Sunday, 9 February 2025

Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close - Data forms 2.0 – Part 2!

 


Its be just over 6 months since my first blog on Forms 2.0 and I am excited to share the latest updates.

Decommission of Support for Forms 1.0

Support for forms 1.0 will be decommissioned in the June 2025 update.  So it’s time to get planning for the move to 2.0 and its an easy update.

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! If you have recently implemented there’s a good chance this will already be set to 2.0


Big News - Formatting styles are no longer limited just to SmartView they now replicate back onto the form in the browser

This is a big step forward and our customers are loving the new look!

How to set up the Formatting in SmartView

The below screenshot is the standard view of a data form in the browser prior to any formatting, pretty bland right!


Allow me to show you how we can enhance this form for a more polished look……..

Step 1 - Log into SmartView

Navigate to the desired data form from the SmartView Panel & double click on it to open the form in SmartView, the below screenshot is the standard view pre-formatting

Step 2 – Apply Custom styles

To begin formatting from the FCCS toolbar ribbon you will see a Formatting section as show above and below, From the “Apply” drop down menu, select Custom Styles

And your Data form will remove any formatting and look like this;


This is your chance to unleash your creativity!

Use all the excel formatting, yes even fonts to design your data form with company branding etc., with exception to the numbers as they take on the formatting from the user preferences, for example I have formatted my form as per below;

Step 3 - don’t forget to save your masterpiece

Click Save From the formatting ribbon, to preserve all your creative efforts.

Step 4 – View the form in the browser

Previously this formatting was only visible when opening the form in SmartView, but now it saves back to the form, so if I go back to my browser and open the form this is how it looks! I hope you agree this looks pretty nice and a big improvement, well done Oracle!


Worth noting: If you have formula columns which are blank the formatting doesn’t apply to that column so add some text and it should format nicely!

Please vote for my Idea in Customer connect to add improvements the formatting

An enhancement that would be super helpful would be the ability to save headers or standard formatting for totals etc., so that when you create a new form you could simply tick a box to apply the formatting style.  If you have high volume of forms this would be a big time saver, I have created an idea in Oracle Customer connect, please vote if you think this would be a good additional feature.

https://community.oracle.com/customerconnect/discussion/844398/data-forms-2-0-standard-headers/p1?new=1

 

Happy formatting - may your forms be flawless!

 

Until next time ………

 



 



Saturday, 8 February 2025

25/02 Oracle EPM Cloud update for Financial Consolidation and Close

 


What’s New!

The are Some exciting new featrures in the February update but first a WARNING of a minor inconvenience, if you have a custom appearance using the Custom Light Theme with a white background the Cards & Clusters are not visible, so change up your background image to a dark background and use the Custom Dark theme, I have logged a SR and will keep you posted once resolved.

New Features

Wait for it……

The long awaited ability to input direct into the YTD member in Financial Consolidation and Close is Here!! 

This is fantastic news for all Close customers, rather than having to use 2 columns on a data input form to show YTD_Input  and YTD  you can now simply choose YTD to input and display the YTD value.  Although a simple thing, the impact on our data forms will significantly simplify their maintenance. Previously, forms often appeared cumbersome and required additional Groovy coding to accommodate complex data form requirements. However, with this enhancement, such extra coding will rarely be necessary...music to my ears!

So, how do I turn on the new feature?

It’s an enablement feature that’s activated in each individual data form, allowing you full control over when you turn on the new feature and implement at your own pace.

To enable this feature simply edit the form, and navigate to the layout tab, then on the grid properties panel at the bottom you will find the Enable YTD data Input feature tick to turn on and then you can simply use the YTD member to input and view YTD values!


New consolidation setting for Calculated movements

There is a new consolidation setting allowing you to control how your default movement is calculated and giving you control over how the Income accounts calculate the default movement using either Periodic or YTD, this is great news for customers who want to translate their movements YTD!

Check out the admin guide for full details on this feature.

https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/financial-consolidation-cloud/agfcc/calculate_movements_rule.html


until next time........


Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close - Data forms 2.0 – Part 2!

  I ts be just over 6 months since my first blog on Forms 2.0 and I am excited to share the latest updates. Decommission of Support for Fo...