

This change is being implemented to address customer feedback. If you have any concerns about this change, please contact Oracle Support.

PLANNER ROLE TO BE RENAMED AS USER

In an upcoming update, Oracle will rename the Planner EPM Cloud predefined role as User. This change will have no functional effect.

Subscriptions that were provisioned prior to the May 2016 update used the Planner role, which has been maintained in subsequent updates to provide continuity. In subscriptions that were activated after May 2016, the Planner role was already replaced by the User role.

NOTE: This change will affect Planning, Financial Consolidation and Close, and Tax Reporting only.

PREDEFINED ROLE NAMES AS EPM CLOUD KEY WORDS

Starting with an update in the near future, Oracle plans to treat the following predefined role names as EPM Cloud key words, which should not be used in the name of any custom artifacts that you create; for example, as a group name in Access Control.

• Service Administrator
• Power User
• User
• Viewer
• Planner
• System Administrator
• Application Administrator
• Library Administrator
• Reports Administrator

If you have any groups or artifacts named using these keywords, Oracle requests that you rename or delete them; else Oracle will rename them to ensure that there is no impact because of this change. For example, a group named Power User will be renamed as Power User1 without affecting the current role assignments. If you do not want Oracle to automatically rename such groups, you must rename them.

This change is being implemented to address customer feedback. If you have any concerns about this change, please contact Oracle Support.

Key Resources

• Modifying Groups in Administering Access Control for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud

UPDATE TO THE EXCEPTION RESPONSE IN REST APIS FOR PLANNING AND PLANNING MODULES

Oracle will remove the internal package and class names from the following fields in the exception response in REST APIs for Planning and Planning modules in an upcoming update in early 2020:

• message
• localizedMessage

NARRATIVE REPORTING LEGACY (ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE REPORTING CLOUD) ENVIRONMENTS TO SUPPORT STANDARD EPM CLOUD PREDEFINED ROLES

Oracle will, in an upcoming update, change the non-conforming Narrative Reporting predefined roles in existing environments to the following predefined roles.

• Service Administrator
• Power User
• User
• Viewer

Current role assignments in legacy environment will be remapped automatically as follows to the common set of predefined roles.

Current Non-Conforming Roles	Common Remapped Roles
System Administrator	Service Administrator
Application Administrator	Power User
Library Administrator	Power User
Reports Administrator	Power User

REMOVAL OF .XLS FORMAT AS REPORT EXPORT OPTION

Currently, the following report export options are available: csv, xls, xlsx, pdf and html.

In an upcoming update, the option for xls will be removed for Account Reconciliation and Tax Reporting. Customers who have built custom reports must ensure that their reports will export as desired to one of the remaining formats: csv, xlsx, pdf, or html.

FUTURE NEW CONNECTION TYPE AND ADVANCED OPTIONS FOR EXTERNAL CONNECTIONS FOR TAX REPORTING

In a future update, Service Administrators for Tax Reporting will be able to use connections created for external Web services, specifying optional query or header parameters. These connections could be referenced or used in a Groovy script to create a communications link between the Groovy script and the external Web resource. Users will be advised when this new feature is to be supported in Tax Reporting.

EPM MOBILE APP STATEMENT OF DIRECTION

EPM Mobile App is a downloadable application for the phone that is purpose built to perform approval actions for iOS and Android based phone devices. It was purpose built to help users perform Approval and Workflow activities. It is currently only supported for Oracle EPM Cloud for the Planning business process.

The terminal release of EPM Mobile App is September 2020.  EPM Mobile App will not be available for download in the Apple and iOS App Stores effective October 2020. Oracle’s strategic direction is to have customers use the Approval and workflow capabilities using the mobile browser interface on mobile devices.

Oracle will continue to support Oracle EPM Mobile App in its current supported versions until September 2020.  Oracle recommends that users using Oracle EPM Mobile App prepare to instead use the approval functionality using supported mobile browser in tablet devices.

CHANGE IN EMAIL ADDRESS FOR OUTGOING EMAILS

Starting with a future update, emails originating from EPM Cloud applications will use no.reply@oraclecloud.com instead of oraclecloudadmin_ww@oracle.com as the from address.

Emails from other Oracle Cloud sources, for example, New Account email sent from the Identity Domain, will continue to use the current From email addressses, for example, oraclecloudadmin_ww@oracle.com.

MIGRATION OF SUPPLEMENTAL DATA MANAGER ARTIFACTS

Due to a large number of changes to Supplemental Data Manager artifacts planned for Financial Consolidation and Close and Tax Reporting in release 20.05, backward compatible migration will not be supported from 20.05 to 20.04 during the two week window when test systems are upgraded ahead of production. The changes in migration for Supplemental Data Manager artifacts do not affect the current release. This does not affect any artifacts other than Supplemental Data Manager artifacts.