Document History

This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates appear in the following table:

Date Update Version Notes
29 NOV 2018 December 2018 Update Delivered new features in December 2018 update.
25 OCT 2018 November 2018 Update Delivered new features in November 2018 update.
27 SEP 2018 October 2018 Update Delivered new features in October 2018 update.
30 AUG 2018 September 2018 Update Delivered new features in September 2018 update.
26 JUL 2018 August 2018 Update Delivered new features in August 2018 update.
28 JUN 2018 July 2018 Update Delivered new features in July 2018 update.
24 MAY 2018 June 2018 Update Delivered new features in June 2018 update.
26 APR 2018 May 2018 Update Delivered new features in May 2018 update.
28 MAR 2018 April 2018 Update Delivered new features in April 2018 update.
23 FEB 2018 March 2018 Update Delivered new features in March 2018 update.
26 JAN 2018 February 2018 Update Delivered new features in February 2018 update.
22 DEC 2017 January 2018 Update Delivered new features in January 2018 update.

December 2018 Update

Revision History

This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates appear in the following table:

Date Feature Notes
29 NOV 2018   Created initial document.

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud, December Update

This document outlines the upcoming Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud update.

Monthly Update Schedule

Oracle will apply the latest updates to your test environments starting at 23:00 UTC (15:00 PST) on Friday, December 7, 2018 and to your production environment on Friday, December 21, 2018, also starting at 23:00 UTC. The updates will be applied to your environments during the first subsequent daily maintenance.

The Oracle Help Center provides access to updated documentation. The updates will be available in the Help Center on December 7, 2018. Some of the links to new feature documentation included in this document will not work until after the Oracle Help Center update is complete.

Backing up the daily maintenance snapshot and restoring the environment as needed are self-service operations. Oracle recommends that you download the maintenance snapshot every day to a local server.

Please Join Oracle Cloud Customer Connect

Please take a moment to join the Cloud Customer Connect forums for EPM Cloud services. Oracle Cloud Customer Connect is a community gathering place for members to interact and collaborate on common goals and objectives. This is where you will find the latest release information, upcoming events, or answers to use-case questions. Joining takes just a few minutes. Join now!

https://cloud.oracle.com/community

NOTE: The Settings and Actions menu now contains a link to Cloud Customer Connect. To access this link, from the Home page, click the down arrow next to the user name (in the upper right-hand corner of the screen), and select Cloud Customer Connect.

Give Us Documentation Feedback

We welcome your comments and suggestions to improve the content of the What's New document and the product documentation. Please send us your feedback at EPMdoc_ww@oracle.com. In the body or title of the email, state that you are inquiring or providing feedback, and indicate for which EPM Cloud service and the monthly update cycle.

Announcements

New EPM Automate Utility Version

A new version of the EPM Automate Utility, which includes the getdailymaintenancestarttime command, is available with this update. You use this command to display the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) at which the daily maintenance of the environment is scheduled to start.

You must install this version of the utility to use the new command.

Key Resources

Working with EPM Automate for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud

Enhanced Documentation to Access Sample Applications

The following information will be included in an early 2019 update of Administering Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud. It enhances the current section "Accessing Sample Applications" with the following detailed steps:

ACCESSING THE SAMPLE APPLICATION

A sample application is available in the product installation which is used for testing and self-led exploration of functional areas. The sample application includes a small data set and a fully built out modeling structure that illustrates allocations and other product features. Before attempting to load the sample application, you must ensure that no other applications are loaded.

To load the sample application:

  1. On the Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Home page, click Application, and then Application again.
  2. On the Application tab, click +.
  3. Select Sample Application.
  4. Optional: Check the status of the import. Click Migration, and then click Reports, and then Migration Status.

Upcoming Changes

Proposed Changes to Application-Level Access Control

Using Groups created in Access Control, EPM Cloud supports application-level access control for planning, consolidation and close, tax reporting, and Oracle Enterprise Data Management Cloud applications. In addition to the custom groups created in Access Control, access control screens list predefined identity domain roles (Service Administrator, Power User, User and Viewer) as groups.

Pre-Defined Roles and Groups in Forms Access Control Screen

With a view to simplifying security across EPM Cloud and to ensure that application-level access control can be seamlessly migrated across environments, Oracle plans to remove the ability to display predefined roles as groups in access control screens. After this change, you will no longer see predefined roles listed when you search for groups in access control screens.

NOTE: The proposed change will not affect how you create and manage groups or use them for application-level access control.

Before making this change, Oracle wants to evaluate the impact, if any, that the proposed change will have on your environments. If you are concerned that the proposed change will affect your environment, please create a service request explaining your use case.

Defects Fixed

Software issues addressed each month will be posted to My Oracle Support.

November 2018 Update

Revision History

This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates appear in the following table:

Date Feature Notes
25 OCT 2018   Created initial document.

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud, November Update

This document outlines the upcoming Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud update.

Monthly Update Schedule

Oracle will apply the latest updates to your test environments starting at 22:00 UTC (15:00 PDT) on Friday, November 2, 2018 and to your production environment on Friday, November 16, 2018, starting at 23:00 UTC (15:00 PST). The updates will be applied to your environments during the first subsequent daily maintenance.

The Oracle Help Center provides access to updated documentation. The updates will be available in the Help Center on November 2, 2018. Some of the links to new feature documentation included in this document will not work until after the Oracle Help Center update is complete.

Tips And Considerations

Backing up the daily maintenance snapshot and restoring the environment as needed are self-service operations. Oracle recommends that you download the maintenance snapshot every day to a local server.

Please Join Oracle Cloud Customer Connect

Please take a moment to join the Cloud Customer Connect forums for EPM Cloud services. Oracle Cloud Customer Connect is a community gathering place for members to interact and collaborate on common goals and objectives. This is where you will find the latest release information, upcoming events, or answers to use-case questions. Joining takes just a few minutes. Join now!

https://cloud.oracle.com/community

NOTE: The Settings and Actions menu now contains a link to Cloud Customer Connect. To access this link, from the Home page, click the down arrownext to the user name (in the upper right-hand corner of the screen), and select Cloud Customer Connect.

Give Us Documentation Feedback

We welcome your comments and suggestions to improve the content of the What's New document and the product documentation. Please send us your feedback at EPMdoc_ww@oracle.com. In the body or title of the email, state that you are inquiring or providing feedback, and indicate for which EPM Cloud service and the monthly update cycle.

Announcements

New EPM Automate Utility Version

A new version of the EPM Automate Utility is available with this update. This version includes the following new commands

Additionally, this version includes enhancements to the following commands:

NOTE: In a future update, Oracle will make the simplified Provisioning Report as the default report that is generated from Access Control as well as using the provisionreport command. You will still be able to create the classic Provisioning Report using this command.

Key Resources

Improved Performance While Uploading and Downloading Files

This update features improved performance while processing large files using the following EPM Automate commands:

Key Resources

New Version of Oracle Smart View for Office

Oracle Smart View for Office 11.1.2.5.810 will be available in November 2018. This version includes new features such as:

This release also fixes a number of defects.

The Smart View 11.1.2.5.810 Readme, available on the Help Center, will contain a complete list of features and defects addressed in this version. You must install this version to ensure access to the new functionalities.

Key Resources

REST APIs for Managing Users

You can now use REST APIs to perform these user management-related operations:

Key Resources

Ability to Enter Hex Values to Customize Font Colors in Financial Reporting Reports

You can now enter hex values to customize the font color for text objects in Financial Reporting reports. You enter hex values (without the prefix) in the text editor in Financial Reporting Web Studio. Hex values can be entered in both the short RGB format and the long RRGGBB format.

Key Resources

Upcoming Changes

Proposed Changes to Application-Level Access Control

Using Groups created in Access Control, EPM Cloud supports application-level access control for planning, consolidation and close, tax reporting, and Oracle Enterprise Data Management Cloud applications. In addition to the custom groups created in Access Control, access control screens list predefined identity domain roles (Service Administrator, Power User, User and Viewer) as groups.

Pre-defined Roles and Groups in Forms Access Control Screen

With a view to simplifying security across EPM Cloud and to ensure that application-level access control can be seamlessly migrated across environments Oracle plans to remove the ability to display predefined roles as groups in access control screens. After this change, you will no longer see predefined roles listed when you search for groups in access control screens.

NOTE: The proposed change will not affect how you create and manage groups or use them for application-level access control.

Before making this change, Oracle wants to evaluate the impact, if any, that the proposed change will have on your environments. If you are concerned that the proposed change will affect your environment, please create a service request explaining your use case.

Defects Fixed

Software issues addressed each month will be posted to My Oracle Support.

October 2018 Update

Revision History

This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates appear in the following table:

Date Feature Notes
27 SEP 2018   Created initial document.

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud, October Update

This document outlines the upcoming Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud update.

Monthly Update Schedule

Oracle will apply the latest updates to your test environments starting at 22:00 UTC (15:00 PDT) on Friday, October 5, 2018 and to your production environment on Friday, October 19, 2018, also starting at 22:00 UTC. The updates will be applied to your environments during the first subsequent daily maintenance.

The Oracle Help Center provides access to updated documentation. The updates will be available in the Help Center on October 5, 2018. Some of the links to new feature documentation included in this document will not work until after the Oracle Help Center update is complete.

Tips And Considerations

Backing up the daily maintenance snapshot and restoring the environment as needed are self-service operations. Oracle recommends that you download the maintenance snapshot every day to a local server.

Please Join Oracle Cloud Customer Connect

Please take a moment to join the Cloud Customer Connect forums for EPM Cloud services. Oracle Cloud Customer Connect is a community gathering place for members to interact and collaborate on common goals and objectives. This is where you will find the latest release information, upcoming events, or answers to use-case questions. Joining takes just a few minutes. Join now!

https://cloud.oracle.com/community

NOTE: The Settings and Actions menu now contains a link to Cloud Customer Connect. To access this link, from the Home page, click the down arrownext to the user name (in the upper right-hand corner of the screen), and select Cloud Customer Connect.

Give Us Documentation Feedback

We welcome your comments and suggestions to improve the content of the What's New document and the product documentation. Please send us your feedback at EPMdoc_ww@oracle.com. In the body or title of the email, state that you are inquiring or providing feedback, and indicate for which EPM Cloud service and the monthly update cycle.

Announcements

New EPM Automate Utility Version

A new version of the EPM Automate Utility is available with this update. This version includes the renameSnapshot, which enables you to rename a snapshot available in an environment to prevent the maintenance process from overwriting it. Customers who have small applications can use this command to archive snapshots in the environment subject to snapshot retention policies.

This version also includes updates to the rundailyMaintenance command, which has been enhanced to take skipNext as a new optional parameter. This parameter allows you to skip the next occurrence of the daily maintenance process. Use this parameter to prevent the daily maintenance process from interfering with long running ad hoc processes of unknown duration that you execute in an environment.

Additionally, the runcalc command has been updated with the DATA_POV_NAME optional parameter, which enables you to run Profitability and Cost Management Cloud calculations using rules in a model POV against data in a different data POV without copying rules.

Key Resources

REST API Update Supports Using Rules from a Model POV on Different Data POVs

The Run ML Calculations REST AP resource now enables you to run calculations using rules in a model POV against data in a different data POV without copying rules across POVs. A new parameter, dataPOVName, supports this enhancement.

The runcalc EPM Automate command also includes this update.

Key Resources

New Server Setting in Financial Reporting Web Studio

A new server setting, "Export to Excel Using Default Sheet Name", controls Excel sheet names upon export. When set to false, the sheet name uses the Financial Reporting report name. When set to true, the sheet name uses the Excel default name (Sheet1, Sheet2, etc.)

Key Resources

Defects Fixed

Software issues addressed each month will be posted to My Oracle Support.

September 2018 Update

Revision History

This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates appear in the following table:

Date Feature Notes
30 AUG 2018   Created initial document.

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud, September Update

This document outlines announcements in the upcoming Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud update.

Monthly Update Schedule

Oracle will apply the latest updates to your test environments starting at 22:00 UTC (15:00 PDT) on Friday, September 7, 2018 and to your production environment on Friday, September 21, 2018, also starting at 22:00 UTC. The updates will be applied to your environments during the first subsequent daily maintenance.

The Oracle Help Center provides access to updated documentation. The updates will be available in the Help Center on September 7, 2018. Some of the links to new feature documentation included in this document will not work until after the Oracle Help Center update is complete.

Tips And Considerations

Backing up the daily maintenance snapshot and restoring the environment as needed are self-service operations. Oracle recommends that you download the maintenance snapshot every day to a local server.

Please Join Oracle Cloud Customer Connect

Please take a moment to join the Cloud Customer Connect forums for EPM Cloud services. Oracle Cloud Customer Connect is a community gathering place for members to interact and collaborate on common goals and objectives. This is where you will find the latest release information, upcoming events, or answers to use-case questions. Joining takes just a few minutes. Join now!

https://cloud.oracle.com/community

NOTE: The Settings and Actions menu now contains a link to Cloud Customer Connect. To access this link, from the Home page, click the down arrow next to the user name (in the upper right-hand corner of the screen), and select Cloud Customer Connect.

Give Us Documentation Feedback

We welcome your comments and suggestions to improve the content of the What's New document and the product documentation. Please send us your feedback at EPMdoc_ww@oracle.com. In the body or title of the email, state that you are inquiring or providing feedback, and indicate for which EPM Cloud service and the monthly update cycle.

Announcements

Provisioning Changes to Simplify Role Usage

The following changes that affect provisioning are included in this update.

Rules Express Editing Enhancements for Performance and Ease of Use

The Rules Express Editing feature of Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud has these updates for performance and ease of use:

Key Resources

Drilling Down from Summary Members

When working with an Essbase dimension that has drill-down data, you can see what makes up the dimension value at the summary level instead of the leaf level of each dimension in Data Management.

Key Resources

New EPM Automate Utility Version

A new version of the EPM Automate Utility is available with this update. This version includes the following commands:

Key Resources

REST APIs for Managing Users

You can now use REST APIs to perform these user management-related operations:

Key Resources

Defects Fixed

Software issues addressed each month will be posted to My Oracle Support.

Considerations

Remember to Upgrade EPM Automate Each Month

To ensure you're using the latest updates to EPM Automate, you must upgrade EPM Automate with each new monthly refresh.

Key Resources

Microsoft Excel Known Issue that Affects Smart View for Office

Due to an issue with Microsoft Office, using the copy and paste functionality in Excel and then performing any Smart View operation (such as Refresh, Zoom In, or Submit) causes Smart View to stop responding in the following cases (bug number 26796966):

The issue is fixed for Excel 2013 and Excel 2016 if you have applied the updates described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles:

Microsoft has not provided the fix for Excel 2010. Workarounds:

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Supports Smart View Private Connections

Currently, Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud supports only Private Connections with Smart View.

Key Resources

For details, see “Accessing Smart View” in Chapter 2 of Getting Started with Oracle Profitability and Cost Management for Administrators and Getting Started with Oracle Profitability and Cost Management for Users.

Avoid Special Characters in Artifact Names, Including Calculation Rules

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud does not allow special characters in dimension names and artifact names, including calculation rules. If you are migrating an application from on-premise Profitability and Cost Management, you must remove any special characters from rule names before you perform the migration.

Particularly, Oracle strongly discourages the use of the forward slash ( / ) character in dimension and member names.  Validations will be added in future releases to prevent its use.  If you create a Smart View query that references a member that contains the '/' character in its name, the query will become unusable.

August 2018 Update

Revision History

This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates appear in the following table:

Date Feature Notes
26 JUL 2018   Created initial document.

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud, August Update

This document outlines announcements and upcoming changes in the upcoming Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud update.

Monthly Update Schedule

Oracle will apply the latest updates to your test environments starting at 22:00 UTC (15:00 PDT) on Friday, August 3, 2018 and to your production environment on Friday, August 17, 2018, also starting at 22:00 UTC. The updates will be applied to your environments during the first subsequent daily maintenance.

The Oracle Help Center provides access to updated documentation. The updates will be available in the Help Center on August 3, 2018. Some of the links to new feature documentation included in this document will not work until after the Oracle Help Center update is complete.

Tips And Considerations

Backing up the daily maintenance snapshot and restoring the environment as needed are self-service operations. Oracle recommends that you download the maintenance snapshot every day to a local server.

Please Join Oracle Cloud Customer Connect

Please take a moment to join the Cloud Customer Connect forums for EPM Cloud services. Oracle Cloud Customer Connect is a community gathering place for members to interact and collaborate on common goals and objectives. This is where you will find the latest release information, upcoming events, or answers to use-case questions. Joining takes just a few minutes. Join now!

https://cloud.oracle.com/community

NOTE: The Settings and Actions menu now contains a link to Cloud Customer Connect. To access this link, from the Home page, click the down arrow next to the user name (in the upper right-hand corner of the screen), and select Cloud Customer Connect.

Give Us Documentation Feedback

We welcome your comments and suggestions to improve the content of the What's New document and the product documentation. Please send us your feedback at EPMdoc_ww@oracle.com. In the body or title of the email, state that you are inquiring or providing feedback, and indicate for which EPM Cloud service and the monthly update cycle.

Announcements

New EPM Automate Utility Version

A new version of the EPM Automate Utility is available with this update. This version includes updates to the clearPOV command, which has been enhanced to clear data regions within a POV. Previously, this command was used to clear all artifacts and data from the POV.

Key Resources

EPM Automate Command Copies Files from Another Cloud Instance

A new EPM Automate command, copyfilefrominstance, enables you to copy files from another Enterprise Performance Management Cloud instance into Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud.

This command can increase efficiency since you can move a file from one environment to another directly.without needing to download it locally and then upload it again.

Key Resources

Enhanced Rule Sort Order for Easier Express Editing

To help you find rules in a large application, a new sort order, Model Calculation Sequence, is now available for use in the Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Rules Express Editing screen. It is the default sort.

If you prefer, you can select another sort order:  Name, Rule Set Name, or Rule Sequence.

Key Resources

Delete Multiple Files in the File Explorer

You now can use Ctrl+Click to select multiple files for deletion in the Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud File Explorer. You can delete multiple selected files at one time. However, you must select one file at a time for uploading or downloading.

Key Resources

Modify Filters with Express Editing

As in previous Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud updates, you can use the Calculation Rules menu to replace members in the Target, Source, and Destination tabs. This feature is now extended so you can replace members within the rule filters as well. You now can select members of attribute and user-defined attribute (UDA) dimensions. These selections apply to the filters on the specified rule tabs.

Key Resources

Clear Selected Input Data from POVs

You can clear or delete selected objects (artifacts) from an Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud POV. These Comprehensive clears delete all artifacts of the selected type. Now, you can also create a query and perform a Targeted clear, which deletes a specific slice of input data. This is useful, for example, when you want to delete other input data without deleting drivers.

The clearPOV EPM Automate command now supports Targeted clears, as described earlier in this document, and so does the Run ML Clear POV REST API resource.

Key Resources

New Server Setting in Financial Reporting Web Studio

Run Batch With Signed On User Credentials, a new server setting, is available in Financial Reporting Web Studio. When this setting is set to true, there is no prompt for a username and password in the Batch Scheduler; instead, the batch is run with the credentials of the user who is currently signed in.

To set this property, open Financial Reporting Web Studio and select File, and then Manage, and then Server.

NOTE: You must restart the environment to enable the new setting. You can restart an environment using the resetservice EPM Automate command or by modifying the maintenance start time. If you do not restart the environment, the setting will take effect after the next scheduled daily maintenance of the environment.

Key Resources

Financial Reporting Studio Desktop Client

Starting with this monthly update, Oracle will stop distributing the Financial Reporting Desktop Studio installer. The command line utilities associated with Financial Reporting Desktop Studio will also be discontinued starting with the 18.08 update.

NOTE: Existing installations of the Financial Reporting Desktop Studio and command line utilities will no longer work with Financial Reporting starting with the 18.09 update.

Use Financial Reporting Web Studio instead of Financial Reporting Studio Desktop Client.

Upcoming Changes

Change Dimension Sort Order

Currently Administrators and Power Users can change the sort order of dimensions in the Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Applications Console (click Application, then Application,and then Actions). Starting with the next update, Oracle plans to move that functionality to Dimension Management (click Application, and then Dimension Management).

Defects Fixed

Software issues addressed each month will be posted to My Oracle Support.

Considerations

Remember to Upgrade EPM Automate Each Month

To ensure you're using the latest updates to EPM Automate, you must upgrade EPM Automate with each new monthly refresh.

Key Resources

Microsoft Excel Known Issue that Affects Smart View for Office

Due to an issue with Microsoft Office, using the copy and paste functionality in Excel and then performing any Smart View operation (such as Refresh, Zoom In, or Submit) causes Smart View to stop responding in the following cases (bug number 26796966):

The issue is fixed for Excel 2013 and Excel 2016 if you have applied the updates described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles:

Microsoft has not provided the fix for Excel 2010. Workarounds:

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Supports Smart View Private Connections

Currently, Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud supports only Private Connections with Smart View.

Key Resources

For details, see “Accessing Smart View” in Chapter 2 of Getting Started with Oracle Profitability and Cost Management for Administrators and Getting Started with Oracle Profitability and Cost Management for Users.

Avoid Special Characters in Artifact Names, Including Calculation Rules

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud does not allow special characters in dimension names and artifact names, including calculation rules. If you are migrating an application from on-premise Profitability and Cost Management, you must remove any special characters from rule names before you perform the migration.

Particularly, Oracle strongly discourages the use of the forward slash ( / ) character in dimension and member names.  Validations will be added in future releases to prevent its use.  If you create a Smart View query that references a member that contains the '/' character in its name, the query will become unusable.

July 2018 Update

Revision History

This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates appear in the following table:

Date Feature Notes
28 JUN 2018   Created initial document.

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud, July Update

This document outlines announcements and upcoming changes in the upcoming Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud update.

Monthly Update Schedule

Oracle will apply the latest updates to your test environments starting at 22:00 UTC (15:00 PDT) on Friday, July 6, 2018 and to your production environment on Friday, July 20, 2018, also starting at 22:00 UTC. The updates will be applied to your environments during the first subsequent daily maintenance.

The Oracle Help Center provides access to updated documentation. The updates will be available in the Help Center on July 6, 2018. Some of the links to new feature documentation included in this document will not work until after the Oracle Help Center update is complete.

Tips And Considerations

Backing up the daily maintenance snapshot and restoring the environment as needed are self-service operations. Oracle recommends that you download the maintenance snapshot every day to a local server.

Key Resources

Please Join Oracle Cloud Customer Connect

Please take a moment to join the Cloud Customer Connect forums for EPM Cloud services. Oracle Cloud Customer Connect is a community gathering place for members to interact and collaborate on common goals and objectives. This is where you will find the latest release information, upcoming events, or answers to use-case questions. Joining takes just a few minutes. Join now!

https://cloud.oracle.com/community

NOTE: The Settings and Actions menu now contains a link to Cloud Customer Connect. To access this link, from the Home page, click the down arrow next to the user name (in the upper right-hand corner of the screen), and select Cloud Customer Connect.

Give Us Documentation Feedback

We welcome your comments and suggestions to improve the content of the What's New document and the product documentation. Please send us your feedback at EPMdoc_ww@oracle.com. In the body or title of the email, state that you are inquiring or providing feedback, and indicate for which EPM Cloud service and the monthly update cycle.

Announcements

Changes to Labels and Threshold Values in Activity Report

Oracle has lowered the display threshold for the following metrics in the Activity Report to 2 seconds.Additionally, the labels of these metrics have been modified to reflect these changes.

Key Resources

New EPM Automate Utility Version

A new version of the EPM Automate Utility is available with this update. This version includes the copyfilefrominstance command, which copies a file from a source environment to the environment (target) from which you run the command.

This version also includes changes to the following commands to make them consistent with other file operation commands:

Key Resources

Optimize for Reporting When Running Calculations

You now can choose whether or not to run aggregations on the Essbase cube when you run calculations in Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud. Running aggregations improves performance for queries, reports, and analytics. Aggregations are needed only for the final calculation before using analytics and reports. A new option enables you to turn off aggregations to save time, especially when running a single rule set or a single rule. To turn off aggregations, clear Optimize for Reporting on the Calculations screen.

Key Resources

Calculation Rules Now Allow Up to Two Dimensions Defined As Same-As-Source with Different Matching Dimensions

In the Manage Rules screen, on the Destination tab, you can now define up to two dimensions per rule as same-as-source with different matching source dimensions.

This feature is applicable for certain business use cases, where it can greatly streamline business modeling.

Key Resources

Migration: Backup Versus Export

The Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Migration page now contains Backup and Export buttons to migrate different levels of system content.

To perform a complete backup, on the Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Home page, click Application, then Migration, and then Categories. Then, click Backup. This selects all content from all categories to provide a full backup of your environment, like the Artifact Snapshot that is created during the Automated Maintenance Window (AMW).

To export a selective backup, display Migration, and then select the categories and content that you want to export. Then, click Export to create a backup of just the categories and artifacts that you selected.

Key Resources

Data Management Artifacts and Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Applications Are Deleted Together

Enhanced cleanup procedures ensure that all associated Data Management artifacts are removed when a Profitability and Cost Management Cloud application is deleted.

Option to Show Hidden Files in the Financial Reporting Web Studio Repository

By default, hidden artifacts are not displayed in Financial Reporting Web Studio. If you need to edit an artifact that is hidden, you can now "unhide" the artifact and edit it directly in the Financial Reporting Web Studio repository.

Key Resources

Upcoming Changes

Financial Reporting Studio Desktop Client

As announced in preceding Readiness Documents, Oracle will stop distributing the Financial Reporting Desktop Studio installer starting the 18.08 update (August 3, 2018 for test and August 17, 2018 for production environments). The command line utilities associated with Financial Reporting Desktop Studio  will also be discontinued starting with the 18.08 update.

NOTE: Existing installations of the Financial Reporting Desktop Studio and command line utilities will no longer work with Financial Reporting starting with the 18.09 update.

Oracle recommends that you transition to using Financial Reporting Web Studio as soon as possible. Please send questions and concerns to Oracle using the Provide Feedback option in the service.

Defects Fixed

Software issues addressed each month will be posted to My Oracle Support.

Considerations

Remember to Upgrade EPM Automate Each Month

To ensure you're using the latest updates to EPM Automate, you must upgrade EPM Automate with each new monthly refresh.

Key Resources

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Supports Smart View Private Connections

Currently, Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud supports only private connections with Smart View.

Key Resources

Microsoft Excel Known Issue that Affects Smart View for Office

Due to an issue with Microsoft Office, using the copy and paste functionality in Excel and then performing any Smart View operation (such as Refresh, Zoom In, or Submit) causes Smart View to stop responding in the following cases (bug number 26796966):

The issue is fixed for Excel 2013 and Excel 2016 if you have applied the updates described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles:

Microsoft has not provided the fix for Excel 2010. Workarounds:

Avoid Special Characters in Artifact Names, Including Calculation Rules

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud does not allow special characters in dimension names and artifact names, including calculation rules. If you are migrating an application from on-premise Profitability and Cost Management, you must remove any special characters from rule names before you perform the migration.

Particularly, Oracle strongly discourages the use of the forward slash ( / ) character in dimension and member names.  Validations will be added in future releases to prevent its use.  If you create a Smart View query that references a member that contains the '/' character in its name, the query will become unusable.

June 2018 Update

Revision History

This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates appear in the following table:

Date Feature Notes
24 MAY 2018   Created initial document.

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud, June Update

This document outlines announcements, upcoming changes, and considerations in the upcoming Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud update.

Monthly Update Schedule

Oracle will apply the latest updates to your test environments starting at 22:00 UTC (15:00 PDT) on Friday, June 1, 2018 and to your production environment on Friday, June 15, 2018, also starting at 22:00 UTC. The updates will be applied to your environments during the first subsequent daily maintenance.

The Oracle Help Center provides access to updated documentation. The updates will be available in the Help Center on June 1, 2018. Some of the links to new feature documentation included in this document will not work until after the Oracle Help Center update is complete.

Tips And Considerations

Backing up the daily maintenance snapshot and restoring the environment as needed are self-service operations. Oracle recommends that you download the maintenance snapshot every day to a local server.

Key Resources

Please Join Oracle Cloud Customer Connect

Please take a moment to join the Cloud Customer Connect forums for EPM Cloud services. Oracle Cloud Customer Connect is a community gathering place for members to interact and collaborate on common goals and objectives. This is where you will find the latest release information, upcoming events, or answers to use-case questions. Joining takes just a few minutes. Join now!

https://cloud.oracle.com/community

NOTE: The Settings and Actions menu now contains a link to Cloud Customer Connect. To access this link, from the Home page, click the down arrow next to the user name (in the upper right-hand corner of the screen), and select Cloud Customer Connect.

Give Us Documentation Feedback

We welcome your comments and suggestions to improve the content of the What's New document and the product documentation. Please send us your feedback at EPMdoc_ww@oracle.com. In the body or title of the email, state that you are inquiring or providing feedback, and indicate for which EPM Cloud service and the monthly update cycle.

Announcements

Remove Time Stamp From File Name When Bursting Batch Reports

In Financial Reporting, you now have the option to remove the time stamp from the zip file names created by batch job outputs to external directory. This change does not apply to normal batch output in Financial Reporting.

Key Resources

New Version of Oracle Smart View for Office

Oracle Smart View for Office 11.1.2.5.800 will be available by mid-June. This version includes new features such as:

This release also fixes a number of defects.

The Smart View 11.1.2.5.800 Readme, available on the Help Center at the time of release, contains a complete list of features and defects addressed in this version. You must install this version to ensure compatibility with the June 2018 update features and to access the new functionalities.

Key Resources

Updates to Snapshot Retention Policy

The daily maintenance process has been enhanced to prevent large accumulation of snapshots (over 150 GB) in EPM Cloud environments.

By default, the snapshots that you create through the export process or upload to an environment are stored for a period not exceeding 60 days after which they are automatically removed. Starting with this update, the daily maintenance process will automatically remove snapshots prior to sixty days, oldest first, to prevent the total size of all snapshots from exceeding 150 GB, which may adversely impact your environment. The daily maintenance snapshot, irrespective of its size, is always retained in EPM Cloud environments.

Key Resources

Import Shared POV Members

Using Template Import or LCM Import, you now can import applications with shared members in a POV dimension.

Key Resources

New REST API Supports Updates of Dimension Members with Flat Files

A new REST API, Update Dimensions As a Job, is now available for Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud. Similar to Update File-Based Application, you can use the new resource to update dimension flat files for an application. However, Update Dimensions As a Job runs asynchronously; it immediately returns the job ID and the job status (Running or Failed). Update File-Based Application runs synchronously and waits until the job finishes to indicate whether the job succeeded or failed.

NOTE: Update File-Based Application is a deprecated resource and will be removed in the near future. Use Update Dimensions As a Job instead.

The description is as follows:

Description Use this resource to update dimension flat files for an application.  Request parameters follow this table.
Action Type POST
Request URI

https://<SERVICE_NAME>-<TENANT_NAME>.<SERVICE_TYPE><dcX>.oraclecloud.com/epm/rest/{api_version}/fileApplications/{applicationName}/jobs/updateDimensionJob

Example, Request Payload

{

"dataFileName":"input.txt#input1.txt",

"stringDelimiter":"#"

}

Example, Response      

{

    "type": "Profitability",

    "links": [

          {

                "href": " https://<SERVICE_NAME>- <TENANT_NAME>.<SERVICE_TYPE><dcX>.oraclecloud.com/epm/rest/{api_version}    /fileApplications/BksML12/jobs/updateDimensionJob ",

             "action": "POST",

             "rel": "self",

             "data": {

             "dataFileName":"input.txt,input1.txt"

     "stringDelimiter":"#"

                  }

         },    {

                 "href":   " https://<SERVICE_NAME>- <TENANT_NAME>.<SERVICE_TYPE><dcX>.oraclecloud.com/epm /rest/{api_version}  /applications/jobs/ChecktaskStatusJob/BksML12_BksML12_UpdateDimension_D20160118T051020_bb8_1",

                 "action": "GET",

                 "rel": "Job status"

                 }

          ],

          "status": -1,

          "details": "BksML12_BksML12_ UpdateDimension _D20160118T051020_bb8_1",

          "statusMessage": "In_Progress"

  }

Process Type

Asynchronous

REQUEST PARAMETERS

Parameter Description Example

dataFileName (required)

Name of the flat files; usually separated by commas

DimA.txt

stringDelimiter (optional)

Separator character to use in place of commas

#

Key Resources

Specify a Maximum Email Attachment Size When Scheduling Batches

In Financial Reporting, you can now specify a Maximum Email Attachment Size so that you can email more books using the Batch Scheduler.

Key Resources

Upcoming Changes

Financial Reporting Studio Desktop Client

Oracle is committed to providing a simple and intuitive user experience. To achieve this, Financial Reporting Web Studio, available since March 2016, will become the only environment for designing and building reports.

Oracle is providing additional time for users to transition from Financial Reporting Desktop Studio to Financial Reporting Web Studio. Tentative plans call for functional parity between Financial Reporting Web Studio and Financial Reporting Desktop Studio in 2018, at which time, support for the Desktop Studio will transition to the Web Studio and distribution of the Desktop Studio will cease. This transition is tentatively planned for the 18.09 update (September 07, 2018 for test and September 21, 2018 for production environments).

Oracle recommends that you transition to using Financial Reporting Web Studio at the earliest opportunity. Please send questions and concerns to Oracle using the Provide Feedback option in the service.

Defects Fixed

Software issues addressed each month will be posted to My Oracle Support.

Considerations

Remember to Upgrade EPM Automate Each Month

To ensure you're using the latest updates to EPM Automate, you must upgrade EPM Automate with each new monthly refresh.

Key Resources

"Show Member Alias" Issue for the Program Documentation Report

There is a known issue with using the Show Member Alias checkbox for the Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Program Documentation report.  Running the report with Show Member Alias checked temporarily alters the rules in the Point of View (POV) so that they are invalid.

To revert this alteration, either restart the Profitability service or wait until after the next AMW backup.   Until that time, the rules in that POV are marked as invalid in Model Validation and the POV cannot be calculated. Also, if you do a "Copy Point of View" operation with the "Manage Rules" option checked and use that particular POV as the source, the rules in the target POV will be permanently invalid.  In this case, you must  delete the target POV and run the copy operation again after restarting the service.

NOTE: These cases only occur for those POVs where you have run the Program Documentation report with a check for Show Member Alias. And once the Profitability service has been restarted, the issue no longer exists.

Key Resources

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Supports Smart View Private Connections

Currently, Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud supports only private connections with Smart View.

Key Resources

Microsoft Excel Known Issue that Affects Smart View for Office

Due to an issue with Microsoft Office, using the copy and paste functionality in Excel and then performing any Smart View operation (such as Refresh, Zoom In, or Submit) causes Smart View to stop responding in the following cases (bug number 26796966):

The issue is fixed for Excel 2013 and Excel 2016 if you have applied the updates described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles:

Microsoft has not provided the fix for Excel 2010. Workarounds:

Avoid Special Characters in Artifact Names, Including Calculation Rules

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud does not allow special characters in dimension names and artifact names, including calculation rules. If you are migrating an application from on-premise Profitability and Cost Management, you must remove any special characters from rule names before you perform the migration.

Particularly, Oracle strongly discourages the use of the forward slash ( / ) character in dimension and member names.  Validations will be added in future releases to prevent its use.  If you create a Smart View query that references a member that contains the '/' character in its name, the query will become unusable.

May 2018 Update

Revision History

This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates appear in the following table:

Date Feature Notes
26 APR 2018   Created initial document.

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud, May Update

This document outlines announcements, defects fixed and considerations in the upcoming Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud update.

Monthly Update Schedule

Oracle will apply the latest updates to your test environments starting at 22:00 UTC (15:00 PDT) on Friday, May 4, 2018 and to your production environment on Friday, May 18, 2018, also starting at 22:00 UTC. The updates will be applied to your environments during the first subsequent daily maintenance.

The Oracle Help Center, which provides access to updated documentation, has a new look and feel. The updates will be available on May 4, 2018. Some of the links to new feature documentation included in this document will not work until after the Oracle Help Center update is complete.

Tips And Considerations

Backing up the daily maintenance snapshot and restoring the environment as needed are self-service operations. Oracle recommends that you download the maintenance snapshot every day to a local server.

Key Resources

Please Join Oracle Cloud Customer Connect

Please take a moment to join the Cloud Customer Connect forums for EPM Cloud services. Oracle Cloud Customer Connect is a community gathering place for members to interact and collaborate on common goals and objectives. This is where you will find the latest release information, upcoming events, or answers to use-case questions. Joining takes just a few minutes. Join now!

https://cloud.oracle.com/community

NOTE: The Settings and Actions menu now contains a link to Cloud Customer Connect. To access this link, from the Home page, click the down arrow next to the user name (in the upper right-hand corner of the screen), and select Cloud Customer Connect.

Give Us Documentation Feedback

We welcome your comments and suggestions to improve the content of the What's New document and the product documentation. Please send us your feedback at EPMdoc_ww@oracle.com. In the body or title of the email, state that you are inquiring or providing feedback, and indicate for which EPM Cloud service and the monthly update cycle.

Announcements

New EPM Automate Utility Version

A new version of the EPM Automate Utility is available with this update. This version includes the runDailyMaintenance command, which enables Service Administrators to run the daily service maintenance process as needed. For example, Service Administrators can use this command to update their service as soon as a patch to an environment is available instead of waiting for the daily maintenance window.

Key Resources

Microsoft Excel Version Usage in Activity Report

The Activity Report has been enhanced to include the Microsoft Excel Versions in use and the number of users who use them.

Key Resources

Updated Execution Statistics Report

The Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Execution Statistics Report is updated in two ways:

Key Resources

Removal of Support

Financial Reporting Studio Desktop Client

Oracle is committed to providing a simple and intuitive user experience. To achieve this, Financial Reporting Web Studio, available since March 2016, will become the only environment for designing and building reports.

Oracle is providing additional time for users to transition from Financial Reporting Desktop Studio to Financial Reporting Web Studio. Tentative plans call for functional parity between Financial Reporting Web Studio and Financial Reporting Desktop Studio in 2018, at which time, support for the Desktop Studio will transition to the Web Studio and distribution of the Desktop Studio will cease. This transition is currently planned for the 18.06 update (June 01, 2018 for test and June 15, 2018 for production environments).

Oracle recommends that you transition to using Financial Reporting Web Studio at the earliest opportunity. Please send questions and concerns to Oracle using the Provide Feedback option in the service.

Defects Fixed

Software issues addressed each month will be posted to My Oracle Support.

Considerations

Avoid Special Characters in Artifact Names, Including Calculation Rules

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud does not allow special characters in dimension names and artifact names, including calculation rules. If you are migrating an application from on-premise Profitability and Cost Management, you must remove any special characters from rule names before you perform the migration.

Particularly, Oracle strongly discourages the use of the forward slash ( / ) character in dimension and member names.  Validations will be added in future releases to prevent its use.  If you create a Smart View query that references a member that contains the '/' character in its name, the query will become unusable.

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Supports Smart View Private Connections

Currently, Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud supports only private connections with Smart View.

Key Resources

Microsoft Excel Known Issue that Affects Smart View for Office

Due to an issue with Microsoft Office, using the copy and paste functionality in Excel and then performing any Smart View operation (such as Refresh, Zoom In, or Submit) causes Smart View to stop responding in the following cases (bug number 26796966):

The issue is fixed for Excel 2013 and Excel 2016 if you have applied the updates described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles:

Microsoft has not provided the fix for Excel 2010. Workarounds:

April 2018 Update

Revision History

This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates appear in the following table:

Date Feature Notes
28 MAR 2018 Created initial document.

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud, April Update

This document outlines announcements, defects fixed and considerations in the upcoming Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud update.

Monthly Update Schedule

Oracle will apply the latest updates to your test environments starting at 22:00 UTC (15:00 PDT) on Friday, April 6, 2018 and to your production environment on Friday, April 20, 2018, also starting at 22:00 UTC. The updates will be applied to your environments during the first subsequent daily maintenance.

The Oracle Help Center, which provides access to updated documentation, has a new look and feel. The updates will be available on April 6, 2018. Some of the links to new feature documentation included in this document will not work until after the Oracle Help Center update is complete.

Tips And Considerations

Reminder: Backing up the daily maintenance snapshot and restoring the environment as needed are self-service operations. Oracle recommends that you download the maintenance snapshot every day to a local server.

See Backing Up and Restoring an Environment Using the Maintenance Snapshot in Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Administrators for detailed procedures.

Please Join Oracle Cloud Customer Connect

Please take a moment to join the Cloud Customer Connect forums for EPM Cloud services. Oracle Cloud Customer Connect is a community gathering place for members to interact and collaborate on common goals and objectives. This is where you will find the latest release information, upcoming events, or answers to use-case questions. Joining takes just a few minutes. Join now!

https://cloud.oracle.com/community

NOTE: The Settings and Actions menu now contains a link to Cloud Customer Connect. To access this link, from the Home page, click the down arrow next to the user name (in the upper right-hand corner of the screen), and select Cloud Customer Connect.

Give Us Documentation Feedback

We welcome your comments and suggestions to improve the content of the What's New document and the product documentation. Please send us your feedback at EPMdoc_ww@oracle.com. In the body or title of the email, state that you are inquiring or providing feedback, and indicate for which EPM Cloud service and the monthly update cycle.

Announcements

Ease of Use Enhancements for the Profitability and Cost Management Job Library

The following enhancements make the Job Library easier to view and use:

Key Resources

For more information about the Job Library, see Viewing Tasks in the Application Job Library.

Diagnose Option for Managing Queries

Users with appropriate security provisioning now can view the following diagnostic information in the Manage Queries screen:

This information is displayed with the Diagnose command in a new Actions menu. Export Query Results is also available in that menu.

The new diagnostic information can be useful for debugging and improving the performance of queries, as well as fine-tuning queries if returned cells exceed Essbase limits.

Key Resources

For more information about queries, see Running Queries from the Intelligence Panel.

Additional Charts in Activity Report

The Activity Report has been enhanced to include the following charts that help you understand the processing load in your environment:

Number of User Interface Requests by Hour

Duration of User Interface Requests by Hour

Number of Essbase Operations By Hour

Duration of Essbase Operations By Hour

CPU Usage

Memory Usage

Key Resources

See Using Activity Reports and Access Logs to Monitor Usage in Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Administrators.

Removal of Support

Financial Reporting Studio Desktop Client

Oracle is committed to providing a simple and intuitive user experience. To achieve this, Financial Reporting Web Studio, available since March 2016, will become the only environment for designing and building reports.

Oracle is providing additional time for users to transition from Financial Reporting Desktop Studio to Financial Reporting Web Studio. Tentative plans call for functional parity between Financial Reporting Web Studio and Financial Reporting Desktop Studio in 2018, at which time, support for the Desktop Studio will transition to the Web Studio and distribution of the Desktop Studio will cease. This transition is currently planned for the 18.06 update (June 01, 2018 for test and June 15, 2018 for production environments).

Oracle recommends that you transition to using Financial Reporting Web Studio at the earliest opportunity. Please send questions and concerns to Oracle using the Provide Feedback option in the service.

Defects Fixed

Software issues addressed each month will be posted to My Oracle Support.

Considerations

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Supports Smart View Private Connections

Currently, Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud supports only private connections with Smart View.

Key Resources

Microsoft Excel Known Issue that Affects Smart View for Office

Due to an issue with Microsoft Office, using the copy and paste functionality in Excel and then performing any Smart View operation (such as Refresh, Zoom In, or Submit) causes Smart View to stop responding in the following cases (bug number 26796966):

The issue is fixed for Excel 2013 and Excel 2016 if you have applied the updates described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles:

Microsoft has not provided the fix for Excel 2010. Workarounds:

Avoid Special Characters in Artifact Names, Including Calculation Rules

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud does not allow special characters in dimension names and artifact names, including calculation rules. If you are migrating an application from on-premise Profitability and Cost Management, you must remove any special characters from rule names before you perform the migration.

Particularly, Oracle strongly discourages the use of the forward slash ( / ) character in dimension and member names.  Validations will be added in future releases to prevent its use.  If you create a Smart View query that references a member that contains the '/' character in its name, the query will become unusable.

Possible Syntax Change Required for EPM_Automate loaddimdata Command

The loaddimdata command now allows multiple files separated by "_" (underscore) by default. If you are using this command with a file name having an underscore in it, you need to add the stringDelimiter parameter to specify a different file name separator, as shown below:

With one file:

epmautomate loaddimdata <appName> dataFileName="aaa_bbb.csv" stringDelimiter=#

With multiple files:

epmautomate loaddimdata <appName> dataFileName="aaa_bbb.csv#fff_ggg.csv#jjj_kkk.csv" stringDelimiter=#

March 2018 Update

Revision History

This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates appear in the following table:

Date Feature Notes
23 FEB 2018   Created initial document.

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud, March Update

This document outlines announcements, considerations and defects fixed in the upcoming Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud update.

Monthly Update Schedule

Oracle will apply the latest updates to your test environments starting at 22:00 UTC (14:00 PST) on Friday, March 2, 2018 and to your production environment on Friday, March 16, 2018, also starting at 22:00 UTC. The updates will be applied to your environments during the first subsequent daily maintenance.

The Oracle Help Center, which provides access to updated documentation, will also be available on March 2, 2018. Some of the links in this document may be available only after the Oracle Help Center update is complete.

Reminder: Backing up the daily maintenance snapshot and restoring the environment as needed are self-service operations. Oracle recommends that you download the maintenance snapshot every day to a local server. See Backing Up and Restoring an Environment Using the Maintenance Snapshot in Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Administrators for detailed procedures.

Please Join Oracle Cloud Customer Connect

Please take a moment to join the Cloud Customer Connect forums for EPM Cloud services. Oracle Cloud Customer Connect is a community gathering place for members to interact and collaborate on common goals and objectives. This is where you will find the latest release information, upcoming events, or answers to use-case questions. Joining takes just a few minutes. Join now!

https://cloud.oracle.com/community

NOTE: The Settings and Actions menu now contains a link to Cloud Customer Connect. To access this link, from the Home page, click the down arrow next to the user name (in the upper right-hand corner of the screen), and select Cloud Customer Connect.

Give Us Documentation Feedback

We welcome your comments and suggestions to improve the content of the What's New document and the product documentation. Please send us your feedback at EPMdoc_ww@oracle.com. In the body or title of the email, state that you are inquiring or providing feedback, and indicate for which EPM Cloud service as well as the monthly patch cycle.

Announcements

Script to Generate Provisioned Users Audit Report

A script is now available to automate the process of creating an audit report for provisioned users. This report shows the users and associated roles or groups that changed since the last time the report was generated.

Key Resources

See Scenario 13: Creating Provisioned Users Audit Reports in Working with EPM Automate for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for detailed information.

Optimize for Reporting is Handled Automatically

In the Manage Calculation screen, the “Optimize for Reporting” setting has been removed. Optimization is handled automatically now.

Key Resources

See Performing Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Calculations.

New Server Setting in Financial Reporting Web Studio

A new property has been added to the Server Settings in Financial Reporting Web Studio. The "Maximum Number of Page Members For Excel Report" property allows you to specify the maximum number of page dimension members that can be exported to Microsoft Excel. The default value for this property is 100.

Key Resources

Designing with Financial Reporting Web Studio for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud

Removal of Support

Financial Reporting Studio Desktop Client

Oracle is committed to providing a simple and intuitive user experience. To achieve this, Financial Reporting Web Studio, available since March 2016, will become the only environment for designing and building reports.

Oracle is providing additional time for users to transition from Financial Reporting Desktop Studio to Financial Reporting Web Studio. Tentative plans call for functional parity between Financial Reporting Web Studio and Financial Reporting Desktop Studio in 2018, at which time, support for the Desktop Studio will transition to the Web Studio and distribution of the Desktop Studio will cease. This transition is currently planned for the 18.06 update (June 01, 2018 for test and June 15, 2018 for production environments).

Oracle recommends that you transition to using Financial Reporting Web Studio at the earliest opportunity. Please send questions and concerns to Oracle using the Provide Feedback option in the service.

Defects Fixed

Beginning in this update, software issues addressed each month will be posted to My Oracle Support.

Considerations

Oracle Profitability and Cost Managment Cloud Supports Smart View Private Connections

Currently, Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud supports only private connections with Smart View.

Key Resources

For details, see Accessing Smart View in Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Administrators.

Microsoft Excel Known Issue that Affects Smart View for Office

Due to an issue with Microsoft Office, using the copy and paste functionality in Excel and then performing any Smart View operation (such as Refresh, Zoom In, or Submit) causes Smart View to stop responding in the following cases (bug number 26796966):

The issue is fixed for Excel 2013 and Excel 2016 if you have applied the updates described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles:

Microsoft has not provided the fix for Excel 2010. Workarounds:

Avoid Special Characters in Artifact Names, Including Calculation Rules

If you are migrating an application from on-premise Profitability and Cost Management, you must remove any special characters from rule names before you perform the migration.

Particularly, Oracle strongly discourages the use of the forward slash ( / ) character in dimension and member names.  Validations will be added in future releases to prevent its use.  If you create a Smart View query that references a member that contains the '/' character in its name, the query will become unusable.

Possible Syntax Change Required for EPM Automate loaddimdata Command

The loaddimdata command now allows multiple files separated by "_" (underscore) by default. If you are using this command with a file name having an underscore in it, you need to add the stringDelimiter parameter to specify a different file name separator, as shown below:

with one file:

epmautomate loaddimdata <appName> dataFileName="aaa_bbb.csv" stringDelimiter=#

with multiple files:

epmautomate loaddimdata <appName> dataFileName="aaa_bbb.csv#fff_ggg.csv#jjj_kkk.csv" stringDelimiter=#

February 2018 Update

Revision History

This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates appear in the following table:

Date Feature Notes
26 JAN 2018   Created initial document.

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud, February Update

This document outlines the announcements and considerations in the upcoming Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud update.

Monthly Update Schedule

Oracle will apply the latest updates to your test environments starting at 22:00 UTC (14:00 PST) on Friday, February 2, 2018 and to your production environment on Friday, February 16, 2018, also starting at 22:00 UTC. The updates will be applied to your environments during the first subsequent daily maintenance.

The Oracle Help Center, which provides access to updated documentation, will also be available on February 2, 2018. Some of the links in this document may be available only after the Oracle Help Center update is complete.

Please Join Oracle Cloud Customer Connect

Please take a moment to join the Cloud Customer Connect forums for EPM Cloud services. Oracle CloudCustomer Connect is a community gathering place for members to interact and collaborate on commongoals and objectives. This is where you will find the latest release information, upcoming events, oranswers to use-case questions. Joining takes just a few minutes. Join now!

https://cloud.oracle.com/community  

NOTE: The Settings and Actions menu now contains a link to Cloud Customer Connect. To access this link, from the Home page, click the down arrow next to the user name (in the upper right-hand corner of the screen), and select Cloud Customer Connect.

Give Us Documentation Feedback

We welcome your comments and suggestions to improve the content of the What's New document and the product documentation. Please send us your feedback at  EPMdoc_ww@oracle.com.  In the body or title of the email, state that you are inquiring or providing feedback, and indicate for which EPM Cloud service as well as the monthly patch cycle.

Announcements

Display Calculation Rules as a Hierarchy

You can now display calculation rules as a rule set/rules hierarchy from Calculation Rules. Displaying calculation rules as a hierarchy allows you to:

Key Resources

See Displaying Calculation Rules as a Hierarchy in Administering Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud.

Validate Rule Data for Custom Calculation Rules

In addition to verifying data for Allocation rules, the Rule Data Validation Report now helps you verify the source and driver data for Custom Calculation rules.

Key Resources

For examples of Rule Data Validation Reports, see Rule Data Validation Report Examples in Administering Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud.

Export Supplemental Diagnostics

You are now able to export supplement diagnostics from the Profitability Applications console into .csv files that you can view in Microsoft Excel. The diagnostics captured include .csv format output of the Job Library history and the Model Validation report for calculation rules.

Key Resources

See Performing Other Application Tasks in Administering Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud.

Calculation Rules Same-as-Source Function Allows Matching to a Different Source Dimension

In calculation rules, when setting a dimension to Same-As-Source in the Destination tab, you can now select a different source dimension to match it to. In this case, when the rule is executed, members in the destination dimension are selected for allocation by matching to the member selection in the selected source dimension.

This feature is applicable for certain business use cases, where it can greatly streamline business modeling.

Key Resources

See the step that discusses the “Same as Dimension” drop down in the Defining a Destination for Allocation Rules topic in Administering Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud.

Trace Allocation Screen Now Available When Using Integrated Business Process Navigation Flows

In addition to Dashboards, Profit Curves, and Financial Reports, the Profitability and Cost Management Trace Allocations screen can now be accessed from source services like Planning and Budgeting using the Integrated Business Process Navigation Flow feature (also known as EPM Connect).

Removal of Support

Financial Reporting Studio Desktop Client

Oracle is committed to providing a simple and intuitive user experience. To achieve this, Financial Reporting Web Studio, available since March 2016, will become the only environment for designing and building reports.

Oracle is providing additional time for users to transition from Financial Reporting Desktop Studio to Financial Reporting Web Studio. Tentative plans call for functional parity between Financial Reporting Web Studio and Financial Reporting Desktop Studio in early 2018, at which time, support for the Desktop Studio will transition to the Web Studio and distribution of the Desktop Studio will cease. This transition is currently planned for the 18.04 update (April 6, 2018 for test and April 20, 2018 for production environments).

Oracle recommends that you transition to using Financial Reporting Web Studio at the earliest opportunity. Please send questions and concerns to Oracle using the Provide Feedback option in the service.

Defects Fixed

Check this list again for the latest information when the update is applied to your test environment.

Defect Number

Description

26926689

For Analysis Views, when you choose the “outline” sort order, the rows and columns in the table are now correctly sorted according to member position in the Essbase outline.

27078859

In Migration (Life Cycle Management), the Model folder/artifact, which contains all the calculation rules defined for each POV in your application, can now be imported from a snapshot into an existing application, independently of other artifacts without interfering with existing Essbase data in the target application.

27223642

When using trace allocation, when you drill down, the nodes now correctly expand to the rule numbers.

26598697

In Financial Reporting, Planning users no longer get an "error executing query" when running a book if the book has a level 0 list, descendants for the book Point of View, and level 0 members.

26921808

Financial Reporting Web Studio no longer times out.

27227593

In Financial Reporting, Planning users no longer get an "error executing query" when running a book if the book has a level 0 list and descendants for the book Point of View.

27266649, 27271949

In Financial Reporting Web Studio, you can now successfully close the Select Members page.

27281312

In Financial Reporting, Batch scheduler reports that are set up with a bursting file now successfully send emails after they are run.

25217541

In Smart View, hierarchy member indentation and expansion are now correctly displayed when the “Suppress hierarchy” and “Start Expanded” options are enabled in Planning

25678319

When working with user variables in Smart View, the order of the children members available for selection is now consistent with the order specified in the Planning web application.

26955559

A provider error no longer occurs when launching business rules from Smart View.

27159164, 27239819

In cases where duplicate aliases exist in a hierarchy but their parent member does not have an alias, Smart View now displays the member name as the qualified name and the friendly name as the alias.

27206571

In Smart View, form data can be submitted without error when the “Calculate Currencies”  business rule is set to “Run After Save” and the “Suppress missing blocks” option is enabled for a Planning web form

27227923

In an ad hoc grid in Smart View, all members selected for a POV are retained after changing the POV member for a dimension, and then changing the alias table to “None.” 

27334131

Refreshing a previously-saved Smart View ad hoc grid no longer causes an "invalid display POV" error.

26405218

In Data Management, the French version of the File Selection window now shows Télécharger (Download button) and Charger (UpLoad button).

27231950

In Data Management, empty journal entries are now exported correctly to FCCS.

27340363

In Data Management, when using an FCCS application, a data load rule no longer has different target options depending on the language of the web browser.

Considerations

Use the Update Dimension Job to Create Attribute Associations

Dimension Management currently has a problem persisting attribute associations for newly-created business dimensions such that they are not properly deployed to the Essbase cube.  To work around this problem, use the Update Dimension job to make attribute associations.

Mozilla Firefox

USING FIREFOX ESR 52.4.2 WITH SMART VIEW

Mozilla Firefox has phased out support for XUL-based add-ons such as Smart View. Only add-ons and extensions built with new web extension technology will work in newer versions of Firefox. Therefore, Smart View 11.1.2.5.710 and newer only supports Firefox versions up to ESR 52.4.1. If you want to continue using Firefox with Smart View 11.1.2.5.710 and newer, do not upgrade your Firefox browser.

If your Firefox browser is set to automatically install updates, Oracle recommends changing the setting to “Check for updates, but let me choose whether to install them.” See the Firefox help for instructions on changing this setting.

Microsoft Excel Known Issue that Affects Smart View for Office

Due to an issue with Microsoft Office, using the copy and paste functionality in Excel and then performing any Smart View operation (such as Refresh, Zoom In, or Submit) causes Smart View to stop responding in the following cases (bug number 26796966):

The issue is fixed for Excel 2013 and Excel 2016 if you have applied the updates described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles:

Microsoft has not provided the fix for Excel 2010. Workarounds:

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Supports Smart View Private Connections

Currently, Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud supports only Private Connections with Smart View.

Key Resources

For details, see “Accessing Smart View” in Chapter 2 of Getting Started with Oracle Profitability and Cost Management for Administrators and Getting Started with Oracle Profitability and Cost Management for Users.

Avoid Special Characters in Artifact Names, Including Calculation Rules

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud does not allow special characters in dimension names and artifact names, including calculation rules. If you are migrating an application from on-premise Profitability and Cost Management, you must remove any special characters from rule names before you perform the migration.

Particularly, Oracle strongly discourages the use of the forward slash ( / ) character in dimension and member names.  Validations will be added in future releases to prevent its use.  If you create a Smart View query that references a member that contains the '/' character in its name, the query will become unusable.

Possible Syntax Change Required for EPM_Automate loaddimdata Command

The loaddimdata command now allows multiple files separated by "_" (underscore) by default. If you are using this command with a file name having an underscore in it, you need to add the stringDelimiter parameter to specify a different file name separator, as shown below:

with one file:

epmautomate loaddimdata <appName> dataFileName="aaa_bbb.csv" stringDelimiter=#

with multiple files:

epmautomate loaddimdata <appName> dataFileName="aaa_bbb.csv#fff_ggg.csv#jjj_kkk.csv" stringDelimiter=#

January 2018 Update

Revision History

This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates appear in the following table:

Date What's Changed Notes
22 DEC 2017   Created initial document.

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud, January Update

This document outlines the announcements and known issues in the upcoming Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud update.

Monthly Update Schedule

Oracle will apply the latest updates to your test environments starting at 22:00 UTC-8 (2:00pm Pacific Time) on Friday, January 5, 2018 and to your production environment on Friday, January 19, 2018, also starting at 22:00 UTC-8. The updates will be applied to your environments during the first subsequent daily maintenance.

The Oracle Help Center, which provides access to updated documentation, will also be available on January 5, 2018.

NOTE: You can import backup snapshots into environments with the same, the preceding, or the next update versions. For example, you can import backup snapshots from release 17.08 into releases 17.07 and 17.09. For more information about migration, see Administering Migration for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud.

Please Join Oracle Cloud Customer Connect

Please take a moment to join the Cloud Customer Connect forums for EPM Cloud services. Oracle CloudCustomer Connect is a community gathering place for members to interact and collaborate on common goals and objectives. This is where you will find the latest release information, upcoming events, or answers to use-case questions. Joining takes just a few minutes. Join now!

https://cloud.oracle.com/community

NOTE: The Settings and Actions menu now contains a link to Cloud Customer Connect. To access this link, from the Home page, click the down arrow next to the user name (in the upper right-hand corner of the screen), and select Cloud Customer Connect.

Give Us Documentation Feedback

We welcome your comments and suggestions to improve the content of the What's New document and the product documentation. Please send us your feedback at EPMdoc_ww@oracle.com. In the body or title of the email, state that you are inquiring or providing feedback, and indicate for which EPM Cloud service and the monthly patch cycle.

Announcements

Relocate EPM Cloud Environments from One Identity Domain to Another

Oracle Cloud Account Administrators can now move an environment from its current identity domain to another. Unifying multiple EPM Cloud environments under one identity domain helps simplify user management and single sign on configuration. It also supports seamless cross-environment navigation.

Oracle Cloud Account Administrators may relocate an environment from its current identity domain to another if the target identity domain is provisioned to the same customer account and is in the same data center.

In addition to requesting the relocation of instances from My Services, additional service environment-specific tasks must be completed.

NOTE: You can relocate an environment only if it was provisioned after May 1, 2016. Environments that were provisioned prior to this date cannot be unified to use one identity domain.

See Relocating an EPM Cloud Environment to a Different Identity Domain in Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Administrators for detailed information.

New EPM Getting Started Guides

Starting with the December update (17.12), Service Administrator and end user “getting started” information for all EPM Cloud Services is available from these new guides:

Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Administrators contains information on the tasks that Service Administrators can perform with EPM Cloud Services. This guide, which provides common administrative information for all EPM Cloud services, is now your primary source for tasks related to EPM Cloud administration, including managing users and roles, setting up single sign-on, and backing up and restoring environments. This guide replaces these guides:

Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Users introduces end users to Oracle EPM Cloud and provides information that enables them to quickly become proficient. This guide replaces these guides:

Links in the Cloud Help Center and Oracle Learning Library have been modified to direct users to these guides. Please change your personal bookmarks and shortcuts so that they point to these new guides.

NOTE: Oracle Enterprise Data Management Cloud content is documented in several common Enterprise Performance Management Cloud guides. The service will be available in early 2018.

Removal of Support

Financial Reporting Studio Desktop Client

Oracle is committed to providing a simple and intuitive user experience. To achieve this, Financial Reporting Web Studio, available since March 2016, will become the only environment for designing and building reports.

Oracle is providing additional time for users to transition from Financial Reporting Desktop Studio to Financial Reporting Web Studio. Tentative plans call for functional parity between Financial Reporting Web Studio and Financial Reporting Desktop Studio in early 2018, at which time, support for the Desktop Studio will transition to the Web Studio and distribution of the Desktop Studio will cease. This transition is currently planned for the 18.04 update (April 6, 2018 for test and April 20, 2018 for production environments).

Oracle recommends that you transition to using Financial Reporting Web Studio at the earliest opportunity. Please send questions and concerns to Oracle using the Provide Feedback option in the service.

Defects Fixed

Check this list again for the latest information when the update is applied to your test environment.

Defect Number

Description

27152908

In Data Management, an error no longer occurs when reading an import expression for a data or amount column.

27009032

In Data Management, a data load no longer fails when an import mapping encounters UTF8 Byte Order Mark (BOM) characters.

27026977

In Data Management, source filters associated with data load rules are now saved correctly. 

26539247

In Data Management, the drill through to source feature is now working as designed in both the application and Smart View interfaces.

26985098

In Smart View, dimension members are no longer duplicated when zooming in, zooming out, or refreshing the parent member of a dimension.

26982965

In free-form mode, Smart View can now retrieve dynamic time series members that are shared members without using qualified names.

Considerations

Problem with Rule Express Editing "Add Member" for the Destination Tab

When using the Add Member action in Rule Express Editing to add members to the Destination tab of the selected rules, the action is not actually performed, even though the Add Member job may end with status Success without any error messages.This is being addressed in the next monthly release.  For this release, use the Manage Calculation screen to edit rules individually.

Mozilla Firefox

USING FIREFOX ESR 52.4.2 WITH SMART VIEW

Mozilla Firefox has phased out support for XUL-based add-ons such as Smart View. Only add-ons and extensions built with new web extension technology will work in newer versions of Firefox. Therefore, Smart View 11.1.2.5.710 and newer only supports Firefox versions up to ESR 52.4.1. If you want to continue using Firefox with Smart View 11.1.2.5.710 and newer, do not upgrade your Firefox browser.

If your Firefox browser is set to automatically install updates, Oracle recommends changing the setting to “Check for updates, but let me choose whether to install them.” See the Firefox help for instructions on changing this setting.

Microsoft Excel Known Issue that Affects Smart View for Office

Due to an issue with Microsoft Office, using the copy and paste functionality in Excel and then performing any Smart View operation (such as Refresh, Zoom In, or Submit) causes Smart View to stop responding in the following cases (bug number 26796966):

The issue is fixed for Excel 2013 and Excel 2016 if you have applied the updates described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles:

Microsoft has not provided the fix for Excel 2010. Workarounds:

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud Supports Smart View Private Connections

Currently, Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud supports only Private Connections with Smart View. For details, see “Accessing Smart View” in Chapter 2 of Getting Started with Oracle Profitability and Cost Management for Administrators and Getting Started with Oracle Profitability and Cost Management for Users.

Avoid Special Characters in Artifact Names, Including Calculation Rules

Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud does not allow special characters in dimension names and artifact names, including calculation rules. If you are migrating an application from on-premise Profitability and Cost Management, you must remove any special characters from rule names before you perform the migration.

Particularly, Oracle strongly discourages the use of the forward slash ( / ) character in dimension and member names.  Validations will be added in future releases to prevent its use.  If you create a Smart View query that references a member that contains the '/' character in its name, the query will become unusable.

Possible Syntax Change Required for EPM_Automate loaddimdata Command

The loaddimdata command now allows multiple files separated by "_" (underscore) by default. If you are using this command with a file name having an underscore in it, you need to add the stringDelimiter parameter to specify a different file name separator, as shown below:

with one file:

       epmautomate loaddimdata <appName> dataFileName="aaa_bbb.csv" stringDelimiter=#

with multiple files:

       epmautomate loaddimdata <appName> dataFileName="aaa_bbb.csv#fff_ggg.csv#jjj_kkk.csv" stringDelimiter=#