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 NOV 2017	Defects Fixed	Updated document. Added description for fixed defect 26993809.
30 NOV 2017	Balance Calculation	Updated document. Added consideration.
30 NOV 2017	Ownership Management Enablement	Updated document. Added consideration.
22 NOV 2017		Created initial document.

Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud, December Update

This guide outlines the announcements, fixed issues and considerations in the upcoming Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud update.

Announcements and New Features

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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.

Monthly Update Schedule

Oracle will apply the latest updates to your test environments on Friday, December 1, 2017 and to your production environment on Friday, December 15, 2017, starting at 14:00 UTC-7 (2:00pm Pacific Time). The updates will be applied to your environments during the first daily maintenance occurring after this time.

The Oracle Help Center, which provides access to updated documentation, will also be available on December 1, 2017.

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

Advanced Consolidation Features

This update includes Advanced Consolidation features, including:

• Manage Ownership

Ownership management consists of managing global consolidation settings and the application of those consolidation settings to each entity hierarchy on a scenario-by-scenario, year-by-year and period-by-period basis. You can add or modify consolidation methods, assign ownership percentages, recompute ownership data, and also load ownership data from a comma-delimited file. See “Managing Ownership” in Administering Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud.

NOTE: Before you enable Ownership Management for an existing application, you must review the migration considerations to avoid potential conflicts with new seeded members. See “Enabling Ownership Management in Applications” in Administering Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud.

• New Members for Elimination

If Ownership Management is enabled, the system provides new seeded members in the Consolidation and Data Source dimension for elimination. See “Enabling Ownership Management in Applications” in Administering Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud.

• New System Rules for Consolidation

These hard-coded system rules have been added to support Advanced Consolidations:

• Investment in Subs (Holding method)
• Owner’s Equity (Subsidiary/Proportional methods)
• Owner’s Equity (Holding method)

These rule-sets provide a basic adjustment/elimination between the investment of a holding company in a subsidiary and the Owner’s Equity of that owned company, whether consolidated by the Subsidiary method (recognizing Minority Interest) or the Proportional method.

See “System Consolidation Rules” in Administering Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud.

To use advanced consolidation, you must enable both the Intercompany dimension and Intercompany Elimination Tracking. If these are not both enabled, you will not see advanced consolidation features such as Ownership Management and the new hard-coded consolidation rules.

In addition, the Account, Movement, Consolidation and Data Source dimensions have new members.

If the Ownership Management feature is enabled, you will need to reconsolidate all existing data in your application in order to re-populate the Proportion member in the Consolidation dimension.

See “Application Feature Descriptions” and “Enabling Ownership Management in Applications” in Administering Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud.

Calculation for Opening Balance for Retained Earnings Prior

The calculation for Opening Balance for the Retained Earnings Prior account has been updated. Opening Balance for Retained Earnings Prior is the Closing Balance of Total Retained Earnings from the end of the Prior Year for the first period of the year, for the YTD member of each period of the year, and for the QTD member for the first quarter. For all other view and periods in the year, the Opening Balance is pulled from the Closing balance of Retained Earnings Prior of the previous period for periodic and quarter for QTD. See “Built-in Calculations” in Administering Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud.

Loading Metadata in Data Management

Data Management now supports the loading of metadata from a flat file. This feature allows customers to build a metadata load file in any format, from any source, and load the metadata to an EPM Cloud environment. Using this approach, users can set property defaults during the load or mapping process. In this monthly update, only regular, custom, and Smart List dimensions are supported for metadata loads, and the feature is supported for the following services only:

• Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud
• Oracle Enterprise Planning and Budgeting Cloud
• Oracle Financial Consolidation and Closing Cloud
• Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud

For detailed information, see "Integrating Metadata" in Administering Data Management for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud.

New Custom Functions in Calculation Manager

Five new custom functions have been added to Calculation Manager. Each of these functions correspond to an existing function in that the existing functions return only positive numbers, and the new functions can return either a positive number or a negative number depending on the calculated result. The new functions (and the existing function to which they correspond) are as follows:

Existing Function	New Function
@CalcMgrDateDiff	@CalcMgrDiffDate
@CalcMgrYearsBetween	@CalcMgrYearsDiff
@CalcMgrMonthsBetween	@CalcMgrMonthsDiff
@CalcMgrDaysBetween	@CalcMgrDaysDiff
@CalcMgrWeeksBetween	@CalcMgrWeeksDiff

See "Date/Time Functions" in Designing With Calculation Manager for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for a detailed description of each of these functions.

New Design-Time Prompt Functions in Calculation Manager

A new @Length design-time prompt is now available in Calculation Manager. @Length returns the length of the text.

For detailed information, see "@Length" in "About Design-Time Prompt Functions" in Designing With Calculation Manager for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud.

Excel Smart View Support for Supplemental Data Sets

You can now work with the Supplemental Data Set dashboard in Smart View. After you create a connection in Smart View, you can view and filter supplemental data in data sets. To work with Smart View, you must download the Smart View Extension for Close and Supplemental Data Management.

See “Working with Supplemental Data in Smart View” in Administering Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud.

New Smart View for Office Version

Smart View for Office 11.1.2.5.720 will be available by early December. This version includes new features such as:

• Support using a connection string with HypUIConnect, instead of a friendly name. Friendly names are still supported
• Enhanced extension update workflow, allowing you to select a server or service from which to check for updated extension downloads
• Cascading from multiple dimensions in a single operation
• Ability to run business rules templates
• Support for additional data types with HsGetValue: Smart Lists, text, and date
• Option to suppress display of the floating toolbar on forms
• Option to automatically resize column width and row height on cells in forms and ad hoc grids

This release also fixes a number of defects.

The Smart View 11.1.2.5.720 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 December 2017 update features and to access the new functionalities. See "Downloading and Installing Clients" in Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Users for instructions.

New EPM Getting Started Guides

Starting with this update, Service Administrator and end-user “getting started” information for all EPM Cloud Services is available from the following new guides:

• Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Administrators
• Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Users

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 the 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 the following guides:

• Using Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud
• Getting Started with Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud
• Getting Started with Account Reconciliation Cloud for Administrators
• Getting Started with Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud for Administrators
• Getting Started with Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud
• Getting Started for Administrators for Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud

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 the following guides:

• Getting Started with Account Reconciliation Cloud for Users
• Getting Started with Oracle Profitability and Cost Management Cloud for Users
• Getting Started for Users for Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud

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.

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.

Removal of Support

Classic Dimension Editor

Effective the February 2018 (18.02) 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 February 2018 update to the service (February 2, 2018 for test and February 16, 2018 for production instances).

For detailed information on using the Simplified Dimension Editor, See Editing Dimensions in the Simplified Dimension Editor in Administering Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close 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 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
26453193	When you create a new member with an Alias and select Copy Data or Clear Data, the dialog boxes now display correctly.
27033732	When you run a journal report, the Journal Description column now displays correctly.
26453193	If you copy or clear data, a blank dialog no longer appears if any members do not have an alias.
26968673	Clearing large amounts of data now works correctly.
26993809	Opening the Task List from Close Manager now works correctly.
26645082	Creating a right-click (action) menu that invokes the Manage Approvals page from a form now works as expected.
26940771	To accommodate applications that have a large numbers of attribute dimensions, a scroll bar now enables you to drag and drop dimensions to rows and columns in Form Layout.
25985928	Dynamic ranges on graphs now work the same in both the Cloud and on-premises versions of Financial Reporting Web Studio. (Previously, reports set to vary the y-axis range based on the data set resulted in graphs with too wide or too narrow of a data range.)
26478186	Custom fonts uploaded with Financial Reporting Web Studio are now correctly stored.
26719130	The problem with security when running a report from the Explore Repository in Financial Reporting Web Studio has been fixed. (Previously, if you had "Apply Application Security to FR POV and Prompt" set to "true", you were still able to see the entire hierarchy)
26759004	You can now add labels to charts in Financial Reporting Web Studio.
26975317	When you export multiple reports from Financial Reporting Web Studio into Excel, and then view the reports in HTML, an error no longer occurs and the reports display correctly.
26995802	In Financial Reporting Web Studio, selecting an account using the member selection now works correctly.
27045036	The HTML preview of a Financial Reporting report with multiple grids now displays correctly.

Considerations

Balance Calculation

Tip:  By default, the system automatically processes the Balance Calculation, which can impact consolidation performance.  To improve performance, you can disable the Balance Calculation so that the system does not automatically balance the Balance Sheet for you.   You can select one or more scenarios to disable.  If you do not want to have the calculation run for any scenarios, select all scenarios for disablement.  You can then create a new balance account member and write a custom calculation to run as needed.

See the “Balance the Balance Sheet” and “Creating Configurable Calculations” sections in the Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud Administrator’s Guide.

Ownership Management Enablement

Enabling the Ownership Management feature entails adding seeded accounts, which causes a restructuring of your application. Depending on the size of your application, the restructuring could take a considerable length of time. This can be expected to take as long as manually refreshing the database after adding accounts.

If you enable the Ownership Management feature, you may not be able to open some existing Financial Reporting reports due to metadata changes for Ownership Management.

Adding Base Members From Dimension Editor

If you add a base member from the Dimension Editor and select the Never Share Data Storage property, the system applies the Dynamic Calc property and the member is read-only.
To work around this issue, load the metadata through a metadata load, or add the member from Smart View with the Never Share property.  In these cases, the storage setting will remain unchanged and you can enter data to the member.

Smart View

SUMMARY DIALOG DISPLAY

In Internet Explorer, you may experience issues using the Open Summary dialog in Smart View. To work around this issue:

• Use the keyboard arrow keys to make your selection, then close and reopen the Summary dialog; or
• Minimize and then reopen the Summary dialog; or
• Use a different browser.

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.

Copying and Clearing Data

If you try to clear a shared entity, the base entity and all shared entities do not get cleared. To work around this issue, clear the primary entity in order to clear all shared entities.

After copying data from actual to forecast, clearing the forecast data may result in clearing of some actual data.

Change in Calculation of CTA for Net Income/Retained Earnings Current Accounts

In the August, 2017 update (17.08), the seeded Net Income hierarchy included a new member named “Retained Earnings Current – Opening Balance – FX-CTA” as a sibling of Net Income. Opening Balance calculation was done for the new member, which was automatically added during the upgrade process. Due to this change, if you have not yet done so, you must reconsolidate your historical data by running the Consolidation process.

Comprehensive Income CTA Accounts

If you assigned an account as a CICTA Redirection Account, after you upgrade, the Redirection account attribute that you selected may be missing.

If you configure a Comprehensive Income CTA account (CICTA) to capture CTA adjustments, the CICTA values are not correctly translated to reporting currencies other than the Entity and Parent Currency.

Self Service Upgrade

It is strongly recommended that you do not use the Upgrade Application Content settings in this update. Although a new Upgrade screen is available in Daily Maintenance, this feature is not fully functional.

FCCS Amount Override and Rate Override Accounts

If your application does not have any historical accounts defined, there will be no shared members under the seeded FCCS_Amount Override and FCCS_Rate_Override Accounts, which results in errors when refreshing the database.

A workaround is to add placeholder accounts.  Under FCCS_Balance Sheet add FCCS_AmountOverride_Placeholder_Account and/or add  FCCS_RateOverride_Placeholder_Account.  Assign the exchange rate of Historical Amount Override for FCCS_AmountOverride Placeholder Account and Historical Rate Override for FCCS_RateOverride Placeholder Account.

Editing Dates in a Data Collection Period

In a Data Collection Period in Supplemental Data, editing Start, End, and Close Dates may result in an error that the date is outside the valid range.

Entity Member Names/Aliases with ICP Property

When you create an Entity with the ICP property enabled, the maximum length of the member name is 76 characters instead of 80, to allow for the ICP prefix.

Working with Metadata

Be aware of the following considerations:

• You should not make metadata changes that result in the following:
• Changing a base member to which a journal has been posted into a parent member (other than in the Entity dimension in which journals are valid at a parent entity)

If there are journals or Supplemental Data posted to those members, these changes can cause problems when accessing Journals or importing existing journals.

• When you use ad hoc grids in Smart View with Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud, do not add a root Period member on the grid. Make sure the root Period member is removed by either clicking Remove Only or selecting periods that are in the application and selecting Keep Only.  If a Period member is left on the grid, then any changes to data that you make will fail to properly set the impact status of the Entities.