Update 19C

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
14 SEP 2023	Configure Supplier Registration In-Process Notifications with Business Intelligence Publisher	Updated document. Added opt in expiry.
30 AUG 2019	Store and Report on Purchasing Document Import Errors	Updated document. Delivered feature in update 19C.
29 JUL 2019	Establish Order Generation Schedules by Supplier Agreement	Updated document. Added link to a white paper on My Oracle Support.
29 JUL 2019	Route Purchasing Documents for Approval Using Employment Assignment Attributes	Updated document. Added Steps to Enable content.
29 JUL 2019	Route Purchase Requisitions for Approval Using Grade and Department Attributes	Updated document. Added Steps to Enable content.
21 JUN 2019		Created initial document.

Overview

This guide outlines the information you need to know about new or improved functionality in this update, and describes any tasks you might need to perform for the update. Each section includes a brief description of the feature, the steps you need to take to enable or begin using the feature, any tips or considerations that you should keep in mind, and the resources available to help you.

Security and New Features

The Role section of each feature identifies the security privilege and job role required to use the feature. If feature setup is required, then the Application Implementation Consultant job role is required to perform the setup, unless otherwise indicated. (If a feature doesn't include a Role section, then no security changes are required to use the feature.)

If you have created job roles, then you can use this information to add new privileges to those roles as needed.

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.

Optional Uptake of New Features (Opt In)

Oracle Cloud Applications delivers new updates every quarter. This means every three months you'll receive new functionality to help you efficiently and effectively manage your business.  Some features are delivered Enabled meaning they are immediately available to end users. Other features are delivered Disabled meaning you have to take action to make available. Features delivered Disabled can be activated for end users in a couple of ways:

Access the Opt In page from the New Features Work Area

1. Click the Navigator, and then click New Features (under the My Enterprise heading)
2. On the New Features page, select the offering that includes new features you’d like to review
3. Click Go to Opt In for any feature you want to opt in
4. On the Edit Features page, select the Enable option for the feature, and then click Done

or...  Access the Opt In page from the Setup and Maintenance Work Area

1. Click the Navigator, and then click Setup and Maintenance
2. On the Setup page, select your offering, and then click Change Feature Opt In
3. On the Opt In page, click the Edit Features icon for any area that includes features you want to opt in
4. On the Edit Features page, select the Enable option for any feature you want to opt in to. If the Enable column includes an Edit icon instead of a check box, then click the icon, select your feature options, and click Save and Close. 
5. Click Done.

Opt In Expiration

Occasionally, features delivered Disabled via Opt In may auto enable in a future update. This is known as an Opt In Expiration. If your cloud service has any Opt In Expirations you will see a related tab in this document. Click on that tab to see when the feature was originally delivered Disabled, and when the Opt In will expire, potentially auto enabling the feature. You can also click here to see features with Opt In Expirations across all Oracle Cloud Applications.

Feature Summary

Procurement

Cross-Product Procurement Enhancements

Integrate and Extend Procurement Using REST Services

In this update, Oracle Procurement Cloud delivers new and modified REST APIs to enable and simplify integration with external systems.

One new REST API was introduced in this update:

• Draft Purchase Orders

The following REST APIs were enhanced:

• Supplier Qualification Question Responses
  • POST and PATCH actions were enabled
• Suppliers
  • POST and PATCH actions were enabled for suppliers, addresses, and contacts
• Purchase Requisitions
  • PATCH action was enabled on requisition headers, lines, and distributions
• Supplier Negotiations
  • POST action was enabled to support the creation of draft negotiations with lines, collaboration team members, and suppliers

Steps to Enable

Review the REST service definition in the REST API guides to leverage (available from the Oracle Help Center > your apps service area of interest > REST API) .  If you are new to Oracle's REST services you may want to begin with the Quick Start section.

Key Resources

• REST API for Oracle Procurement Cloud documentation, available on the Oracle Help Center.

Purchasing

Establish Order Generation Schedules by Supplier Agreement

Consolidate requisition demand into fewer purchase orders by establishing order generation schedules for requisitions sourced to supplier agreements. Define and set a schedule group for your agreements with similar ordering frequency conditions. For example, define a schedule group called "Thursdays" and associate agreements to be processed on Thursdays with that schedule group. Schedule the Generate Orders job with the schedule group parameter, and configure the job settings to schedule the job to run periodically. When the job runs, it will process only the requisitions sourced to agreements with that schedule group.

Steps to Enable

Use the Opt In UI to enable this feature. For instructions, refer to the Optional Uptake of New Features section of this document.

Offering: Procurement

To use this feature after enabling the opt in, you need to define schedule groups, associate agreements with those schedule groups, and schedule the Generate Orders job with the schedule group parameter.

DEFINE SCHEDULE GROUPS

1. Navigate to the Manage Standard Lookups task and search for Lookup Type: ORA_PO_SCHEDULE_GROUP.
2. Add your lookup code and meaning to the Lookup Codes table.

Manage Standard Lookups

ASSOCIATE AGREEMENT WITH SCHEDULE GROUP

1. Go to the agreement controls tab and select the schedule group for that agreement. You can associate the same schedule group with multiple agreements. 

Agreement Controls

SCHEDULE GENERATE ORDERS JOB WITH SCHEDULE GROUP PARAMETER

1. When running the Generate Orders job, the schedule group parameter acts as a filter. If the schedule group parameter is blank, then the job processes only requisitions with no backing agreement and requisitions with backing agreements that have no associated schedule group. 

2. If the schedule group parameter is set to a value, then the Generate Orders job processes only requisitions with backing agreements associated to that schedule group value.  

Generate Orders Parameters

3. To make sure all requisitions are processed, we recommend having a Generate Orders job scheduled with a blank schedule group and additional jobs scheduled for each possible schedule group value.  

4. To schedule the job to run periodically, you need to configure the settings in the Schedule tab under Advanced Options. 

Generate Orders Advanced Options

Key Resources

For more details on how to use this feature, review the following white paper on My Oracle Support: Generate Orders by Supplier Agreement (Doc ID 2569322.1).

Generate Separate Purchase Orders by Ship-To Location

Group requisitions by ship-to location during batch purchase order generation so that separate purchase orders are created for each location. Requester-negotiated requisition lines with no source agreement are grouped by ship-to location into single purchase orders after you run the Generate Orders scheduled process. Requisition lines with the Use ship-to location option enabled on their source agreement are grouped in a similar fashion.

This feature enriches the requisition to purchase order process, allowing buyers to generate separate purchase orders by ship-to location for described online requisitions. 

Steps to Enable

Use the Opt In UI to enable this feature. For instructions, refer to the Optional Uptake of New Features section of this document.

Offering: Procurement

Import Supplier Part Number and Auxiliary ID Updates for Blanket Purchase Agreement Lines

Update the supplier part number and auxiliary IDs of existing agreement lines using File-Based Data Import (FBDI). Simplify your catalog content management by importing updates to existing lines, instead of replacing them by creating new lines.

In the FBDI template for a blanket purchase agreement, you can load or update Supplier Item and Supplier Part Auxiliary ID attributes using the PO_LINES_INTERFACE sheet. After importing, the Purchase Agreements page will display two attributes.

This screen capture illustrates the feature.

Columns to Populate Supplier Item and Supplier Part Auxiliary ID in PO_LINES_INTERFACE Sheet

Steps to Enable

Use the Opt In UI to enable this feature. For instructions, refer to the Optional Uptake of New Features section of this document.

Offering: Procurement  No Longer Optional From: Update 20A

Tips And Considerations

In addition to FBDI, Supplier Item and Supplier Item Auxiliary Identifier attributes can be updated using the agreement loader.

Route Purchasing Documents for Approval Using Employment Assignment Attributes

You can configure approval rules to route purchasing documents using employment assignment attributes for the worker types: Buyer, Requester, Preparer and Submitter. These attributes are available:

• Job Name
• Job Level
• Grade
• Department

Steps to Enable

You must configure your approval rules to use the grade and department attributes if you want to take advantage of this feature. You can configure attributes for approval rules in a variety of ways. For details, see: Setting Up Document Approvals in Oracle Fusion Procurement.

Store and Report on Purchasing Document Import Errors

Store and report import purchasing document errors for rows that failed validation when you run the Purchasing Document Import process. You can create a new Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher report to identify failed transactions and take corrective actions. For the new report, create a BI Publisher data model comprising the PO_INTERFACE_ERRORS table and the respective report layout. The output can be in .xlsx, .csv, or .xml format, among other output formats supported by BI Publisher. After you take corrective actions, you can run the Purge Processed Open Interface Documents process to purge the import errors.

Steps to Enable

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

Tips And Considerations

• Your new report won't be limited to 500 records, unlike the standard Purchasing Document Import Errors report.
• You can view the output in any format supported by BI Publisher.

Key Resources

For details about the Import Purchasing Documents process, refer to Import Purchase Orders in the Manage Purchase Orders chapter of the Using Procurement guide, available on the Oracle Help Center.

For details about the process to create BI Publisher reports, refer to Data Models, Layouts, and New Reports in the Modify Reports chapter of the Creating and Administering Analytics and Reports guide, available on the Oracle Help Center.

Self Service Procurement

Search for Requisitions by Item or by Supplier on the Manage Requisitions Page

Search for requisitions that contain lines for a specific item. This makes it easy to confirm whether a requisition exists for a particular item or not, without needing to know who might have ordered it.

Similarly, you can search for requisitions with lines sourced to a specific supplier from the Manage Requisitions page, without needing to know who might have created an existing requisition.

Prior to this feature, you could only search for requisitions created by a specific person or in a specific requisitioning business unit.

Steps to Enable

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

Tips And Considerations

• If the results of your search will exceed a count of 5,000, the system will display a maximum of 5,000 randomly selected results. This can be identified by the randomness of the creation dates of the returned results.

• One way to prevent the above behavior and/or ensure the returned results contains the requisition(s) you are interested in, is to limit your search results by specifying a value for the "Created" search attribute. For example, you could limit your search to requisitions created in the "Last 7 days", "Last 30 days", etc.

Route Purchase Requisitions for Approval Using Grade and Department Attributes

You can now configure approval rules to route purchase requisition documents using these additional attributes.

• Preparer Department
• Preparer Grade
• Requester Department
• Requester Grade

These attributes are part of the user's employment assignment in Oracle HCM Cloud and supported for the worker types: Preparer and Requester.

Steps to Enable

You must configure your approval rules to use the grade and department attributes if you want to take advantage of this feature. You can configure attributes for approval rules in a variety of ways. For details, see: Setting Up Document Approvals in Oracle Fusion Procurement.

Supplier Model

Configure Supplier Registration In-Process Notifications with Business Intelligence Publisher

Use Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher templates to configure notifications that communicate additional action needed by the external user to complete their supplier registration. The new templates support the Save for Later and Request to Resubmit notifications for supplier self-service registration. You can configure the email notification content and add or remove data model attributes. You can also tailor the layout, style, and format of your notifications.

Email notifications created using Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher templates are clear and readable across email clients. Users can view the email notifications on a broad range of devices.

External Supplier Registration: Save for Later Email Notification

External Supplier Registration: Request to Resubmit Email Notification

Steps to Enable

Use the Opt In UI to enable this feature. For instructions, refer to the Optional Uptake of New Features section of this document.

Offering: Procurement  No Longer Optional From: Update 24C

After you opt in, follow these steps to configure the templates for supplier registration in process notifications:

1. Sign in to Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher.

2. In the Suppliers Business Intelligence Catalog, locate the following templates, and then click Customize. This creates a copy of the templates in your Custom folder.

• For the save for later external supplier registration email notification, use the External Supplier Registration Save for Later Email Report template.
• For the request to resubmit external supplier registration email notification, use the External Supplier Registration Request To Resubmit Email Report template.

3. Edit the copied templates in your Custom folder.

4. Upload the templates (select the appropriate locale for your instance).

Access Requirements

This role is required to configure the notifications:

• Job Role Name and Code:
  • BI Administrator (BIAdministrator)

Navigate to Supplier Profile from Reports

You can use reports to identify supplier profile information needing review or updates. Rather than exiting the report to find each supplier that requires attention, you can now create reports that include links to the supplier profile. You can include these links on both Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence and Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher reports. Use them to navigate to the supplier profile, to view details and take required actions.

This screen capture illustrates the feature:

Drill Down from OTBI Report to Supplier Profile

Steps to Enable

For details on how to set up and use this feature, refer to Navigate to Supplier Profile from Reports on My Oracle Support (note 2556026.1).

Tips And Considerations

• You can enable the supplier profile link on Supplier Name or Supplier Number in the report.
• Security is enforced, so users will need supplier profile access in the Suppliers work area to successfully navigate and view the supplier details.

Supplier Qualification Management

Duplicate Initiatives

Duplicate an initiative to reuse the same questionnaires and suppliers. Save time and improve accuracy when you use a copy of an existing initiative as your starting point. After duplicating, you can update your new draft as necessary.

This screen capture illustrates the feature.

Duplicate an Initiative from Manage Initiatives

Steps to Enable

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

Tips And Considerations

• You can duplicate initiatives of qualification and assessment types.
• You can duplicate initiatives from the Manage Initiatives, Monitor Initiative, and View Initiative pages.