Financial Consolidation and Close
What's New
  1. July 2019 Update
  1. Revision History
  2. Financial Consolidation and Close, July Update
        1. Monthly Update Schedule
        2. Please Join Oracle Cloud Customer Connect
        3. Give Us Documentation Feedback
        4. Follow Us on Social Media
        5. New Videos and Tutorials
    1. Announcements
        1. New Version of EPM Automate
        2. Changes to Provisioning Terminology
        3. Removal of Support for Transport Layer Security Protocol 1.0 and 1.1
        4. Ability to Export Metadata Validation Results
        5. Export Expanded Reports to Excel
        6. Using Calculation Manager in Standard Mode
        7. Configuring Consolidations Rule-Set Source Dataset
        8. Viewing and Filtering Jobs
        9. Use REST API to Generate Reports
        10. Email Generated Reports Using REST API
        11. Support for Comma Separated Value (CSV) Format for Reports
        12. Tracing Users in Task Manager Workflows
        13. Add or Remove Users When Working with Teams Using REST API
        14. New EPM Cloud Features Tool
        15. New Domain Option in Smart View (Mac and Browser) Manifest File
    2. Upcoming Changes
        1. Classic Dimension Editor
        2. EPM Cloud's New Look and Feel
        3. Removal of Instance Name from Predefined Role Names
    3. Defects Fixed
    4. Considerations
        1. Calculation Status
        2. Copying Data
        3. Editing Data in a Data Collection Period
        4. Adding Shared members in Smart View
        5. Self-Service Upgrade
        6. Horizontal Scroll on a Non-Tabular Form
        7. Unable to Refresh the Cube
        8. Viewing Members on Seeded Forms
        9. Viewing the FCCS_VIEW_SYSTEM_MEMBERS
        10. Translation Override Rule Redirection
        11. Simplified Dimension Editor and Metadata Validation
        12. Entity Member Names/Aliases with ICP Property
        13. Setting the Data Collection Period
        14. Working with Metadata
        15. Ownership Management Enablement
        16. Smart View Summary Dialog Display
        17. Extended Dimensionality Performance Consideration
        18. Equity Pickup - Different Currencies for a Holding Company and Its Immediate Parent

July 2019 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 JUN 2019   Created initial document.

Financial Consolidation and Close, July Update

This document outlines the upcoming Financial Consolidation and Close update.

Monthly Update Schedule

Oracle will apply the latest monthly updates to your Test environments during the first daily maintenance that occurs at or after 22:00 UTC (15:00 PDT) on Friday, July 5,  2019. Oracle will apply the latest monthly updates to your Production environments during the first daily maintenance that occurs at or after 22:00 UTC (15:00 PDT) on Friday, July 19,  2019.

The Oracle Help Center provides access to updated documentation. The updates will be available in the Help Center on Friday, July 5,  2019. Some of the links to new feature documentation included in this readiness document will not work until after the Oracle Help Center update is complete.

NOTE: 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.

Follow Us on Social Media

For the latest updates and information about EPM Cloud, follow us on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn at Hyperion EPM Info.

New Videos and Tutorials

New Videos: Watch videos and learn about service capabilities, benefits and how to use key features. 

Need a world-class EPM Cloud solution? Don’t settle for a partial, configuration-heavy solution that will clunk your business along, data silo by silo, process by disjointed process. Oracle EPM Cloud provides agile, connected, and purpose-built solutions to give you the insight you need to outpace change. #EPMCloud http://bit.ly/2HGTxG3

Say good bye to single point data estimates, and hello to simulations; an easy way to capture ranges of uncertainty in your model for amazing insight into your strategic plan.

Need an agile EPM tool that provides a complete, streamlined end-to-end close solution? Need more visibility into your close, consolidation, data collection, and reporting activities? Oracle EPM Cloud delivers. The preconfigured close model makes it easy to meet global requirements such as GAAP and IFTS, prebuilt cash flow, balance sheet, and income statement let you report with confidence, and you can integrate with core source systems. #EPMCloud http://bit.ly/2KcRpJR

New Tutorials: Use tutorials to interactively perform tasks and access related documentation, videos, and tutorials.

  • Creating Rule-Sets for Configurable Consolidation in Financial Consolidation and Close http://bit.ly/2Xr1Hct Learn how to filter the rule-set scope, add conditions, and define a factor.
  • Creating Rules for Configurable Consolidation in Financial Consolidation and Close http://bit.ly/2QNzFoR Create and add rules to rule-sets, define factors, select processing options, redirect target members, and add conditions for redirection.
  • Managing Configurable Consolidation Rules in Financial Consolidation and Close http://bit.ly/2JZbfIi Learn how to deploy and undeploy rule-sets, filter the rules list, copy rules and rule-sets, and delete rules and rule-sets.
  • (Updated Video) Configuring Financial Consolidation and Close for Enterprise Performance Management Cloud http://bit.ly/2Fn0N9J :Learn how to configure the Financial Consolidation and Close business process for Enterprise Performance Management Cloud. You learn how to define time periods, select currency options, and configure features.

Announcements

New Version of EPM Automate

A new version of EPM Automate is available with this update. These new commands are now available: exportAppAudit, addUsersToTeam, and removeUsersFromTeam..

  • exportAppSecurity Command

This command exports the date related to artifact-level access assignments (ACLs) to a ZIP file, which you can download for local storage.

  • addUsersToTeam Command

This command adds users listed in a CSV file to an existing team. If a user included in the CSV file is already a member of the team, this command ignores that user.

  • removeUsersFromTeam Command

This command removes users listed in a CSV file from a team. If a user included in the CSV file is not a a member of the team, this command ignores that user.

Key Resources

Changes to Provisioning Terminology

With a view to standardizing the terminology around assigning roles to users at the identity domain, application, and artifact levels, EPM Cloud has changed such labels in the user interface to "Assign". Because of this change, the labels of Provision Roles tab and Provisioning Reports tab in Access Control have been renamed to Assign Roles and Role Assignment Report respectively. Similar changes have been made to the access control screens displayed in business processes and EPM Connections.

Removal of Support for Transport Layer Security Protocol 1.0 and 1.1

As announced in previous readiness documents, Oracle supports only Transport Layer Security protocol version 1.2 (TLS 1.2) to communicate with EPM Cloud. To ensure the highest level of authentication and data encryption security, support for TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 have been removed.

Because most modern operating systems and browsers support TLS 1.2; users of such systems and browsers are not affected by the deprecation of TLS 1.0 and 1.1.

You cannot use client operating systems that do not support TLS 1.2 (for example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Microsoft Windows 2002) to run operating system-specific commands (for example, code to run cURL tools to transfer data and custom code that integrates with the REST APIs) against EPM Cloud. Additionally, Smart View and EPM Automate installed on such systems will also fail to communicate with EPM Cloud. Similarly, you cannot use browsers that do not support TLS 1.2 protocol to access EPM Cloud environments.

If you are using on-premises FDMEE to integrate with EPM Cloud, you must update your on-premises EPM 11.1.2.4 deployment to support TLS 1.2. Refer to the following Oracle Support document to enable TLS 1.2 support:

Ability to Export Metadata Validation Results

When you validate metadata, you can now export all error messages to a CSV file. The members are displayed in [Parent].[Child] format.

Key Resources

Export Expanded Reports to Excel

Now you can include expanded rows and columns when you export a Financial Report to Microsoft Excel.

  1. From the Home page, click Reports, and then click the report you want to see.
  2. Select an export option for the report, and expand your choice of rows and columns.
  3. Click the Export to Excel  toggle on the top left of the page.

Key Resources

Using Calculation Manager in Standard Mode

Oracle has introduced two new Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud services: Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Standard Cloud Service and Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Enterprise Cloud Service.

Changes introduced with the new services mainly affect new customers only; current customers will continue using their existing, familiar EPM Cloud environments. Users will notice some changes to certain naming and terminology used in documentation, videos and other collateral as we adopt the new Cloud Services (Standard and Enterprise).

These changes impact the following Calculation options:

  • If you are using Standard mode, you cannot launch Calculation Manager from the Advanced Consolidation card.
  • if you are using Enterprise mode, Calculation Manager will launch from Advanced Consolidation.

Key Resources

Configuring Consolidations Rule-Set Source Dataset

For Configurable Consolidations, when you create a rule-set and select the Source Dataset for the Elimination data, you can now select a different Scenario, Year, Period, Consolidation and Currency member than that currently being processed. The destination to which processed data is written will not change and will remain as the Scenario, Year, and Period currently being processed.

Key Resources

Viewing and Filtering Jobs

When you view the list of Task Manager Jobs, you can now use the POV bar to filter the list and find a specific job. You can filter by Job Name, Status, Created by (or Modified By), Start Date and End Date.

Key Resources

Use REST API to Generate Reports

Using REST API, you can generate either a single predefined Financial Consolidation and Close or Tax Reporting report, or generate a custom report.

Steps to Enable

Only Service Administrators can run REST APIs against EPM Cloud environments.

Key Resources

Email Generated Reports Using REST API

You can now email generated Task Manager and Supplemental Data Manager reports using REST API.

Steps to Enable

Only Service Administrators can run REST APIs against EPM Cloud environments.

Key Resources

Support for Comma Separated Value (CSV) Format for Reports

You can now generate a report in Comma Separated Value (CSV) format. This is available for predefined or custom reports.

Key Resources

Tracing Users in Task Manager Workflows

In Task Manager workflows, a new attribute is available for each workflow stage showing the actual user for the completed workflow, for example Assignee (Actual). In the workflow, the Actual column will show who did work on the task, regardless of the user status.

Key Resources

Add or Remove Users When Working with Teams Using REST API

You can now add or remove a batch of users when working with teams using REST API.

Steps to Enable

Only Service Administrators can run REST APIs against EPM Cloud environments.

Key Resources

New EPM Cloud Features Tool

Oracle has released an EPM Cloud Features tool. Use this tool to quickly find features released each month for your EPM Cloud business process. Click a link to learn more about each feature in the What’s New document and the EPM Cloud user assistance.

New Domain Option in Smart View (Mac and Browser) Manifest File

There is a new option to add a Domain URL in Smart View (Browser and MAC) when creating the manifest file. Smart View will extract the domain from the Server URL and will add it to the App Domains list as the default. Smart View also supports adding multiple domains.

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 in 2019. Oracle will notify you at least two months prior to the removal of the feature.

EPM Cloud's New Look and Feel

In a future update, there will be a revised interface with enhanced navigation and a new theme called Sky Blue.

New Interface of Planning

The following EPM Cloud services will adopt this new theme as their default interface:

  • Planning
  • Financial Consolidation and Close
  • Tax Reporting
  • Profitability and Cost Management
  • Account Reconciliation
  • Strategic Workforce Planning
  • Sales Planning

The revised interface retains existing functionality and enhances your experience with a more modern look and feel and responsive design. The Welcome Panel and the Global Header readjust after resizing, which means less scrolling. An updated Welcome Panel features Announcements and Notifications. Arrows are available on the Home Page to help you navigate easily between the Springboard and infolet dashboard pages. A bigger Navigator Menu has improved usability, more themes for customization are included, and a bigger work area has more space to maneuver and provide better visibility. The interface is also more consistent with other Oracle products, such as Fusion Applications.

After the interface is released, all new customers will use the new lighter-colored Sky Blue theme, and existing customers will keep their current theme. You can switch themes using Tools, and then Appearance.

Removal of Instance Name from Predefined Role Names

Currently, the predefined role names displayed in the Access Control screens of EPM Cloud environments prefix the instance name to the role name in INSTANCE_NAME ROLE_NAME format. They are also stored in this format in the snapshots, making it difficult to migrate snapshots from one instance to another.

To facilitate the migration of security across EPM Cloud environments, Oracle plans to rename predefined role names displayed within EPM Cloud applications by removing the instance name prefix in the August update. For example, if the instance name is Planning1, predefined role names are Planning1 Service Administrator, Planning1 Power User, Planning1 User and Planning1 Viewer. The new role names will be Service Administrator, Power User, User, and Viewer.

NOTE: This change does not affect how the role names are displayed in the MyServices customer portal.

This change will affect customers who use the predefined roles for managing application-level provisioning and access to artifacts; you will need to reassign such assignments using the updated role name after the roles are renamed. This change makes it easy to migrate EPM Cloud artifacts across environments.

Additionally, all predefined role names; Domain Administrator, Service Administrator, Power User, User, and Viewer will be treated as EPM Cloud keywords, which should not be used in the name of any custom artifacts that you create; for example, group name in Access Control. If you have any group with these keywords, rename them before this change comes into effect.

This change is being implemented to address customer feedback. If you have any concerns about this change, please contact Oracle Support.

Defects Fixed

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

Considerations

Calculation Status

When you change Ownership Data that uses a Consolidation rule and then consolidate, the Calculation Status is not correct for the partner and entity.

Copying Data

When copying an entity with a Calculation Status of No Data, the target should also have a Calculation Status of No Data. The Copy Data process is incorrectly setting the Calculation Status to Impacted.

Editing Data 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.

Adding Shared members in Smart View

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.

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.

Horizontal Scroll on a Non-Tabular Form

In Supplemental Data forms, the horizontal scroll does not work on a non-tabular form, which is intended only for use on a single record. Do not use non-tabular layout if the form is meant for more than one record.

Unable to Refresh the Cube

A Cube refresh will not complete if a level 0 currency dimension member has the "Label only" data storage property, but this is not currently detected in the Dimension Editor or Metadata Validator.

Viewing Members on Seeded Forms

If you are using an Extended Dimensionality environment, on seeded forms, use the View members, such as Periodic, QTD and YTD, instead of using functions to ensure the _RULE members are not accidentally added to the forms.

Viewing the FCCS_VIEW_SYSTEM_MEMBERS

If you are using an Extended Dimensionality environment, users other than the Administrator can view the FCCS_VIEW_SYSTEM_MEMBERS and its hierarchy in the data form and Intercompany reports.

Translation Override Rule Redirection

When you create a Translation Override rule, redirection does not work properly when you use a shared Parent account for the Source. The workaround is to specify the primary Parent account.

Simplified Dimension Editor and Metadata Validation

Some of the Simplified Dimension Editor errors (cells outlined in red) are false-positive errors (that is, incorrectly reported as errors). Data Storage errors for the following members should be ignored:

  • Data Source --> All children of "FCCS_Source Entities" Entity --> "FCCS_Global Assumptions"

If you are using an Extended Dimensionality upgraded environment, the Simplified Dimension Editor does not show Dynamic Calc as an allowed value for Custom dimension parent member Data Storage. This issue does not occur in a newly-installed Extended Dimensionality environment. You can use the Classic Dimension Editor, Import Metadata, or Smart View to change the Data Storage value.

In addition, the Metadata Validator incorrectly shows validation errors for the following:

  • Shared level 0 Scenario dimension members
  • Parent members of the Scenario dimension

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.

Setting the Data Collection Period

In Supplemental Data, when setting the Data Collection Period (DCP), the Start, End, and Close dates must be inside the valid range.

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. 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.

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 there are conflicts with aliases of existing members, an error is displayed that the system cannot enable the feature. Resolve the member alias conflict, refresh the database and then enable the feature.

When 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. 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.

See Enabling Ownership Management in Applications section in Administering Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud

Smart View Summary Dialog Display

In Internet Explorer, you may experience issues using the Open Summary dialog in Smart View.

Workaround:

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

Extended Dimensionality Performance Consideration

For an Extended Dimensionality application with Ratios enabled, consolidation performance may be slower.  When you create an Extended Dimensionality application, you should not enable the “Include Ratio Calculations” feature.

Equity Pickup - Different Currencies for a Holding Company and Its Immediate Parent

In Ownership Management it is generally assumed that the Holding Company and the immediate parent (which represents the consolidated results of the Holding Company) have the same local currency. You may encounter an issue with the EPU calculations if the Holding Company does not have the same currency as its immediate parent.