Summary of EPM Cloud Updates – June 2019

Posted by Jun on May 30, 2019June 4, 2019

Howdy, folks! Continue your educational journey by “hopping” over to the following posts to find out more about specific product updates, as well as gain different partner perspectives on the licensing, naming, and consolidation changes:

Opal Alapat gives an overview of the June 2019 Oracle EPM Cloud blog hop, as well as details on the product name changes, product consolidations, and new licensing
Pete Nitschke discusses the Planning Cloud June updates in more detail
Eric Erikson provides his perspective on FCCS
Jay Chapman covers the notable EPRCS (now called Narrative Reporting) June updates
Kate Helmer summarizes important EDMCS updates
Tony Scalese covers changes to the REST API and EPM Automate

Thanks for the amazing blog hop group!

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, Internet of Things Apps, Enterprise Performance Management, Adaptive Intelligent Apps, Industry Solutions.

A quick recap of the EPM applications.

For the above EPM cloud solutions, typically, 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 June update, it will apply the latest updates to test environment on Friday, Jun 7th, 2019 and to production environment on Jun 21st, 2019.

In this patch, these are the major updates:

Planning

1.New Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud Services

Oracle has introduced two new Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud services: Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Standard Cloud Service and Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Enterprise Cloud Service. Changes introduced with the new services mainly affect new customers only; current customers will continue using their existing, familiar EPM Cloud environments. Going forward, the two new EPM Cloud Services will replace the existing EPM Cloud Service offerings for new purchases. The Business Processes and features available to you depend on the specific EPM Cloud service that you purchase. Users will notice some changes to certain naming and terminology used in documentation, videos and other collateral as we adopt the new Cloud Services (Standard and Enterprise).

2.TLS 1.2 Support for Outbound EPM Cloud Emails

EPM Cloud has been enhanced to send outbound emails using Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol 1.2. This update enables EPM Cloud to route emails, for example, from Financial Reporting Batches, correctly even if your email server accepts only TLS 1.2 compliant emails.

3.New Version of EPM Automate

A new version of EPM Automate is available with this update. These new commands are now available: mergeDataSlices, and restructureCube. Additionally, the recreate command has been enhanced to change the service type of a current environment to another service type; for example, to change a Planning and Budgeting Cloud environment to an Oracle Account Reconciliation environment.

mergeDataSlices Command

This command merges all incremental data slices of an aggregate storage cube with a view to improve a cube’s performance and, optionally, removes cells that have a value of zero.

restructureCube Command

This command restructures a block storage cube to eliminate or reduce fragmentation. Restructuring also removes empty blocks, and will not push any changes from the application to the cube.

4.Script Available for Maintaining a Snapshot Library

Generally, Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud supports snapshot compatibility for one monthly cycle only; you can migrate maintenance snapshots from the test environment to the production environment and vice versa. However, audit requirements of some customers may necessitate restoring snapshots from multiple years on the latest EPM Cloud environment, and accessing application in a short period of time. A script that automatically updates snapshots to maintain an up-to-date library of snapshots is now available in EPM Automate for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud.

5.New EPM Cloud URL

Starting with this release, all EPM Cloud Service instance URLs will use epmcloud as the context for accessing environments.

Existing users may continue using the current URLs to access EPM Cloud environments or update them with this new application context. For example, if the current URL is https://example-idDomain.pbcs.dom1.oraclecloud.com/HyperionPlanning, you can update it to https://example-idDomain.pbcs.dom1.oraclecloud.com/epmcloud.

6.Oracle Smart View for Mac OS and Browser-Based Deployment of Microsoft Excel

Oracle is pleased to announce the availability of Oracle Smart View for Office for MacOS and browser-based deployment of Microsoft Excel. This new Smart View add-in provides for a thin and customizable deployment across the enterprise in support of Oracle EPM Cloud applications.

The following high-level features are included in the initial release:

Ad hoc analysis operations such as: Zoom, Pivot, Keep/Remove only, as well as Submit, Range Operations, Analyze/Free Form, and Formula Preservation
Form operations such as: Form Open and Refresh, Submit from Forms, Expand/Collapse, Supporting Details, Mass Allocate, Job Console, Copy Version, Business Rules, and Analyze
Options and Styles
Member Selection and POV
Drill Through

7.Updates to REST APIs

You can now override some of the job parameters when importing or exporting data and metadata with REST APIs. Also, when you import security with REST APIs, you can now use a CSV file for import, and you can clear existing access permissions when importing new access permissions.

8.New Connection Type and Advanced Options for External Connections

Service Administrators can now create connections to external Web services and specify optional query or header parameters while defining external connections. These connections can be referenced or used in a Groovy script to create a communications link between the Groovy script and the external Web resource.

9.Connections Interface Updates

Updates to the Connections interface include grouping all EPM service providers into a single provider called Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud.

On the Select Provider to Create Connection page, all Enterprise Performance Management service providers will be grouped into a single service provider called Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud.
On the Connection Details page, based on the URL provided, Application Type will be automatically identified and displayed.
On the Manage Connections page, the name and description will be grouped together under one column called Name, and the application type and provider will be grouped together under one column called Application.

10.Data Export to File

The Data Export to File option in Data Management enables you to export data from an EPM application to a data file. You can use the data file to load data into an ERP application or an external system. The new Data Export to File option provides several enhancements over the existing Custom Application option and will provide performance improvement when using the Simple workflow mode option.

Both the Data Export to File option and custom target application options are supported in this release. Eventually, the Data Export to File option will supersede the custom target application option due to its enhanced functions and capabilities.

Starting with this release, you can migrate your existing custom target applications to Data Export to File application using a new Upgrade Custom Application script. The new script is available under the System Maintenance and it can be run for an individual or all scripts.

11.Purge All Imported Data

Use the new Purge All Imported Data script, available in Data Management, to clear all imported data from your data tables for a selected LOV. Purging data may increase system performance and enables you to start over when loading data. Note that there is no backup or utility to recover any purged data when this option is executed. For this reason, use extreme caution before executing this script.

12.Show or Hide Financial Reporting Annotations

In the simplified user interface, when running a Financial Reporting report in HTML preview, you can now select to either show or hide annotations. This functionality was previously only available when running a report from the Explore Repository.

13.Improving Forecast Accuracy Using Simulations

Simulations allow you to perform automated what-if analysis on your Strategic Modeling models, optimizing your decision making. Simulation allows you to assign a range of possible values to inputs that are uncertain and analyze how that uncertainty affects related accounts. You can:

Quickly calculate and review hundreds of possible outcomes and the likelihood they will occur
Analyze best and worst case scenarios
Assess the likelihood of meeting target goals
See how key uncertain inputs affect your bottom line

14.Integration between Strategic Modeling and Financials

You can integrate data between models in Strategic Modeling and income statements in Financials using the provided template and data maps. Both Strategic Modeling and Financials must be enabled. Income Statement must be enabled in Financials.

Create the Strategic Modeling model from the provided Financial template. When you create the model, two data maps are created:

<Model_Name>_SMtoPLDatamap pushes data from Strategic Modeling to the Target version in Financials.
<Model_Name>_PLtoSMDatamap pushes data from the Working version in Financials to Strategic Modeling.

The data maps’ detailed mappings are automatically populated between the dimension members in Strategic Modeling and in Financials.

Financial Consolidation and Close

1.Equity Pickup

Equity Pickup is an alternative method of recording the value of investments in subsidiaries, estimating the current value based on the owner’s share of net retained earnings. You can enable Equity Pickup during application creation, or from the Enable Features page. Four new seeded consolidation rules, and new Account (FCCS_EPUSource) and Data Source (FCCS_EPU) members have been added for Equity Pickup.

2.Updates to Seeded Configurable Consolidation Rules

Several updates have been made for the seeded rules for configurable consolidations.

In the Owner’s Equity (Holding) rule-set, the Owner’s Equity source account has been changed from Owner’s Equity to Total Equity. This change is to facilitate the upcoming enhancement that will allow creation of an application with minimal seeded accounts. There should be no change in consolidated data because the only accounts included in the scope that were not previously included are Minority (Non-controlling) Interest and CTA, neither of which should be populated at a level 0 Holding company.

All accounts within Total Equity are now included in either the Owner’s Equity adjustments (pre-acquisition), or Net Income adjustments (post acquisition) Equity elimination rule-sets, to ensure that all equity accounts are processed either as an equity adjustment or an income adjustment. The rule-sets can be copied and modified if the default set-up does not match client requirements.

In the two Investment rule-sets, the execution condition has been changed to run for Holding (as before), plus Subsidiary and Proportional method entities. This change supports the use of “flat” entity structures in which all Investment in Subsidiaries needs to be eliminated at the first (and only) parent. The existing Intercompany dimension scope condition (#Any ICP that is a descendant of the current parent#) will ensure that the adjustment only runs at a common parent.

For all rule-sets, the POV for the Data Source dimension has been changed from Total Input and Adjusted to Total Data Source. This change is to cater for recursive calculations such as Minority (Non-controlling) Interest on Minority Interest.

3.Support for @Currmbrrange Function in Configurable Calculations

You can now use this Essbase Financial function in Calculation Manager when you create configurable calculations: @CURRMBRRANGE. This function generates a member list that is based on the relative position of the current member being calculated. It can be used with other range functions such as @SUMRANGE and @AVGRANGE.

Profitable and Cost Management

N/A

Account Reconciliation

1.Generation of A Report Through REST API Now Available

You can now generate a report in Account Reconciliation by using REST API. All predefined Reconciliation Compliance reports, predefined Transaction Matching and custom reports can be generated this way

2.Reports Now Available in CSV (Comma Separated Value) Format

You can now generate a report in CSV (Comma Separated Value) format. This is available for predefined or custom reports.

3.Filtering and Grouping Capabilities Added to Automatch Rules in Transaction Matching

You will now be able to filter or group transactions within AutoMatch rules which will enhance the performance and match percentage within Transaction Matching. Filtering or grouping is optional for each rule. AutoMatch will only include the transactions specified by the filter while executing the rule. Grouping which will be for “many” type rules only means that the grouped transactions will behave as a single transaction.

4.Point of View (POV) and Search Field Added to Jobs

The Jobs card under Applications now has a Search field and a Point of View (POV).

5.Current and Actual Workflow More Apparent in Reconciliation Compliance

The workflow user who originally worked as a preparer or reviewer on a reconciliation is now visible on the UI in Reconciliation Compliance along with the current workflow user.

6.Support Calculation for Data Type Attributes in Transaction Matching

Calculation is now supported for data type attributes that you define in a data source in Transaction Matching.

Narrative Reporting

1.Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud is Now Narrative Reporting

Product Name changes are introduced in 19.06 as part of a new approach to structuring Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud business processes.

The new Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud provides end-to-end business processes to meet the requirements of most organizations and ensure a connected and agile experience across multiple business processes.

Starting in 19.06, Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud is referred to as the Narrative Reporting business process. The functionality is unchanged. Narrative Reporting continues to provide a secure, process-driven approach for defining, authoring, reviewing and publishing financial and management report packages.

2.Working with Butterfly Report Format

You can define a “butterfly report”, with a column of members between two columns of data cells.

3.Report Package – Publish to Library

You can publish the report in Word or PowerPoint format, or in PDF format, depending on the report package type.

Published report can be either saved to Local or Library location.
Published doclet can be either saved to Local or Library location.

Tax Reporting

1.National and Regional Detailed Tax Losses and Credits

Tax Losses and Credits provide a mechanism that enables business entities to carry forward tax losses and credits to offset future taxable income and/or tax liability. Losses and credits are captured on the detailed Tax Losses and Tax Credits forms and are detailed by the year originated and the year of expiration. The detailed Tax Loss and Credit forms are now integrated with the current provision and temporary difference forms.

2.Rollover Process Includes Entity Hierarchies Outside FCCS_Total Geography

When you perform a Rollover, the Rollover process is also applicable to any entity outside of the FCCS_Total Geography hierarchy.

Enterprise Data Management

N/A

These are the June updates for EPM Cloud. I will keep my eyes on the monthly updates and will share more ideas going forward.

I highly suggest you hopping over the related posts to learn more. Thanks for the blog hop group’s effort!