September 2022 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:

Date	Product	Feature	Notes
31 AUG 2022			Created initial document.

Overview

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The information contained in this document may include statements about Oracle’s product development plans. Many factors can materially affect Oracle’s product development plans and the nature and timing of future product releases. Accordingly, this Information is provided to you solely for information only, is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.

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Feature Summary

Strategic Workforce Planning

Strategic Workforce Planning

Monthly Update Schedule

Test Environments: Oracle will apply this monthly update during the first daily maintenance that occurs at or after 22:00 UTC on Friday, September 2, 2022.

Production Environments: Oracle will apply this monthly update during the first daily maintenance that occurs at or after 22:00 UTC on Friday, September 16, 2022.

NOTE: The monthly update will not be applied to any environment for which this monthly update is requested to be skipped using the EPM Automate skipUpdate command or service request to Oracle.

NOTE: Backing up the daily maintenance snapshot and restoring the environment as needed are self-service operations. Oracle strongly recommends that you download the maintenance snapshot every day to a local server.

The Oracle Help Center provides access to updated documentation. The updates will be available in the Help Center on Friday, September 2, 2022.

NOTE: 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.

Documentation Updates Available One Week After Readiness Documents

Updated documentation is published on the Oracle Help Center on the first Friday of each month, coinciding with the monthly updates to Test environments. Because there is a one week lag between the publishing of the readiness documents (What's New and New Feature Summary) and Oracle Help Center updates, some links included in the readiness documents will not work until the Oracle Help Center update is complete.

https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/epm-cloud/index.html

Fixed Issues and Considerations

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

NOTE: Fixed issues for EPM Cloud Common components (Smart View for Office, EPM Automate, REST API, Migration, Access Control, Data Management/Data Integration, Reports, Financial Reporting, and Calculation Manager) are available in a separate document on the My Oracle Support “Release Highlights” page.

This provides visibility into EPM Cloud release contents.

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.

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

Follow EPM Cloud on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

These are great resources for the latest updates and information about EPM Cloud.

Features

Increased Limit to Save Office Documents to Strategic Workforce Planning Cloud from Smart View

When you save Microsoft Office files to the EPM Cloud Library from Smart View, you can now upload files that are up to 20 MB in size. Previously, you could upload files only up to 5 MB.

You can save Microsoft Office documents (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files) to the EPM Cloud Library. Storing files in the EPM Cloud Library gives you an option for saving files in a central location and facilitates sharing documents with other users.

Any Word, Excel, and PowerPoint file that is up to 20 MB can now be saved to the EPM Cloud Library from Smart View. You will not be able to save files that exceed 20 MB.

To upload and save Office documents to the EPM Cloud Library, first you need to create a folder under the Documents folder in the Smart View panel. You can then use the Save or Save As option to upload and save your documents to the EPM Cloud Library. If you aren't already connected, you will be prompted to sign in to an EPM Cloud business process while saving.

Business Benefit: Users can now upload, save, and share Office files of larger sizes using the EPM Cloud Library from Smart View.

Tips And Considerations

• The size limit to upload PDFs remains the same at 100 MB.
• There is no size limit for saving Narrative Reporting reports to the EPM Cloud Library.

Key Resources

• Saving Office Documents to EPM Cloud in Working with Oracle Smart View for Office

Integration Agent OAuth 2.0 Support

The Integration Agent can now use the OAuth 2.0 authentication protocol to access OCI (Gen 2) Strategic Workforce Planning Cloud environments. OAuth is an open-standard authorization protocol that enables a service to use another service without requiring user security information (username, password, etc.).

To enable OAuth 2.0 access, an Identity Domain Administrator must register your application as a public client in the Oracle Cloud Identity Service. OAuth2 is enforced for the application and not across your subscription.

Business Benefit: In Strategic Workforce Planning Cloud environments on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)/Gen 2 architecture, you can use an OAuth 2 access token to issue commands to satisfy the requirement of avoiding the use of passwords.

Key Resources

• Using OAuth 2.0 Authorization Protocol with OCI (Gen2) Environments in Administering Data Integration for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud

Multi-Pass Solution for Metadata Loads

When performing metadata loads as a part of cloning environments or importing snapshots using Migration or EPM Automate, Strategic Workforce Planning Cloud uses the new multi-pass solution.

This solution automatically initiates another load of the same metadata input file if the previous metadata load resulted in rejected records. Currently during snapshot imports and cloning of environments, if a shared member comes before the base member in an outline, the shared member import fails resulting in rejected records in the metadata load. Loading the dimension once again typically corrects this issue because the base member exists after the first load. The multi-pass solution automatically attempts multiple loads to fix records that are dependent on records that come later in the load.

If multiple attempts using this solution are required to load all metadata, the time taken to complete the snapshot import and clone process increases. This processing time increase is usually about 15-25 percent more than that taken by the current single pass solution and depends on the number of times metadata load files are processed by this solution.

Business Benefit: With multi-pass, multiple loads are automatically initiated until the load no longer fails due to rejected records.

Key Resources

• Administering Planning
  • Loading the Metadata Import File

New Task Manager Report for Task Comments

Task Manager now includes a new standard report to summarize all user comments added to tasks.

You can run the Task Comments report for a particular Period or Schedule to display all the comments users entered on their tasks.

Business Benefit: This feature not only shows the comments but also allows you to see how to incorporate task comments into your own custom report.

Key Resources

• Working with Planning
  • Generating Task Manager Reports

Generate Execution Plans for Custom Report Queries in Task Manager

When creating custom queries, you can now generate the execution plan and validate the query.

NOTE: By default, generation of execution plans is only available for OCI (Gen 2) environments. To enable it for Classic environments, contact Oracle using a service request.

Business Benefit: This feature helps you diagnose the causes of suboptimal query performance and take suitable actions to improve it.

Key Resources

• Administering Planning
  • Creating a Task Manager Query

Advanced Auto Predict Options

New advanced Auto Predict options give you more flexibility when defining Auto Predict jobs and improve prediction results in some scenarios.

You can define advanced options for:

• Data Screening
• Data Attributes
• Methods

Auto Predict Advanced Options

Business Benefit: Auto Predict advanced options improve the quality of Auto Predictions, especially in cases where it is difficult to detect seasonality (predictions tended to go flat in these cases), or where there is not enough historical data compared to the prediction range (predictions tended to be negative in these cases).

Key Resources

Administering Planning

• Creating Auto Predictions for Forecasts
• Configuring Advanced Auto Predict Options

IPM Insights Chart Enhancements

In the Insights Analyzer view, Insights charts have been updated with enhancements:

• The Account name is now displayed on the Y axis.

• For Anomaly insights, a dashed grey Mean line is added to the chart to indicate the average value, which gives you a better indication of how far the anomaly is from the average.

Business Benefit: These enhancements improve the usability of the charts, helping you spot insights more easily.

Key Resources

Working with Planning

• Analyzing Insights

Ability to Generate Insights for Dynamic Calc Parent Members

In IPM Insights, you can now generate insights for dynamic calc parent members.

• For reporting cubes (Aggregate Storage, or ASO cubes), there is no restriction on including dynamic calc parent members in insight definitions.

• For data entry cubes (Block Storage, or BSO cubes), the restriction is still in place (you can’t include dynamic calc parent members or any dynamic calc member even at the leaf level), however you can use this solution:
  • Create an alternate hierarchy with shared members for parents that you want to consider for insight generation. The parent members should be defined as level zero members in the alternate hierarchy. When you configure the insight slice definition, make sure to select the members from the alternate hierarchy.
  • As a best practice, move the data to the reporting cube (Aggregate Storage, or ASO cube) using data maps, and then generate insights from that cube.

Business Benefit: This enhancement removes a restriction from ASO cubes that was previously in place that prevented you from generating insights when the slice definition included dynamic calc parent members. This enhancement for ASO cubes and the solution for BSO cubes supports more use cases for insights generation. It’s especially helpful when you have a large number of members: you no longer have to define multiple slice definitions for level zero members; you can define the slice definition to include a parent member.

Tips And Considerations

• To avoid delays in insight generation for reporting cubes (ASO), consider not including dynamic parent members that have formulas in insight definitions.

• Because the number of alternate hierarchies you can create is limited, for data entry cubes (BSO), as a best practice, move the data to the reporting cube (ASO cube) using data maps, and then generate insights from that cube.

• For ASO cubes, prediction insights require that the slice definition includes only level zero members. Alternatively, to generate prediction insights for dynamic calc parent members, don’t enable Auto Predict. Or, run the prediction in BSO, and then move the results to ASO.

Key Resources

Administering Planning

• Configuring IPM Insights
• Considerations for Defining the Slice for Insights

IMPORTANT Actions and Considerations

One-Week Lag Between Readiness Documents Live and Help Center Live

Because Oracle readiness documents (What's New and New Feature Summary) are live one week before the monthly update is applied to Test environments, some links to documentation included in the readiness documents will not work until after the Oracle Help Center update is complete when the monthly update is applied to Test environments.

Calculation Manager Errors and Warnings Enforcement

In an upcoming release, Calculation Manager will enforce the execution of the Errors & Warnings diagnostic tool for any rule being launched, validated, or deployed from Calculation Manager. If there are errors that result from this new process, Calculation Manager will not execute, validate, or deploy the rule. This new process will apply to all new applications once released. Existing applications will have a finite period of time to bypass this new process to allow you to modify the rules that violate the new Errors & Warnings diagnostic analysis. In all cases, existing rules that are already deployed will continue to run as-is without any change in behavior.

Valid Intersection and Cell-level Security Import & Export File Format Update

In an upcoming release, both Valid Intersection and Cell-level Security Import and Export files in .XLSX format will include new columns for each dimension in the Sub Rules worksheet. These new columns to support excluding all instances of members by name will apply to each dimension and will be positioned after each dimension’s “Exclusion” column. If you use these exported files for integration with other systems and the order of columns is fixed, you may need to modify your process to account for these new columns in these export files. The release of these new columns will coincide with the planned release of this enhancement for Valid Intersections and Cell-Level Security.

Change in Behavior for Grids Created from Groovy and REST APIs for ASO Cubes

In an upcoming release, the suppression behavior for grids created via Groovy DataGridDefinitionBuilder and the exportdataslice REST API for ASO cubes will be made consistent with that of the run time data grids created using the Form Designer. Previously, if a grid was built for an ASO cube in Groovy or REST API, then the system used the NON EMPTY MDX clause to suppress missing rows when the suppressMissingBlocks flag was true. Now, when a grid is built for an ASO cube, it will use the NON EMPTY MDX clause when suppressMissingRows is true, and suppressMissingBlocks will be ignored. This means that ASO grids with suppressMissingRows true and suppressMissingBlocks false will now start using MDX. Likewise, ASO grids with suppressMissingRows false and suppressMissingBlocks true will no longer use MDX. Grids where the suppressMissingRows and suppressMissingBlocks flags had the same value will not be impacted. These changes may result in a change in behavior or performance for some ASO grids. If this happens and is undesirable, consider toggling the value of suppressMissingRows from the builder or the JSON payload in case of the REST API.

Mandatory Steps Required to Make the Explore Repository Artifacts Accessible to Users

Prior to the 22.07 update, Strategic Workforce Planning used the WORLD pre-seeded group to grant access to Explore Repository artifacts such as reports and folders. Starting with the 22.07 update, the WORLD group was removed. If you previously used the WORLD group to grant access to repository artifacts, complete these steps to ensure that users can access Repository artifacts:

1. Create a group in Access Control with all Strategic Workforce Planning Cloud users as its members.
2. In Explore Repository, grant access privileges to the group you created in the preceding step.

For detailed steps, see Granting Access Permissions to Document Repository Users in Working with Financial Reporting for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud.

Default Time Zone for New Users

Starting in the October (22.10) update, the default time zone for new users will be (UTC) Reykjavik - Greenwich Mean Time. To reset the time zone, click Tools, then User Preferences, and then click General.

Rolling Back Changes Made to Page Title Display for Horizontal tabs

Starting in the July (22.07) update, we have rolled back changes made in the April (22.04) update to the page title for horizontal tabs. The change was to not display the page title in horizontal tabs while using the Redwood Theme. From the feedback received on this change, we've decided to roll it back.

Loaner Program for Cloud Infrastructure Generation 2 Testing and OCI Migration Assistance Early Adopter Program

Oracle Strategic Workforce Planning Cloud is now live on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Gen 2 environments. If you are interested in testing your application performance on an OCI environment, open a service request following the process at https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/enterprise-performance-management-common/tsepm/op_procs_loaner_envs.html and request for a loaner environment in an OCI data center for a duration of 30 days with the business justification as “Want to test application performance in an OCI Gen 2 data center”.

After you have performed the testing, submit Provide Feedback from the loaner environment. Create a service request using the normal support process, if you have any issues or feedback for the OCI environment. For more information, see What is a Gen 2 Cloud?

Additionally, Oracle has instituted a program to assist a limited number of early adopters on Oracle Cloud Classic to migrate to OCI. For more information, see Oracle Cloud Classic to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Migration Assistance Program for Early Adopters.

Alerts Cannot be Migrated to Prior Version

Due to a major upgrade in Alert functionality, any service that has defined Alert Types will not be able to migrate them or the Alerts that are based on them from the 22.04 update to an earlier update. This normally happens if artifacts are moved from Test to Production during the two week period when Test is upgraded to the 22.04 update while Production is still on the 22.03 update. All other objects in the migration are not affected.

Task Manager Email Notification Settings

Starting in the 22.04 update, the service changed the handling of Task Manager’s Email Notification settings during a migration. The target service’s Task Manager Email Notification settings were updated with the settings from the source service. If a customer wants to retain the target service’s Task Manager Notification settings, they can generate an LCM export with the notification settings from the target service, perform the source migration, then import the LCM file with the notification settings.

See LCM Export and LCM Import in REST API for Oracle Performance Management Cloud.

Date Format when Using the EPM Digital Assistant

When using the EPM Digital Assistant, note that the Date format is not taken from User Preferences, and the assistant does not ask which format to use for the date. The assistant attempts to detect the date format based on the user locale set in the browser and other common formats.

Report Import/Export to Excel Change in Behavior for Number Formatting

Due to a bug fix in the 22.09 update, please note the following change in behavior in number formatting when importing or exporting Reports into Excel. It is now required that a user’s Windows Regional Settings related to data formatting, and Excel advanced data format options for thousand and decimal separators, must be same as specified in the report designer for the thousands and decimal separators to correctly render in Excel.

Drill Landing Page in Data Integration / Data Management

The Enhanced Drill Landing page is the default starting in this update. Also starting in this update, the option to switch the Drill Type user interface is no longer available, and the Enhanced version is the only version.

Internet Explorer 11 End of Support and Smart View

Microsoft has announced end of support of Internet Explorer 11 by June 15, 2022.

Do not uninstall Microsoft Internet Explorer, even after the end-of support date of June 15, 2022. Instead, you may securely disable Internet Explorer following Microsoft’s guidelines. In situations where the Internet Explorer browser would be called, the Edge browser will be launched instead.

Oracle Smart View for Office does not require the Internet Explorer browser specifically. However, Smart View depends on Windows components (for example, WinInet APIs) that may have dependencies on Internet Explorer. Microsoft recommends keeping Internet Explorer installed on the machine since uninstalling may cause other applications that are dependent on it to work incorrectly. Microsoft also recommends updating to the latest security patches as they become available.

For more information, Oracle Support Document 2877741.1 (Impact on Smart view with Microsoft decommissioning Internet Explorer 11 on June 15, 2022) can be found at: https://mosemp.us.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocumentDisplay?id=2877741.1.

Data Maps with Mapping or Cross Applications

Data Maps with mapping or cross applications are not supported in this update. If the Data Map has mapping or is a cross application, it needs to be attached to a form or included in the Groovy rule and run as a Smart Push.