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.
06 SEP 2018 August 2018 Update Revised August 2018 update.
13 JUL 2018 July 2018 Update Revised July 2018 update.
24 MAY 2018 June 2018 Update Delivered new features in June 2018 update.
07 MAY 2018 May 2018 Update Revised May 2018 update.
05 APR 2018 April 2018 Update Revised April 2018 update.
02 MAR 2018 March 2018 Update Revised March 2018 update.
05 FEB 2018 February 2018 Update Revised 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 Tax Reporting Cloud, December Update

This document outlines the upcoming Oracle Tax Reporting 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

Classifying Deferred Tax Assets and Liabilities

By default, deferred tax classifies each temporary difference account, based on Total Deferred Tax amount (TRCS_NDefTaxNetVA). If the Total Deferred Tax is positive (greater than or equal to zero), then all temporary difference accounts are classified as Noncurrent Assets. If the Total Deferred Tax amount is negative (less than zero), each temporary difference account is classified as a Noncurrent Liability.

If you require additional flexibility, you can use the  "Classifications" attribute to define how both National and Regional accounts can be classified.

The following system members exist:

Apart from the out-of-the-box classification attributes, you can create additional custom attributes. When a custom attribute is assigned to multiple level 0 temporary difference accounts then the total of those accounts determines the classification of the comprising individual accounts.

Key Resources

Calculating the Weighted FX Rate

The Weighted Average FX rate can automatically be calculated at the base entity level to any translated currency using the year-to-date Net Income Before Tax (NIBT). You must input or load each translated NIBT amount. The weighted average FX rate will be calculated, stored, and used  in translation.

The Weighted Average Rates Override form is created when the feature is enabled during creation of the application, or at a later time. Using the NIBT amounts, the Weighted Average FX Rate is calculated by the system during the Consolidation process.

If you do not want to use the system-calculated value, you can override the calculated rates in the Weighted Average FX Rate Override column.

Key Resources

Dynamic Calc Jurisdiction

The Dynamic Calc Jurisdiction feature is used to update the data storage type for out-of-the-box parent members of the Jurisdiction dimension, such as the "All National" member, to dynamic calc.

The Dynamic Calc Jurisdiction feature is automatically enabled in applications created for Release 18.12 or later.  For applications created prior to this release, you may be able to improve consolidation timing and performance by enabling this feature.

Performance improvements may result where limited or no custom member formulas are used.

Caution: It is recommended that the impact to performance be assessed in a test environment before this feature is enabled in production.

Key Resources

Supplemental Data Support for Negative Number Colors

For Supplemental Data, you can specify whether to display negative numbers in Red or Black. You set the negative number color in User Preferences on the Application card.

Key Resources

Supplemental Data Manager Governors

In Supplemental Data, you can set governors on form template sections and attributes, and selectable columns in the Data Analysis dashboard, to improve application performance. The system provides default settings, which you can decrease or increase up to the maximum value. It enforces the maximum limits when these objects are created.

Key Resources

Smart View Support for Dashboards

You can now open Oracle EPM Cloud dashboards in Oracle Smart View for Office.

Dashboards give you an overview to key information and let you change and save data. When you open a dashboard in Smart View, a new Excel workbook is launched with each dashboard object displayed in a separate worksheet. Chart objects are displayed in grid format. Only grid and chart objects are supported; other dashboard objects are ignored.

Key Resources

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

Data Management Dimension and Attribute Column Enhancements

Dimension and attribute columns can now accept a maximum of 300 characters. Formerly, the dimension column accepted a maximum of 80 characters, attribute columns 1-7 accepted a maximum of 70 characters, and attribute columns 8-14 accepted a maximum of 20 characters.

In addition, you can now import values into a maximum of 40 attribute columns. Formerly, you could only import a maximum of 14 attribute columns.

HsSetValue Accepts Additional Data Types

The HsSetValue function can now be used to set values from cells with Smart List, text, or date formats.

Key Resources

System Maintenance Task Options Enhancements

The Maintain FDMEE Data Tables option has been renamed to Maintain Data Tables by Application.

The new Maintain Data Table by Location option allows you to delete data for a specific location by period or category. You can still delete all locations for a target application by using the Maintain Data Tables by Application option.

A new Maintain Setup Data option has been added so that you can view and delete an orphan row or invalid data that cannot be accessed or deleted from the user interface. This data may include an orphan row from an import format, location, or data load rule. It can also include a duplicate row, or a Cloud user id or password defined for a local target application.

Key Resources

Administering Data Management for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud

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.

Ability to Create New Composite Forms

To allow customers more time to adapt and move from composite forms to dashboards, Oracle has decided to defer the removal of the ability to create new composite forms (forms that comprise multiple simple forms) to a future update in 2019. After this update all existing composite forms can still be edited and used. This change impacts only the creation of new composite forms in the service. Oracle will notify you at least two months prior to the removal of the feature.

All customers are advised to use dashboards in place of composite forms. No more enhancements will be made to the composite forms functionality.

Classic Dimension Editor

With a view to allowing customers more time to familiarize themselves with the Simplified Dimension Editor, Oracle has decided to defer the removal of support for Classic Dimension Editor to a future update in 2019. Oracle will notify you at least two months prior to the removal of the feature.

Defects Fixed

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

Considerations

Tax Automation Migration Configuration Task Removed

With this release, the 'Tax Automation Migration' configuration task has been removed from the Configuration screen.

Initially introduced to facilitate data migration to the new tax automation data model, customers using tax automation have already migrated their data so this task is no longer required.

Removal of Block Storage Cube Runtime Statistics

Starting in Release 19.02, run time statistics for Block Storage (BSO) cubes will no longer be available in the Database Properties module of Calculation Manager.

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 Tax Reporting Cloud, November Update

This document outlines the upcoming Oracle Tax Reporting 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

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

Improved Search for Forms, Dashboards, and Infolets

Search functionality is now more intuitive when you search for forms, dashboards, and infolets. Before, Search displayed artifacts in context of their folder structure. Now, you can toggle between searching for these artifacts using a flat view or a hierarchical view.

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

Working with CbCR Automation

The Consol cube is used to report provisioning, and the CbCR cube is used to collect and assemble data for CbCR reports, pulling its data from the Consol cube. Because the data resides in two different cubes, any changes to the Consol cube must be transferred to the CbCR cube. With this release, you can set up CbCR Automation to automate the movement of data between the Consol cube and the CbCR cube.

NOTE:  CbCR Automation replaces the previous method of mapping of attributes from the Consol cube to the CbCR cube. The topic, ``Synchronizing the Consol and CbCR Databases for Country by Country Reporting`` has been removed from the Working with Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud guide.

If you are using the default or custom CbCR mapping attributes to source data from the provision (Consol cube) into CbCR (CbCR cube), you must perform a migration to convert your mappings into CbCR Automation rules. The migration will take any default or custom mappings with the CBCR Account attribute and create corresponding CbCR automation rules. If you are not using CbCR mappings, you do not need to perform a migration.

Key Resources

Applying Prior Year Rate on RTA Amounts

By default, Return to Accrual (RTA) amounts are calculated using the current year tax rate.

You now have the option of applying prior year tax rates on RTA amounts. To enable this feature, you must associate the ApplyTaxReturnRate attribute with the TRCS_TRADO (Return to Accrual Deferred Only) member of the Movements dimension.

Key Resources

Excluding Loss Entities from Interim Provision

For Interim Tax Provisioning, the Annualized Estimated Effective Tax Rate (AEETR) is taken from the Consolidated Rate Reconciliation, and takes into account the Regional Tax and Federal Benefit of Regional Taxes, where appropriate. All entities participate in the calculation; however, there may be instances when you need to exclude Loss Entities from the Effective Tax Rate calculation.

The new Loss Entities Forecast form enables you to mark the loss entities that you want to exclude from your calculations.

Key Resources

Displaying the POV Member Selector for a Report

Selecting the Show POV Options on a Reports page displays a POV member selector window, which enables you to select reports that have a POV. Your selection for this check box applies to all reports in the list that have a POV and persists for the current session, until you log out.

If you clear the Show POV Options check box (which is selected by default), the report launches directly, without displaying the POV member selector window. The POV members in the report are the most recently used members on the form, or the dimension's root if there are no most recently used members. Even if you launch a report directly and bypass the POV member selector window, when the report is displayed, you can still change the members in the POV by clicking a link in the POV and selecting different members.

Key Resources

Reopening Locked Schedules

When working on a Close Manager schedule, you can now reopen a locked schedule, if required.

Select the locked schedule, and then under Set Status, select Open.

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

Removal of Tax Automation Migration Task

The 'Tax Automation Migration' configuration task has been deprecated and will no longer be available from the Configuration screen, starting with Release 18.12. ‘Tax Automation Migration’ performs data migration in line with the new tax automation data model introduced in 18.02 and 18.03 for applications created prior to 18.02. Applications leveraging tax automation must have migrated tax automation data in order for tax automation to be functional.

‘Tax Automation Migration’ will be removed from the Configuration screen starting with 18.12.

Ability to Create New Composite Forms

To allow customers more time to adapt and move from composite forms to dashboards, Oracle has decided to defer the removal of the ability to create new composite forms (forms that comprise multiple simple forms) to a future update in 2019. After this update all existing composite forms can still be edited and used. This change impacts only the creation of new composite forms in the service. Oracle will notify you at least two months prior to the removal of the feature.

All customers are advised to use dashboards in place of composite forms. No more enhancements will be made to the composite forms functionality.

Defects Fixed

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

Considerations

Classic Dimension Editor

With a view to allowing customers more time to familiarize themselves with the Simplified Dimension Editor, Oracle has decided to defer the removal of support for Classic Dimension Editor to a future update in 2019. Oracle will notify you at least two months prior to the removal of the feature.

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.

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 Tax Reporting Cloud, October Update

This document outlines the upcoming Oracle Tax Reporting 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 command, 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.

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

Working with Multiple Close Manager Schedules

Administrators can now perform various actions on multiple Close Manager schedules at a time. This can be helpful if your application has a large number of schedules.

You can perform these actions on multiple schedules: Set Status, Reassign Users, and Generate Report Binders.

Key Resources

New CbCR Parent Entity

For users that prefer to analyze data for a specific geographic area rather than Total Geography, you can now set a User Variable that points to a selected CbCR Parent Entity from which you can run analysis for all CbCR Summary and Risk Assessment forms.

For example, rather than using Total Geography, you could set the CbCR Parent Entity to United States.

Key Resources

Security for Users to Run Consolidation Process

Users can now run the consolidation process, in addition to Power Users and Service Administrators. To consolidate data, you must also have Write access for the entity that you want to consolidate.

Key Resources

Viewing Close Manager Tasks on the Welcome Panel

Administrators now have the ability to display either Close Manager "Current Tasks" or "Current and Upcoming Tasks" in the Worklist and on the Welcome panel.

If administrators enable "Current and Upcoming Tasks", the user can see items in the upcoming workflows, as well as items currently available to work on.

Key Resources

Tasks Displayed on Vertical Tabs

From the Home page, on the Tasks card, the tabs are displayed vertically now, rather than horizontally across the top of the page,

Defects Fixed

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

Considerations

Classic Dimension Editor

With a view to allowing customers more time to familiarize themselves with the Simplified Dimension Editor, Oracle has decided to defer the removal of support for Classic Dimension Editor to a future update in 2019. Oracle will notify you at least two months prior to the removal of the feature.

Ability to Create New Composite Forms

To allow customers more time to adapt and move from composite forms to dashboards, Oracle has decided to defer the removal of the ability to create new composite forms (forms that comprise multiple simple forms) to a future update in 2019. After this update all existing composite forms can still be edited and used. This change impacts only the creation of new composite forms in the service. Oracle will notify you at least two months prior to the removal of the feature.

All customers are advised to use dashboards in place of composite forms. No more enhancements will be made to the composite forms functionality.

Removal of Tax Automation Migration Task

The 'Tax Automation Migration' configuration task has been deprecated and will no longer be available from the Configuration screen, starting with Release 18.12.

‘Tax Automation Migration’ performs data migration in line with the new tax automation data model introduced in 18.02 and 18.03 for applications created prior to 18.02. Applications leveraging tax automation must have migrated tax automation data in order for tax automation to be functional. ‘Tax Automation Migration’ will be removed from the Configuration screen starting with 18.12.

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.

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 Tax Reporting Cloud, September Update

This document outlines announcements in the upcoming Oracle Tax Reporting 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

Integrated, Comprehensive User Preferences

As an end user, you can now set your preferences for many aspects of the application in a comprehensive, integrated framework in the Simplified Interface. For example, from the Home page, select Tools, and then User Preferences to set your profile picture, select members for user variables, set preferences for ad hoc options and printed reports, and so on. The preferences you set override your administrator’s settings, and persist across sessions. However, you can always change your preferences or revert to the administrator’s settings if you want to.

The new user preferences functionality is integrated across the Planning and Budgeting platform, so you benefit from using a similar user interface across its services—for example, across Planning, Financial Close, and Tax Reporting. Before, you set preferences from different parts of the application, but now you can set all your preferences in one place.

These enhancements greatly simplify how you set and manage your preferences.

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

Loading Data Using an Incremental File Adapter

Data Management now includes an incremental file adapter to optimize the data load process. The new Incremental adapter compares the source data file with a prior version of the source data file and identifies new or changed records and loads only this data set. The user has the option to sort the input source data file before making the comparison or they can provide a pre-sorted file for better performance.

Key Resources

Drilling Down from Summary Members

You can now drill down from Summary level grid members and view the detail source data that make up the number.

In order to use this feature you should select the Enable Summary Drill option in Data Management. After enabling this option and loading the data with Create Drill Region option set to Yes the Drill icon will be enabled at the summary level. Drill is limited to 1000 descendant members for a dimension.

Key Resources

Provisioning Changes to Simplify Role Usage

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

System Settings and Defaults Moved to Application Settings in the Simplified Interface

In a further effort to simplify how you manage administrator settings, administrators can now define all application settings and system defaults in one place in the Simplified Interface. For example, from the Home page, select Application, and then Settings to set email options, assign an owner to an application, or to enable currency options.

Previously, these setting were accessed from the Navigator menu on the System Settings and Defaults page. Starting with this update, the System Settings and Defaults link has been removed from the Navigator menu.

Key Resources

Supplemental Data Set Governors

In Supplemental Data, you can set governors on the maximum number of Data Set Calculated and Dimension attributes to improve application performance. The system provides default settings, which you can decrease or increase up to the maximum value. It enforces the maximum limits when attributes are created.

Key Resources

Uniform Time Zone Settings

The time format used throughout Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud is now based on the time zone setting that you specify in User Preferences under Tools.

Key Resources

Close Manager Support for Viewer Users

In Close Manager, users with the Viewer role can now have restricted access to Close Manager functionality. For example, auditors can be assigned the Viewer role to check that the close process has been followed correctly without having the ability to modify tasks. Administrators can assign users with the Viewer role to tasks, templates, schedules, and so on, and can also create teams of Viewer users.

NOTE: The Viewer role is optional. If you have existing Close Manager users with the User role, it is not necessary to reassign them.

Key Resources

Selecting All Data Source Option When Clearing Data

When you clear data, if you select the All data source option from the Data Source drop-down, the selected entity is now marked as "No Data" and all its ancestors are marked as "Impacted."

Previously, if the All data source option was selected, both the selected entity and all its ancestors were marked as "Impacted."

Key Resources

New Balance Sheet Total Column Added to National and Regional TAR Reports

Previously, Acquisitions and Disposals data was posted under Equity adjustments on the National and Regional Tax Account Rollforward (TAR).

Because Acquisitions and Disposals are considered to be balance sheet items, the Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud National and Regional TAR forms have been modified to display a new Balance Sheet Total column, which enables the Acquisitions Totals and Disposals Totals to be rolled up to the new column, rather than under the Equity adjustments.

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.

Considerations

Classic Dimension Editor

With a view to allowing customers more time to familiarize themselves with the Simplified Dimension Editor, Oracle has decided to defer the removal of support for Classic Dimension Editor to a future update in 2019. Oracle will notify you at least two months prior to the removal of the feature.

Ability to Create New Composite Forms

To allow customers more time to adapt and move from composite forms to dashboards, Oracle has decided to defer the removal of the ability to create new composite forms (forms that comprise multiple simple forms) to a future update in 2019. After this update all existing composite forms can still be edited and used. This change impacts only the creation of new composite forms in the service. Oracle will notify you at least two months prior to the removal of the feature.

All customers are advised to use dashboards in place of composite forms. No more enhancements will be made to the composite forms functionality.

Removal of Tax Automation Migration Task

The 'Tax Automation Migration' configuration task has been deprecated and will no longer be available from the Configuration screen, starting with Release 18.12.

‘Tax Automation Migration’ performs data migration in line with the new tax automation data model introduced in 18.02 and 18.03 for applications created prior to 18.02. Applications leveraging tax automation must have migrated tax automation data in order for tax automation to be functional. ‘Tax Automation Migration’ will be removed from the Configuration screen starting with 18.12.

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
06 SEP 2018 Security for Users to Run Consolidation Process  Removed feature that was incorrectly included in the August 2018 update.
02 AUG 2018 Migration Updated document. Added consideration.
26 JUL 2018   Created initial document.

Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud, August Update

This document outlines announcements in the upcoming Oracle Tax Reporting 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

Using Interim Tax Provision AEETR

For Interim Provision, the Annualized Estimate Effective Tax Rate (AAETR) is available to automatically pull the estimated tax rate from the new TRCS_InterimForecast member in the Scenario dimension. You have the option to make adjustments to the calculated Total Tax, or Current and Deferred Tax.

You can select the way AEETR is calculated, based on which options you select. You can pick one or both of the following:

You must enable Interim Provision AEETR in order to use the feature when you create the application, or enable the feature later. 

NOTE: If you enabled Interim Tax Provision for Applications created prior to 18.08, this option is no longer available to select. You can continue to use this option to manually enter data, and calculate monthly or quarterly tax provision using an annualized estimated effective tax rate, plus discrete tax amount. Historic data is stored in the Forecast or other scenario designated for Interim Tax Provision.  If you no longer want to use the pre-18.08 version, you can select one or both of the options listed under Interim Tax Provision without creating a new application. Under Key Resources, review "Enabling Application Features" for more information.

Key Resources

Intercompany Dimension Reads from FCCS_Intercompany Top Member

The Intercompany dimension (ICP) is used to store the entity member. This dimension is system generated if Intercompany is selected during application creation. All attributes are read from the FCCS_Intercompany Top member. This member provides companies with the flexibility to load to a specific Intercompany member or the “FCCS_No_Intercompany” member.

Key Resources

Synchronizing the Consol and CbCR Databases for Country by Country Reporting

The Consol cube is used to report provisioning, and the CbCR cube is used to collect and assemble data for CbCR reports, pulling its data from the Consol cube. Any changes to the Consol cube must be transferred to the CbCR cube. To enable the automatic synchronization of the two cubes, you must map the attributes from the Consol cube to the CbCR cube.

Key Resources

Enhancements to the Close Manager and Supplemental Data User Interface

This update includes enhancements to the Close Manager and Supplemental Data user interface. Close Manager and Supplemental Data functions that you previously accessed from the Navigator have moved to the Home Page under the Applications card.

From the Applications card, after you select Close Manager or Supplemental Data, you then use tabs on the left side of the main page to access functions such as Templates, Task Types, and Schedules in Close Manager, or Data Sets and Forms and so on in Supplemental Data.

Key Resources

Close Manager - List and Gantt Views

The Tax List Hierarchy and Gantt Chart views that you previously accessed from the Navigator have moved to the main Close Manager interface. They are available as View types in the drop-down on the right side of the Close Tasks page.

Key Resources

Close Manager Expanded Search Functionality

Search functionality has been expanded for fields on the Worklist. Using the Search field, you can now search on all fields except Date.

Key Resources

Close Manager Drag and Drop Attachments

In Close Manager, you can now edit one or more attachments to tasks, task types, templates, and schedules by using drag and drop functionality from the Add Attachments dialog box.

Key Resources

Close Manager Task Assignees

In Close Manager tasks, the Related Tasks section enables you to view the predecessor and successors for a task. It also now shows the Task Assignees and Task Owners for the dependent tasks.

Key Resources

Supplemental Data - Close Date in Supplemental Data Calculation

In Supplemental Data Manager, Close Date is now available as a selectable attribute for Calculation in Data Sets. It is available from the "Add Attribute" drop-down list on the Calculation tab of Data Set Attributes, and can be used in calculations.

Key Resources

Supplemental Data – Power (Exponential) Calculation Added

In Supplemental Data and Close Manager, a new scripted calculation allows you to use POWER(x,y) to raise one number to the exponential power of another. The usage is: POWER(x,y), where x=BASE NUMBER, and y=EXPONENT. x and y can be attributes or calculations, as long as they are numeric.

Key Resources

New Documentation on Optimizing Business Rules

Information on leveraging available Enterprise Management Cloud tools to diagnose and address performance issues with business rules is now available in the new "Optimizing Business Rules" section of Designing with Calculation Manager for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud.

Key Resources

Updated Vision Sample Application

An updated version of the Vision sample application is available starting with this update. The updated sample application contains features that were added in recent updates.

INFOLETS

The sample application now supports Infolets, which provide the dashboard capability to enable data visualization. As a Service Administrator, you can create infolets for any cube to provide enhanced graphical data presentation to users using charts and texts.

ABILITY TO ENTER DATA INTO SUPPRESSED ROWS 

The updated sample application allows Service Administrators to enable users to enter data in a web form for members on rows that are currently suppressed (because they have no data and the form layout option “Suppress Missing Data – Rows” option is selected).

NAVIGATION FLOWS

Service Administrators can set up connections that enable users to navigate across Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud environments to create unified business process flows across multiple environments. Cross-environment navigation flows allow users of multiple EPM Cloud environments to sign into one environment, and then seamlessly navigate to others without going through additional authentication processes. Service Administrators can create mashups of artifacts from various environments into a single unified business process flow for their users. Clusters, cards, and tabs can be brought together into a single flow. These cards and tabs can contain forms, reports, and  dashboards from various applications. Users will not see the clusters, cards and tabs in the process flow unless they are members of the groups to which these flows are assigned.

SMART FORMS

Three Smart Forms: one containing Excel formulas, one containing Excel functions, and one created in Smart View, are included.

REORGANIZED CLUSTERS AND CARDS THAT MATCH THE NEWEST EPM CLOUD INTERFACE

Clusters and cards in the sample application now match the current EPM Cloud interface.

Folder Support for Dashboards and Infolets

The listing pages for dashboards and infolets now support folders. Folders enable you to assign permissions to all artifacts within a folder rather than assigning permissions to each individual artifact. The listing pages for dashboards and infolets will look and behave the same as the listing page for data (forms). All three artifact listing pages (forms, dashboards, and infolets) use the same folder hierarchy and all artifacts and folders reside under a root folder called Library.

Search and Filter will also work for dashboards and infolets in the same way as they do for forms.

Key Resources

New Infolets Designer Properties Panel

A new properties panel on the right side of the Infolets Designer enables you to view and work with various properties of infolets, such as the title, subtitle, chart type, size, and so on. The properties panel displays the properties of the infolet (and its displayed view) which is highlighted by the blue border.

To view the properties panel in the Infolets Designer, from the Home page, click Infolets, and then either create an infolet or edit an existing infolet.

Key Resources

Using the Infolets Designer in Administering Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud

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

Incremental Export and Import Behavior Change

In the initial 18.07 update, Oracle changed the behavior of  incremental export and import operations to prevent the selection of Essbase Data and a few other artifacts. Due to customer demand, Oracle reverted this change in a later 18.07 patch, which was applied to your test and production environments. The reverted behavior allows you to select all artifacts, including Essbase Data artifacts, during incremental exports and imports.

Due to this change, these artifacts can now be selected for incremental exports. These can also be imported from snapshots:

Key Resources

Upcoming Changes

Removal of Tax Automation Migration Task

The 'Tax Automation Migration' configuration task has been deprecated and will no longer be available from the Configuration screen, starting with Release 18.12.

‘Tax Automation Migration’ performs data migration in line with the new tax automation data model introduced in 18.02 and 18.03 for applications created prior to 18.02. Applications leveraging tax automation must have migrated tax automation data in order for tax automation to be functional. ‘Tax Automation Migration’ will be removed from the Configuration screen starting with 18.12.

Ability to Create Composite Forms

To allow customers more time to adapt and move from composite forms to dashboards, Oracle will defer removing the ability to create new composite forms (forms that comprise multiple simple forms) to a future release update (January 2019 - 19.01). Oracle had previously announced that this feature will be removed in the June (18.06) update.

All customers are advised to use dashboards in place of composite forms. There will be no more enhancements to the composite forms functionality.

Close Manager Calendar View

For users of Close Manager within Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud and Tax Reporting Cloud, the Calendar view will not be supported effective with this August, 2018 (18.08) update.

Defects Fixed

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

Considerations

Migration

In 18.08, Lifecycle Management (LCM) migration to 18.07 will not be supported for Close Manager schedules, templates, tasks and task types. You also cannot restore an 18.08 update backup for Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud into 18.07 systems. This covers the two week window when Test systems are upgraded to 18.08 and production is still on 18.07.

Close Manager Custom Currency Codes

The ability to create or edit Close Manager-specific current codes is no longer supported effective with this update. If your application contains a Close Manager-specific currency code, it will remain in the application but will no longer be editable.

Financial Reporting User Preferences

All existing customers will be migrated to the new Financial Reporting Repository (implemented in the 18.05 update for new customers). The process does not migrate Financial Reporting user preferences.

Workaround: Each end user must manually set Financial Reporting user preferences when using the Repository for the first time.

Only for Smart View for Office with Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus

A known issue with Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus patch 16.0.10228.20051 updated through the insider slow channel prevents the use of Smart View for Office with Microsoft Office 365. This Microsoft patch was pushed to users who signed up for monthly channel updates between June 12 and June 14, 2018.

Workaround: Do not update Microsoft Office 365 with patch 16.0.10228.20051 if you are using Smart View for Office with Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus. Instead, use Microsoft Office 365 monthly channel Version 1806 (Build 10228.20080), which contains the fix for this issue.

Classic Dimension Editor

To allow customers more time to familiarize themselves with the Simplified Dimension Editor, Oracle will defer the removing support for Classic Dimension Editor to a future update. The current plan is to remove access to the Classic Dimension Editor starting with the 18.10 (October 2018) update to the service.

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.

Consolidation Operator for Seeded Members

Seeded dimension members must have the Consolidation Operator set as Ignore. None of the POV members should be set to Dimension member. Rather, always use Top Member to view aggregated values.

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
13 JUL 2018 Financial Reporting User Preferences

Updated document. Added consideration.

28 JUN 2018   Created initial document.

Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud, July Update

This document outlines announcements and upcoming changes in the upcoming Oracle Tax Reporting 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

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

Migration Export Scenarios: Clone and Incremental Export

Migration has been enhanced to differentiate two export scenarios:

Backup to create a snapshot that can be used to clone an environment, for example to migrate an application from a production instance to a test instance for troubleshooting or additional development work.

When you backup the environment, you create a snapshot of the entire environment, similar to the daily maintenance snapshot, by exporting the application with all of its data and artifacts including artifacts belonging to Document Repository, Data Management, Calculation Manager, Relational and Essbase data, and Groups and Membership.

Export to create an incremental backup of specific artifacts in an environment. Generally, you use incremental snapshots to create backups that can be used to update another environment. For example, you can export artifacts that you tested in a test environment to create an interim snapshot, which you can import into a production environment.

Artifacts that can be exported only as a part of backup operation are greyed out and cannot be selected during export.

Unavailable Artifacts for Incremental Export

Key Resources

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

Simpler Member Selector

To select items in the Member Selector, you are no longer required to click the checkmark. You can now simply select an item by clicking on it or by selecting the checkmark as before.

Infolets Moved to the TRCS Library

Previously, Infolets were accessed through the Inflolets card on the Home Page.

The Infolets card has been moved from the Home page to a tab in the Tax Reporting Library to be consistent with other forms, dashboards and reports.

To access Infolets, select the Library card from the Home page, and then select the Infolets tab.

Key Resources

Modifications to CbCR Reports

Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud enables you to collect and assemble the required data for the CbCR reports.

Some of the tabs and labels for rhe CbCR reports have been modified as follows:

Key Resources

Upcoming Changes

Classic Dimension Editor

With a view to allowing customers more time to familiarize themselves with the Simplified Dimension Editor, Oracle has decided to defer the removal of support for Classic Dimension Editor to a future update. The current plan is to remove access to the Classic Dimension Editor starting with the 18.10 (October 2018) update to the service.

Key Resources

Composite Form Creation Capability

To allow customers more time to adapt and move from composite forms to dashboards, Oracle has decided to defer the removal of the ability to create new composite forms (forms that comprise multiple simple forms) to a future release update (January 2019 - 19.01). Oracle had previously announced that this feature will be removed in the June (18.06) update.

All customers are advised to use dashboards in place of composite forms. There will be no more enhancements to the composite forms functionality.

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

Only for Smart View for Office with Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus

A known issue with Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus patch 16.0.10228.20051 updated through the insider slow channel prevents the use of Smart View for Office with Microsoft Office 365. This Microsoft patch was pushed to users who signed up for monthly channel updates between June 12 and June 14, 2018.

Workaround: Do not update Microsoft Office 365 with patch 16.0.10228.20051 if you are using Smart View for Office with Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus. Instead, use Microsoft Office 365 monthly channel Version 1806 (Build 10228.20080), which contains the fix for this issue.

Financial Reporting User Preferences

All existing customers will be migrated to the new Financial Reporting Repository (implemented in the 18.05 update for new customers). The process does not migrate  Financial Reporting  user preferences.

Workaround: Each end user must manually set Financial Reporting  user preferences when using the Repository for the first time.

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 Tax Reporting Cloud, June Update

This document outlines announcements and upcoming changes in the upcoming Oracle Tax Reporting 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

More Intuitive POV Bar in Dashboards

The Go arrow in the POV for dashboards (which commits changes made on the page) displays only if the user has made changes. Changes to the page display in yellow.

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

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

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

New Tax Interim Provision Access

Previously, to enter details for Tax Interim Provision, you had to access two separate cards: Tax Provision National and Tax Provision Regional.

To simplify access, you can now select the Tax Provision Interim card which displays the following cards:

Key Resources

Set Entity Aggregation Type to Ignore

When creating an Entity, under Plan Type, you must set the aggregation type to Ignore for all cubes (Consol, Rates and CbCR).

The Entity dimension is aggregated as part of the Consolidation process, so it must be set to Ignore for the native Essbase calculation. If you select another option, it will default to Ignore when the database is refreshed.

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

Classic Dimension Editor

With a view to allowing customers more time to familiarize themselves with the Simplified Dimension Editor, Oracle has decided to defer the removal of support for Classic Dimension Editor to a future update. The current plan is to remove access to the Classic Dimension Editor starting with the 18.10 (October 2018) update to the service.

Key Resources

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.

Composite Form Creation Capability

To allow customers more time to adapt and move from composite forms to dashboards, Oracle has decided to defer the removal of the ability to create new composite forms (forms that comprise multiple simple forms) to a future release update (January 2019 - 19.01). Oracle had previously announced that this feature will be removed in the June (18.06) update.

All customers are advised to use dashboards in place of composite forms. There will be no more enhancements to the composite forms functionality.

New Data Exchange Card in Oracle EPM Cloud

To facilitate easier access to Data Management features, starting with the 18.07 update, EPM Cloud will feature a new Data Exchange card in the Application Cluster. This card will launch a page from which you can access these Data Management features:

Defects Fixed

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

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
07 MAY 2018 Classic Dimension Editor Updated document. Added URL link to Key Resources.
07 MAY 2018 Enhancements to Dashboards Updated document. Added URL link to Key Resources.
26 APR 2018   Created initial document.

Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud, May Update

This document outlines announcements, defects fixed and considerations in the upcoming Oracle Tax Reporting 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

Oracle Account Reconciliation Cloud Clusters and Cards as Navigation Flows Targets

EPM Cloud source subscriptions can now customize navigation flows to access Oracle Account Reconciliation Cloud clusters and cards (note that Oracle Account Reconciliation Cloud is only a target service when connecting subscriptions). Clusters and cards can now be directly selected from Oracle Account Reconciliation Cloud using the Add Existing Card/Cluster option.

Key Resources

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

Enhancements to Dashboards

Dashboards have been enhanced in several ways:

Key Resources

Retain Last Accessed Tab in Navigation Flow Cards

When working with cards in navigation flows that have multiple tabs or sub tabs, the last tab accessed by a user will be retained the next time the user accesses the card in the same session.

Key Resources

Removal of Support

Classic Dimension Editor

For users of the Simplified Interface, effective with the June 2018 (18.06) update, the Dimensions link in the Navigator will link to the Simplified Dimension Editor, which was released with the 17.05 update (May 2017). Consequently, the Classic Dimension Editor will not be supported starting with the June 2018 update to the service (June 1, 2018 for test and June 15, 2018 for production instances).

Key Resources

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.

Close Manager Calendar View

For users of Close Manager within Tax Reporting Cloud, the Calendar view will not be supported effective with the August, 2018 (18.08) update.

Defects Fixed

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

Considerations

Dashboard Folders

In a future update (tentatively planned for the June (18.06) update), Service Administrators will have the ability to organize dashboards in folders. These folders will enable Service Administrators to apply security and permissions to folders rather than to each dashboard.

Existing dashboards will be visible under the root folder in dashboards and infolets listing pages after this new feature is introduced. The form folders available in the environment will also be available for organizing dashboards because folders are shared across artifact types in Planning and Budgeting Cloud and Enterprise Planning and Budgeting Cloud. All folders will be managed using a unified folder management screen.

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
05 APR 2018 Support for Infolets Updated document. Revised feature description.
28 MAR 2018   Created initial document.

Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud, April Update

This document outlines announcements and defects fixed in the upcoming Oracle Tax Reporting 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

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.

Support for Infolets

Infolets, a new dashboard capability to enable data visualization, are now available in Financial Consolidation and Close. Infolets enable Service Administrators to provide enhanced graphical data presentation using charts and texts. Service Administrators can create infolets for any cube.

Infolets are interactive and use progressive disclosure to display high-level, aggregated, essential information for quick consumption at a glance. Users can act upon the information in the infolets as needed. They can be flipped and resized to display up to three charts or sets of values.

Service Administrators can create an infolets page that contains one or more infolets. An Infolets page houses a container that manages the space occupied by the infolets and rearranges them depending on the size of the browser and the size of the infolets.

Service Administrators can customize the application interface to enable end users to access infolets from the Home page using the Navigation Flow Designer.

NOTE: Although you can design infolets on the 18.04 Test environment, they will not work in Production before 18.04 is applied. If you try to apply the infolets in Production 18.03, the infolet dots will be displayed, but you may not see any content upon accessing the infolet pages. When 18.04 is applied to the Production environment, you will be able to access infolets in the Navigation Flows.

Key Resources

Support for Subtitles in Infolets

Service Administrators can now add subtitles to infolets after the infolet header. The infolet header remains the same for all views of an infolet, but you can now add an optional subtitle which can be customized to display different text for each view of an infolet. To add subtitles to an infolet, open an infolet in the Infolets Designer and hover over the upper right corner of the infolet to view the Infolet Menu. Under Layout, select Subtitle.

Key Resources

See Using the Infolets Designer in Administering Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud.

Migration and Audit Cards Moved to the Tools Cluster

Starting with the 18.04 update, the Migration card and Audit card will be moved to the Tools cluster in the Home page.

The Migration card, which enables Service Administrators to access and manage lifecycle management-related activities such as exporting and importing artifacts and data and working with snapshots, has been moved to the Tools cluster.

The Audit card allows Service Administrators to activate audit trails to track changes to artifacts and data.

Previously, these cards were included in the Application Cluster.

Key Resources

New Row and Column Suppression Behavior

Service administrators can use the Smart View Suppression Behavior option to change suppression behavior when both the Smart View No Data/Missing and Zero suppression options for rows, or columns, or both are selected.

If the Smart View Suppression Behavior option in the web application is set to:

Legacy—Only suppresses rows or columns containing either all No Data/Missing or all Zeros. Does not suppress rows or columns containing a combination of No Data/Missing and Zeros. For example, in Smart View, if both the No Data/Missing and Zero suppression options are selected for rows, and a row contains both zeroes and Missing labels, then the row is displayed; it is not suppressed.

Standard—Suppresses rows or columns containing all No Data/Missing or all Zeros, or a combination of both. For example, in Smart View, if both the No Data/Missing and Zero suppression options are selected for columns, and a column contains both zeroes and Missing labels, then the column is suppressed; it is not displayed.

Tips And Considerations

This feature was introduced with the 18.03 update.

Key Resources

Smart View Users: See “Data Options” and “Data Options Supported for Planning Forms and Ad Hoc” in Oracle Smart View for Office User's Guide.

New Financial Reporting Explore Repository

For new subscriptions, Financial Reporting has implemented a new Explore repository, which is very similar to the existing Explore repository.

Existing subscriptions will be migrated to the new Explore repository in a near term release. The Explore repository documentation has been updated.

Key Resources

See Working with Financial Reporting for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud.

Support for Custom Automated and Event Monitoring Integrations

Close Manager now includes the ability to create Process Automated and Event Monitoring tasks for external applications. A new EPM Adapter allows you to create connections and integration flows in Integration Cloud Service using Oracle EPM Cloud and other cloud and on-premises applications.

Key Resources

For more information, see Creating Custom Close Manager Integrations in Administering Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud.

Interim Tax Provisioning

Tax Reporting can now calculate an Interim Tax Provision to estimate the current and deferred taxes for a designated interim period, based on the forecasted estimated annualized effective tax rate.

This process estimates the current and deferred taxes by legal entity based on the statutory rates in the Forecast Scenario. You manually enter the estimated annualized effective tax rate for current and deferred taxes for the Actual scenario. The system calculates the taxes using estimated annualized effective tax rates applied to the year-to-date net income before tax. You can also enter additional discrete adjustments.  The sum of the calculated tax plus discrete amounts are captured on the interim provision web form.

Key Resources

For more information, see the following topics in the Administering Oracle Tax Reporting guide:

Setting Up Separate Approvals for CbCR

Previously, if you were using Country by Country reporting (CbCR), if you consolidated and locked one of the cubes at the end of a period (Consol or CbCR), the other cube was automatically closed and could not be separately modified.

With this release, if you use Country by Country reporting, you must create a separate Scenario to enable you to consolidate and lock either of your Current Provision and CbCR cubes individually.

To set up the separate approvals, you must create two Scenarios, as follows:

You enter data and tax rates in the Consol cube for current provision. Only CbCR data needs to be entered for the CbCR Scenario. The Scenarios are consolidated and translated separately to generate the Total Tax.

Key Resources

For detailed instructions, see Setting Up Separate Approvals for CbCR in Administering Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud.

Ability to Output Reports in XLSX Format

For Close Manager and Supplemental Data reports, you can now output reports in .XLSX (Excel) format as well as .XLS, HTML, and PDF formats.

Key Resources

For more details, see Generating Custom Reports in Administering Oracle Tax Reporting 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.

File-Based Integration of Data Management with Oracle Fusion Financials Cloud

Oracle Fusion Financial Cloud Budgetary Control and Encumbrance Accounting is now fully integrated with Data Management.

This enhancement brings the integration of Oracle Fusion Financials Cloud with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud on par with the current, out of the box, file-based integration. As a result, the file-based integration is being phased out starting the September update to the service.

If you are using file-based integration between Oracle Fusion Financials Cloud and Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud, Oracle recommends that you adopt this new integration as soon as possible.

Classic Dimension Editor

Effective with the June 2018 (18.06) update, the Dimensions link in the Navigator will link to the Simplified Dimension Editor, which was released with the 17.05 update (May 2017). Consequently, the Classic Dimension Editor will not be supported starting with the June 2018 update to the service (June 1, 2018 for test and June 15, 2018 for production instances).

Key Resources

For detailed information on using the Simplified Dimension Editor, See Editing Dimensions in the Simplified Dimension Editor in Administering Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud.

Defects Fixed

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

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
02 MAR 2018 Updated EPM Cloud Application Creation Page Updated document. Revised landing page for this feature.
23 FEB 2018   Created initial document.

Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud, March Update

This document outlines announcements, considerations and defects fixed in the upcoming Oracle Tax Reporting 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

Updated EPM Cloud Application Creation Page

The first time you log in, you'll see an updated screen displaying these Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud solutions from which to choose:

To create an application, select Start under Finance, then select Tax Reporting, and then select the type of application you want to create.

           The New Application Creation Page

Key Resources

For detailed application creation information, see Creating the Application in Administering Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud.

Supplemental Data Manager Multi-Cube Support

When you work with Supplemental Data Manager forms, you now have the option to select the cube from which to use dimension members. For example, when you are validating supplemental data, you select the cube from which the data needs to be validated.

During the Refresh Database process, metadata is copied to Supplemental Data Manager. In addition to leaf-level members, non-leaf level members are now copied, and the corresponding parent node name is displayed in Supplemental Data Manager.

Key Resources

See “Creating Supplemental Data Manager Form Templates” in Administering Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud.

Setting Data Sources for National and Regional Ending Balances per Book

For National and Regional Tax Account Rollfoward, you can now pull data from multiple data sources, such as Managed Data, Supplemental data, and Data Input, so that all selected data sources are reflected in the Tax Account Rollforward ending balances per book.

Key Resources

See the following topics in Working with Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud:

Run Restructure Cube from Jobs Console

You can now run a Restructure Cube job in the Jobs Console, enabling you to restructure your Tax Reporting cubes (Consol, CbCR, and Rates) to eliminate or reduce fragmentation, rebuild indices, and remove empty blocks.

Key Resources

See “Scheduling Jobs” in Administering Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud.

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.

Smart View Support for Integrated Business Process Navigation Flows

Smart View now supports integrated business process navigation flows.

Using integrated business process navigation flows, Service Administrators can configure shared connections that enable Smart View users to navigate across any combination of the supported EPM Cloud subscriptions.

Key Resources

Service Administrators: See “Connecting Subscriptions in EPM Cloud” in Administering Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud for information on setting up integrated business process navigation flows.

Smart View users: See these topics in the Oracle Smart View for Office User's Guide for information on connecting:

Removal of Support

Classic Dimension Editor

Effective with the June 2018 (18.06) update, the Dimensions link in the Navigator will link to the Simplified Dimension Editor, which was released with the 17.05 update (May 2017). Consequently, the Classic Dimension Editor will not be supported starting with the June 2018 update to the service (June 1, 2018 for test and June 15, 2018 for production instances).

Key Resources

For detailed information on using the Simplified Dimension Editor, See “Working with Dimensions Using the Dimension Editor” in Administering Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud.

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.

File-Based Integration of Data Management with Oracle Fusion Financials Cloud

Oracle Fusion Financial Cloud Budgetary Control and Encumbrance Accounting is now fully integrated with Data Management.

This enhancement brings the integration of Oracle Fusion Financials Cloud with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud on par with the current, out of the box, file-based integration. As a result, the file-based integration is being phased out starting the September update to the service.

If you are using file-based integration between Oracle Fusion Financials Cloud and Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud, Oracle recommends that you adopt this new integration as soon as possible.

Defects Fixed

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

Considerations

EPM Automate

When using EPM Automate, log out and log in again after importing a Financial Close Management (FCM) snapshot to refresh the icons on the Home page.

Academy

In the Academy, some pages and icons may appear different in the video and the Cloud service.

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
05 FEB 2018 Defects Fixed Updated document. Added defect information.
26 JAN 2018   Created initial document.

Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud, February Update

This document outlines the announcements in the upcoming Oracle Tax Reporting 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 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

Exporting Tasks From Close Manager Task Lists to Excel

Close Manager Users are now able to export tasks from a Task List to Microsoft Excel. From the Task List, you can export selected rows, or export all the rows in the table. The export file is formatted for Excel.

Key Resources

See “Exporting Tasks from Task Lists” in Working with Tax Reporting Cloud.

Selectable Parameters for EPM Integrations

When you are using EPM Cloud Integrations through Close Manager, many parameters for automated integrations are now selectable from drop-down lists, which eliminates the need to manually enter values. For example, in the FCCS Run Business Rule pre-built integration, you can select from a list of business rules, such as ForceConsolidate or ForceTranslate, and in ARCS, you can select period and filter names.

Key Resources

See ”Pre-Built EPM Cloud Integrations” in Administering Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud.

Integration Tasks for Uploading and Downloading Files Within EPM

In Close Manager, you can use pre-built integration tasks to upload and download files to automate data extract from one service to import into another service. For example, you can export data from Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud and import it into Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud.

Key Resources

See “Uploading and Downloading Files Within EPM Services”  in Administering Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud.

New EPM Automate Utility Version

A new version of the EPM Automate Utility is available with this update. This version includes the upgrade command, which automatically downloads and silently installs the newest version of the EPM Automate Utility. After you run the login command to initiate a session, the utility identifies the current installed version. If the installed version is not the newest available, you can run this command to the utility prompts you to download and install the latest version.

Key Resources

See “EPM Automate Utility Commands in Working” with EPM Automate for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for detailed information.

Application-Level Provisioning for Data Management

Application-level provisioning is now available for Data Management. This enhancement allows Service Administrators to grant the following roles to users who have the User or Viewer identity domain role. Granting these roles allow Users and Viewers to participate in the data integration process using Data Management.

Key Resources

See “Managing Application-Level Provisioning” in Administering Access Control for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for detailed information.

Copy Data

You can copy data from a source POV to a destination POV. This enables you to perform a bulk copy of data and provides the option of including data posted from Supplemental Data Manager forms and data imported with Data Management.

Key Resources

See “Copying Data” in Administering Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud.

Clear Data

You can clear data for selected entities from a specific Scenario, Year, and period or range of periods.

Key Resources

See “Clearing Data” in Administering Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud.

Clear Cube

User can clear a BSO type TRCS cube. Users will be able to clear the TRCS cube data using the ‘Clear Cube’ option.

Key Resources

See “Creating Clear Cube Jobs” in Administering Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud.

Customizing CBCR Table 1

You can now customize CbCR Table 1 to enhance reporting for your organization by adding details or grouping columns to manage data at a more granular level. By adding child accounts, you can report on jurisdictions and regions, or extend columns to display additional details for selected accounts. For example, for the Total Unrelated Party Revenue column, you could create items such as Third Party Revenue, Other Income, and so on to suit your organization's requirements.

Key Resources

See “Customizing CbCR Table 1” in Working with Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud.

Enhanced Tax Automation Rules

To enhance the flexibility of tax automation, you can now create multiple tax automation rules for each account, to which you can apply more than one rule, or assign more than one source account. There are no restrictions on the number of rules that can be created.

The additional rules enable you to define the Logic (Pull, Move or Squeeze) to be applied. You can create rules that use multiple Pull, Move or Squeeze rules within a single rule, or define multiple rule combinations for more complex requirements that incorporate a flow within a rule, such as both Pull and Squeeze.

For each rule, you can also select a different Source Account, enabling you to manage multiple source accounts more easily.

Key Resources

For more information, see Working with Tax Automation in the Administering Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud.

Migration of Tax Automation Data

Due to the changes to Tax Automation, Tax Automation rules stored under "FCCS_No Data Source" must  be migrated to the corresponding Data Source members and impacts the status for all intersections impacted by the data migration.  This can impact your existing data, rules and forms.

After upgrading your application, you must run the “Tax Automation Migration” configuration task. This task is launched as a job and can take a long time to complete, based on the amount of data. Users can refer to “Migrating Artifacts – Exporting Artifacts” in the Administering Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud for details. This migration task will be available for some maintenance cycles, but then will be removed.  Oracle recommends running this migration as soon as possible.

NOTE: During migration, older Tax Automation data will not be cleared. Running the migration tool multiple times could override any newly created Tax Automation rules.

The Tax Automation data migration configuration task performs the following data movement:

To run the Tax automation data migration:

  1. From the Home page, select Overview, and then Configuration.
  2. On the Configure: Tax Reporting screen, select Tax Automation Migration.
  3. From the Task Automation Data Migration Task, click Launch.

NOTE: This task will mark status as Impacted for all the Entities, including locked Entities.

  1. When the task is launched, from the Home page, select Overview, and then Jobs to view the status of the job.
  2. When the data migration is complete, the status of the Tax Automation Migration task shows the status as Completed.

Key Resources

For details users can refer to “Migrating Artifacts – Exporting Artifacts” in the Administering Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud.

Removal of Support

Classic Dimension Editor

With the March 2018 (18.03) update, the Dimensions link in the Navigator will link to the Simplified Dimension Editor. Effective March 2018 (March 2, 2018 for test and March 16, 2018 for production environments), the Simplified Dimension Editor will be the only interface available to edit and manage dimensions.

Key Resources

For detailed information on using the Simplified Dimension Editor, See “Working with Dimensions Using the Dimension Editor” in Administering Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud.

File-Based Integration of Data Management with Oracle Fusion Financials Cloud

Oracle Fusion Financial Cloud Budgetary Control and Encumbrance Accounting is now fully integrated with Data Management.

This enhancement brings the integration of Oracle Fusion Financials Cloud with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud on par with the current, out of the box, file-based integration. As a result, the file-based integration is being phased out starting with the September update to the service.

If you are using file-based integration between Oracle Fusion Financials Cloud and Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud, Oracle recommends that you adopt this new integration as soon as possible.

Defects Fixed

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

Defect Number

Description

Data Management

26405218

The French version of the File Selection window now shows Télécharger (Download button) and Charger (Upload button).

27314175

The Source Value field in Data Load Mappings now has a maximum length of 80 characters instead of 75.

27267369

Application snapshot no longer fails with the "EPMFDM-140223:EXPORT FAILED FOR SYSTEM SETTING" error.

Financial Close Cloud

27129399

Power Users can generate Intercompany Reports if they have access to all the entities and partners used in the report.

27261080

Loading data in each month will not affect consolidation performance.

27255075

Users can generate Close Manager Report Binders without selecting any tasks.

27235098

Users are now allowed to export tasks from the Task List to Excel.

27353517

In Close Manager, graphs on the Compliance dashboard are now exported correctly to Excel.

27338211

In Close Manager, switching between tasks using the Next and Previous buttons displays the information correctly.

Financial Reporting

26598697

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.

27281312

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

27227593

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.

27271949/ 27266649

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

Planning and Budgeting Cloud

26800141

Planning allows aggregating data into a parent member if the shared member for a dynamically calculated member and the parent member are displayed in the form.

26880448

The attribute dimension import duration has improved significantly.

26992261

Aggregate values for Dynamic Calc parent members now are displayed correctly in forms and reports when the “Suppress missing blocks” option is selected.

27252688

Validation rules work correctly when you change the POV in a form.

27223902

Annotations for approval units now display line feeds consistently, whether they’re entered from the Home page > Approvals or Navigator > Manage Approvals.

27218905

Smart Push is now moving negative percentage values to the reporting cube.

2729495126645082

A right-click (or Action) menu item that invokes Manage Approvals now works correctly.

Smart View

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, 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.

Tax Reporting Cloud

26598498/26774224

Tax Automation feature to support multiple accounts and define multiple rules has been implemented.

27233419

You can now customize CbCR Table 1 to enhance reporting for your organization by adding details or grouping columns to manage data at a more granular level.

Considerations

Academy

In the Academy, some pages and icons may appear different in the video and the Cloud service.

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 Tax Reporting Cloud, January Update

This document outlines the announcements in the upcoming Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud update.

Monthly Update Schedule

Oracle will begin applying the latest updates to EPM Cloud Test environments starting at 22:00 UTC-8 (2:00pm Pacific Time) Friday, January 5, 2018 and to Production environments on Friday, January 19, 2018, also starting at 22:00 UTC-8 . The updates will be applied to your EPM Cloud 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.

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 Whats New document and the product documentation. Please send us your feedback at EPMdoc_ww@oracle.com. State that you are inquiring or providing feedback, and indicate for which EPM Cloud service as well as the monthly patch cycle, in the body or title of the email.

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

Classic Dimension Editor

With the March 2018 (18.03) update, the Dimensions link in the Navigator will link to the Simplified Dimension Editor. Effective March 2018 (March 2, 2018 for test and March 16, 2018 for production environments), the Simplified Dimension Editor will be the only interface available to edit and manage dimensions.

For detailed information on using the Simplified Dimension Editor, See “Working with Dimensions Using the Dimension Editor” in Administering Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud.

File-Based Integration of Data Management with Oracle Fusion Financials Cloud

Oracle Fusion Financial Cloud Budgetary Control and Encumbrance Accounting is now fully integrated with Data Management.

This enhancement brings the integration of Oracle Fusion Financials Cloud with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud on par with the current, out of the box, file-based integration. As a result, the file-based integration is being phased out starting with the September update to the service.

If you are using file-based integration between Oracle Fusion Financials Cloud and Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud, Oracle recommends that you adopt this new integration as soon as possible.

Defects Fixed

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

Defect Number

Description

Data Management

27009032

A data load no longer fails when an import mapping encounters UTF8  Byte Order Mark (BOM) characters.

27026977

Source filters associated with data load rules are now saved correctly.

27152908

An error no longer occurs when reading an import expression for a data or amount column.

Smart View

26982965

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

26985098

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

Tax Reporting Cloud

27188469

In TAR, the Ending Balance as per book is now translated at the Ending Rate, except for the Current Expense section which is translated at the Average Rate.

Considerations

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.

EPM Automate

When using EPM Automate, log out and log in again after importing a Financial Close Management (FCM) snapshot to refresh the icons on the Home page.

Navigator

You may receive inaccurate messages from Navigator if pop-up blockers are enabled. Disable pop-up blockers in your browser to avoid this.

Academy

In the Academy, some pages and icons may appear different in the video and the Cloud service.