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

Oracle Cloud EPM Consolidation and Close (FCC) Data Validations

A common question Brovanture’s clients have when moving from Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) to Oracle Cloud EPM Consolidation and Close (FCC) is how do we add validations into the close process. They want to prevent users from promoting data when certain conditions haven’t been met, such as Balance Sheet balancing, Depreciation in the Profit and Loss = depreciation in the Balance Sheet etc.

The answer is simples 😁, in “Data forms”.

Creating validations in Oracle Cloud EPM Consolidation and Close (FCC) is a significantly easier for the Administrator to manage compared to HFM. In HFM the administrator would need to create new metadata and rules. In Oracle Cloud EPM Consolidation and Close (FCC) it’s easier, simply create the criteria to be validated in a data form and then add a validation rule using the rule builder to apply the required conditions.

Let me take you through a couple of examples.

Example 1 - Results of a cell determines if the validation passes or fails.

The scenario below shows a headcount data form for two entities, a validation is required to flag if the headcount data is missing.

We can see in the example below that Entity 1 has headcount data populated but Entity 2 has no headcount data and therefore fails the validation and highlights the Check cell red.

Step 1 – Create a calculation row which contains the data to validate.

Step 2 – Create the validation by selecting the row you wish to hold the validation, in this case row 3 Check row, and from the properties panel select Validation Rules

Step 3 - Ensure the rule location is set to row 3 as seen below and click the to create a new rule.

Step 4 – This will open the Data Validation Rule Builder screen as show below. Enter the desired Rule Name and description and tick the enable validation rule, next use theto add a new condition and populate with the required criteria as below.

Condition 1

Condition = If, Source Type = Current Cell Value, Operator = <=, Target Type = Value, Target Value = 0, Process = blank, Actions = none selected

Condition 2

Condition = Then, Source Type = Process Cell, Actions = Click the format icon

This opens the Data Validation Rule Builder formatting window where you can choose the Cell Background Colour when the validation fails.

Next, choose the Approval action, either None (soft validation) Update promotional path or Do Not Promote (Block Promotional path)

Example 2 – A Validation based on the difference between two data points

Step 1 – Create a data form with the two data points in separate rows or columns and then add a Formula row/column to calculate the variance between the two data points, this will be used for the validation.

Step 2 – Select the formula row where the variance of the two data points is held and open the Data Validation Rule Builder and build out the conditions as per below, this validation rule checks the variance calculation is withing a tolerance of -10 and +10, here we have 2 process cell lines to format the cell Green if ok and red if it fails, and the same as the 1^st example here we have added an additional condition to prevent the data from being promoted if the validation fails.

When setting the cell format for row 4, you can select the Approvals to “Do Not Promote”

Until Next time....

Sarah

 Please note that while we try to keep our blogs UpToDate, Oracle publish updates monthly and so there may be changes, we always advise to check the latest admin guide published by Oracle.

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

 

 

  

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A Basic guide to building a Financial Dashboard in FCCS