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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 06 JUL 2021 | Created initial document. |
This guide outlines the information you need to know about new or improved functionality in this update.
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Agent Contact Scripting for Start/Service/Transfer Service Request Process Flows
Define and embed contact scripting, in predefined locations, to enable call center agents to efficiently process Start/ Stop/Transfer Service requests in a consistent manner. You can use this feature to provide specific instructions to call center agents or specific information to customers about how their collected information (such as, identifiers or email) is used.
Enrich your view of the customer's key activity history and financial information through the improved Customer Activity History and Financial Details zones of the Customer 360 portal. The Customer 360 portal enhancements provide a fuller view of your customer's activity history and financial details, resulting in better handling of account maintenance requests and most common inquiries.
Support for NACHA’s Web Debit Account Validation Rule
Enhancements to several inbound web service-related business objects and automated clearing house-related batch controls provide the capability to support the National Automated Clearing House Association's (NACHA) web debit account validation rule. The rule requires originators of web debits to validate the customer's checking or savings account prior to it being used for an electronic payment for the first time. These enhancements reduce the need for implementation-specific extensions to support NACHA's web debit account validation rule.
Decrease project costs and project timelines using new REST Inbound Web Services to view and manage various customer-related data.
Configure and define characteristics for devices using new Device Characteristics zones.
Dynamic Aggregation Totalization
The Dynamic Aggregation engine now uses the totalization rules utilized by the Billing Determinant engine, which considers measurement component configuration and usage subscription-service point relationships when calculating usage. This ensures that billing processes are consistent with the aggregation processes.
Aggregate the same business day as many times as the downstream processes require through a new re-aggregation batch control. This ensures billing processes that use aggregated data will have the current data, resulting in financial accuracy.
Service Order Management Data in Local Time
Service Order Management data in the Activity and Appointment Booking portals is now displayed in the service point's local time, allowing customer service representatives to more easily communicate service times with customers.
Master Data Analytics Visualization
Identify master data counts and related information using the Meter Master Data Tables. You can verify data counts after conversion, track the number of Scalar meters replaced by AMI devices, identify the service point types used, and more.
Access Utilities Cloud Service REST APIs with OAuth Credentials
OAuth-based authorization (client credentials) is now supported for inbound web services. This provides an industry-standard integration mechanism for the Oracle Utilities Cloud Services REST APIs. OAuth support further enhances the reliability and security of the Oracle Utilities Cloud Services REST APIs. It allows customers to integrate with a broader range of Oracle and non-Oracle products, and simplifies the integration implementation.
Utilities Application Framework
Oracle's Redwood user experience elevates the application pages of Oracle Utilities Cloud Services to a more visually appealing and modern user interface experience. This includes a new compact page header that takes up less vertical space to allow more page content to be displayed, as well as new portal tabs, buttons, background colors, borders, and fonts all updated to match the overall Redwood user experience found in other Oracle applications. Oracle Redwood provides a consistent user interface experience across Oracle's latest solutions.
Use a single search box to quickly retrieve customer, account, and meter information such as customer name, premise address, account ID, badge/serial number and more (where applicable). For more complex queries, you can use the link provided to navigate to a pre-configured advanced search portal. You can also search for Oracle Utilities application menu items using the same single search box. The Unified Search feature allows you to quickly find customer, account, and meter information without leaving the current page.
Batch Day Dashboard and Batch Run Threads Portals
Review the batch runs for a given business day using list zones and various analytic charts. The introduction of the Business Day Dashboard allows you to quickly determine the state and performance information of your batch workloads using the Business Date as a key dimension. The portal contains zones to provide details about state and individual thread performance to assist in detecting data and performance issues with individual batch workloads.
Use a new type of zone to display information using tabs. The Tab Display zone supports the display of complex of information using tabs within a single zone. This allows you to stay within a context of a zone, but it allows for flexibility in the information available in that zone to reduce your time and costs.
Display Domain Name in Toolbar
The configured domain name for an environment is visible in the toolbar. Implementations with multiple environments for development, testing, production, and others can easily identify their current environment.
NOTE: This feature is only supported with the Redwood user experience. Refer to the online documentation for more information about the Redwood user experience.
Support Additional Zone Layout Options
Additional configuration allows zones within a portal to have more detailed height and width settings along with configured layout options to allow for more customized page designs. The additional zone configuration options allow for more specialized design of portals to ensure that information is presented in the optimal way for the user. This feature gives designers finer grain of control of the configuration for better organization of zones in portals.
NOTE: This feature is only supported with the Redwood user experience. Refer to the online documentation for more information about the Redwood user experience.
Support for Defining Links and List Standards in Schemas
Defining self links and foreign key links as well as returning lists of information (surrounded by a "_data" grouping element) is now supported by providing syntax in the REST inbound web service operation schema. Supporting syntax in the REST inbound web service (IWS) operation schema for some standard features in published APIs moves the burden of configuration to the object that needs the feature. The internal schema can therefore remain devoid of this configuration that is not applicable to the internal service. This is in the style of the Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State (HATEOAS) standard.
Service to Maintain the Sequence Table
Provides the ability for product teams and implementation teams to maintain records in the Sequence table (CI_SEQ) through configuration tools processes.
Organize and run your project's automated test flows or test flow sets in a single test plan. For example, you can run a test plan for each iteration of a regression or acceptance test flow for an application's upgrade test. Test Planning provides a consolidated run summary of all the test flows or test flow sets, and a high-level view of the overall status of the automated test flows in the context of the test application's health. Test Planning organizes automated test flows or test flow sets into a single test plan, eliminating the need to run each test flow or test flow set and manually consolidate the results.
See a preview of the database changes coming for 21B in the Oracle Utilities Cloud Services Database Changes Guide.