Enabling Forms 2.0 for Oracle Financial consolidation and close (FCC)

 

If you haven’t made the move to Forms 2.0, this blog might be useful before you dive in!

Forms 2.0 was first released in 23.11 and there are lots of great additional features that enhance the user experience as summarised below, however, there are a few considerations to be aware of before making the switch!

Considerations

All fixes and enhancements will only take place in Forms 2.0

If you have formatting applied on your current forms, note forms 2.0 doesn’t have formatting in the browser, however you can apply formatting in SmartView which is saved to the form for future retrieves and is pretty smart! (ha-ha see what I did there 😉) (Form formatting in the browser is in the pipeline, dates to be announced, but unlikely in the next few months) Groovy is an option but can be code heavy…. as my Colleague Mike informed me!, but personally & I hope you will agree the SmartView formatting is pretty cool!!  See a quick example below,

Forms 2.0 - Web View

Forms 2.0 - SmartView Standard View

Forms 2.0 - SmartView Formatted  View

To apply formatting in SmartView, select the FCCS menu then Apply > Custom Styles from the formatting section, then use normal excel formatting, once complete, select Save from the formatting menu

I  Always recommend mitigating any risk by checking out the features in your test environment first, I am sure you will love the improvements!

It’s an application specific setting so if you don’t like it simply reset back to Forms 1.0. or clone production back to test.

And Finally, If you are using Dashboards they will need to be migrated to 2.0

Highlights of enhancements

Faster rendering, cell navigation, scrolling across and down the page,

Improved member selections via dropdowns with ability to start typing the member name speeding up selection, it refreshes instantly as the member is selected, no more clicking the Apply arrow to update the form (Yay).

Line-item detail, (Like HFM) ability to add additional lines to give context to a balance with logic to determine how the value rolls up into the balance of a single account see example below.

New updated Icon Menu: Adjust, Grid spread, Comments, line-item detail, Cell History and Undo   

Plus the ability to add Comments to multiple cells in one go. 

Enabling Forms 2.0

There are no migrations steps, as the Administrator simply update the settings as below;

Navigate to Application > Settings

And from the dropdown menu against Forms Version select Forms 2.0 and Click Save and you are good to go!

Oracle related webcasts and YouTube content on Forms 2.0

https://youtu.be/naDI1TlHyy0?si=FLt-bT-Yvf3z7cBp

https://community.oracle.com/customerconnect/events/604915-epm-why-you-should-adopt-the-new-forms-2-0-and-dashboards-2-0

 

Highlights of the EPM Cloud Aug 2024 update - Financial Close

 

Not a huge amount happening on August EPM update, but a few items to note are:

Account reconciliation

There are 2 new roles available for Access Control  
View & Manage, enhancing the segregation of duties, which was a focus across the EPM Close products announced at the ODTUG Kscope24 conference this month (safe harbor apply)  so we can look forward to welcoming further enhancements for role segregation.

View role – Provides Read Only visibility to the tabs within Access Control, along with viewing user security reports

• Manage Groups
• Manage Native Users
• Manage Application Roles
• Role Assignment Report
• User Login Report
• Manage Teams
• Manager Users
• Power User Security
• User Group Report

Manage role – Can View and Export user security reports

For more details see the Oracle documentation here: https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/account-reconcile-cloud/adarc/admin_setup_tools_access_control.html

Financial Consolidation and Close

Oracle have added the capability to Export & Import Configurable Consolidation Rules in XML format, with the ability to modify in a text editor, thus making it quicker to move across applications after testing, modifying and amending rules.  Do be aware that when the rules are imported they will have the status of Undeployed  and unfortunately the seeded rulesets cannot be exported!.

Important Actions and Considerations - Highlights

• Oracle advise installing the Latest version of EPM Automate, and also recommend updating this every month to ensure you have the latest features, bug fixes etc. for smooth operation.
• Advanced warning for 24.10 update – Changes in the permissions, power users who work with Forms and Dashboards will require security access to the folder in which they create Forms and Dashboards, so it’s a good idea to update the access in advance to avoid disruption.
• Good news for Forms 2.0 and Dashboard 2.0 – This update indicates that many of the gaps and issues customers were facing have been addressed and recommend customers move to 2.0 see my blog on enabling Forms 2.0 for more details.

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Oracle Transaction Matching Tip for period mapping when pulling data from Oracle Fusion ERP

 

We have recently seen an increase in  customers taking advantage of the Powerful Account Reconciliation and Transaction mapping tool in the Oracle EPM Suite of products and our very first implementation of Transaction Matching took us a while to figure out why our Period mapping wasn’t working and so the fix stuck with me ever since!

After recently completing another Transaction matching implementation I wanted to share this information for those of you just starting out on your Transaction Matching journey in the hope this Tip will hopefully save you a heap of time!!

When you are creating the Application to pull data from Fusion, the “Dimension Name” for “Fusion Month” should be mapped to the “Generic” Dimension Classification”  and “Data Table Column Name” as “UD11” as shown in the below screenshot, this is not the same when creating Applications for loading Account Balances or for FCC where you would normally select the Dimension Classification as Period.

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog,  I hope this was useful!

… Until next time

Feb24 EPM Update – Important Actions & Considerations

 

This section of the Oracle Cloud readiness update is often overlooked and many of us just want to see this month’s enhancements, myself included! however this section shouldn't be overlooked, below are some key items that may impact your applications!

• Oracle are Upgrading All Non-Hybrid Essbase versions to Hybrid Essbase in the next 3 months, to check if your application is Hybrid enabled, go to Applications > Overview > Activity Reports, as shown in the below screenshot and follow the link at the bottom of the page to see the full information & instructions published by Oracle.
  
  
  
  
  
• Discontinuation of Infolets from the 24.04 update, creation of new infolets will be disabled and no longer supported, this is a real shame as Infolets were a great way to display high level detail and embed them on the home screen, however with the enhancements in Dashboards in recent releases the discontinuation of this feature should not be a significant loss, so if you do have Infolets that are in constant use! it’s time to switch them over to Dashboards.

• Discontinuation of Non-Redwood Themes, this has been talked about for some time now, but Oracle are saying this will be removed towards the end of Q1 so not long to switch, check out this oracle video to see the enhancements you are missing out on by not utilizing the Redwood theme: https://community.oracle.com/customerconnect/events/604505-epm-why-you-should-be-using-the-redwood-theme-in-epm-cloud

• 24.03 Updates to Substitution Variables and Consolidation Settings, the March update Financial Consolidation and Close will be introducing a new module called “Consolidation Settings” this will phase out the user-created substitution variables, with a migration option for some substitution variables with more plan in future updates

So take a break, grab a beverage and read the 24.02 Important action and considerations!

https://www.oracle.com/webfolder/technetwork/tutorials/tutorial/cloud/epm/wn/epm/releases/Feb24/24feb-epm-wn.htm#T55212

Oracle FCC Audit Log Purge expected 23.03

 

Oracle FCC Audit Log Purge expected 23.03

Oracle announced a road map item which is expected in 23.03 usual safe harbour applies.

What does that mean for you?

The audit log will purge any activity older than 1 year leaving you with a years’ worth of history, so if you need to keep this history for your auditors then please follow the steps outlined below to export your Audit logs.

 

1)  From the Tools cluster select Audit 

2)  Next click the Filter as shown below and select your date range to be exported, see example below.

3)   Select your date range as shown below and click Apply.

Note: This process can be run using and epmautomate routine, However, if you are doing this manually you may need to reduce your export to 3 months if you have a high number of audit entries, you can experiment to find a duration that exports in a timely fashion.

4) Next from the Actions drop down menu select Export.

5) This will export in a CSV file format.

Alternatively, you can use Epmautomate command to run this job.

Epmautomate command = exportAppAudit