New Feature - Performing Calculations without having to submit the changes

How this new change help business users -

During ad hoc analysis, user can now perform calc on the fly in FCCS and TRCS business processes without having to submit changes to the database.

Steps to Enable

It can be enabled by administrators and users as well.

By Administrators -

• In the web application, click the Navigator, and under Application, click Settings.
• In the Other Options section, select the Yes option from the Enable User Formulas in Ad Hoc list.
• Click Save.

By Users-

This user preference setting overrides the application setting.

• In the web application, click the Navigator, and under Tools, click User Preferences.
• In the Preferences page, click the Display tab.
• In the Other Options section, select the Yes option from the Enable User Formulas in Ad Hoc list.
• Click Save.

Benefit: You can perform multiple calculations quickly without having to submit the changes to see the results.

Thank you!

Created by - Mohit Jain& Megha Gupta

New major update on Task Manager - Data Exchange Integration- Jun-2023 update

Data Exchange Integration Type and Task Type in Task Manager

Task Manager is enhanced with a new end user integration and task type called Data Exchange that allows to streamline the data exchange integration tasks with the monthly close process. This integration is available for:

• Local and remote Financial Consolidation and Close, Tax Reporting, and Planning connections
• Remote Enterprise Profitability and Cost Management

Applies to: Enterprise Profitability and Cost Management, Financial Consolidation and Close, Planning, Planning Modules, Tax Reporting

Benefit: 

• Allows to run integrations defined in Data Exchange from Task Manager.
• This allows the integration of data loads defined in Data Exchange easily into the monthly processing schedule.

Enterprise Journals in FCCS : A Centralize place to manage all Journals

Problem Statement

• Topside Journals taking month end close to infinity.
• In today's business, lots of reliance on offline spreadsheets, differs depending on target ERP systems.
• Many organizations have to make offline workflow mechanism to post journals in GL.
• During Month end close… big question is:
• How can topside journals posted to EPM system travel back to ERP without manually booking them?
• How to automate monthly close to speed up to reduce low value tasks, most of these tasks are offline spreadsheet journals
• Depending on how many ERP systems you have, every Excel template used to process journals may be different.

Many organizations might work on manual or different custom approaches, but these does not meet the requirements as describe below -

Manual approach

• Increases the operational cost
• Significantly increases the risk of material misstatements
• Lack of adequate controls with top-sided JE posting

Custom Integration

• Most customizations are prohibitively expensive
• Do not provide future proofing
• Need of seamless workflow from one process to another

Organizations are looking for a solution who can meet the requirement as depicted below -

This article talks about how Enterprise Journal module provide by EPM Cloud tools to streamline and centralized way to manage manual journal entries across the oracle EPM cloud platform.

What is Enterprise Journal

• It is an EPM platform tool used for preparation, approval and posting of manual journal entries to the journal ledger postings for both Oracle and Non-Oracle ERP systems.
• It provides a streamlined, centralized way to manage manual journal entries across the oracle EPM cloud platform.

How Enterprise Journals can help!

• It addresses challenges mentioned in above section by automating the manual journal entry process for
• Collection
• Posting process
• Centrally managing the process across multiple business processes and potentially multiple ERP systems

Key Capabilities

Below are the key capabilities as below –

1. Single point of entry for all manual journals

2. Standardized journal entry templates based on journal types and general ledger systems

3. The ability to have journal entries validated for -

• Required Fields
• Matching balances
• Proper journal format

4. Visibility of unposed and in-process journals by comprehensive dashboards for Adhoc analysis on status of journals

5. Security rules determine access and assign tasks

6. Posting process is based on the workflow process and defined targets.

7. If target ERP system is Oracle Cloud Financials, Enterprise Journals uses a pre-built direct connector to post to the journal ledger

8. You can use a set of provided APIs for direct posting to other ERPs

9. A file-based journal posting option is also available if required.

Below are the high level steps which are required to setup the Enterprise journal module -

Thank you!

Created by Mohit Jain & Megha Gupta

Pipeline Feature in EPM Cloud Data Integration

A new feature introduced in Data Integration

• A orchestrate a series of jobs as a single process.
• It allows to orchestrate EPM cloud jobs across instances from one location. 
• It allows a better control and visibility of full extended data integration process of preprocessing, data loading and post processing jobs.
• Contains multiple stages each of which includes jobs that can be run in serial or parallel.

• A Pipeline can include the following job types for multiple target application:

  • integrations
  • business rules
  • business rulesets
  • open batches (by file, location, and name)
  • objects to and from the Object Store
  • substitution variables

Applies to: FCCS, EPBCS, TRCS, Planning, and Planning Modules

Pipeline is available from the Data Integration home page by clicking the Add icon and then selecting the Pipeline option.

A Pipeline job is identified with a  icon on the Data Integration home page. Pipeline jobs can be also searched by searching for the word "pipeline" or a part of the word from Search.

Run Pipeline Option

• It is available from the Data Integration home page enabling to execute the jobs in the Pipeline, send emails, and attach logs.
• When the Pipeline is running, it shows the status. Customers can also see the status of the Pipeline running in Process Details.
• Each individual job in the Pipeline is submitted separately and creates a separate job log in Process Details.

Benefit: 

• The Pipeline provides customers with a framework to combine multiple and different jobs type as a single process instead of a series of processes.
• Previously customers had to use the Batch option in Data Management, which restricted the types of jobs that could be included in the batch.

Thank you!

Created by - Mohit Jain & Megha Gupta

Introduction to Account Reconciliation

 Account Reconciliation process gives finance teams confidence that their information is reliable and provide an opportunity to see any discrepancies that happen. In this article, we will talk about Account reconciliation (i.e., What, Why) and tool offered by Oracle EPM Cloud (Oracle Account Reconciliation Cloud Service (ARCS) to help Account reconciliation.

Thank you!

Created by - Mohit Jain & Megha Gupta

ARCS Updates June -2023

 ARCS Updates June-2023

In June 2023 release, below updates have been announced - 

1. New Setting in Formats to prevent upload to files
2. Increasing Default Governor Limits in Account Reconciliation

1. New Setting in Formats to prevent upload to files

Reconciliation formats determine what reconciliations will look like, and the type of information that preparers and reviewers can enter.

A new option named Prevent File Upload is added to formats. When this option is selected for a format, users cannot attach files to the reconciliations that use this format.  Users may still use the option to attach a link.

Benefit: This setting enables Service Administrators to prevent users from uploading files to certain reconciliations.

2.Increasing Default Governor Limits in Account Reconciliation

In some cases, default governor limits may be increased at customer’s request. Before customer submit a technical service request to increase governor limits, Oracle requires customer to test the impact of this change on the overall performance of application.

Benefit: This feature provides flexibility to manage governor limits based on business requirement.

Below are the details of Governor Limits -

Account Reconciliation provides both predefined and customizable governor limits.

Predefined Governor Limits in Transaction Matching

• Maximum Allowed Number of match types in an application - 300
• Number of data sources in a match type - 20
• Number of data sources in an application - 500
• Number of attributes in a data source - 200
• Number of match processes in a match type - 20
• Number of rules in a match process -500

Setting Customizable Governor Limits

 Default governor limits are set for various system settings. The Service Administrator can modify these default values based on the business requirement.

 

For Account Reconciliation - 

• Maximum Number of Items displayed in a List - use the drop-down to set a value for the maximum number of rows to display in the Reconciliations, Transactions, Profiles, and Matching lists and the Reconciliation Actions dialog. The default value is 10000.
• Select maximum file upload size - select a value up for the maximum individual file size that users are allowed to upload. The default is 5MB. The maximum individual file size is 20MB. There is no maximum number of files you can store.

For Report Session -

• Generate reports as separate process - , select Turn On or Turn Off.
• Number of reports that can be run in parallel - use the drop-down to select the number of reports that can be run in parallel.

Thank you!!

Created by: Mohit Jain & Megha Gupta

Updating EPM Automate for all newer version

Scenario: There have been scenarios where EPM cloud application administrator wants to use latest features of EPM Automate but its version has not been updated. Admin user needs a easy way to upgrade the EPM Automate with newer version.

Oracle offering: To upgrade the EPM automate with newer version use "Upgrade" command.

Command: upgrade

Purpose: Automatically downloads and silently installs the newest version of EPM Automate.

After login command is use to initiate a session, EPM Automate identifies the current installed version. If the installed version is not the newest available, EPM Automate informs you that a newer version is available.

Applies to: Planning, Planning Modules, FreeForm, FCCS, TRCS, ARCS, PCMCS/EPMCS, Oracle Enterprise Data Management Cloud, Narrative Reporting, Oracle Sales Planning Cloud, and Oracle Strategic Workforce Planning Cloud.

Implementation:

Admin user can create a separate window/shell script to call he upgrade command whenever there is newer version of EPM Automate and take benefit of those.

Usage of command -

        epmautomate upgrade

Thank you!

Created by - Mohit Jain & Megha Gupta

Error - Referential Integrity Constraint - HFM: Unable to load members in Entity dimension in Replace mode

Scenario: Recently, we were trying to recreate a HFM application in new environment. It was planned to create a shell HFM application first, later, each dimension will be updated by importing the .csv file each dimension at a time. Shell application was created, and dimensions was created by importing the.csv file except the Entity dimension.

Note: Entire application lift and shift (using LCM) was not recommended in this scenario due to some factors. 

Issue:  When Admin user was tried to load Entity dimension in "Replace" mode, there was error of "Referential Integrity Constraint". Due to this, Entity dimension was not getting updated. However, Entity dimension was getting updated in "Merge" mode.

Finding: It was found there was a "Member List", loaded into application, in which Entity dimension member were used. HFM will not allow to delete any dimension member if that member is used anywhere (like, in member list, Data form, Data Grid, Rule, IC Reports). This is why Entity dimension was not getting loaded in "Replace" mode of loading metadata. In "Merge" mode of loading metadata, it will not delete the existing member and will add additional members to existing hierarchy.

Solution:  Member list was removed from HFM application and metadata was successfully loaded into application in Replace mode.

Thank you!

 

Created by - Mohit Jain & Megha Gupta

Hyperion Financial Reporting: Displaying the value of associated attribute member or UDA with a member of standard dimension.

 We are using the Essbase as a data source for financial reporting. In Essbase, we have a dimension "GEO"(which contains the countries, where organization has its operations) and a attribute dimension named "Currency" associated with "GEO.

To displaying the country and its corresponding currency in two columns in Hyperion financial reporting- take the all the countries in first column and use the "MemberProperty()" function in second column to display the currency of that country.
Syntax of MemberProperty() function-
MemberProperty( "GridName", page/Row/Col, DimensionName, property)
e.g.- MemberProperty("Grid1", 1, "GEO", "Currency")

Same way, to display the value of UDA associated with any member, use the same function.
e.g. - There are two UDAs[ Major Market and Normal Market] assigned to "GEO" dimension in Esssbase cube. To display the type of market (major or normal) in a separate column in financial reporting, us the "MemberProperty" function as below.
MemberProperty("Grid1", 1, "GEO", "UDA").
Limitation- If any member will have two UDA associated(both Major and Normal), it will show both the UDAs using MemberProperty function.

Posted by - Mohit Jain & Megha Gupta