EPM Cloud Update – April 2018 – EPBCS, FCCS, PCMCS, ARCS & EPRCS

Posted by Jun on March 30, 2018April 1, 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 and EPRCS, 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 April update, it will apply the latest updates to test environment on Friday, April 6th, 2018 and to production environment on April 20th, 2018.

In this patch, these are the major updates:

Enterprise Planning Cloud

1.Additional Charts in Activity Report

The Activity Report has been enhanced to include the following charts that help us understand the processing load in our environment:

Number of user interface requests by hour
Duration of user interface requests by hour
Number of Essbase operations by hour
Duration of Essbase operations by hour
CPU usage
Memory usage

2.Migration and Audit Cards Moved to the Tools Cluster

Starting with the 18.04 update, the Migration card and Audit card will be moved to the Tools cluster in the Home page.

The Migration card enables Service Administrators to access and manage lifecycle management-related activities such as exporting and importing artifacts and data, working with snapshots, and viewing the Modified Since and Migration Status reports.
The Audit card allows Service Administrators to activate audit trails to track changes to artifacts and data.

3.Schedule Jobs to Run Hourly and by Minute

We can now schedule jobs to run in 15 minute, 30 minute, and hourly increments. Jobs scheduled to run hourly, for example, will start to run in exactly one hour. If we set the job to run hourly and the time is currently 3:11, the job will start to run at 4:11, then 5:11, and so on.

We can set the frequency of by Minute jobs for 15 or 30 minutes. The job will start running in 15 or 30 minutes and continue to run at the selected frequency until the ending date and time. For example, if we set the job to run every 15 minutes and the current time is 3:15, the job will start to run at 3:30, then 3:45, and so on.

4.New Financial Reporting Explore Repository

For new subscriptions, Financial Reporting has implemented a new Explore repository, which is very similar to the existing Explore repository. Existing subscriptions will be migrated to the new Explore repository in a near-term release.

5.New Design-Time Prompt in Calculation Manager

The new Calculation Manager design-time prompt, @PlanDimMember, returns a member if it is valid for the specified dimension in the specified plan type.

6.New Row and Column Suppression Behavior

Service administrators can use the Smart View Suppression Behavior option to change suppression behavior when both the Smart View No Data/Missing and Zero suppression options for rows, or columns, or both are selected.

If the Smart View Suppression Behavior option in the web application is set to:

Legacy—Only suppresses rows or columns containing either all No Data/Missing or all Zeros. Does not suppress rows or columns containing a combination of No Data/Missing and Zeros. For example, in Smart View, if both the No Data/Missing and Zero suppression options are selected for rows, and a row contains both zeroes and Missing labels, then the row is displayed; it is not suppressed.
Standard—Suppresses rows or columns containing all No Data/Missing or all Zeros, or a combination of both. For example, in Smart View, if both the No Data/Missing and Zero suppression options are selected for columns, and a column contains both zeroes and Missing labels, then the column is suppressed; it is not displayed.

7.Simplified Merit-Based Planning

In the Workforce business process, we can now set default percentage rates for merit increases and apply them to other entities. The merit increase for the year is included in the base salary calculations of that year and carried forward into the base salary for subsequent years. Planning merit rates by entities enable us to calculate salaries that include merit increases when performance ratings aren’t available. This capability also lets us plan merit rates at a more generic level than basing the merit rates on performance ratings.

To plan merit rates at the entity level, select Compensation Planning, then select the Assumptions tab, and then the Merit Rates form. Select the entity, and then enter the merit rate percentage into the new Default Merit member.

Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud

1.Configurable Consolidations

We now have the ability to develop consolidation and elimination adjustment rules specific to our application. We can create rules for consolidation requirements that are not already provided by the system seeded rules. We can create one or more rule-sets, each defining a Source POV and Global conditions and representing a “consolidation adjustment journal.” Within each rule-set, we can then define individual rules, each representing the individual detail lines of the journal. Source POV members can also be re-directed within the rules to post to alternative target members based on one or more conditions. We can deploy the consolidation rules when needed.

2.New Seeded Member in Other Comprehensive Income Hierarchy

The seeded Other Comprehensive Income hierarchy in the Account dimension now includes a base member named FCCS_OR_OBFXCICTA, Other Comprehensive Income – Opening Balance – FX – CICTA. It is used to carry forward Opening Balance for all revenue and expense accounts within Other Reserves (the parent member of Total Other Comprehensive Income).

3.Support for Custom Automated and Event Monitoring Integrations

Close Manager now includes the ability to create Process Automated and Event Monitoring tasks for external applications. A new EPM Adapter allows us to create connections and integration flows in Integration Cloud Service using Oracle EPM Cloud and other cloud and on-premises applications.

Profitable and Cost Management Cloud

1.Ease of Use Enhancements for The Profitability and Cost Management Job Library

The following enhancements make the Job Library easier to view and use:

To help us identify jobs in the Job Library, the Properties pane opens automatically when we select a job. Once we close the pane, it no longer opens automatically but we can still open it manually.
The Properties pane is expanded for better viewing of the Point of View name.
To allow more space for the expanded Properties pane without covering up the most important fields in the Job Library table:

The user name is removed from the table and included in the Inspect pane for all job types.
Start Date and End Date use a localized numeric format for the date instead of spelling out the month.
The fields in the table have been reordered and some default column widths have been adjusted.

2.Diagnose Option for Managing Queries

Users with appropriate security provisioning now can view the following diagnostic information in the Manage Queries screen:

The actual MDX query produced by the selected query definition
The query run time in seconds
The number of cells returned by the query

This information is displayed with the Diagnose command in a new Actions menu. Export Query Results is also available in that menu.

The new diagnostic information can be useful for debugging and improving the performance of queries, as well as fine-tuning queries if returned cells exceed Essbase limits.

Account Reconciliation Cloud

1.Migrating from On-Premise Account Reconciliation Manager to Account Reconciliation Cloud

We can migrate from Oracle Hyperion Financial Close Management’s Account Reconciliation Manager module to Oracle Account Reconciliation Cloud. The Financial Close Management release must be at 11.1.2.4.250 or later to perform this migration.

Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud

1.Support for PDF-Based Report Packages

We can now use PDF-based report packages to collaboratively develop PDF reports. We can incorporate both PDF files and Management Reports and merge them together into a single PDF report. We can stamp PDF doclets with a common header and footer, and PDF-based report packages support both reference and supplemental doclets.

2.New Sample Report Package for PDF-Based Report Packages

We can now use a PDF-based sample report package to become familiar with the report package functionality and content such as the report center, doclets, PDF headers and footers, and phases. The PDF-based sample report package is included in “Sample Report Package – PDF.zip”. A service administrator must install samples before we can access the sample content.

3.Support for Report Package Distributions

Report Package distributions enable you to send report content to stakeholders at any point in the report development. We can send the entire report, or a limited subset of the report content that we define per user or group. The recipients of the distribution are able to view the report content that we assigned to them, but they do not participate in the report development process.

4.Other EPRCS Updates

Rename for disclosure management reports
Unlink in disclosure management
Selected text that is not highlighted in disclosure management
High volume xbrl extension in disclosure management
Splitting text content within a document in disclosure management
Review and manage the ixbrl file name and report title of the document
Management reporting member selector search results display location
Management reporting conditional formatting includes number formatting
Management reporting number formatting allows for negative scaling
Support for pdf-based report packages in smart view
View or download distributed report content anytime in smart view
Add doclets and sections from smart view
Edit report package, doclet, and section properties from smart view

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