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
30 NOV 2017	Defects Fixed	Updated document. Added descriptions for fixed defects 27084462 and 27132200.
30 NOV 2017	Possible Syntax Change Required For EPM_AUTOMATE loaddimdata Command	Updated document. Added consideration.
22 NOV 2017		Created initial document.

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud, December Update

This document outlines the announcements and known issues in the upcoming Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud update.

Announcements and New Features

Monthly Update Schedule

Oracle will apply the latest updates to your test environments on Friday, December 1, 2017 and to your production environment on Friday, December 15, 2017, starting at 14:00 UTC-7 (2:00pm Pacific Time). The updates will be applied to your environments during the first Daily Maintenance occurring after this time.

The Oracle Help Center, which provides access to updated documentation, will also be available on December 1, 2017.

NOTE:  You can import backup snapshots into environments with the same, the preceding or the next update versions. For example, you can import backup snapshots from release 17.08 into releases 17.07 and 17.09. For more information about migration, see Administering Migration for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud.

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.

Create New Dimensions

You can now create a dimension and set its properties in Dimension Management. To do this, select Application, then Dimension Management, and then click +. For more information, see "Creating Dimensions with Dimension Management" in Administering Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud.

View Dimension Properties on the Dimension Management Page

To quickly view the properties of a dimension, a new Inspect button has been added to the Dimension Management page which expands the Properties pane. To expand the Properties pane, highlight or select a dimension on the Dimension Management page, and then click Inspect. For more information, see "Viewing Application Dimensions" in Administering Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud.

Add Multiple Dimension Members Using the Rules Express Editing Screen

You can now add multiple members to a rule using the Rules Express Editing screen. You can select members in the Express Add Member dialog by typing the member names, selecting them from the list which displays as you type, or pressing enter on an exact match; or click the search icon to use the member selector. Selected members are displayed in the box above the search box. You can also select members for deletion from the list so they are not added to the rule. For more information, see “Adding Members to Rules” in Administering Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud.

Inspect Rule Detail Enhancement

When using Rules Express Editing, you can now inspect the detail of a rule by highlighting it, and then clicking the Inspect icon.  The Inspect region stays open and refreshes as you highlight a different rule.

New Stop After Rule Option

The new option Stop After Rule calculation rule option enables you to specify a stopping point for a calculation job.  All rules up to and including the specified rule will run and the calculation will stop at that point. For more information, see “Performing Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Calculations” in Administering Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud.

New Smart View for Office Version

Smart View for Office 11.1.2.5.720 will be available by early December. This version includes new features such as:

• Support using a connection string with HypUIConnect, instead of a friendly name. Friendly names are still supported (all services)
• Enhanced extension update workflow, allowing you to select a server or service from which to check for updated extension downloads
• Support for additional data types with HsGetValue: Smart Lists, text, and date
• Option to automatically resize column width and row height on cells in forms and ad hoc grids

This release also fixes a number of defects.

The Smart View 11.1.2.5.720 Readme, available on the Help Center at the time of release, contains a complete list of features and defects addressed in this version. You must install this version to ensure compatibility with the December 2017 update features and to access the new functionalities. See "Downloading and Installing Clients" in Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Users for instructions.

New EPM Getting Started Guides

Starting with this update, Service Administrator and end user “getting started” information for all EPM Cloud Services is available from these new guides:

• Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Administrators
• Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Users

Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Administrators contains information on the tasks that Service Administrators can perform with EPM Cloud Services. This guide, which provides common administrative information for all EPM Cloud services, is now your primary source for tasks related to EPM Cloud administration, including managing users and roles, setting up single sign-on, and backing up and restoring environments. This guide replaces these guides:

• Using Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud
• Getting Started with Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud
• Getting Started with Account Reconciliation Cloud for Administrators
• Getting Started with Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud for Administrators
• Getting Started with Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud
• Getting Started for Administrators for Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud

Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Users introduces end users to Oracle EPM Cloud and provides information that enables them to quickly become proficient. This guide replaces these guides:

• Getting Started with Account Reconciliation Cloud for Users
• Getting Started with Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud for Users
• Getting Started for Users for Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud

Links in the Cloud Help Center and Oracle Learning Library have been modified to direct users to these guides. Please change your personal bookmarks and shortcuts so that they point to these new guides.

Removal of Support

Financial Reporting Studio Desktop Client

Oracle is committed to providing a simple and intuitive user experience. To achieve this, Financial Reporting Web Studio, available since March 2016, will become the only environment for designing and building reports.

Oracle is providing additional time for users to transition from Financial Reporting Desktop Studio to Financial Reporting Web Studio. Tentative plans call for functional parity between Financial Reporting Web Studio and Financial Reporting Desktop Studio in early 2018, at which time, support for the Desktop Studio will transition to the Web Studio and distribution of the Desktop Studio will cease. This transition is currently planned for the 18.04 update (April 6, 2018 for test and April 20, 2018 for production environments).

Oracle recommends that you transition to using Financial Reporting Web Studio at the earliest opportunity. Please send questions and concerns to Oracle using the Provide Feedback option in the service.

Defects Fixed

Check this list again for the latest information when the update is applied to your test environment.

Defect Number	Description
26980895	The Dimension Editor now allows more than 1000 characters in the Formula field.
26789795	Profitability and Cost Management Cloud trace allocation reports are now generated as expected when shared members are present.
25985928	Dynamic ranges on graphs now work the same in both the Cloud and on-premises versions of Financial Reporting Web Studio. (Previously, reports set to vary the y-axis range based on the data set resulted in graphs with too wide or too narrow of a data range.)
26478186	Custom fonts uploaded with Financial Reporting Web Studio are now correctly stored
26719130	The problem with security when running a report from the Explore Repository in Financial Reporting Web Studio has been fixed. (Previously, if you had "Apply Application Security to FR POV and Prompt" set to "true", you were still able to see the entire hierarchy)
26759004	You can now add labels to charts in Financial Reporting Web Studio.
26975317	When you export multiple reports from Financial Reporting Web Studio into Excel, and then view the reports in HTML, an error no longer occurs and the reports display correctly.
26995802	In Financial Reporting Web Studio, selecting an account using the member selection now works correctly.
27045036	The HTML preview of a Financial Reporting report with multiple grids now displays correctly.
27084462	Importing an application no longer fails due to calculation rules and model views that have a dimension without any member selections.
27132200	The Artifact Snapshot backup taken during the Automated Maintenance Window (AMW) now always includes all calculation rules in the exported snapshot.

Considerations

Mozilla Firefox

USING FIREFOX ESR 52.4.2 WITH SMART VIEW

Mozilla Firefox has phased out support for XUL-based add-ons such as Smart View. Only add-ons and extensions built with new web extension technology will work in newer versions of Firefox. Therefore, Smart View 11.1.2.5.710 and newer only supports Firefox versions up to ESR 52.4.1. If you want to continue using Firefox with Smart View 11.1.2.5.710 and newer, do not upgrade your Firefox browser.

If your Firefox browser is set to automatically install updates, Oracle recommends changing the setting to “Check for updates, but let me choose whether to install them.” See the Firefox help for instructions on changing this setting.

Microsoft Excel Known Issue that Affects Smart View for Office

Due to an issue with Microsoft Office, using the copy and paste functionality in Excel and then performing any Smart View operation (such as Refresh, Zoom In, or Submit) causes Smart View to stop responding in the following cases (bug number 26796966):

• Copying a column to multiple columns if the column copied contains a Smart List or the database to which you’re connected supports duplicate member names.
• Copying one Smart List cell to multiple cells
• Copying one member cell to multiple cells if the database to which you’re connected supports duplicate member names

The issue is fixed for Excel 2013 and Excel 2016 if you have applied the updates described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles:

• For Excel 2013: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3115455/august-9--2016--update-for-excel-2013-kb3115455
• For Excel 2016: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3115438/august-9--2016--update-for-excel-2016-kb3115438

Microsoft has not provided the fix for Excel 2010. Workarounds:

• While designing the ad hoc grid and copying and pasting columns or cells, ensure that the Member Name Display option is set to "Distinct Member Name Only." The Member Name Display option is in the Member Options tab of the Options dialog box.
• After pasting, save the workbook and reopen it, then perform the refresh.

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Supports Smart View Private Connections

Currently, Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud supports only Private Connections with Smart View. For details, see “Accessing Smart View” in Chapter 2 of Getting Started with Oracle Profitability and Cost Management for Administrators and Getting Started with Oracle Profitability and Cost Management for Users.

Avoid Special Characters in Artifact Names, Including Calculation Rules

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud does not allow special characters in dimension names and artifact names, including calculation rules. If you are migrating an application from on-premise Profitability and Cost Management, you must remove any special characters from rule names before you perform the migration.

Particularly, Oracle strongly discourages the use of the forward slash ( / ) character in dimension and member names.  Validations will be added in future releases to prevent its use.  If you create a Smart View query that references a member that contains the '/' character in its name, the query will become unusable.

Possible Syntax Change Required For EPM_AUTOMATE loaddimdata Command

The loaddimdata command now allows multiple files separated by "_" (underscore) by default. If you are using this command with a file name having an underscore in it, you need to add the stringDelimiter parameter to specify a different file name separator, as shown below:

with one file:

epmautomate loaddimdata <appName> dataFileName="aaa_bbb.csv" stringDelimiter=#

with multiple files:

epmautomate loaddimdata <appName> dataFileName="aaa_bbb.csv#fff_ggg.csv#jjj_kkk.csv" stringDelimiter=#

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 patch cycle.