EPM Cloud Updates – July 2018 – EPBCS, FCCS, PCMCS, ARCS, EPRCS & EDMCS

Posted by Jun on June 30, 2018July 28, 2018

Oracle releases the application updates documentation on new features and fixed issues from the Applications Release Readiness site. From there, you will be able to check the update for Customer Experience, Human Capital Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, Supply Chain Management, Enterprise Performance Management.

A quick recap of the EPM applications.

For PBCS, Enterprise Planning Cloud (EPBCS), FCCS, PCMCS, ARCS, EPRCS and EDMCS, usually, the latest update will be installed on the first Friday of each month to test environment, and third Friday of each month to production environment. The update will be applied during the normal daily maintenance window.

For the July update, it will apply the latest updates to test environment on Friday, July 6th, 2018 and to production environment on July 20th, 2018.

In this patch, these are the major updates:

Enterprise Planning Cloud

1.New EPM Automate Utility Version

This version also includes changes to the following commands to make them consistent with other file operation commands:

listfiles: now lists snapshots and files available in an environment
deletefile: now deletes snapshots and files from an environment

2.Migration Has Been Enhanced to Differentiate Two Export Scenarios

Backup to create a snapshot that can be used to clone an environment, for example to migrate an application from a production instance to a test instance for troubleshooting or additional development work.

When you back up the environment, you create a snapshot of the entire environment, similar to the daily maintenance snapshot, by exporting the application with all of its data and artifacts including artifacts belonging to Document Repository, Data Management, Calculation Manager, Relational and Essbase data, and Groups and Membership.

Export to create an incremental backup of specific artifacts in an environment. Generally, you use incremental snapshots to create backups that can be used to update another environment. For example, you can export artifacts that you tested in a test environment to create an interim snapshot, which you can import into a production environment.

Artifacts that can be exported only as a part of backup operation are greyed out and cannot be selected during export.

3.New Data Integration Component in the Simplified User Interface

In addition to the standard Data Management interface, the 18.07 update provides a new, simplified interface to work with integrations in the Oracle’s Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service. The new simplified interface, called Data Integration is the front-end for all integration-related activities. Using this interface, the workflow to create mapping rules to translate and transform source data into required target formats, and to execute and manage the periodic data loading process is now streamlined and simplified.

Data Integration is featured as a new tab on the Data Exchange card under the Application cluster, or from the Navigator. It is fully embedded within the simplified interface and customers can now work with integrations as they do with other planning tasks.

4.Option to Show Hidden Files in the Financial Reporting Web Studio Repository

By default, hidden artifacts are not displayed in Financial Reporting Web Studio. If you need to edit an artifact that is hidden, you can now “unhide” the artifact and edit it directly in the Financial Reporting Web Studio repository.

5.Create Custom Calculation Logic in a Component

In the Workforce business process, now you can create custom calculation logic for a component’s additional earnings, benefits, or taxes. Defining your own calculations gives you great flexibility in applying conditional logic and specifying value drivers to component calculations.

For example, create a bonus calculation that applies to new hires who start in the first 6 months of a calendar year, but not for those who start in the last 6 months of the calendar year in their first year of hire. You can also base additional earnings, benefits, or taxes on a driver other than the predefined ones (for example, Flat Amount, Percentage of Salary, and so on). So, for example, you could base an additional earning such as commissions on a custom member that you create, like Revenue. To specify a member as the Value Type driver, you include it in the member formula for the component type of Custom.

6.Greater Control in Expense Timing

In the Workforce business process, you now have greater control over when component expenses occur. New One-time Pay Options for Payment Frequency enable you to specify which month an additional earning, benefit, or tax is paid. Your options depend on which Payment Terms you’ve selected for the component.

For example, if your Payment Terms is Semiannually (Calendar), and you select One-time Pay as the Payment Frequency, then the one-time payment occurs once in 6 months. For One-time Pay Options, you can then select whether the expense is paid in the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth month in the half-year. If you select Second Month, the expense would occur in the second month of the first half of the year (February) and the second month of the second half of the year (August).

Another example: if your Payment Terms is Annually (Fiscal Year), and you select One-time Pay as the Payment Frequency, then the one-time payment occurs once in the fiscal year. For One-time Pay Options, you can then select which month in the fiscal year (first through twelfth) the expense is calculated. If your fiscal year starts in July, and you select the twelfth month, the expense is added in June.

You access these new options in the Benefits and Taxes wizard, from the Workforce Configure page on the Details page for the component.

7.More Flexibility with Hiring Requisitions

In the Workforce business process, the salary for new hires was formerly set using Salary Defaults. Now, you can set the salary for a new hire requisition (TBH) in one of three ways:

By using the salary defaults, based on the entity defaults defined for the salary. (This option is the default and assumed if you don’t select a salary option when adding a TBH.)
By directly entering the salary rate and selecting the salary basis (for example, Monthly or Annual)
By selecting an existing salary grade

To provide more flexibility in managing the workforce expenses of temporary employees, you can now specify the start month and year and the end month and year for requisitions. The Add Hiring Requisition wizard now provides a Calendar prompt for specifying these dates. The start month and year is required, but the end month and year isn’t required. However, if you know the end date for a temporary employee, specifying it saves you from having to plan their departure using the Plan Departure rule. Calculations for their workforce expenses then begin and end with their start and end dates.

If needed, you can later change the Salary Rate, Salary Basis, Salary Grade, or the end period for a hiring requisition that you’ve added.

Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud

1.Manage Ownership Enhancements

For the following Ownership Management actions, if the process takes longer than 60 seconds, then the remainder of the process will be continued in the background and the user can navigate to other screens if required. To view the progress of the process, open the Jobs console.

Recompute Ownership Data
Import Ownership Data
Copy Ownership Data to Next Year

Profitable and Cost Management Cloud

1.Optimize for Reporting When Running Calculations

You now can choose whether or not to run aggregations on the Essbase cube when you run calculations in Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud. Running aggregations improves performance for queries, reports, and analytics. Aggregations are needed only for the final calculation before using analytics and reports. A new option enables you to turn off aggregations to save time, especially when running a single rule set or a single rule. To turn off aggregations, clear Optimize for Reporting on the Calculations screen.

2.Calculation Rules Now Allow Up to Two Dimensions Defined as Same-As-Source With Different Matching Dimensions

In the Manage Rules screen, on the Destination tab, you can now define up to two dimensions per rule as same-as-source with different matching source dimensions.

This feature is applicable for certain business use cases, where it can greatly streamline business modeling.

Account Reconciliation Cloud

1.Power (Exponential) Calculation Added

A new scripted calculation allow you to use POWER(x,y) to raise one number to the exponential power of another. The usage is: POWER(x,y) where x=BASE NUMBER,and y=EXPONENT. x and y can be attributes or calculations, as long as they are numeric.

2.Both New and Supported Transactions Can Be Selected

In Transaction Matching, you can now select “Both” in the Status field in order to display New and Supported unmatched transactions at one time.

Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud

1.New Memberproperty Member Selection Function

The new MemberProperty member selection function returns members based on specified User Defined Attributes (UDAs) or Associated Attribute dimension members

2.Row Banding Property Settings

A new row-based banding property has been added to provide more granular row banding in a grid.

Enterprise Data Management Cloud

1.Subscriptions

You can now use subscriptions to make changes in one viewpoint and have those changes applied to target viewpoints for multiple business applications which require the same changes. Target viewpoints can subscribe to source viewpoints in the same or different applications in order to propagate changes made in the source viewpoint to the subscribing viewpoints.

Subscription requests are generated for subscribing viewpoints and can automatically be submitted for immediate synchronization across applications. Changes in subscription requests are validated in the subscribing viewpoints and requests that have issues are assigned to users for resolution.

2.Email Notifications for Subscriptions

You can notify users when changes from another application are synchronized to their application. When a subscription request is generated, an email notification is sent to the user specified in a viewpoint subscription. Subscription users may be notified to:

Review a request before submission
Resolve validation issues
Be made aware of an automatically submitted request in their view

3.Request Types

Request types inform users of how the request was created and processed in Oracle Enterprise Data Management Cloud. There are two types of requests:

Interactive – Created and manually submitted by a user
Subscription – Generated from a subscription and may be manually submitted or automatically submitted as part of the subscription process

4.Compare Viewpoint Relationships and Properties

You can now compare two viewpoints to determine differences in relationships and property values for nodes that are common to both viewpoints. You can run comparisons individually or together. You can compare properties for both list and hierarchy viewpoints. Relationships can only be compared for hierarchy viewpoints.

5.Locate Nodes with Same Parents in Side By Side Layout

When you locate nodes between hierarchy viewpoints in side by side layout, the Locate Node feature now attempts to find the same node with the same parent in the target viewpoint as in the source viewpoint. If the node does not exist under the same parent in the target viewpoint, the Locate Node feature finds the first occurrence of the node.

These are the July updates for EPM Cloud. I will keep my eyes on the monthly updates and will share more ideas going forward. See you next time.