What's New

Update 22B

Revision History

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

Revision History

Overview

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are being updated directly from 21D to 22B you should review the content of both 22A and 22B sections to ensure you see all the changes included in the update.

HCM Cloud applications have two types of patches you can receive that are documented in this What’s New:

• Release Updates (22A, 22B, 22C, and 22D)
• Optional Monthly Maintenance Packs to each update

It is important for you to know what Release Update your environment is on. You can find this in your Cloud Portal.

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HAVE AN IDEA?

We’re here and we’re listening. If you have a suggestion on how to make our products better, please let us know. To enter an idea go to the Ideas Lab on Oracle Customer Connect. In this document wherever you see the light bulb icon after the feature name it means we delivered one of your ideas.

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Suggested Reading for all HCM Products:

• Human Resources What’s New – In the Global Human Resources section you will find features on the base application in which other application are built upon. 

NOTE: Not all Global Human Resource features are available for Talent and Compensation products.

• Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud Functional Known Issues and Maintenance Packs (Document ID 1554838.1). These documents identify bug fixes and possible known issues. You will also need to review these documents based in the release update version you are currently on or will be moving to.

• Oracle Help Center – Here you will find guides, videos and searchable help.
• Release Readiness – New Feature Summary, What’s New, Feature Listing Spreadsheet, Spotlights and Release Training

GIVE US FEEDBACK

We welcome your comments and suggestions to improve the content. Please send us your feedback at oracle_fusion_applications_help_ww_grp@oracle.com. Indicate you are inquiring or providing feedback regarding the HCM Cloud What’s New in the body or title of the email.

Feature Summary

Benefits

Benefits

Oracle Benefits is a complete, configurable and flexible global solution that enables organizations to successfully evolve and adapt to the unique needs of their workforce. The solution enables setup of traditional 'one-size fits all' plans to highly complex plans that selectively target different workforce segments with different benefit packages. Self-service capabilities present the user with an out of the box intuitive guided enrollment process with contextual information and embedded analytics.

Enhanced Enrollment Summary Page

Participants can now print an expanded view of the enrollment summary report so they can see more details. You need to turn on this feature in the self-service configuration page. Participants also print the enrollment summary that's applicable as on a specific date. Additionally, the Your Benefits page displays open enrollment details automatically if the event is active.  If not, the open enrollment choice won't appear in the list.

These enhancements simplify the enrollment flow and save the time of the Benefits administrators required to answer related questions. Participants can now easily preview all their plans before they print the enrollment summary.

Steps to Enable

 Here’s how you enable the expanded view of the enrollment summary report:

1. On the Home Page, click Benefits Administration > Plan Configuration.

2.  In the Tasks panel drawer, click Self-Service Configuration.

3. Select Display enrolled plans on the Confirmation and Summary page in an expanded state.

4. Click Save.

Self-Service Configuration

Key Resources

• Watch Enhanced Benefits Administrative and Participant Features Readiness Training

Add Text at Plan and Option Level in Self-Service Benefits

You can now add additional instruction text for plans and options in self-service benefits. Especially when you group multiple plans within one plan type, it's useful for employers to have the ability to provide additional text at the plan or option level. You can enter plain text of up to 180 characters for plans and 150 characters for options.

You can include the instruction text when you add or edit a plan or option in the Plan Configuration work area.

Sample Instruction Text

Where You Add Instruction Text

When you group multiple plans, it's beneficial if you have the ability to customize specific text at the plan or option level.

Steps to Enable

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

Key Resources

• Watch Enhanced Benefits Administrative and Participant Features Readiness Training

Allow Participants to Add Eligible Contacts during Self-Service Enrollment

You can now offer more flexibility to participants by enabling them to add newly added eligible contacts during the benefits self-service enrollment flow in the Before You Enroll or Add Contacts pages.  Previously, when family member rules were set, you could configure the application to allow a newly added dependent to show up in the enrollment flow after you add them in the contacts section. If family member rules were not set, you had to back out and reprocess the events to make the new contact an eligible dependent. With this new feature, the newly added eligible dependent record will appear in the enrollment flow even if there is no supporting configuration, thus improving ease of use. You no longer need to back out and reprocess the events. Here are the constraints for enabling newly added contacts as eligible dependents:

• Your plan configuration doesn't have family member rules set up.
• The life event should be in the Started status.
• The life event shouldn’t be of type Unrestricted or Unrestricted Open.
• Contact should be added after the life event creation date.
• Contact relationship should be started on or before the occurred date of the life event.

Self-Service Enrollment

The Benefits Setup Diagnostic Test report now includes a new column to indicate whether the self-service configuration for this feature is enabled or not.

Benefits Setup Diagnostic Test Report

Also, the Person Benefits Diagnostic Test report now includes a new section to show the details of any error that occurred because of this feature.

Person Benefits Diagnostic Test Report

To view these diagnostics reports, click the logged-in user's icon, and click Run Diagnostics Tests in the Troubleshooting section. Then, search for the Benefits Setup Diagnostic Test or Person Benefits Diagnostic Test.

You no longer have to do additional steps to display newly added eligible in the benefits self-service enrollment flow. This improves the user experience and saves time.

Steps to Enable

You can turn on this feature from the self-service configuration page. Here’s how you enable the newly added dependent to show up in the enrollment flow:

1. On the Home Page, click Benefits Administration > Plan Configuration.
2. In the Tasks panel drawer, click Self-Service Configuration.
3. Select the Allow new contacts to be added as eligible dependents check box.
4. Click Save.

Self-Service Configuration

Once you enable this feature, you can evaluate the life event and when the life event is in Started status, you need to add new contacts. If the newly added contact is eligible, you can see the contact for designation without backing out or reprocessing the life event.

Key Resources

• Watch Enhanced Benefits Administrative and Participant Features Readiness Training

Contact Person Number to Identify Benefit Contacts

You can now identify contacts easily with a new field called Contact Person Number on the Enrollment Results, Enrollment Summary, and People to Cover pages. In previous releases, you could inadvertently create duplicate contacts and not be able to identify them easily to decide which ones to delete or retain. The new Contact Person Number field helps you easily choose which contacts you want to undesignate from the enrollment. You can then safely delete and end-date the relevant records without causing data issues.

Contact Person Number

Person number available on the Enrollment Results, Enrollment Summary, and People to Cover pages would help in resolving issues related to duplicate dependents or beneficiaries.

Steps to Enable

By default, the person number doesn’t appear on the Before You Enroll page.  You need to enable it using HCM Experience Studio:

1. Log in as a user who has administrative privileges.

2. On the Home Page, click Configuration > Sandboxes.

3. Create a sandbox with HCM Experience Design Studio as the tool.

4. Click Create and Enter.

5. From the Tools menu, click HCM Experience Design Studio.

6. Select Before You Enroll from the Action list, and click Add.

7. On the Page Attributes section of the Edit Rule page, set the Person Number attribute to Visible.

8. Enter the basic details and click Save and Close.

Before You Enroll

Person Number

By default, the person number doesn’t appear on the Benefits Service Center enrollment results page.  You need to enable it using HCM Experience Studio:

1. Log in as a user who has administrative privileges.

2. On the Home Page, click Configuration > Sandboxes.

3. Create a sandbox with HCM Experience Design Studio as the tool.

4. Click Create and Enter.

5. From the Tools menu, click HCM Experience Design Studio.

6. Select Benefits Service Center from the Action list, and click Add.

7. Enter the basic details.

8. On the Available Attributes section of the Edit Rule page, select Benefits Summary as the data source.

9. Set the Person Number attribute to Visible.

10. Click Save and Close.

11. Repeat steps 6 to 10. In step 8, you need to select these data sources:

    1. Enrollment Results – Beneficiaries

    2. Enrollment Results – Dependents

Benefits Service Center

Benefits Summary

 Enrollment Results – Beneficiaries

Enrollment Results – Dependents

Key Resources

• Watch Enhanced Benefits Administrative and Participant Features Readiness Training

Enhance Audit Purge Reporting Details

You can now take advantage of the improved reporting capabilities in these purge processes:

• Purge Participation Evaluation Audit Data

• Purge Backed-Out or Voided Life Event Data

• Purge Stage Data

Most notably, these capabilities help you better understand how often you need to run these processes, and how much data is held before and after each run. You can find these processes in the Maintenance Processes section of the Processes tab in the Evaluation and Reporting work area.

Purge Processes

This feature helps you better understand how often you need to run these processes, and how much data is held before and after each run. The count gives you an estimate of how much data gets purged over a period. You can use these numbers along with the frequency of the current purge run to identify the future frequency of running the respective purge processes. The count gives you an estimate of how much data gets purged over a period. You can use these numbers along with the frequency of the current purge run to identify the future frequency of running the respective purge processes. This will enable you to make informed business decisions.

Steps to Enable

The Audit Log parameter should be set to Yes to see the enhanced logs. If the parameter is set as No, the log files show only the basic details. You need to submit the processes from the Maintenance Processes section of the Processes tab in the Evaluation and Reporting work area to set the Audit Log parameter.

Audit Log Parameter

Here’s a sample log when the Audit Log parameter is set to No:

Sample Log

Here’s a sample log when the Audit Log parameter is set to Yes:

Sample Log

Key Resources

• Watch Enhanced Benefits Administrative and Participant Features Readiness Training

• For more information see How You Purge Benefits Staging Data in the Oracle Help Center.

Extend Benefits Employee Alerts

You can now configure benefits alerts to send a confirmation to the participant when a dependent is added to be covered by a court order. You can do this by using the new event alert named Confirmation of Dependent Added by Court Order (BEN_COURT_ORDER_DEPENDENT_CREATED).

You can also send a confirmation alert to the participant when a new self-declared event is added. A new event alert named Confirmation of a Self-Declared Event (BEN_REPORT_LIFE_EVENT) is provided for this.

New Alerts

Confirmation of Life event

Confirmation of Self-Declared Event

The alerts provide a summary of what the participants have done and direct them to the next steps. 

Steps to Enable

Here’s how you enable the alerts:

1. Click Navigator > Tools > Alerts Composer.

2. Search for either BEN_REPORT_LIFE_EVENT or BEN_COURT_ORDER_DEPENDENT_CREATED.

3. Click Actions, Edit.

4. Select Yes in the Enabled list.

5. Click Save and Close.

At a high level, here's what you need to do to enable event alerts and make them available to the benefits users.

1. Enable the alerts you want to use on the Alerts page.

2. Open the alert for editing, and use the Templates tab if you want to change the wording or format, or add graphics and links.

3. Use the Run Options tab if you want to define a schedule for event alerts and make any changes to the delivered runtime settings.

Key Resources

• Watch Enhanced Benefits Administrative and Participant Features Readiness Training

• Benefits Alerts  

Use Plan Copy for Only Rates

You can now spend less time using the Plan Copy feature by choosing to import only rates data from the plan and program zip. If you tend to frequently update just the rates, this feature allows you to import just those changes so you don't need to deal with all the other plan configuration objects, thus leading to improved performance.

When you use plan copy, this feature provides an easy way to group all rate types by program or plan-not-in-program. This also means that there's less need to use the rate loaders to do the same task. You can change the rates in your staging environment and export. When you import the data in the production environment, the application imports only the rate changes, ignoring everything else you changed in the test environment. That leads to a reduced risk of inadvertently carrying over changes that you didn't want to see in your production environment.

When you import the zip file in the Plan Configuration work area, you need to select Rates from the drop-down list named Import Specific Objects to import only the rate data. This drop-down list is visible only for the import of programs and plans.

Import Specific Objects

The import process will fail if these dependent objects aren’t present in the production environment:

• Program

• Plan

• Option

• Compensation Level Factor

• User Values

• Formula

• Flex Shell Plan

• Eligibility Profile 

This enhancement reduces the time you spend on importing and exporting Benefits objects. 

Steps to Enable

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

Key Resources

• Watch Enhanced Benefits Administrative and Participant Features Readiness Training

• For more information see the Export and Import Benefits Plan Configuration topic in the Help Center.

Plan Copy Support for Multiple Set IDs

You can now use Plan Copy for objects, such as job and location. Because these objects are part of a set (or set enabled), you can use these objects in Plan Copy export and import even if their names are duplicated.

New alternative names are provided for the set-enabled objects during the import process:

Here’s how the alternative name appears for the job family object:

Alternative Name

This enhancement handles any duplication issues during import and export. 

Steps to Enable

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

Key Resources

• Watch Enhanced Benefits Administrative and Participant Features Readiness Training

Allow Unrestricted Processing to Restrict to Once A Day

You can now configure the application to process the enrollment just once a day even if the employee visits the enrollment flow and makes changes multiple times during the day. You can now use the new unrestricted processing rule called Once a Day.

This enhancement gives you more flexibility to control when to reprocess the enrollment.

Steps to Enable

You can turn on this feature from the self-service configuration page. Here’s how you restrict the enrollment processing to once a day:

1. On the Home Page, click Benefits Administration > Plan Configuration.

2.  In the Tasks panel drawer, click Self-Service Configuration.

3. Set Unrestricted Processing Enablement to Once a day.

4. Click Save.

Self-Service Configuration

Key Resources

• Watch Enhanced Benefits Administrative and Participant Features Readiness Training

Benefits for the UK

UK Pensions Enrollment

You can now use the new page designed for UK Pension to support participants to enroll in an eligible pension scheme. Participants can now make changes to their contributions, leave a pension scheme if they’re already enrolled, or elect not to be in a pension scheme. They can also enroll into a different scheme, navigate to the Pensions tile from the benefits landing page, and print the enrollment summary.

The new pension section that appears in the Person Enrollment Summary Report:

New Pension Section

 A new quick action named My Pension is provided as part of this release. This quick action is disabled by default.

This feature makes it easy for the participants to enroll in pension schemes and to manage the enrollments. 

Steps to Enable

Here’s how you turn on the My Pension tile. 

1. Log in as a user who has administrative privileges.
2. On the Home Page, click Configuration > Structure. 
3. Create a sandbox with Structure and Page Composer as the tools.
4. Open the sandbox
5. From the Tools menu, click Structure. Then, click Me. 
6. Select the Quick Actions tab, Benefits. 
7. Select the Add as a quick action link on the home page check box. 
8. Select My Pensions and select Yes from the Visible list to enable the My Pension tile.
9. Select Yes for Mobile Enabled.
10. Click Save and Close.

Settings to Turn on the My Pension Tile

Even if the My Pension tile is disabled, you can view your pension enrollment from the Your Benefits page.

Tips And Considerations

The Person Enrollment Summary Report has been updated to include the UK Pension Scheme details. To uptake the new feature, if you are using customized versions of the report and data model, you must update them based on the newly delivered report and data model.

Key Resources

• Watch Enhanced Benefits Administrative and Participant Features Readiness Training

• For UK Pensions configuration and use, see: Oracle Cloud HCM (UK): Pensions Enrolment Through Employee Self-Service (Doc ID 2811537.1)

Transactional Business Intelligence Enterprise for Benefits

Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence is a real time, self-service reporting solution offered to all Oracle Cloud application users to create ad hoc reports and analyze them for daily decision-making.  Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence provides human resources managers and specialists, business executives, and line managers the critical workforce information to analyze workforce costs, staffing, compensation, performance management, talent management, succession planning, and employee benefits.

Don’t want to start from scratch building a report or analytics? Check out the library of sample reports for all products on Customer Connect on the Report Sharing Center.

Program and Plan Attributes in Benefits Subject Area

Enhance your reporting on benefits with the addition of Program Name and Plan Name attributes in Benefits - Action Items Real Time subject area.

These attributes are added to the Benefit Legal Disclaimer folder in the subject area.

Steps to Enable

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

IMPORTANT Actions and Considerations for Benefits

REPLACED OR REMOVED FEATURES

From time to time, Oracle replaces existing Cloud service features with new features or removes existing features. When a feature is replaced the older version may be removed immediately or at a future time. As a best practice, you should use the newer version of a replaced feature as soon as the newer version is available.

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KNOWN ISSUES / MAINTENANCE PACK SPREADSHEETS

Oracle publishes a Known Issues document for every Update to make customers are aware of potential problems they could run into and the document provides workarounds if they are available.

Oracle also publishes Maintenance Pack and Statutory Maintenance Pack documentation of bugs that are fixed in the monthly or statutory patching.

To review these documents you must have access to My Oracle Support:

Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud Functional Known Issues and Maintenance Packs (Document ID 1554838.1)