5 Key EPM / NSPB Updates - November 2022
The Pivot2 team have compiled a list of some of the most useful updates to be included over the last month, that could specifically help your business process.
Please reach out for a chat by contacting us here if you would like any further information.
SUMMARY
ORACLE CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE (OCI GEN2)
1 Migration from EPM Cloud Classic to OCI (Gen 2) for Commercial Data Centers Has Started
PLANNING
2 IPM Insights Analyzer View Enhancements
3 Activity Report Enhanced with Version Status and Outline Warnings
DATA INTEGRATION
4 Quick Mode Data Synchronization
FCCS
5 Enable Consolidation and Translation with No Prompts in Data Forms
NARRATIVE REPORTING
6 Reports MemberProperty Text Function Enhanced to Return All Essbase UDA Values
7 Updated Narrative Reporting Extension for Smart View
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI GEN2)
MIGRATION FROM EPM CLOUD CLASSIC TO OCI (GEN 2) FOR COMMERCIAL DATA CENTERS HAS STARTED
As part of Oracle’s commitment to providing innovative technologies for both end users and at the infrastructure layer, Oracle has started the process of migrating all of their current EPM products from the current classic commercial data centres to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Gen2 cloud, a new platform delivering even greater performance and reliability.
What does this mean to you?
This is a mandated change underway over the next few months to standardise the Oracle infrastructure and provide improved standards of security. We are expecting the migration to be functionally seamless for the end users – with only minor updates to the URL required. How you will be impacted depends on which of the 2 options below you have chosen, and we strongly recommend taking a customer-managed approach:
1. Oracle-managed Migration
Under this option, Oracle will migrate your Classic environments to OCI in a more seamless way but with less flexibility and on a predefined schedule.
You can change the Domain Administrator and Service Administrator emails by creating a service request containing the updated information.
You cannot change the new domain name or OCI data center location.
After collecting this information, Oracle will send another notification to all Service Administrators with the timeline of when the migration will occur for these environments.
Oracle will migrate your application data, users, and other artifacts to the new OCI environments. Current URLs of Classic environments will redirect to the OCI environments. However, you will have new URLs for the My Services portal.
If you opt for Oracle-managed migration, you don’t have to do anything currently.
2. Customer-managed Migration, Pivot2 will support you through this migration
Under this option, Oracle will provide a new OCI environments equalling the current number of Classic environments. The OCI environments will have new service URLs and your Classic environments continue to work at the same time.
After six months, Oracle will terminate your Classic environments. If your migration effort is finished before that, you can request Oracle to terminate your Classic environments by creating a service request.
This option provides more flexibility and control of the migration process compared to Oracle managed migration. You will, however, have more migration tasks to perform too.
If you plan to use this option, you should start this process as soon as possible.
Business Use Case
The new architecture in OCI delivers greater performance and reliability, and a number of EPM Cloud features that are not available in Classic EPM Cloud. Some of the key benefits include:
System Admin can set up Single Sign-On (SSO) for users from one console for all Oracle products. Once set up, users will no longer need to sign into different products with different passwords.
You can now change the instance name and the URLs of your environments using My Services (OCI) to a more meaningful name that aligns with your business name.
From security perspective, you can now set your own password policy.
In OCI (Gen 2) environments, Web Application Firewall (WAF) is available out-of-the-box and protects EPM Cloud from many application layer attacks.
Our recommendation is taking the Customer-managed approach which allows for a 6-month window to schedule the migration and associated testing. We will work with you to review the reconfiguration, security testing and regression testing requirements by both Pivot2 and your internal team. The Pivot2 team will be in touch shortly to get this migration planning underway.
PLANNING
IPM INSIGHTS ANALYZER VIEW ENHANCEMENTS
The Analyzer view for IPM Insights is enhanced:
The layout is simplified so that you don't have to click Actions to take an action, such as adding a comment or opening as Ad Hoc, on an insight.
The table is enhanced to highlight the Variance column.
Business Use Case:
The layout changes help users spot the variances more easily. This latest IPM setting and table enhancements provides better user interface that you no longer need to click the action button to view or input comments. You can now type directly into the comments box on the same page. If you are running Insights to validate a user entered forecast against a machine predicted forecast you can now more easily open the form as an Ad Hoc to understand where the delta’s lie on a period by period basis.
ACTIVITY REPORT ENHANCED WITH VERSION STATUS AND OUTLINE WARNINGS
The Activity Report now displays version status next to the EPM Cloud environment version with key updates as below:
If your environment is not on the latest monthly update or weekly patch, the version status as well as the reason will be displayed.
With this update you can also see an Outline Warnings table that indicates issues that would result in bad performance of forms and reports.
Clicking on the warning takes you to EPM Cloud Operations Guide section, which helps you in fixing this issue.
Business Use Case:
Version Status – You can now easily identify and understand the reason why your environment is not on the latest monthly update or weekly patch, thereby perform version updates promptly.
Outline Warnings – Helps you identify and fix the issues that would result in bad performance of forms and reports. This was not previously available. Previously you had to manually check and investigate the errors in the system which can be time consuming, whereas now you are able to easily identify the errors and fix them quickly.
DATA INTEGRATION
QUICK MODE DATA SYNCHRONIZATION
In Data Integration you can now use Quick Mode to move data:
between Plan Types in a single EPM Cloud business process or
move data between two EPM Cloud business processes in different environments.
While Quick Mode does not support mapping, all transformation can be done using Import Expressions.
Business Use Case:
Using the Quick Mode data synchronisation, you can now copy data from Planning cube to Reporting Cube quickly without mapping if the member names are identical between the two cubes. This can be particularly useful when you only need to update certain set of data. E.g. You have completed forecasting in Planning cube, and the only data that requires update is the forecast data in Reporting cube, and you have large data volumes. Using Quick Mode to copy from Planning to Reporting will be ideal as it is a lot quicker and the performance will be significantly better.
FCCS
ENABLE CONSOLIDATION AND TRANSLATION WITH NO PROMPTS IN DATA FORMS
This feature allows you to perform the Consolidation and Translation processes from Data forms with no prompt to enter dimension members.
After you enable this feature from the Configuration task, new rules will be available that you can select to attach to a Data form. The benefit of the feature is that consolidation and translation rules can be run more quickly instead of requiring users to manually fill in the attributes each time when running the rules.
When you run the new rules from a Data form, the system will use the members defined in the cell to execute the Business Rule, without prompting you to select members.
Business Use Case:
If you are only running reports at a total consolidated level of the business then because your form will already have the correct Point Of View members, you don't have to waste time selecting members, the solution will automatically run the Consolidation and Translation based on your form member selections.
NARRATIVE REPORTING
REPORTS MEMBERPROPERTY TEXT FUNCTION ENHANCED TO RETURN ALL ESSBASE UDA VALUES
The MemberProperty text function is used to display a specified member’s property, such as associated attributes, UDAs, etc. Previously for the Essbase Data source, if there were multiple UDAs associated with a member, only one UDA was displayed using the MemberProperty text function. Now, by default all the Essbase UDA values are displayed. You can still reference individual UDAs using the optional Index parameter in the MemberProperty text function.
Below is an example of using the new feature to Return All UDAs for a member:
Return the UDAs for the Market dimension member in the current row. The syntax is placed in a text cell in the same row as the Market member:
MemberProperty("Market","UDA"):
The result is as follows:
Business Use Case:
If you have members that have more than one UDA, and you need to display all UDAs in the same report, this feature will be very useful for your reporting. Previously without this feature, the report is only able to show one UDA by using the index number (1), (2), etc. But with the new feature, you can now show all the UDAs within the same report easily. E.g. On the Entity Dimension you may have a UDA for FX and also an UDA for Geographic Region, you could then run a report returning All UDAs using MemberProperty(“FX”,”UDA”) and MemberProperty(“Geographic_Region”,”UDA”), that shows the Entity such as Pivot2 Pty Ltd with its FX of AUD and its Geographic Region of APAC.
UPDATED NARRATIVE REPORTING EXTENSION FOR SMART VIEW
An updated Narrative Reporting extension for Oracle Smart View for Office is now available to download and install. This update includes general improvements and defect fixes.
Business Value:
Having the latest Narrative Reporting extension for Smart View installed will ensure that you have access to the latest improvements and defect fixes.