Oracle Narrative Reporting
What's New
Cloud Apps Readiness
  1. May 2019 Update
  1. Revision History
  2. Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud, May Update
        1. Monthly Update Schedule
        2. Please Join Oracle Cloud Customer Connect
        3. Give Us Documentation Feedback
        4. Follow Us on Social Media
        5. Learning Paths and New Videos
    2. Announcements
        1. Working with Notes in Management Reports
        2. Using Hidden Grids in Management Reports
        3. Uploading File Options in Doclet Properties
        4. Uploading File Options in Style Sample Document
        5. Anchoring Support for European Single Electronic Format (ESEF) Jurisdiction
        6. Auto Tagging the Disclosure Management Master Document
        7. Ability to Auto Tag Table Cells with Multiple Dimensions
        8. New Alert for Extension Updates
        9. New Versions of Oracle Smart View for Office and Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud 19.05 Extension
        10. Removal of Support for Transport Layer Security Protocol 1.0 and 1.1
    3. Defects Fixed
    4. Considerations
        1. Access Control
        2. Report Packages
        3. Management Reporting
        4. Disclosure Management
        5. Smart View
        6. Only for Smart View for Office with Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus

May 2019 Update

Revision History

Date Feature Notes
06 MAY 2019 New Versions of Oracle Smart View for Office and Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud 19.05 Extension Updated document. Delivered new feature with May 2019 to clarify Oracle SmartView announcements.
25 APR 2019   Created initial document.

Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud, May Update

This document outlines the upcoming Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud update.

Monthly Update Schedule

Oracle will apply the latest updates to your test environments starting at 22:00 UTC (15:00 PDT) on Friday, May 3, 2019 and to your production environment on Friday, May 17, 2019, also starting at 22:00 UTC. The updates will be applied to your environments during the first subsequent daily maintenance.

The Oracle Help Center provides access to updated documentation. The updates will be available in the Help Center on May 3, 2019. Some of the links to new feature documentation included in this 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.

Learning Paths and New Videos

New Videos:

Describes how Administrators can tailor the interface to best suit different user and group activities using connections for seamless cross-business processes navigation, custom navigation flows that streamline workflow, and interactive infolets that place key data on the homepage.

Many customer want to know how to use the Enterprise Performance Management Help Center more effectively. This video shows you how to find answers quickly and easily using the Help Center.

  • Learning Paths - By viewing these learning path links, you can get complete hands-on example of how to design and view reports in Management Reporting. Learning Paths are now available on the Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud Help Center.

Announcements

Working with Notes in Management Reports

The Notes feature enables you to have a structured solution for end users to enter POV Based narrative text, which can be displayed in formatted reports along with grids and charts, where desired. Notes in the Management Reports can be utilized where reporting structure and narrative requirements are uniform across Entities, Departments, and so on. For example:

  • Public sector budget books, Department or Division performance summaries, and so on.
  • Each Department page or section may include:
    • A grid
    • Performance summary narrative text
    • A chart
    • Variance explanation narrative text

All Notes can be managed, viewed, and edited in the Notes Manager. Each Note is stored by Note box template, Data source, and POV.

Key Resources

Using Hidden Grids in Management Reports

This feature enables you to hide a grid from being displayed in the report output. For example, if you use row or column formulas to pull in data from additional data sources into one grid, you can hide the source data grids by placing them in the hidden sheet. The hidden sheet is where you can insert or paste grids that need to be hidden from the report output. The hidden sheet contains grids that are created as part of a chart definition.

Key Resources

  • Using Hidden Grids in Designing with Management Reporting for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud

Uploading File Options in Doclet Properties

You can select the doclet that can be either sourced from Local or Library file options.

Key Resources

Uploading File Options in Style Sample Document

You can select the style sample that can be either sourced from Local or Library file options.

Key Resources

Anchoring Support for European Single Electronic Format (ESEF) Jurisdiction

This feature is required when you need to create extension concepts to represent line items in the financial statements because they are not available in the European Single Electronic Format (ESEF) base taxonomy or they are company specific, it is required that these additions be "anchored".

NOTE: The anchoring feature is available for new templates that use ESMA ESEF base taxonomy.

Key Resources

Auto Tagging the Disclosure Management Master Document

The Auto Tag operation can be performed on the Disclosure Management master document. However, be advised that since working with individual doclets enables collaboration of multiple users working on the report, it is more beneficial to Auto Tag individual doclets when there are several users.

Key Resources

Ability to Auto Tag Table Cells with Multiple Dimensions

The auto tagging process now supports mapping of multiple dimension per table cell. The table cells for implicitly defined dimension values and supports multiple explicit dimension values that are defined in the row or column headers. All these multiple dimensions may be explicitly defined in the row and column headers, implicitly defined for the whole table or as a part of the table and explicitly described in preceding or within the proceeding text around the table.

Key Resources

New Alert for Extension Updates

The new Extension Alerts dialog helps you to keep your installed Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting and Oracle Disclosure Management extensions up-to-date. If you haven’t already installed these extensions, it informs you that they’re available for install.

Key Resources

  • Extensions in Working with Oracle Smart View for Office

New Versions of Oracle Smart View for Office and Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud 19.05 Extension

The Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud 19.05 Extension for Oracle Smart View for Office is available. This update includes new features, general performance improvements and bug fixes and is required for compatibility with Smart View 11.1.2.5.900, which will be available in May 2019.

If you are using Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel, all versions of Oracle Smart View and the Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud extension are compatible with Enterprise Performance Reporting release 19.05.

If you are using Microsoft PowerPoint:

  • If you upgrade to Oracle Smart View 11.1.2.5.900, then you must also upgrade to the Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud 19.05 Extension, and vice-versa.
  • You must be running Oracle Smart View for Office 11.1.2.5.810 in order to continue to use Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud 19.02 Extension for Smart View. 

Oracle Smart View for Office 11.1.2.5.900 includes new features and fixed defects.

New features include:

  • Enhanced ad hoc features, including cell-based POV, submit without refresh, additional free-form functionality support, and multiple-grid ad hoc.
  • New Extension Alert dialog to notify you of extension updates upon login.
  • Support for Microsoft Office 2019.
  • New Health Check option, Browser Emulation Mode, to ensure that browser-based screens, such as the Oracle Cloud login dialog, render properly.
  • Informational dialog showing the POV of the drill-through report launch point.

This release also fixes a number of defects.

The Smart View 11.1.2.5.900 Readme, available on the Help Center, will contain a complete list of features and defects addressed in this version. You must install this version to ensure access to the new functionalities.

Removal of Support for Transport Layer Security Protocol 1.0 and 1.1

As announced in previous readiness documents, starting with this update (Release 19.05) to EPM Services, Oracle will support only Transport Layer Security protocol version 1.2 (TLS 1.2) to communicate with EPM Cloud. To ensure the highest level of authentication and data encryption security, TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 will no longer be supported after your environments are updated on May 3, 2019.

NOTE: Support for TLS versions 1.0 and 1.1 will be removed for both your Test and Production environments on May 3, 2019.

Because most modern operating systems and browsers support TLS 1.2; users of such systems and browsers will not be affected by the deprecation of TLS 1.0 and 1.1. EPM Automate and Smart View are also not affected by this change.

After TLS 1.1 is deprecated,  you cannot use client operating systems that do not support TLS 1.2 (for example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Microsoft Windows 2002) to run operating system-specific commands (for example, code to run cURL tools to transfer data and custom code that integrates with the Rest APIs) against EPM Cloud. Additionally, Smart View installed on such systems will also fail to communicate with EPM Cloud. Similarly, you cannot use browsers that do not support TLS 1.2 protocol to access EPM Cloud environments.

If you are using on-premises FDMEE to integrate with EPM Cloud you must update your on-premises EPM 11.1.2.4 deployment to support TLS 1.2. Refer to the following Oracle Support document to enable TLS 1.2 support:

Defects Fixed

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

Considerations

Access Control

  • In Access Control, Service Administrator can manage group using “*” (asterisk) as the wildcard character to retrieve all available groups. For example, "John*" should be added to search user in the search field. However, in Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud (EPRCS) search capability automatically display characters that are matching in the "contains” field. See Creating Groups in Administering Access Control for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud.

  • In Access Control, Service Administrator can create and manage group, where as in Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud, an Application Administrator can create and maintain all artifacts, such as applications, models, dimensions, and data grants. You may not able to view each individual Application-Level provisioning roles in Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud. See Understanding Pre-Defined Roles in Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Administrators.

  • If a Service Administrator creates a user and did not assign any role to that user. If the newly created user tries to login to the application, then an error message is displayed, “You have been authenticated but you do not have access to Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud Service. Contact your Service Administrator.”

  • In Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud, if a user has Reports Administrator rights then the user can view the folder and can perform import or export option on that folder, else the user will not have rights to view all the folders in the library. See Understanding Pre-Defined Roles in Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Administrators.

Key Resources

Report Packages

Be aware of the following considerations when working with Report Packages.

  • In Report Package, if you are adding a table of contents with a report package that uses multi-byte fonts, a service error may occur when executing a link within the table of contents if the associated fonts have not been uploaded to the service.  As a workaround, uploading the required fonts to the service.

  • It’s recommended to limit the number of variables that are inserted into an individual doclet. The maximum limit to insert variables with in the doclet should be less than 250.  If a doclet contains more than 250 variables, then you may encounter extended processing time while checking in doclet, and many times the doclet may fail to check-in.

  • With the latest Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) software update, Time zone preference set to UTC - 08:00 by default. If a user tries to set the date selection in any of the Report Package's time line fields, the time zone code (GMT+/-00:00) is shown at the end of the input field. For example, if the user sets the due date for the start of the author phase to be January 1, 2019 at 9 AM in the Pacific US time zone, the date field is displayed as Jan 1, 2019 9:00:00 AM GMT-08:00.

  • In PDF-based Report Packages, Reviewers are unable to add comments to the report content sourced from Microsoft Excel doclets. Review commenting on the Excel doclet contents will be supported within a future release.

  • Publishing a report package to PDF that contains embedded charts that were created in Microsoft Word results in errors.

Workaround: Either convert the Word charts to images, or replace the Word charts with embedded content from a reference file or doclet.

  • Previewing a report that has a PowerPoint style sample with a custom slide that has numbering starting at zero will display an error.

Workaround: Download the PowerPoint style sample document and change the numbering on the Slide Master to start with one, instead of zero. Then, edit your report package properties and select the updated style sample document.

  • When you add embedded content that contains internal hyperlinks to a report package, if you select Download Preview to view the document, the hyperlinks within the embedded content do not open when clicked.  

  • When creating embedded content, if you use the horizontal text alignment format Center Across Selection in Excel, the selection does not carry forward into the embedded content when the doclet is embedded in Word.  The text remains within the original cell.

Workaround:  To achieve the same visual layout, use Merge cells and Center align to align the text in the merge cell.

  • When you insert a reference variable value that references a document that was created using Word 2007, a line break is inserted in the text, creating an extra line.

Workaround:  If you encounter this issue, delete the extra line.

  • If an Excel worksheet uses a double-line bottom border on the last row of a named range, an extra row appears in the embedded content within a consuming doclet.

Workaround: To work around this issue, try one of the following options:

  1. Do not use a double line bottom border in the last row of a named range, but select an alternative bottom border.

  2. Navigate to a cell that is below the named range, and add dummy text or a blank space. You can then upload and check in the reference doclet. When the embedded content is generated, the empty row is no longer included.

  3. Resize the row below the row that contains the double-line bottom border. You can keep the double line border in the last row intact, but resize the next row to be very small (but not hidden). Click any cell in the relevant row and choose Home, then Format, and then Row Height and enter a small value such as 2 or 3. The extra space is included in the embedded content, but it has a minimal impact.
  • If a PowerPoint slide is created from a layout that contains placeholders for tables, charts, smart art or media files, those objects seem to disappear when uploaded to the service.The content is not lost however. After downloading the files, a reset on the slide will cause the content to reappear.

Workaround: To work around this issue, create the slide by adding the content directly to the slide rather than use a layout with place holders.

  • If the user enters a simple URL format (for example, www.oracle.com) within the Rich Text Editor, a service error will be displayed when the link is executed.

Workaround: If a user enters a fully qualified URL format (for example, http://www.oracle.com) within the Rich Text Editor, the URL link will open within a new browser tab.

  • When using an iPad with the Safari browser to preview a report package, Safari stops responding when you magnify the screen and tap preview.    

  • When downloading files using Safari 9, any spaces in the filename will appear as special characters.    

  • When performing a review of a PowerPoint report package using Safari, a service error is displayed if the user places the comment anchor in the blue area outside slide.    

  • When you open a review instance within Smart View, add a comment, switch to another review instance, and then switch back to the first review instance using the Content Selector, the comment is not updated correctly.

Workaround: Click “Refresh Comments” or click the Content Selector refresh button to display the comment correctly.

Management Reporting

Be aware of the following consideration when working with Management Reporting.

  • When uploaded for use with Management Reporting, Microsoft Internet Explorer requires installable fonts. If custom fonts are not installable, then Internet Explorer will substitute a different font. Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox do not require installable fonts.

Disclosure Management

Be aware of the following considerations when working with Disclosure Management.

  • Bidirectional language functionality is not supported in Disclosure Management for this release. 

  • When publishing a taxonomy in Taxonomy Designer, you must enter the full path for the ZIP file when specifying the location to publish to. An error is displayed if you specify the ZIP file name only without the path.  

  • When auto preview is enabled and you select Exhibit Linking after publish, Exhibit Linking does not work.

Workaround: Close Preview and select Exhibit Linking

  • When publishing a taxonomy in Taxonomy Designer, you must enter the full path for the ZIP file when specifying the location to publish to. An error is displayed if you specify the ZIP file name only without the path.

  • Ribbons are grayed out.

    Workaround: Reopen the same report. No need to restart the entire Microsoft Word instance. Only the report needs to be closed and reopened from the Private Connection. Once the report is reopened the ribbon is in an enabled state. At this time you can undo the checkout so the issue doesn’t occur again. The issue occurs due to the report being checked out earlier and never checked back in, or, the Undo Checkout was selected while the application was in an unstable state

  • Arelle from the client cannot connect to the internet.

Workaround: Run Arelle on a PC that has access to internet or open an SR and DEV (or support) will deliver the http cache and should be unzipped at:

<USER_HOME>\AppData\Local\Arelle\cache

  • Do not convert PDF formatted Disclosure Management reports to Word document.

Best Practice: Use original Word documents where available or re-create the content in a Word instance. Converting a PDF report to Word format is prohibited and will prevent the user from checking in the repository item when working in Disclosure Management.

  • The Auto Tag process can only detect one dimension now. The dimension name should be located on the horizontal or vertical column header.

  • You must ensure that the document is checked-in before clicking Auto Tag. If not, the current mappings in the Review Pane may disappear.

  • If you are restoring a database back up from 18.08 or 18.09, then the taxonomy registrations will not be restored. All the taxonomies need to be registered again. For open taxonomies that was edited using Taxonomy Designer template, you need to publish the taxonomy and register it again. For close taxonomies, you need to download the taxonomy from the issuing jurisdiction and register it again.

  • Auto-Tag process will only detect Level 4 tags in tables. It will not be able to detect tags in narratives.

  • Document Entity Information tags, Level 3 tags should be made first before attempting Auto-Tagging.

  • In Disclosure Management, you should remove spaces inside of the negative number before auto tagging. As a workaround, you must update individual doclet table cell from removing space. For example, you need to change table cell as follows:

    • From: "(74 )" – An extra space is displayed in the table cell.

    • To: "(74)" – Remove an extra space in the table cell.

Smart View

Be aware of the following considerations when working with Smart View.

  • In the Mozilla Firefox browser, if you are trying to download the Smart View extensions, this may result in a new tab opening with a large amount of code being displayed. This is due to a security policy within the Mozilla Firefox browser related to certain file extensions.

Workaround: Download the Smart View extensions using an alternate supported browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer or Google Chrome) or you can install the extension from Smart View directly.

Then, follow the install instructions in “Installing the Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud Extension” of the Oracle Smart View for Office User's Guide.

  • In Word 2016, 32- or 64-bit, when you close a document, Word stops responding (displays the spinning wheel) until you either click in the ribbon area of the interface, or press the Alt key.  

  • On Microsoft Windows 10 with Office 32- or 64-bit, in the Add Report Content dialog, range names display incorrectly.

Workaround: Go to the Control Panel, then Display, then click the link for “Set a custom scaling level” and ensure that the setting in the “Custom sizing options” dialog is 100%. If it is not, set it to 100%, and then log out of Windows and log back in.

  • A connection created in one language cannot be used if Smart View is changed to a different language.

Workaround:  Create multiple private connections using the Add Connection Wizard. Before creating each connection, change the Smart View language display (in the Options dialog box, Advanced tab, Language drop-down list). Then, follow the instructions “Using the Private Connection Wizard” in the Oracle Smart View for Office User's Guide.

  • When downloading a new Smart View extension from Microsoft Internet Explorer, the filename extension defaults to .ZIP instead of .SVEXT. This prevents you from being able to double-click to install the extension.

Workaround: When Internet Explorer prompts you to save the file, choose “Save As”, change the Type to “All Files”, and then change the extension from .ZIP to .SVEXT. Then, double-click the downloaded file to install the extension.

  • When any of the allowable special characters are used in a report package name (such as commas, semicolons, or ampersands), there may be a discrepancy between how the name displays in the library tree and how it displays in the Report Center panel.  

  • If you have open or close bracket characters in an Excel reference or supplemental doclet, Excel changes the brackets to parentheses when you save the file.  

  • When you upload an Excel reference doclet with many named ranges, not all of the named ranges are listed as available content.

Workaround: Upload the doclet and then go to the web and add the embedded contents within the doclet inspect dialog.

Be aware of the following consideration when working with Smart View for ad hoc analysis.

  • When users sign in to the service for the first time, they will be prompted to change the password. Oracle recommends that users sign in first to the web to change their password before connecting through Smart View.

Only for Smart View for Office with Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus

A known issue with Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus patch 16.0.10228.20051, updated through the insider slow channel, prevents users from accessing Oracle Smart View for Office with Office 365, resulting in the “Member not found” message being displayed. This Microsoft patch was pushed to users who signed up for monthly channel updates between June 12 and June 14, 2018.

Workaround: Update Office with Microsoft Office 365 Version 1806 (Build 10228.20080), which contains the fix for this issue.