January 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:

Overview

This document outlines the upcoming Sales Planning Cloud update.

Sales Planning Cloud

Monthly Update Schedule

Oracle will apply the latest monthly updates to your Test environments during the first daily maintenance that occurs at or after 23:00 UTC (15:00 PST) on Friday, January 3, 2020. Oracle will apply the latest monthly updates to your Production environments during the first daily maintenance that occurs at or after 23:00 UTC (15:00 PST) on Friday, January 17, 2020.

The Oracle Help Center provides access to updated documentation. The updates will be available in the Help Center on Friday, January 3, 2020. 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.

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.

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.

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.

Defects Fixed and Considerations

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

Announcements

There are no new features in this update.

New Documentation: Additional Troubleshooting Procedures for Sales Planning Cloud

New sections to enable users to troubleshoot common issues in Sales Planning Cloud are available in Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Administrators. These sections also provide complete lists of information that must be submitted for each issue through the service request that users create to seek help from Oracle Support. These  new troubleshooting sections are now available:

• Dealing with Down Environments
• Resolving Import and Export Errors
• Resolving User, Role, and Group Management Issues
• Resolving Form and Ad Hoc Grid Performance Issues
• Handling Unexpected Timeouts During Database Refresh or Restructure
• Resolving Performance Issues with Data Maps, Copying of Data, Data Push, and Smart Push
• Fixing Smart View Functional and Performance Issues
• Troubleshoot Data Load Issues

Key Resources

• Troubleshooting EPM Cloud Issues in Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Administrators

Upcoming Changes

NEW SALES PLANNING CLOUD INTERFACE

In a future update, there will be a revised interface with enhanced navigation and a new theme called Sky Blue.

The revised interface retains existing functionality and enhances your experience with a more modern look and feel and responsive design. The Welcome Panel and the Global Header readjust after resizing, which means less scrolling. An updated Welcome Panel features Announcements and Notifications. Arrows are available on the Home Page to help you navigate easily between the Springboard and infolet dashboard pages. A bigger Navigator Menu has improved usability, more themes for customization are included, and a bigger work area has more space to maneuver and provide better visibility. The interface is also more consistent with other Oracle products, such as Fusion Applications.

After the interface is released, all new customers will use the new lighter-colored Sky Blue theme, and existing customers will keep their current theme. You can switch themes using Tools, and then Appearance.

PLANNER ROLE TO BE RENAMED AS USER

In an upcoming release, Oracle will rename the Planner EPM Cloud predefined role as User. This change will have no functional effect.

Subscriptions that were provisioned prior to the May 2016 update used the Planner role, which has been maintained in subsequent updates to provide continuity. In subscriptions that were activated after May 2016, the Planner role was already replaced by the User role.

REMOVAL OF INSTANCE NAME FROM PREDEFINED ROLE NAMES

Currently, the predefined role names displayed in the Access Control screens of EPM Cloud environments prefix the instance name to the role name in INSTANCE_NAME ROLE_NAME format. They are also stored in this format in the snapshots, making it difficult to migrate snapshots from one instance to another.

To facilitate the migration of security across EPM Cloud environments, Oracle plans to rename predefined role names displayed within EPM Cloud applications by removing the instance name prefix. For example, if the instance name is Planning1, predefined role names are Planning1 Service Administrator, Planning1 Power User, Planning1 User, and Planning1 Viewer, the new role names will be Service Administrator, Power User, User, and Viewer.

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

This change won't impact customers who currently use predefined roles for managing application-level provisioning and access to artifacts. Oracle will ensure that all application role assignments and artifact security assignments are automatically updated after the roles are renamed. This change makes it easy to migrate EPM Cloud artifacts across environments.

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

PREDEFINED ROLE NAMES AS SALES PLANNING CLOUD KEY WORDS

Starting with an update in the near future, Oracle plans to treat the following predefined role names as Sales Planning Cloud key words, which should not be used in the name of any custom artifacts that you create; for example, as a group name in Access Control.

• Service Administrator
• Power User
• User
• Viewer
• Planner
• System Administrator
• Application Administrator
• Library Administrator
• Reports Administrator

If you have any groups or artifacts named using these keywords, Oracle requests that you rename or delete them; else Oracle will rename them to ensure that there is no impact because of this change. For example, a group named Power User will be renamed as Power User1 without affecting the current role assignments. If you do not want Oracle to automatically rename such groups, you must rename them.

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

Key Resources

• Modifying Groups in Administering Access Control for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud

QUERY GOVERNOR ON BSO AND ASO CUBES

In a future update, Oracle will add a query governor on Essbase block storage and aggregate storage cubes to guard against excessive server load created unintentionally by running ad hoc queries that take a very long time to complete. The new governor will limit all queries to a maximum of 30 minutes execution time. This governor affects only retrieval of data, for example, Smart View ad hoc queries, web and Smart View forms, and reports. It does not affect business rules.

UPDATE TO THE EXCEPTION RESPONSE IN REST APIS FOR PLANNING AND PLANNING MODULES

Oracle will remove the internal package and class names from the following fields in the exception response in REST APIs in an upcoming release in early 2020:

• message
• localizedMessage

Key Resources

• Planning section in REST API for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud

Role Information

• System Administrator