Revision History

This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates are logged below, with the most recent updates at the top.

Date	What’s Changed	Notes
05 DEC 2016		Initial Document Creation

Common Technologies and User Experience

This section contains an overview of some common features available in Release 12.

User Experience

Oracle focuses on delivering an exceptional user experience across Oracle Applications Cloud. Our highest priority is creating a compelling and pleasing user interface that provides only what you need right when you need it.

Financials Setup Screens

Some fields, buttons and regions have been moved on the Financials setup pages in order to provide a more effective and accessible work area on any device.

A new set of icons with a simplified appearance has been introduced, to access various functions and perform actions.

End user Personalization of the Navigator and Springboard

Personalize the Navigator and springboard to show or hide the Navigator menu items or springboard icons for navigation. Personalizations impact only the user making the change while preserving these changes across sessions.

Pagination Dots

Enhance the home page experience by embedding full page Business Intelligence dashboards. You can use these additional dashboard pages for a specific role, enhanced analytics insight, and so on.

Annoucements Preview

Preview your announcements before posting them to the Announcements panel on the home page.

Notification Actions

Enhance your bell notifications dialog box to include custom and system actions.

Applications Security

Oracle Fusion Applications Security provides a single console where IT Security Managers and Administrators can perform various functions including user lifecycle management, role definition, security policy management (both functional and data), role hierarchy maintenance, username and password policy administration, and certificate management. The console also enables users to simulate the effect of security changes, to run security reports, and download a connector for integration with Microsoft Active Directory.

In Release 12, Oracle Fusion Applications Security offers several new capabilities that offer customers the following benefits:

• A Simplified User Experience for the IT Security Manager - Prior to Release 12, security administration functions were distributed across Oracle Identity Management (OIM) and Authorization Policy Manager (APM). In Release 12, these functions are delivered through a single interface – the Security Console. OIM and APM are no longer available in R12.



• Easy Integration with Identity and Access Management (IDM/IAM) Systems - New capabilities to synchronize user account information with Identity and Access Management (IDM/IAM) systems. This synchronization enables the delivery of a Single Sign-On experience through these systems.

For Microsoft Active Directory (AD) and Oracle Identity Management (OIM), customers can download and install connectors that will automatically synchronize user account information between Oracle Fusion Applications and these IDM systems. As in Release 11, customers must continue to log a Service Request (SR) to set up federated Single Sign-On (SSO) between these systems. Once federation is enabled, the connectors will synchronize the information.

Release 12 also delivers a REST API based on the SCIM (System for Cross-Domain Identity Management) standard. Customers can use this API to create user accounts, modify user attributes (e.g. email), enable/disable users, and fetch user account and role information.

• An Upgrade-Safe Reference Role Model - Starting in Release 12, pre-defined roles that are shipped with Oracle Applications Security will be locked down. Customers will not be able to modify the functional and data security policies that are associated with these roles. They can, however, add new data security policies to these pre-defined roles. In addition, privileges and resources are protected. Users cannot create or modify these artifacts.

Locking down these security artifacts enables safe upgrades to pre-defined roles, since the possibility of conflict with customer introduced changes to these roles is now eliminated. This, in turn enables customers to safely adopt new enhancements that may be delivered with pre-defined roles in future releases. As in Release 11, customers can make copies of pre-defined roles and freely customize these copies.

• Enhanced Set of Self-Service Capabilities - Administrators are able to manage the entire user lifecycle. They can customize how notifications are generated and sent for various user lifecycle events including user account creation, and password management.

Administrators can also tailor username and password generation by choosing from a list of shipped policies.

Security Console

Streamline use of some of the functionality that you have used in the past with the Security Console. The Security Console now includes the following functionality:

• User Account information such as password, lock and unlock are managed in the security console.
• Roles are now managed directly in the Security Console and are no longer managed within Oracle Identity Manager or Authorization Policy Manager.
• Privileges are predefined by Oracle and are no longer created or managed by the user.
• You can now view, create or change roles without first selecting an application.

Resources are now granted through privilege and are no longer granted directly to Roles.

Improved Data Security

A new data security model was introduced in Release 11 that only applied to new Oracle ERP Cloud customers. This security model eliminated the need for data role templates and the generation of data roles. Instead, new customers directly assigned users a job role and security context using the new Manage Data Access for Users page.

In Release 12, all customers, including those upgrading from earlier releases, will be migrated to this simplified security model. Users will now be assigned to the appropriate data sets using the new Manage Data Access for Users page, without the need for assigning data roles generated from data role templates. Since data roles are no longer used, they will not be automatically generated upon the creation of a new data security element, such as a new business unit, a new ledger, etc. All customers simply create their setup objects, such as ledgers, business units, asset books, etc. and then use the Manage Data Access for Users page to assign users the appropriate job role and security context and value.

This new feature is available to all products in Oracle ERP Cloud, including Financials, Procurement, Project Portfolio Management, Supply Chain Management, and Incentive Compensation.

User Account Management

Create, manage, and assign user accounts using the Security Console. You can also search, retrieve, and manage user accounts automatically created for employees, contingent workers, supplier contacts, or partner contacts.

Administrator Password Management

Manage passwords of other user accounts as an administrator. You can auto-generate or manually enter a password for a user account. You can also define password lifecycle and complexity policies. Passwords will be automatically validated against these policies.

User Password Management (Self-Service)

Manage your own user account password. Your password will be automatically validated against the defined password lifecycle and complexity policies.

User Account Locking

Lock user accounts as an administrator. If you lock a user account, you will be temporarily preventing the user from logging in with that user account. You can also unlock a locked user account.

Enhanced Role Visualization

View only certain components of a role in the graphic visualizer. You can view only the privileges, aggregate privileges or roles assigned to a role. You can also view the graphic visualizer in full screen mode and pan over a specific region in the graph.

For complex roles, these features enable you to reduce the amount of information visualized and to focus on the area within the role hierarchy that requires your attention.

Tabular Role HieRarchy View

View role hierarchies in a tabular view. You can switch between the graphic visualizer view and the tabular view. You can also export the data you view in the tabular view.

Search in Role Hierarchy Visualization

Search and quickly locate security artifacts (nodes) in the role hierarchy visualization. You can search for privileges, roles or users in the visualization.

User Name Generation Rules

Define user name generation rules that will be used to auto-generate the user name when a user is created. You can define user name generation rules to be based on the user’s first and last names, first initial plus last name, e-mail or person or party number. You can also choose to use a system generated user name if the rule fails to generate a user name.

Password Policies

Define policies for password management. These policies can define the duration for various password lifecycle events like password expiration and password warning generation. You can also set the complexity of generated passwords by choosing from a pre-defined list of rules.

Notification Templates

Define custom notification templates for your user account life cycle events. You can also use pre-defined notification templates. These templates will be used to generate notifications for events like user account created, user password reset and user password expiry warning.

Upgrade-Safe Management of Factory Shipped Roles

Identify a predefined (factory shipped) Oracle role when viewing the role. Predefined Oracle roles are locked and you cannot customize the Oracle delivered functional and data security policies associated with these roles. You can, however, add data security policies to these roles.

Bridge for Microsoft Active Directory

Simplify Single Sign-On with Microsoft Active Directory by downloading and installing the Active Directory Bridge from the Security Console. Automatically synchronize user account information between Oracle Fusion Applications Security and Microsoft Active Directory.

User Password Changes Audit Report

Generate a report that lists password changes made by users. The report can be generated for changes made by specific users or for all changes made during a specific period.

Integrate Custom Identity Management Solution

Integrate optionally with your Identity Management solution for user and role management using industry standard System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) REST APIs and ATOM feeds.

Password Reset

Enhanced password reset flow. Now a notification email will be sent to the user who requests a password reset. The user will be required to click on this link within a specific period of time to change the password. This replaces the previous flow where users were required to answer a series of challenge questions to reset the password.

Integration

Financials Data Extract - Outbound Integration

The Financials Data Extract takes complete or incremental financials data from the Oracle ERP Cloud to seamlessly integrate with on-premise, legacy, or other cloud systems. Business users can launch the outbound extract process from either

1. the Oracle ERP Cloud Scheduled Processes page or
2. automatically by using the ERP Integration Service. 

The following table outlines the key primary financials data extracts available for business enterprises:

Application	Data Extract
Payables	Payables Transactions Extract
Payables	Payments Extract
Receivables	Receivables Transactions Extract
Receivables	Receivables Adjustments Extract
Receivables	Receipts Analysis Extract
Receivables	Receivables Billing History Extract
General Ledger	Journals Extract
General Ledger	Trial Balance Extract
Tax	Financial Tax Extract

Partner Transaction Tax Integrations with Oracle ERP Cloud

Oracle ERP Cloud integration with comprehensive transaction tax management solutions provided by tax partners is currently available for tax content, tax calculation and determination, and tax reporting. Customers can elect to leverage these partner transaction tax solutions independently or together in unison, depending upon the different transaction tax needs sought across unique market segments and industries.

The following summary outlines the key benefits in adopting partner transaction tax management solutions:

Oracle Planning and Budgeting Integration

Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service enables organizations of all sizes to quickly adopt world-class planning and budgeting applications, driving world-class functionality beyond finance across the enterprise, with flexible deployment options and virtually no learning curve. Integration of Planning and Budgeting with General Ledger allows users to take advantage of a joint offering which provides best in class functionality for both budgeting and accounting.

The integration between Planning and Budgeting and the General Ledger keeps budget and actual amounts synchronized for financial reporting and analysis. You can use a seamless method to integrate Oracle Financials Cloud general ledger data with the Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud if you use Oracle ERP Cloud Release 11 or higher. This updated integration allows you to simply pick the desired source ledger from the Oracle Financials Cloud general ledger, set up a few simple mappings and then push a button to pull the data into the EPM Cloud applications. This integration can be run manually, or scheduled for a specific time, and does not require manual steps in the Oracle Financials Cloud or the EPM Cloud services.

Extensibility

Configuring the user experience is easier than ever, with Oracle's modern cloud extensibility tools.

Large Icons

Choose to select small or large springboard icons with this new option.

Financials

Oracle Financials Cloud provides an integrated financial management service that automates, streamlines, and manages financial processes end-to-end. Oracle Financials Cloud simplifies controls, increases productivity, and improves decision-making with superior insight. It delivers broad business capabilities including general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, fixed assets, expenses, collections, and cash management, as well as centralized accounting, tax, payment, and intercompany engines.

Advanced Collections

Oracle Advanced Collections provides a comprehensive solution to running day-to-day collection operations. It automates the collection process, allowing agents to prioritize the tasks assigned to them. An agent can review customer information, record promises, submit payments, and request disputes. Strategy management capabilities automatically identify and apply a list of manual and automated collections tasks to improve the collection experience for your customers. Collectors receive accurate, up to date information based on processes that run in the background.

Collections Work Area

Manage work assigned to individuals more efficiently using the Advanced Collections Work Area. Collections Agents can prioritize delinquent customers, promises, strategy tasks and activities, and review collections data which is conveniently summarized into four new information tiles. These infotiles assist in rapidly navigating work items assigned to the Collections Agent. Click on any infotile to review the data or drill down into customer detail for more complex collection activities. The summary information on each infotile appears in the corresponding detail table for your review.

• Delinquent Customers infotile: Summary information about the number of delinquent customers assigned to you, including customer aging, overdue balances, work status, last paid date, assigned collections strategy and collections score. The corresponding detail table allows you to select an individual customer to easily sort columns, filter specific information, or drill down to take action.
• Promises infotile: Review a summary of both the number of broken and open promises. The detail table displays individual promises made by your assigned customers. You can also review the status, date and amount of those promises from the table.
• Strategy Tasks infotile: Review the number of manual strategies and assigned tasks. The detail table displays a list of the individual items and their due dates.
• Activities infotile: Review the number of collector activities. The detail table displays a list of the individual items and their due dates.

Case Folder

Increase your collections efficiency, and save time and effort for customers with a large number of similar invoices that can be grouped into a Case Folder.

Group transactions into a Case Folder to manage collection efforts as if they were a single transaction. Once the transactions are in a Case Folder, you no longer need to drill into individual transactions. Using the case number you can use the new Case Folder interface to take action against the set of transactions. You can use the simplified search and select interface to add or remove transactions from the. The Case Folder also allows you to view the total amount in the case, assign a status and case type, create promises, and make payments. The collector can also create notes against the Case Folder.

Assets

Oracle Assets simplifies fixed asset accounting tasks and automates global asset management. Oracle Assets provides a unified source of information from both Oracle Applications and external feeder systems to provide global visibility into your assets. Oracle Assets streamlines standard tasks, such as additions, transfers, disposals, reclassifications, financial adjustments, and legacy data conversions. Standard accounting, operational, and registry reports are available for ease of reconciliation and analysis.

Assets Statutory Reports

Optimize the experience for business users with new Assets statutory reports.

• Expedite depreciation reconciliation with General Ledger by reviewing depreciation expense by asset account and balancing segment for each tax year.
• Maintain control of assets by tracking asset sources. Track new asset additions or cost adjustments by their source, including the related invoice details for any period range.
• Comply with US Inland Revenue Property Tax Sections 1245 and 1250 by tracking amounts for sale or exchange held longer than the capital gain thresholds.

Expenses

Oracle Expenses is an expense management solution that streamlines and automates expenses processes. Employees can quickly enter expense reports using simplified online and spreadsheet entry, as well as mobile entry for both iOS and Android devices. Configurable rules automatically enforce policies for approvals and corporate expenses to control enterprise spending. Oracle Expenses also supports corporate card transactions and electronic image processing for expedited reimbursements.

Global Per Diem Policies

Enforce statutory compliance with global per diem policies with new capabilities such as time-based rates, first and last day rates, same day rates, long-term travel rates, and weekend and holiday rates. Additionally, Oracle Expenses supports meal and accommodation deductions and per diem eligibility criteria. To simplify the administration of rates, Oracle Expenses provides a spreadsheet-based upload.

Payments   

Oracle Payments provides a highly configurable and robust engine to disburse and receive payments. As the central payment engine, Oracle Payments processes invoice payments from Oracle Payables and settlements against credit cards and bank accounts from Oracle Receivables. Oracle Payments provides the infrastructure needed to connect applications with third party payment systems and financial institutions.

Payment Approval

Improve control over payments made to suppliers by submitting payment process requests for management review and approval before sending payments to suppliers. Approvers receive approval requests via e-mail or online payment approval process notifications. With the payment approval process, you can prioritize payments to ensure that funds are available and used effectively.

Receivables

Oracle Receivables provides a comprehensive solution for running day-to-day accounts receivable operations. It includes services for customer billing and payment activities, revenue recognition and adjustments, reviewing receivable balances, and reconciliation to the general ledger. Oracle Receivables provides SmartReceipts, an automated cash application solution that is unique in the industry. Role-based work areas provide vivid, real-time displays of transaction and customer account information for active monitoring of all billing and receivables activities.

Recurring Billing

Automate the generation of recurring invoices based on the negotiated terms of a contract. The Recurring Billing process begins by creating a bill plan record that includes billing frequency, contract dates, customer information, payment terms, and the items and memo lines to be billed on each invoice. Generate invoices from the bill plan based on the billing frequency and bill plan dates. Each invoice provides a consistent record of goods and services provided in the given billing period. You can review and update the bill plan to reflect changes to the contract terms. The Recurring Billing feature allows creation, review, and editing of bill plans, and monitors the historical activity of each bill plan.

Installment Update

Update the installments on individual invoices. When necessary, the unpaid installment payment schedule for an invoice can be modified according to customer requirements.

Transactional Business Intelligence (OTBI)

Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence (OTBI) is a real time, self-service reporting solution for all Oracle Financials Cloud users to create ad-hoc reports and perform analysis to improve decision-making. Queries and reports are executed in real-time against the transactions.

Improved Payable and Receivable Reconciliation Drilldown Scalability

New tables improve the performance of drilling from GL reconciliation differences to Payables and Receivables activities. A single action link quickly displays the transactions that are the source of the difference. This prevents data mismatch between accounting summaries and difference drilldowns.

Usability Improvements for Assets

Assets subject areas for depreciation and asset transactions have been redesigned to better support the creation of asset reports. Transaction data has been summarized to improve performance.

Usability Improvements for General Ledger

Report authors can build report content more effectively with several usability improvements in General Ledger subject areas. Hidden dimensions have been un-nested for easier access. Many dimension folders have been re-organized to more easily identify dimensional attributes.

Descriptive Flexfields

New global descriptive flexfields have been added to the subject areas for Receivables, General Ledger, Globalization and Expenses to expand the available transaction data for reporting. As an example, customers can now report on country-specific information.

Improved Support for Audit

Auditing requirements are better supported by the addition of tracking columns in reporting. Reports can now include information about when transactions were created and modified and by whom. This capability is available in the subject areas for Payables, Receivables, Budgetary Control, Cash Management, and Subledger Accounting.

Subject Area Search (New Feature in OBIEE 11.1.1.9)

Boost a report author’s productivity with new search capabilities in subject areas. Locating a field no longer requires you to navigate through the entire subject area. You can perform a search and directly add the search result to the report.

Save A Column (New Feature in OBIEE 11.1.1.9)

In earlier releases, new columns created while building a report were available only in the report that was created. Now, the new column can be saved in the BI Catalog and is available for re-use in other reports.

New Print & Export Options (New Feature in OBIEE 11.1.1.9)

New report print options improve formatting and readability of report information.

HTML5 Graph Style (New Feature in OBIEE 11.1.1.9)

OTBI graphs can now be viewed in web browsers that do not support Flash Player. The OTBI default graph style has been changed from Flash to HTML5.

Regional and Country-Specific Features

Oracle Financials Cloud provides features that integrate with your procure-to-pay and order-to-cash business flows for regional and country-specific statutory and business requirements.

Financials for Latin America

Oracle Financials for Latin America supports country-specific features and functions for the Latin America region.

Mexico

Electronic Accounting Compliance

Government regulations in Mexico require companies to electronically submit accounting information in a standard chart of accounts format to the Tax Administration Services (SAT) internet portal through a registered e-mail account.

• Use the Chart of Accounts for Mexico to define a chart of accounts in the format specified by the fiscal authority. Associate the accounts to your company chart of accounts in order to generate your accounting information in the specified format. Schedule the Chart of Accounts for Mexico process to extract accounting information in the format specified by the fiscal authority.
• Analyze and verify your accounting information using Oracle Hyperion Financial Reporting Studio to generate the Trial Balance Report for Mexico. You can modify the report based on requirements from the federal government.
• Extract accounting information for transactions posted in different subledgers in the format specified by the fiscal authority using the Journals for Mexico report.
• Generate the Auxiliary Report for Mexico by using Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence (OTBI). This report extracts the accounting details of transactions and journals posted during the period in the format specified by the fiscal authorities. The report can be re-configured to align with changing requirements from the federal government.

Electronic Invoicing Compliance

Comply with electronic invoicing requirements for Mexico using Oracle Business Intelligence capabilities that:

• allow your fiscal implementation partners to define reports that extract information in the required format for submission to fiscal authorities. The report extract includes all information needed to submit reports and the report formats may be modified as needed to meet the current or future reporting requirements of the federal government.
• provide a web service to automatically record approved invoice numbers in the global descriptive flexfield of any receivable transaction in order to maintain the association required for reporting.