October 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	Product	Feature	Notes
24 SEP 2020			Created initial document.

Overview

This document outlines the upcoming Enterprise Performance Management Cloud update.

Feature Summary

Enterprise Performance Management Cloud

Monthly Update Schedule

Test Environments: Oracle will apply this monthly update during the first daily maintenance that occurs at or after 22:00 UTC on Friday, October 2, 2020.

Production Environments: Oracle will apply this monthly update during the first daily maintenance that occurs at or after 22:00 UTC on Friday, October 16, 2020.

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

The Oracle Help Center provides access to updated documentation. The updates will be available in the Help Center on Friday, October 2, 2020.

NOTE: 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.

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

Follow EPM Cloud on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

These are great resources for the latest updates and information about EPM Cloud.

Defects Fixed and Considerations

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

This provides visibility into EPM Cloud release contents.

EPM Cloud Common

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

New Videos

Several videos are now available for Dashboards 2.0.

Creating Dashboards in Dashboards 2.0

See how to create a dashboard with multiple components in the Dashboard Designer for Dashboards 2.0. You create a bar chart, a combination chart, a pyramid chart, a ring gauge with traffic-lighting, and a radar chart with bars. You also move and resize components and set general dashboard properties.

Creating Waterfall Charts in Dashboards 2.0

Learn how to create waterfall charts to track the changes in a single account over time and to track how multiple accounts interact to produce a final total.

Creating Quick Analyses in Dashboards 2.0

Discover how to add quick analysis components to dashboards without having a prebuilt form. You learn how to create an ad hoc query in the Dashboard Designer and format the results by changing the dimension layout and applying visualizations.

Business Benefit: These videos provide step-by-step instructions to help you perform your related business activities.

EPM Automate Updates

A new version of EPM Automate is available. This version introduces these new commands: autoPredict, exportLibraryArtifact, importLibraryArtifact, programDocumentationReport, copyFromObjectStorage, and copyToObjectStorage.

Commands for All Environments

• copyFromObjectStorage: This command copies a file or a backup snapshot from Oracle Object Storage Cloud to the current EPM Cloud environment.
• copyToObjectStorage: This command copies a file or a backup snapshot directly from the current environment to Oracle Object Storage Cloud.

Narrative Reporting Commands

• exportLibraryArtifact: This command exports Narrative Reporting library artifacts to an archive (ZIP file).
• importLibraryArtifact: This command imports library artifacts from an archive into the Narrative Reporting library.

Planning and Planning Modules Command

• autoPredict: This command predicts future performance based on an existing Auto Predict definition in Planning and Planning Modules applications in which Hybrid cubes are enabled.

Profitability and Cost Management Command

• programDocumentationReport: This command creates the Program Documentation report containing information on Profitability and Cost Management application logic. It runs the report as a job, so it is useful for reporting on very large applications.

Business Benefit: These commands facilitate the remote administration of EPM Cloud environments.

Key Resources

• Working with EPM Automate for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud
  • Installing EPM Automate
  • Command Reference

REST APIs to Copy Files To and From the Oracle Object Storage Cloud

You can use the Copy to Object Store REST API to copy a file or a backup snapshot from the outbox of the current cloud environment (the source) to the Oracle Object Storage Cloud (the target). In addition, you can use the Copy from Object Store REST API to copy a file from the Oracle Object Storage Cloud (the source) to the cloud environment (the target).

NOTE: This applies to all EPM Cloud business processes.

Business Benefit: The ability to perform these tasks with REST APIs allows you to schedule and automate these tasks.

Key Resources

• Migration REST APIs in REST API for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud

Role Information

• Service Administrators

REST API to Rename Application Snapshot

Use the Rename Snapshot REST API to rename snapshots in EPM Cloud instances to a desired name.

NOTE: This applies to all EPM Cloud business processes.

Business Benefit: This feature gives you flexibility in naming your snapshots.

Key Resources

• Use the Application Snapshot Service in REST API for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud
• About Snapshots in Administering Migration in Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud

Role Information

• Service Administrators

Instance Name Removed from Predefined Role Names in Access Control

The Access Control screens of EPM Cloud environments no longer display the instance name prefix with predefined role names. Instead, predefined role names are displayed as Service Administrator, Power User, User, and Viewer. This change is applicable to all screens and reports that list predefined role names.

Changed Predefined Role Name Display in EPM Cloud

NOTE: This change does not affect how the role names are displayed in the MyServices customer portal.

This change does not impact customers who currently use predefined roles for assigning application-level roles and access to artifacts. All such assignments are automatically updated for you. However, if you manually migrate older snapshots to 20.10 environments, the process will generate errors for the artifacts that have references to predefined roles that use the role names prefixed with the instance name.

Business Benefit: Removal of instance name prefixes from predefined role name display facilitates the migration of snapshots across EPM Cloud environments.

Activity Report Enhancements

The Activity Report has been enhanced by adding a number of tables that provide additional information on business rules, calculation scripts, Essbase data load, data extraction, restructure, and performance of Essbase queries. Additionally, the tables now use a standard set of column labels to group information.

The following tables have been added:

• Top 10 Business Rules by Execution
• Top 10 Calc Script Commands By Number of Blocks Created
• Top 5 Worst Performing Calc Scripts Commands over 1 Min
• Top 10 Worst Performing Essbase Data Extraction Operations
• Top 10 Worst Performing Essbase Data Load Operations
• Top 10 Worst Performing Essbase Restructure Operations
• Top 10 Essbase Queries by Total Duration
• Top 10 Essbase Queries by Execution

The following existing tables were updated or renamed:

• Top 10 Worst Performing Essbase Queries over 15 seconds (updated with additional information)
• Top 10 Calc Scripts by Average Duration (previous title: Top 10 Calc Scripts by Duration)
• Top 10 Worst Performing Calc Scripts Executions (previous title: Top 10 Calc Scripts by Executions)

Business Benefit: These updates provide you a deeper insight into the performance of EPM Cloud components to help you troubleshoot issues.

Key Resources

• Using Activity Reports and Access Logs to Monitor Usage in Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Administrators

Import Users' Group Assignments from File

Service Administrators can now import group assignments of users from a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file to create new assignments in existing Access Control groups. After the import is complete, EPM Cloud enforces appropriate application-level and artifact-level security assignments based on the new group assignments.

NOTE: This feature does not apply to Account Reconciliation, which does not use groups.

Business Benefit: Importing users' group assignments facilitates the administration of access security, especially while migrating applications across environments.

Key Resources

• Importing Group Assignments of Users from a File in Administering Access Control for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud

Business Rules in Data Integration Are Now Available

Business rules are now available in Data Integration that enable you to launch and manage sophisticated rules when loading data to Planning applications. This feature empowers you to invoke rule logic without programmer assistance and without interrupting business processes. You can run an individual business rule or deploy a set of two or more related rules (or rule sets) that you can launch simultaneously or sequentially.  For example, run a business rule to clear data before a data load, perform calculations, aggregate data, or copy data to one slice of a cube.

The business rules available in Data Integration are defined in Planning.  If you want a business rule to be executed for specific integration, then register the business rule on the Integration Options page. If you want the business rule to be executed for all integration loading data to the application, then register the business rule on the Application page. If a given Event has a business rule registered at both the integration and application levels, only the business rule registered on the Integration Options page is executed.

Use the Independent tab to register rules that can be run in response to system events in the Data Integration workflow. The registration includes the system event, rule or rule set name, scope of applicability (either at application or specific integration level), any runtime parameters and run sequences.

Events are shipped out of the box and include:

• Before Import
• After Import
• Before Load
• After Load
• Before Check
• After Check

Business Rules Page in Independent Mode

The Embedded tab is used to register business rules that are passed as parameters to the Outline Line Utility (OLU) and are run after the data load process has completed. Embedded mode does not support runtime parameters.

Prior to this update, business rules were only available in Data Management, could only be run after the data load, and did not accept any run time parameters.

Business Benefit: Business rules enable you to load data that meets your enterprise requirements and use cases successfully. For example, you can set up a business rule that lets you allocate costs among plan targets before importing data. Business rules improve the response time to changing business application needs, shorten application development cycles, increase business user productivity, improve reuse of application components, and increase the return on analytic application investments.

Tips And Considerations

Registration is only available for the Planning, Financial Consolidation and Close, and Tax Reporting business processes. Registration is not supported for the following business processes:

• Account Reconciliation
• Profitability and Cost Management

Key Resources

• Registering and Using Business Rules in Administering Data Integration for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud

Calculation Manager Validation Failures for Certain Essbase Calc Commands in Hybrid Aggregation Mode

Prior to this update, certain Essbase calculation commands were not supported with hybrid aggregation (Hybrid BSO) in Planning Module applications. If any of these commands were encountered in a rule, validation failed and the rule was not launched. Starting with this update, these restricted Essbase commands provide validation errors for any application using Hybrid BSO. Specifically, this validation failure change for the restricted commands now includes EPM Planning Custom and Free Form applications in addition to Module applications.

Business Benefit: Inefficient and non-supported Essbase commands are not allowed with any Planning application type using Hybrid BSO, which helps with application performance and maintenance.

Key Resources

• Working with Hybrid Aggregation in Essbase in Designing with Calculation Manager for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud

Removal of Flash Support in Calculation Manager

Oracle has disabled Flash in Calculation Manager, and options to enable it have been removed. 

Business Benefit: This change aligns with Adobe’s decision to stop updating and distributing Flash at the end of 2020. See https://theblog.adobe.com/adobe-flash-update/.

Account Reconciliation

Ability to Deselect Selected Transactions in Unmatched Transactions

In Transaction Matching's Unmatched Transactions dialog, users can now select a range of transactions and then choose to deselect one or more of the selected transactions using CTRL + CLICK.

Business Benefit: This feature allows users to quickly select a range of unmatched transactions and then back out any individual transactions that should not be selected.

Financial Consolidation and Close

Migration from Enterprise to Legacy Hybrid Environments

Support has been added to allow migration from an Enterprise Hybrid environment to a Legacy Hybrid environment. Using the migration process, you can import an Enterprise Hybrid application file into a Legacy Hybrid environment.

To migrate from a non-hybrid to a hybrid environment, you must recreate the application. See Creating Extended Dimension Applications in Administering Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud.

Business Benefit: You can now migrate an application file from an Enterprise environment to a Legacy Hybrid environment.

Key Resources

• Importing Artifacts and Applications from a Snapshot in Administering Migration for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud

Report Enhancements

When you run Intercompany Matching reports, Journal reports, and Consolidation Reports and save them as Excel report types, the values are now automatically displayed in number format, rather than cell text.

Business Benefit: You can immediately view report values as numbers in Excel, without needing to convert the cell text format to numbers.

Key Resources

• Working with Reports in Working with Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud

Approval Process Enhancements

In the approval process, when you add new entities to an application, you no longer need to unlock and re-lock all prior periods in order to lock the new entities for the current period. The new entity will inherit the locked status from its parent for the previous periods.  In addition, you cannot enter data to an entity that has not yet Started if the entity is part of an Approval Unit Hierarchy assigned to the review process.

Business Benefit: When adding new entities, you no longer need to lock and re-lock all prior periods in the approval process, which could be time-consuming.  To avoid impacting a locked parent, the system also prevents data entry for entities in the review process unless the entity has been Started.

Tips And Considerations

SYNCHRONIZATION PROCESS IN FINANCIAL CONSOLIDATION AND CLOSE

With this change, as part of the synchronization process, the system will automatically lock any new entity added to the application if the following conditions are met:

• New entity should have NODATA status.
• Parent of the new entity must be locked.
• Prior period of the new entity must be locked.

The auto-lock will apply from the first period of the application until the last period where its parent is locked.

PREVENT DATA ENTRY FOR ENTITY PARTICIPATING IN THE REVIEW PROCESS UNLESS ENTITY HAS STARTED THE REVIEW PROCESS IN FINANCIAL CONSOLIDATION AND CLOSE

Starting with this update, if an entity is part of the Approval Unit Hierarchy (AUH) and if the AUH is assigned to any Scenario / Year / Period (S/Y/P), then this entity is considered participating in the review process. If an entity is NOT part of the AUH, or if the AUH is NOT assigned to any S/Y/P, then this entity is NOT considered participating in the review process.

For any entity that participates in the review process, the system will now only allows data entry to the entity after the entity has started the review process (status is either “unlocked” for Consolidation template or “under review” for Bottom Up template). Therefore, you will need to first START the entity before you can enter data for the entity.

Impact to existing customer with this new check:

For customers who have NOT yet started the entities because they are still loading historical data, this change will affect their continued loading of historical data to the system because we now prevent data entry unless the entity has started.

If customers do not want to start the review process while loading and reconciling historical data, customers can manually remove the AUH assignment for the AUH.

When the customers are ready to lock the entities, the customers will need to manually add the AUH assignment and start the review process.

Key Resources

• Locking and Unlocking Entities in Administering Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud

Narrative Reporting

Updated Narrative Reporting Extension for Smart View

An updated Narrative Reporting Extension for Oracle Smart View for Office is now available to download and install. This update includes general improvements and bug fixes.

Business Benefit: Downloading and installing the latest Narrative Reporting extension for Smart View gives you access to the latest features, improvements, and bug fixes.

Key Resources

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

Updated Disclosure Management Extension for Smart View

An updated Disclosure Management extension for Smart View is now available.

Business Benefit: This update includes general improvements and bug fixes.

Key Resources

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

Planning

New Videos

Two new videos are available for Planning.

Copying Data in Strategic Modeling

Learn how to copy data from a source model to one or more target models. See how to automate the copying of data from a source model to target models by associating a data map to the source model, and setting it up to copy data after you check in the source model.

Designing Dashboards 2.0 in EPM Cloud Planning

Learn how to view and interact with dashboards, and how to open and work with the Dashboard Designer for Dashboards 2.0.

Business Benefit: These videos provide step-by-step instructions to help you perform your related business activities.

Terminal Release of EPM Mobile

This update is the terminal release of the EPM Mobile App. Oracle recommends that users using Oracle EPM Mobile App prepare to instead use the approval functionality using supported mobile browser in tablet devices. 

Business Benefit: Oracle’s strategic direction is to have customers use the Approval and Workflow capabilities using the mobile browser interface on mobile devices.

New Data Import Options for Essbase Source Types - Delimiter and Abort on Error

New data import options for Essbase source types (Delimiter and Abort on Error) enable you to configure Essbase data imports similar to the way you configure Planning  data imports.

For Delimiter, you can choose Space or Tab delimiters for Essbase data. Abort on Error is selected by default and the import stops when an error is encountered. Clear the Abort on Error option to enable the import to continue regardless of errors.

To view these new Essbase data import options, from the Home page, click Application, then Overview, then Actions, and then click Import Data. Click Create to create a data import job. For Source Type, select Essbase.

Business Benefit: New data import options for Essbase source types enable you to configure data imports in the same way as Planning source types. In addition, you can now choose to continue the data import when error records are encountered in the data file. Instead of ending the full data import for a select few error records, clearing the Abort on Error option lets you continue the data import through to completion and then setup a subsequent data import with just the fixed-up error records. In summary, instead of the system always deciding to end data import on encountering error records, you can now make the decision which best fits your use case.

Key Resources

• Importing Data in Administering Planning

Additional Use Cases for Lease Asset Planning in Capital

In Capital, if you are performing lease asset planning using the IFRS16 Standard (as well as ASC 842), payment frequency is now taken into account when determining if a lease asset is a low value asset. The value of the asset is calculated as (lease payment x payment frequency). If the calculated value is less than or equal to the Low Value Lease Amount, the asset is considered to be a low value lease asset.

For example, if the Low Value Lease Amount is $5000, and a lease asset has a payment of $500 with a monthly payment frequency, the lease asset value is calculated as $500 x 12 months = $6000. Because $6000 is higher than the Low Value Lease Amount of $5000, this lease asset is not considered to be a low value asset. However, if this same asset has a semi-annual payment frequency, the lease asset value is calculated as $500 x 2 = $1000, which is less than the Low Value Lease Amount of $5,000, and is considered to be a low value asset.

Additionally, you can now override the Low Value Lease Amount for an asset, forcing the asset to be calculated as a low value lease asset. On the Lease Asset Planning form, a new column is added – Low Value Override. By default, the value for Low Value Override for each asset is No. If you change it to Yes for an asset, the asset is calculated as a low value asset regardless of the lease asset value. For existing assets, the Low Value Override value is No.

Low Value Override Column on the Lease Asset Planning Form

Business Benefit: By taking payment frequency into account when determining a lease asset value, lease asset values are more accurate. The ability to override the low value lease amount gives planners more flexibility in lease asset planning.

Key Resources

• Enabling New Capital Investment in Administering Planning Modules
• Adding New Leased Assets in Working with Planning Modules

Workforce Transfer Enhancements

As part of Workforce transfer enhancements, the following changes have been made:

• With this update, you can now transfer an employee across custom dimensions and entities, in a one-step or two-step transfer. Previously, transfers were allowed for changing jobs and entities only. While transferring an employee from one entity to another entity, you can also select the same or different targets from the custom source. The same applies to transferring headcounts in Job Only models.

• In the source's transfer year, most of the employee properties, including FTE and Headcount, are cleared out starting in the transfer month.  Applicable Union Code, Employee Type, Pay Type, and Status will remain but the Status will show as Transfer Out.

• If the employee transfer month is after the merit month in the year of transfer, merit rates are copied from the source. For subsequent years in the target entity, merit rates are calculated based on the target rates. When the employee is not active, the recommended merit rate is not populated. If the employee transfer month is before the merit month, merit rates are copied from the target.

• In the Job Only model, there is a restriction on the number of headcounts that can be transferred or departed based on the headcounts available on the job. This eliminates the need to run a calculate job compensation rule after departing headcounts from the job.

• Total FTE and Total Headcount are added to the New Hire request form, Employee Properties form, and Manage Existing Employee forms. Alias names for FTE and Headcount are modified to FTE Assumption and Headcount Assumption. FTE Assumptions and Headcount Assumptions are used for input assumptions to drive calculations. Total FTE and Total Headcount are used for reporting purposes.

• In the transfer year, earnings, benefits, and taxes paid in the source are considered while applying the target threshold. Computed expense in the source is copied to the transfer year's target as part of the transfer and change job process. After applying the entity defaults to the employee in target, the copied computed expense amount is considered while applying the threshold in the target in the transfer year for the earnings, benefits, and taxes that are the same across source and target. As part of the transfer headcount in Job Only model, computed expense in the source to target is based on the number of headcounts being transferred. This applies to a single-step and two-step transfer and change job actions on the employee in the Employee Only and Employee and Job models and Transfer Headcount action in Job Only model.

Business Benefit: The following lists the business benefits of the Workforce Transfer enhancements:

• You can now transfer employees across all custom dimensions, entities, and jobs as delivered content.

• You will no longer see most employee or job properties in the transfer year to indicate they are no longer in the source data intersection.

• Employee merit salary calculations reflect the source's merit rate if the transfer is after the merit month or from the target if the transfer is before the merit month. This change ensures the most accurate merit salary calculations are being used.

• In Job Only Model, a new restriction ensures that the number of headcount that can be transferred does not exceed the number of headcount available from the source.

• You will see the calculated Total FTE and Total Headcount on the impacted forms instead of the FTE and Headcount assumptions used in conjunction with status to generate the calculated amounts. The alias change to include "Assumptions" will ensure you do not use these accounts for reporting or analysis. These are only used to drive calculations and may not reflect the resulting, calculated value.

• Detailed compensation calculations in the target honor the year-to-date earnings and expenses residing in the source before the transfer month as part of the target calculations concerning any applicable thresholds.

Key Resources

• Working with Planning Modules
  • Transferring Employees
  • Planning Merit Rates

Workforce Form Name Changes - Job Only Models

Forms in Workforce with the Job Only level of granularity configuration are now tracked for customer modifications and appear in the Restore Modified Artifacts lists. This change for these specific forms in the Job Only configuration will lead to an overwrite of any customer customizations on these forms with this update.

The following four forms in the Workforce Job Only configuration are impacted by this change:

• Set Workforce Assumptions
• Identify Invalid Data
• Process Data and Synchronize Defaults
• Process Data and Synchronize Definition

Workforce customers with Job Only level of granularity who have modified any of these four forms were advised to create a backup of only the modified forms from this list prior to the 20.10 update to preserve the customizations.  With this update, you may import this backup of forms to restore their customizations. These forms will now appear in the Modified Artifacts lists for potential restoration, if desired in the future.

Business Benefit: Customers will now be able to track modifications for these delivered forms and restore them to current configurations using the Modified Artifacts feature.

Workforce Account Alias Changes

The alias for two Workforce Accounts has been modified to clarify the intended usage for these accounts as assumptions.

Account	Current Alias	New Alias
OWP_FTE	FTE	FTE Assumption
OWP_Headcount	Headcount	Headcount Assumption

These two accounts are used to drive calculations and should not be used for reporting. There are corresponding, calculated account hierarchies, i.e., Total FTE and Total Headcount, which should be used for reporting instead of these input accounts. Customers who have not modified the alias for these two accounts will have the aliases automatically updated with this update. Such customers are advised to change any hard-coded references to the current alias in Calculation Manager rules, Data Management mappings, or other direct references. As a reminder, the best practice is to refer to member names not aliases in rules, mappings, etc. as they are less likely to change than aliases. Customers who have modified the alias for either of these two accounts will not see any change with the 20.10 update for the account they have modified.

Business Benefit: Users will have clear insight into the correct FTE and Headcount Accounts used for calculation assumptions versus those used for reporting the calculated results.

Migration of Scenario Manager User Interface to Oracle JET

The new Strategic Modeling Scenario Manager user interface makes working with scenarios easier and more intuitive.

Business Benefit: Better user interface and more intuitive workflow.

Profitability and Cost Management

There are no new features in this update.

Tax Reporting

Approvals Process Enhancements

In the approval process, when you add new entities to an application, you no longer need to unlock and re-lock all prior periods in order to lock the new entities for the current period. The new entity will inherit the locked status from its parent for the previous periods. In addition, you cannot enter data to an entity that has not yet Started if the entity is part of an Approval Unit Hierarchy assigned to the review process.

Business Benefit: When adding new entities, you no longer need to lock and re-lock all prior periods in the approval process, which could be time-consuming. To avoid impacting a locked parent, the system also prevents data entry for entities in the review process unless the entity has been Started.

Tips And Considerations

SYNCHRONIZATION PROCESS IN FINANCIAL CONSOLIDATION AND CLOSE

With this change, as part of the synchronization process, the system will automatically lock any new entity added to the application if the following conditions are met:

• New entity should have NODATA status.
• Parent of the new entity must be locked.
• Prior period of the new entity must be locked.

The auto-lock will apply from the first period of the application until the last period where its parent is locked.

PREVENT DATA ENTRY FOR ENTITY PARTICIPATING IN THE REVIEW PROCESS UNLESS ENTITY HAS STARTED THE REVIEW PROCESS IN FINANCIAL CONSOLIDATION AND CLOSE

Starting with this update, if an entity is part of the Approval Unit Hierarchy (AUH) and if the AUH is assigned to any Scenario / Year / Period (S/Y/P), then this entity is considered participating in the review process. If an entity is NOT part of the AUH, or if the AUH is NOT assigned to any S/Y/P, then this entity is NOT considered participating in the review process.

For any entity that participates in the review process, the system will now only allows data entry to the entity after the entity has started the review process (status is either “unlocked” for Consolidation template or “under review” for Bottom Up template). Therefore, you will need to first START the entity before you can enter data for the entity.

Impact to existing customer with this new check:

For customers who have NOT yet started the entities because they are still loading historical data, this change will affect their continued loading of historical data to the system because we now prevent data entry unless the entity has started.

If customers do not want to start the review process while loading and reconciling historical data, customers can manually remove the AUH assignment for the AUH.

When the customers are ready to lock the entities, the customers will need to manually add the AUH assignment and start the review process.

Key Resources

• Locking and Unlocking Entities in Administering Tax Reporting

IMPORTANT Actions and Considerations

FUTURE AVAILABILITY OF THE REDWOOD THEME 

In the November (20.11) update, EPM Cloud will offer a new Redwood appearance theme, in addition to the existing 13 themes available. The Redwood theme gives an enhanced look and feel in terms of colors and icons and brings consistency across Oracle Cloud.

NOTE: Enterprise Data Management will offer the Redwood theme starting in the December (20.12) update.

Preview the new Redwood theme 

Redwood will be the default theme for new instances, while existing instances will continue to see the current theme by default. You can switch to the Redwood theme from Tools > Appearance.

The following EPM Cloud business processes will have the option to select the new theme:

• Account Reconciliation
• Enterprise Data Management
• Financial Consolidation and Close
• Narrative Reporting
• Planning
• Profitability and Cost Management
• Tax Reporting

CHROME 85 AND CHROMIUM EDGE 85 BROWSERS

Due to recent changes in the Chrome 85 and Chromium Edge 85 browsers, you may see some input/output components on user interface stretched apart and tend to align right. Oracle is aware of this behavior change in these browsers and is working to resolve these issues.

CONFIGURING A SOURCE CONNECTION TO ORACLE NETSUITE

The integration between NetSuite and Cloud EPM with Data Management supports both basic authorization as well as token based authorization (TBA).  The NetSuite policy for accessing integrations has changed and requires token based authorization, and NetSuite is in the process of phasing out basic authorization for integrations which uses a user name and password.  This requirement does not go into effect until early 2021, but customers that use the integration with NetSuite should start switching over to token base authentication as soon as possible.  Starting a few months prior to this required change, basic authorization credentials will be made read only, and customers will need to implement TBA.  Please contact NetSuite support to get help generating the required tokens to use when setting up the connection to NetSuite from Cloud EPM.

USABILITY ENHANCEMENTS FOR HORIZONTAL TABS IN NAVIGATION FLOWS

In an update within the next few months, we are introducing a feature within navigation flows to open additional horizontal tabs on the fly to perform related actions; for example, view drill through from a form in a new temporary tab. As part of this new ‘on the fly tab’ feature; the horizontal tabs will move to the bottom of the page instead of at the top of the page where they are currently located. These changes will be the default for all customer environments where horizontal tabs are being used within navigation flows.

With tabs at the bottom of the page instead, customers will benefit from a clear separation of the EPM Cloud horizontal tabs from their browser tabs at the top of the window. Another benefit of this change will be to keep the navigation flow tab names distinct from the name of the artifacts (such as forms and dashboards) rendered within the horizontal tabs. The vertical tabs will stay where they are.

The effective date of the update will be announced in the month prior to the update. It is expected in the next 2-4 months’ timeframe.

NEW SETTING TO ENABLE INCREMENTAL IMPORT OF DATA USING MIGRATION FOR LEGACY PBCS and EPBCS APPLICATIONS

In an upcoming update, Oracle will create a new application setting for Legacy PBCS and EPBCS applications to enable incremental import of data using Migration.  The default setting will be set to disable incremental import of data using Migration. As a result, you cannot use the daily maintenance snapshot or any extract created using Migration for incremental import of data if this new setting remains in the default configuration; you must import a full snapshot to load data using Migration as a full Clone where the target environment does not have an existing application.

PBCS and EPBCS Service Administrators will be able to change this setting with warnings prompting that doing so may lead to data corruption if subsequent incremental import of data using Migration are not done properly.  Examples of potential data corruption include, but are not limited to, incremental data migration from a different source other than the target application where underlying Smart List values may be different.

EPM Enterprise Cloud Service and EPM Standard Cloud Service subscriptions already do not allow incremental import of data using Migration.  This new setting will not be added to these subscriptions, so there is no change in behavior for these subscriptions.

NOTE:  Existing PBCS and EPBCS subscriptions who have already upgraded to the newer version of Essbase will not be impacted by this upcoming change in line with EPM Enterprise Cloud Service and EPM Standard Cloud Service subscriptions.

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

REMOVAL OF PERCENT CONSOLIDATION FORM IN TAX REPORTING

The Percent Consolidation form in Tax Reporting will no longer be available starting in the November update (20.11). Any data entered via the Percent Consolidation form should be migrated and configured within Ownership Management.

REMOVAL OF .XLS FORMAT AS REPORT EXPORT OPTION FOR INTERCOMPANY MATCHING REPORTS IN FINANCIAL CONSOLIDATION AND CLOSE

Using .xls as a report output format will be removed for Intercompany Matching reports in the 20.12 update. Customers who have built custom reports must ensure that their reports will export as desired to one of the remaining formats: xlsx, pdf, or html.

EXPORT FILE LINK MOVED TO GET JOB RESULT RESPONSE IN REST API IN ENTERPRISE DATA MANAGEMENT

Prior to 20.08, when using the Export Dimension To File endpoint in the REST API, the link to download the export file was previously included in the response for the Get Job Run endpoint which is called after running the export. With the introduction of the Validate Dimension Viewpoints on Export feature in 20.08, the export file link has been moved to the response for the Get Job Result endpoint to be returned along with any validation issues occurring during the export. This change will impact existing processes which export a dimension to a file using the REST API. API programs should be modified to call the Get Job Run endpoint to poll for the status of the export job and then the Get Job Result endpoint to retrieve the link for downloading the export file.