- An Overview of Workforce Modeling Feature in Oracle Fusion Application
- Oracle Form Personalizations Training
- Oracle Building Interfaces with ADF I Training
- ORACLE RECEIVABLES TECHNO FUNCTIONAL Training
- Oracle Fusion Financials - The Enterprise Structure, Location, and Legal Jurisdiction
- Oracle Fusion Financials - Implementation Users
- Oracle Fusion Financials - Implementation Projects
- Oracle Fusion Financials - Overview of Functional Setup Manager
- R12 Financial Over View Training
- Oracle Fusion Financials - Fusion Apps User Interface (Part 2)
- Oracle Fusion Financials - Fusion Apps User Interface (Part 1)
- Oracle Fusion Financials - Financial Enterprise Structures and Fusion Security
- Oracle Fusion Financials - Overview of Fusion Applications and Fusion Terminologies
- Oracle Demantra : Predictive Trade Planning Training
- Creating Project and Interface in ODI
- Initiating Self Service Transactions in Oracle Fusion Application
- Adding a New Category and Page in Oracle Fusion Application
- Solution for error Got minus one from a read call while connecting to Oracle Database remotely
- Implementing table to table Integration in ODI
- Creating Flow Patterns in Fusion Applications
- Unlocking XELSYSADM account in OAM with Fusion applications
- Creating Multilingual Reports in Oracle Fusion Applications A Worked Example
- Creating Repository in ODI
- Setting Up User Preferences in Oracle Fusion Applications
- Subscribe to My Oracle Apps Articles by Email
- OIM Installation on Linux
- A How-To Article About Creating a Master-Detail OTBI Analysis
- An Overview of Oracle Fusion Receivables
- Modifying the Look and Feel of Fusion Application
- Need and Importance of Fusion Dashboard Pages
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Posted: 01 Jul 2016 09:47 AM PDT
Introduction
Before we start with detailing the steps required as well as the impact of the same let-us try to understand What Workforce Modeling is and Why is it Required.
Workforce Modeling as the name implies is a way of rearranging your team members in a specific design.
Workforce modeling provides managers and human resource (HR) specialists with the ability to plan, model, and execute workforce changes using a graphical tool.
One can perform the following actions on workers and managers:
1) Promote
2) Transfer
3) Terminate
4) Change manager
5) Change location
We can move people with or without direct reports either by dragging and dropping or using the table view and selecting a new manager. You can create vacancies in the model, and on final approval they're added to the database. Use an existing model or create a new one to terminate workers.
We can even review the impact of planned terminations using the analytics. The modeled changes are saved to the Oracle Fusion database when the model is approved.
In a real life scenario it is very difficult for any individual to take promotion, transfer and other aligned changes. Workforce modeling provides a graphical too enabling lift and shift movement whereby one is even able to analyze the impact before the impact actually takes place.
Since workforce modeling is associated with assignment changes it does has to follow some approval rules and there are certain stages before the entire process gets completed.
Security Aspect
Line managers and HR specialists have access to Workforce Modeling. You can access all the Workforce Modeling features if you are either an author or the top manager of a model. If you try to access the same using an Implementation Role you would encounter an error as shown below:
To access the model as the top manager, the author of the model can give you access in the model properties. HR representatives can edit the model, and other approvers can open and view the model.
The following rules define who the default approvers are:
Workforce Modeling Status
Once a Workforce Model is designed it may have either of the below mentioned status. It could be in either of Draft, Pending, Rejected, Returned or Completed status. A complete description in tabular format below:
Impact of Workforce Modeling
Once the newly created workforce model is approved, the relevant assignments are updated using the model effective date. Currently, notifications aren't issued for this. Role provisioning Security occurs automatically if it's set up accordingly. For example, if the line manager role is enabled for auto-provisioning, then a user who becomes a manager is given the line manager role automatically. Vacancy changes are reflected in the system on the date on which a Model is approved and not on the Date on which the Model was created/designed.
So that is it from a theoretical perspective, let us now try to create a Model and verify whether the results match with the concept as described above.
As a first step login to the application with appropriate login credentials ( A user with HR Specialist / Line Manager role)
  
Next populate the following data in the new popup window:
Once you populate the above details the popup window should appear as below:
Click on the ‘Continue’ button and you would land-up in a new screen which would display an Organization Chart:
Now, you may expand individual Employee Cell and perform actions as shown:
Also you may pick a specific employee from a specific manager and move him/her to another manager. In the below screen you may see how you may pick an employee (Landy Madrid) in this case from One Manager(Brian Joseph) to Another (Frank Pukta).
The moment you perform this operation a new window opens up with prepopulated fields (based on the actions performed by you ) and it would look as:
Click on the OK button and the operation is complete.
We will perform one similar action so that we have Two Transfers and post that when we return to the screen it would appear as below:
Note the small infolets along with relevant info displayed on the header section. Each one of them shows the impact of this reorganization and we would try to understand the same better by taking our cursor to each one of them.
Let-us begin with the first one (The Numeral ‘2’)
A click on the same shows up the following details:
And the above window does clearly shows that there has been a transfer for Simon Gilbert to HR Service Desk US and also 2 Vacancies have opened up for Human Resources Specialist post and other relevant details. Nice way of information sharing isn’t it.
But let us see at other
A mouse click on numeral ‘1’ (for Alerts) shows up below info:
The ‘Headcount’ one is of particular interest as it summarizes pretty much everything ( movement from one manager to another denoted by additions and substractions, vacancy created, no of contingent workers which have moved across as well as the current count).
 
Similarly if we move on to the next one ‘Worker Cost’ it would display us the annualized salary of the workers. An important point to note is that the change figure due to the Transfer operation proposed as a Data Modeling activity has not impacted in any change (Employees have been transferred from one Manager to another without a change in remuneration and also while 2 vacancies have been created none of the individuals have been hired till date which also ensure that the Worker Cost remains the same).
With this we would move on ‘Predictive Effectiveness’ and a click on the same displays following info:
Precise Information served in form of specific analytic reports, I would say.
Really helpful for top executive to make quick changes and analyze the impact the same is going to have not only from a Cost perspective but also from a point of effectiveness and utilization of an individual.
And I would end this article now with a hope that this was able to demonstrate the Workforce Modeling Feature and showcase the capabilities of the same. Having said so do take some time and try this in your environment and feel free to share your findings and experiences.
Thank you for your time and have a nice day….
Good Bye…….
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Posted: 01 Jul 2016 08:01 AM PDT
The Form Personalization feature allows you to fundamentally alter the behavior of the product that Oracle ships and access any and all data. Since this feature allows you to change and alter Forms-based screens, including changing properties, executing built-ins, displaying messages, and adding menu entries, this feature should only be made available to trusted users. After completing this course you should be able to work with GLOBAL variables, understand Oracle Forms Query-by-Example(QBE) mode, create special menu entries, and ‘ZOOM’ to other functions.
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Posted: 30 Jun 2016 10:48 AM PDT
Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) is a new and groundbreaking Java EE development framework that is supported and enabled by Oracle JDeveloper 11g. Oracle ADF simplifies Java EE development by minimizing the need to write code that implements the application’s infrastructure. It allows developers to focus on the features of the actual application. Java EE is a standard, robust, scalable, and secure platform that forms the basis for many of today’s enterprise applications. This course is aimed at developers seeking to build Fusion web applications using Oracle ADF. Participants use Oracle JDeveloper 11g to build, test and deploy an end-to-end application. The data model is built with ADF Business Components and the user interface is built with ADF Faces. During the course, participants learn to build each part of the application with the Fusion technology stack for deployment to the WebLogic Server.
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Posted: 30 Jun 2016 04:38 AM PDT
{tab Course Contents | orange}
{tab-l1 Day 1 | orange}
Introduction
What is ERP ? , comparison of Oracle Apps with other ERPS
Types of Roles , Types of projects, AIM documents Oracle Apps file structure, database structure and 3-tier architecture Application Object Library Levels of Oracle Applications, Creating users, WHO columns, Creating responsibilities Menu construction, Defining concurrent program Concurrent program with parameters, Creating Value sets, incompatibilities Scheduling concurrent program, Creating request group, Creating request set Concurrent program creation using API Module Overviews
Inventory Module flow with base tables
Accounts Receivable module flow with base tables Order Management module flow with base tables
{tab-l1 Day 2 | green}
Reports
Report development process, Report registration process
Bind parameters, lexical parameters, reports with value set, Building report manually Using repeating frames, Summary columns , Standard report customization Interfaces
Introduction to Interfaces, working with Out Bound Interfaces, using UTL_FILE package
Inbound Interface process, Working with SQL*Loader tool Different option in SQL *Loader tool, bad file, discard file Using Interface table approach Using API Approach
{tab-l1 Day 3 | red}
Conversions
Introduction to conversions, Creation of staging table
Developing the validation package, Explaining the real time project code. Completing the conversion task, Differences between Inbound interfaces and Conversions Forms
Form development process using TEMPLATE.FMB , Form registration process
Form personalization Using Custom.pll
{tab-l1 Day 4 | blue}
Workflows
Workflow Introduction, Workflow development process, running the workflow
Sending notifications, branching the workflow using resultout variable XML Publisher
Introduction to XML publisher, Report development process
Creating reports for multiple rows, Creating Data definitions, Creating templates
{/tabs}
{tab Enroll | orange}
{tab Training Hours | red}
5-6 Hrs starting from 5:30pm Indian Standard Time {/tabs}  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Posted: 30 Jun 2016 01:50 AM PDT
This tutorial deals with Oracle Fusion Financials, and how it functions. In this tutorial,we look at the definition of the enterprise structure in Oracle Fusion.
Defining the Enterprise Structure
One of the most critical decisions for any project is the enterprise structure. As discussed before, the Enterprise is on top of the structure. There can be only one enterprise for a project in Fusion.
The next step after the creation of an implementation project and implementation users is to configure the enterprise structure of the project. The following steps detail the method of configuring the enterprise structure:
Fig. 1 - The required implementation project
Fig. 2 - The ‘Manage Enterprise HCM Information’ task
Fig. 3 - The details of the enterprise
Fig. 4 - The ‘Update’ and ‘Correct’ options to change the details of the enterprise
Fig. 5 - After clicking on ‘Update’ or ‘Correct,’ all of the fields will become editable
Managing Locations
To create a location for the enterprise, follow the steps detailed below:
Fig. 6 - The ‘Manage Locations’ task
Fig. 7 - Creating a location for the enterprise
Fig. 8 - Entering the basic details and location information
Fig. 9 - Entering the contact details and shipping details of the location
Fig. 10 - The submission prompt
Fig. 11 - The confirmation message
Managing Legal Jurisdictions
A jurisdiction is a physical territory, such as a group of countries, country, state, county, or parish, where a particular piece of legislation applies. French Labour Law, Singapore Transactions Tax Law, and U.S. Income Tax Laws are some examples of particular legislations that apply to legal entities operating in different countries’ jurisdictions. Judicial authority may be exercised within a jurisdiction.
The following steps detail how to manage legal jurisdictions in an implementation project in Oracle Fusion:
Fig. 12 - The ‘Manage Legal Jurisdictions’ task
Fig. 13 - Searching for a territory
Fig. 14 - Searching and selecting the territory
Fig. 15 - The search results of the jurisdiction search
Fig. 16 - Viewing and editing the details of the legal jurisdiction
Managing Legal Addresses
The next step in configuring the enterprise structure of the project is to manage the legal addresses of the enterprise. The following steps detail the method of managing the legal addresses:
Fig. 17 - The ‘Manage Legal Addresses’ task
Fig. 18 - The ‘Manage Legal Addresses’ task page. The ‘Create’ icon is circled
Fig. 19 - Creating a legal address
(The next tutorial explains about legal entities in the enterprise)
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Posted: 30 Jun 2016 01:43 AM PDT
This tutorial deals with Oracle Fusion Financials, and how it functions. In this tutorial,we look at the creation of implementation users in Oracle Fusion.
Creating Implementation Users
Implementation users are the ones who view, access, and manage the implementation projects in the Fusion application. To create implementation users, follow the steps detailed below:
Fig. 1 - The required implementation project
Fig. 2 - The ‘Create Implementation Users’ task
Fig. 3 - The ‘Oracle Identity Manager - Self Service’ window
Fig. 4 - The ‘Oracle Identity Manager - Delegated Administration’ window
Fig. 5 - Entering the details of the implementation user to be created
Fig. 6 - Searching and selection the organisation
Assigning Roles to the User
After creating a user, roles have to be assigned to him/her. To do so, follow the steps detailed below:
Fig. 7 - After the successful creation of the user
Fig. 8 - Assigning roles to the user
Fig. 9 - Searching for the ‘Employee’ role
Fig. 10 - Adding three roles at once
Searching for Users
In order to search for users in the system, follow the steps below:
Fig. 11 - The ‘Advanced Search - Users’ link
Fig. 12 - Searching for a user
(The next tutorial explains how to configure the enterprise structure of a project.)
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Posted: 29 Jun 2016 09:59 PM PDT
This tutorial deals with Oracle Fusion Financials, and how it functions. In this tutorial,we look at the creation and management of implementation projects in Oracle Fusion.
Manage Implementation Projects
The next step to be undertaken after selecting the offerings in Setup and Maintenance is to manage the projects in which the offerings are being implemented, i.e. the implementation projects.
What Is an Implementation Project?
An implementation project is the list of setup tasks that need to be completed to implement selected offerings and options. First, a project is created by selecting the offerings and options that the organisation wants to implement together. The project is then managed as a single unit throughout the implementation lifecycle. These tasks will be assigned to users and their completion will be tracked using the project management tools.
Therefore, an implementation is nothing but a list of tasks to be performed together that are grouped as a unit. For example, an organisation may choose to create a single implementation project for Human Capital Management, Financials, and Supply Chain Management. Or it may choose to create three separate implementation projects for the three offerings.
Furthermore, there may be multiple implementation projects inside the financials department itself. All of these implementations are at instance level.
Creating an Implementation Project
To create an implementation project in the Fusion application, follow the steps below:
Fig. 1 - The ‘Manage Implementation Projects’ task
 
Fig. 2 - The ‘Manage Implementation Projects’ page. The Create icon is circled
Fig. 3 - Entering the basic information of the implementation project
Fig. 4 - Selecting the offerings to be included in the implementation project
Once you are done creating an implementation project, you can continue configuring the tasks under the project. To view the individual tasks in the implementation project, click on its name from the main list of search results on the Manage Implementation Projects page.
Fig. 5 - The created implementation project shows up in the main list
Click on the arrow next to the name of the offering to view all of the task lists and tasks that come under it. An asterisk (*) next to a task list name denotes that there is at least one task under it that needs to be configured mandatorily. Most of the tasks are ordered according to the generally accepted sequence to be followed when configuring them.
Fig. 6 - Expanding the task list to view the individual tasks
Tasks in an Implementation Project
In order to configure and run tasks after creating an implementation project, first go to the required implementation project by clicking on its name from the Manage Implementation Projects page.
Fig. 7 - The required implementation project
The ‘Run User and Roles Synchronization Process’ Task
Oracle Identity Management (OIM) maintains Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) user accounts for users of Oracle Fusion applications. OIM also stores the definitions of abstract, job, and data roles, and holds information about roles provisioned to users. During implementation, any existing information about users, roles, and roles provisioned to users must be copied from the LDAP directory to the Oracle Fusion Applications tables. Once the Oracle Fusion Applications tables are initialised with this information, it is maintained automatically. To perform the initiation, this process should be executed.
To run this task, click on the Go to Task icon (circled in the screenshot below) next to the task name in the task list.
Fig. 8 - The ‘Run User and Roles Synchronisation Process’ task
Click on the Submit button on the page that follows.
Fig. 9 - Submitting the ‘Run User and Roles Synchronisation Process’ task
Fig. 10 - Confirmation of the task being submitted
To check the status of this process, go to the Scheduled Processes page under Tools in the Navigator menu.
Fig. 11 - The ‘Scheduled Processes’ link in the Navigator menu
Click on the Refresh button (circled in the screenshot below). The status of the process will change from Running to Completed, and finally to Succeeded upon successful completion of the process.
Fig. 12 - The status of the process tells that it is successful
(The next tutorial will discuss about the creation of Implementation Users)
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Posted: 29 Jun 2016 09:40 PM PDT
This tutorial deals with Oracle Fusion Financials, and how it functions. In this tutorial,we look at an overview of the Functional Setup Manager (FSM) in Oracle Fusion.
The Functional Setup Manager (FSM)
The Functional Setup Manager (FSM) in Oracle Fusion is a centralised place where configurations are done for the user. It is also called as the Setup and Maintenance work area.
The Oracle Fusion Functional Setup Manager enables rapid and efficient planning, implementation, and deployment of Oracle Fusion Applications through self service administration.
By using the Functional Setup Manager, the organisation can:
The Functional Setup Manager is used to implement all Oracle Fusion Applications through a standard and consistent process.
In addition, the Functional Setup Manager allows application developers to manage application design objects, which are the core components of Oracle Fusion Applications, and to add and modify the functionality of the Oracle Fusion Applications.
Navigating to the Functional Setup Manager
There are two ways to navigate to the Functional Setup Manager:
Fig, 1 - The Navigator icon in the Global Area is circled
Fig. 2 - The ‘Setup and Maintenance’ link on the Navigator menu
Fig. 3 - The name of the user logged in
Fig. 4 - The ‘Setup and Maintenance’ link on the Settings and Actions menu
An important point to note about the Functional Setup Manager is that it is role driven. This means that it can only be accessed by the users who have administrative privileges. Not every user can configure the application using the Setup and Maintenance work area.
Specifically, a user with either of the two roles, Application Implementation Consultant or Application Implementation Manager, can configure the application by using the Functional Setup Manager.
The Setup and Maintenance Work Area
When you navigate to the Setup and Maintenance work area by either of the two methods shown above, you will be taken to the Setup and Maintenance home page.
Fig. 5 - The home page of the Setup and Maintenance work area
If you click on the Getting Started link under Implementations from the task list on the left, a sequence of the implementation process will be shown: Plan, Configure, Implement, Export and Import, Transact, and Maintain. You can click on the links below each step of the process to perform the respective tasks.
Fig. 6 - Getting started with Oracle Fusion Applications - Setup and Maintenance
Offerings
The first step is to choose the offerings to be implemented. When you scroll down from the implementation process, you will be able to see a variety of “offerings” available that can be implemented in the application. Click on each of the offering’s name to view the contents and documents related to that offering.
Fig. 7 - Various offerings available to be implemented
Fig. 8 - The contents of the ‘Financials’ offering
Configure Offerings
In order to configure the settings of the offerings that are required, go to the Configure Offerings task under Implementations from the task list on the left.
Fig. 9 - The ‘Configure Offerings’ task
You will see that the offerings that have been installed will have their Provisioned field set to Yes. This means that the offering has been provisioned for the user.
In order to use the offerings and the tasks associated with it, the checkbox under the Enable for Implementation field has to be checked. Note that checking the parent (Financials) checkbox alone is not enough. You will have to expand the offering name to view the subdivisions, and then check each box individually in order to have that component enabled for implementation.
Fig. 10 - The ‘Financials’ offering on the Configure Offerings page
There are three levels to the offerings and their modules. They are the offering itself, its options, and the features.
To select the choice of features available in the offering, click on the pencil icon (circled in the screenshot below) under the Select Feature Choices column.
Fig. 11 - The three levels of the offerings
After selecting the checkboxes of the required features, click on the Save and Close button.
Fig. 12 - Selecting the feature choices
(The next tutorial deals with the next step of Setup and Maintenance, which is Managing Implementation Projects)
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Posted: 29 Jun 2016 09:32 PM PDT
In this course, you will learn the basics of the Oracle Financial Applications, which includes General Ledger, Purchasing, Payables, Fixed Assets, Order Management, Accounts Receivables, Cash Management, and Projects. Learn the core concepts that are integral to these applications, such as Suppliers, Customers, and Items. Additionally, learn how they work together in different flows to suit your business needs. Business flows include Procure to Pay and Order to Cash Flow. You will also be able to try many of these products during the course of your study using a series of hands on practices, which build on one another, thus allowing you to experience both the tools and the workflow of which they are a part.
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Posted: 28 Jun 2016 01:30 PM PDT
This tutorial deals with Oracle Fusion Financials, and how it functions. In this tutorial,we look at the interface of the Fusion applications.
Fusion Apps User Interface
The Navigator Menu
The Navigator menu has got several sub-divided sections. These sections depend upon the role of the user who has logged in to the application.
Fig, 1 - The Navigator menu
The items in the navigator menu are shown in the screenshot above. Since the user that has logged in is the FAAdmin, the tasks displayed on his navigator menu are related to his duties: Revenue Management , Collections, Contract Management, Receivables , Procurement, Payables, Cash Management , Fixed Assets, etc. There are many other tasks available as well, which is not visible in the screenshot, like General Accounting, Payroll , Expenses, etc.
As an example, let us look into the Tools section of the Navigator menu below.
Tools
The Tools present on the Navigator menu are:
Fig. 2 - The ‘Tools’ section on the Navigator menu
As an example, the Scheduled Processes page is shown below:
On the Navigator menu, go to Tools -> Scheduled Processes to view a list of the scheduled processes in the application. Here, you can schedule a new process as well as resubmit, put on hold, cancel, or release processes.
Fig. 3 - The Scheduled Processes page
Let us look into the Journals task under General Accounting as an example of viewing and performing tasks related to the role of the user.
The Journals Page
The Journals page can be visited from the Navigator menu as follows:
Fig. 4 - The ‘Journals’ link on the Navigator menu
Fig. 5 - Selecting the Data Access Set
Fig. 6 - The ‘Journals’ page. The task list on the left is circled
Fig. 7 - The ‘Process Monitor’
Creating a Journal
To create a journal, follow the steps below:
Fig. 8 - The ‘Create Journal’ task
Fig. 9 - Creating a journal
Managing Journals
To search for and manage journals that are already existing in the application, follow the steps below:
Fig. 10 - The ‘Manage Journals’ task
Fig. 11 - The ‘Manage Journals’ page
Fig. 12 - Viewing the search results
Fig. 13 - The ‘View’ menu of the search results
Fig. 14 - Querying search results by example
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Posted: 28 Jun 2016 01:27 PM PDT
This tutorial deals with Oracle Fusion Financials, and how it functions. In this tutorial,we look at the interface of the Fusion applications.
Fusion Apps User Interface
Logging in to the Application
Follow the steps below to log in to Fusion Applications:
Fig. 1 - The Fusion Applications login page
Fig. 2 - The login input area for entering the credentials
Fig. 3 - The home page of Fusion Applications after logging in
After logging in to Fusion Applications, the home page will appear, the screenshot of which has been shown above. The different elements present on the home page are discussed below.
The Global Area
The top portion of the page is called the Global Area (circled in the screenshot below). This Global Area will be visible on all pages within the application, irrespective of the function.
Fig. 4 - The Global Area of the Fusion Applications
Home
The first icon is the Home icon, which brings you to the home page of the application.
Navigator
The second icon from the left, the Navigator icon (circled in the screenshot below), brings up the Navigator menu. The Navigator menu provides a list of all the tasks available for the user to perform, depending on his/her role defined in the system.
Fig. 5 - The Navigator icon and menu
Favourites and Recent Items
The Favourites icon (circled in the screenshot below) will show favourites and recent items for the user. To add pages to your favourites, click on the Add to Favorites… link. Recent items are added based on the page history of the user.
Fig. 6 - The ‘Favourites’ icon
Watchlist
The Watchlist icon (circled in the screenshot below) brings up the Watchlist menu, which has a list of items that require the user’s attention, depending on his/her role. A dashboard version of the watchlist is also viewable on the home page of the application, as discussed subsequently.
Fig. 7 - The Watchlist menu
Recent Notifications
The bell icon (circled in the screenshot below) brings up the notifications and approvals for the user that are related to his/her tasks. A dashboard version of this is viewable on the home page of the application, as discussed subsequently.
Fig. 8 - The ‘Notifications’ icon
Accessibility
The Accessibility icon (circled in the screenshot below) can be used to modify the look and feel of the interface - fonts, colours, etc.
Fig. 9 - The ‘Accessibility’ icon
Help
The Help icon is a very useful tool for getting information about the items on a page. When you click on the Help icon, it turns orange (as shown in the screenshot below), and smaller orange icons appear next to the items on the page (circled in the screenshot below). Click on one of these will bring up a help menu on the right of the screen with context-sensitive help articles about the items.
Fig. 10 - The ‘Help’ icon turns orange after clicking it
Fig. 11 - The context-sensitive help menu pops up
Settings and Actions
When you click on your username on the right of the Global Area, a menu of Settings and Actions for the user will drop down. The items on the menu are used for configuring settings for the user.
Fig. 12 - The ‘Settings and Actions’ menu for the user
For example, the Set Preferences… option is used to configure preference settings for the user, like regional preferences, language preferences, accessibility preferences, password, etc.
Fig. 13 - The ‘Preferences’ settings for the user
Fig. 14 - Changing the password settings for the user
Fig. 15 - Regional preferences for the user
The Watchlist preferences can be used to enable or disable any item that shows up on the Watchlist.
Fig. 16 - Enabling and disabling items in the Watchlist
Dashboards
Dashboards are sections that appear on pages in the applications. The dashboards present on the home page are discussed below.
Watchlist
The Watchlist dashboard (circled in the screenshot below) shows a list of exception items that require your attention. This depends on the role of the user that has signed in to the application. In this case, the role of the user is FAAdmin. The numbers in the bracket denote the number of such instances of the respective item.
Fig. 17- The Watchlist dashboard
Worklist: Notifications and Approvals
The Worklist: Notifications and Approvals dashboard (circled in the screenshot below) present to the right of the Watchlist displays any notifications or approvals related to tasks that need to be brought to the attention of the user. The user can then perform relevant activities on those notifications when they appear.
Fig. 18 - The ‘Worklist: Notifications and Approvals’ dashboard
Activity Stream
The Activity Stream dashboard (circled in the screenshot below) present below the Worklist is something of an “internal social media”. Here, the user can share, discuss, and converse with his/her colleagues and clients. It is also called the Oracle Social Network (OSN). The conversation history is saved and stored along with the project.
Fig. 19 - The ‘Activity Stream’ dashboard
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Posted: 27 Jun 2016 07:08 AM PDT
This tutorial deals with Oracle Fusion Financials, and how it functions. In this tutorial,we look at Financial Enterprise Structures and the security feature of Oracle Fusion.
Financial Enterprise Structures
One of the most critical decisions for any project is the financial structure. In Oracle Fusion, the financial enterprise structure exists as depicted in the below illustration:
Fig. 1 - The financial enterprise structure with legal entities and primary ledgers
Here, the Enterprise is on top, and there can be only one enterprise for a project in Fusion.
Under the enterprise, there exist the Legal Entities. These legal entities will be associated with Primary Ledgers. Note that there can be multiple legal entities for a single primary ledger. In such a case, each legal entity has to be associated with a balancing segment. In case of a one-to-one relationship, the balancing segment is optional.
Fig. 2 - A financial enterprise structure with business units
Under the primary ledger, there will be Business Units. A business unit is an entity that performs certain business functions. Each business unit will have Inventory Organisations associated with it.
Fig. 3 - The structure of a primary ledger
As seen in the above chart, each primary ledger has a Chart of Accounts, currency, calendar, and accounting method associated with it. In case of any difference in those components, either a reporting currency or a secondary ledger is created.
When creating a secondary ledger with a different currency, it cannot be done directly. First, the secondary ledger is created with the same currency as the primary ledger. Then, a reporting currency is created for the secondary ledger.
Business Functions
Business functions are those that are performed by a business unit. Oracle Fusion Financials has a number of financial-related business functions available to be performed by the users, according to their roles and duties. The various business functions related to financials that can be performed are:
Fusion Security - Roles in Fusion Applications
There are different roles available in Fusion applications. As specific roles will be able to perform only those functions for which they have access to, this type of system enhances its security and prevents mistakes or any unauthorised access. There are different types of roles applicable to users in Fusion:
Role Based Security
The following illustration depicts how the role based security in Oracle Fusion works in Fusion Financials:
Fig. 4 - Role based security in Oracle Fusion Financials
Here, the user ‘Fred’ has the following roles associated to him: Accounts Payable Manager - US-West (here, US-West is a business unit), Employee, and Line Manager. Each of these roles has got certain functional privileges and data access granted to it, as depicted above.
The role Accounts Payable Manager - US-West grants Fred the following functional privileges: Manage Payables Invoices, Apply or Unapply Payables, and Prepayments. These privileges grant Fred access to the following data: Payables Invoices in US-West Business Unit. Similarly, the Employee and Line Manager roles follow suit with their functional privileges and data access.
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Posted: 27 Jun 2016 06:59 AM PDT
This tutorial deals with Oracle Fusion Financials, and how it functions. In this tutorial,we look at an overview of Fusion applications and some commonly used Fusion terminologies.
Overview of Fusion Applications
The Fusion application, since its launch in October 2011, has been divided into seven pillars- Financials, Human Capital Management, Procurement, Projects, Customer Relationship Management, Supply Chain Management, and Governance Risk and Compliance.
Each of these pillars have several of their own modules, which are used to perform functions relevant to them. The following diagram depicts the seven pillars of Fusion, along with the modules they contain.
Fig. 1 - The Seven Pillars of Fusion
When we look at the Financials pillar in particular, it has got a number of modules associated with it, for performing all the respective functions related to financials. The following diagram depicts the modules contained in Oracle Fusion Financials.
Fig. 2 - Oracle Fusion Financials Offerings
As can be seen from the illustration above, Oracle Fusion Financials consists of the following modules:
The Revenue Management module, in particular, is not usually made available by Oracle to all of its customers. This is because it is an up-and-coming department, especially in the United States, where the government has issued regulations to be followed by companies. They have to implement revenue management policies and put them into effect by the start of 2018. Oracle has been working on this and will be implementing these features in the future.
Key Features of Oracle Fusion Financials
The key features offered by Oracle Fusion Financials are:
Benefits of Oracle Fusion Financials
Oracle Fusion Financials provides a number of benefits to its users. With the help of Oracle Fusion Financials, the user would be able to:
Fusion Terminologies
Some of the common terminologies used when talking about Oracle Fusion have been explained below:
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Posted: 27 Jun 2016 04:11 AM PDT
Oracle Value Chain Planning:
In Demantra Promotion Trade Planning training you will learn about Oracle Demantra Promotion Trade planning (PTP). Our expert instructors will help you develop a thorough understanding of PTP business scenarios and flows, while exploring key aspects and tips for implementation. By the end of this course you will learn to implement a Demantra Promotion Trade planning project. You will get an opportunity to explore the various capabilities of the Demantra PTP product while also learning to utilize them efficiently when implementing a Demantra PTP Solution.  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Posted: 24 Jun 2016 05:47 AM PDT
Objective:In the previous article we saw Table to table integration in ODI, in this article we will learn how to create Project and Interface.Creating Project and Interface
Let's create a project in which we have the table to table interface.
In the designer tab, Projects section, create a new project and provide a name. Project code is an important identifier which is used to identify project specific objects as compared to global objects.
Expand the project which is created, right click on knowledge modules and select import knowledge modules(IKM). we need to select three knowledge modules here for loading, integration and check constraint. Select CKM Oracle,LKM SQL to SQL and IKM SQL Incremental update. We need to select knowledge modules specific to the technology and kind of data loading we are doing. KM automates the process with predefined code for loading, integration, check constraints, reverse engineering and journalizing (change data capture).
1. LKM SQL to SQL - Automates the loading of data from source to staging. reads data from hr.employees and put it into odi_staging.c$_employees.
2. IKM SQL Incremental Update - Takes the data from staging and merges (insert or update) data to target.
3. CKM Oracle - Check for specific constraints we need to check after loading in target.
After selection, we can verify the imported KMs in knowledge modules section.
Let’s create an interface now. Under project folder right click on interfaces and select new interface.
Provide name for interface and select the schema to which we need to load.
Click on the mapping tab in interface. Drag the employees table from hr model to source area and drag employees table from data_target model to target area. drag the field from source to target to complete the mapping. select the employee id in target mapping and verify that key attribute check box is checked. if not we cannot enable flow control in IKM and so make sure that it is checked.
Go to overview tab, select staging is different from target so that staging tables are created in odi_staging schema.
Go to flow tab. Select staging in the diagram and select LKM SQL to SQL from the drop down. This LKM has only one option which is delete temporary objects. make this true so that C$ temporary table is deleted once target loading is complete.
Select target in the flow tab and select the IKM from the drop down. IKM provides few options which we configure based on our needs.
FLOW_CONTROL - checks the constraints while loading into the target. error records are placed into E$ table.
TRUNCATE - truncates the target table before loading into it.
DELETE ALL - delete the rows instead of truncate
STATIC_CONTROL - checks the constraints after loading into target table. But target table will still have the error records
RECYCLE_ERRORS - considers the rows from E$ table along with C$ table for integration loading into target so that if any records corrected, they will be recycled and loaded to target.
COMMIT - we can make this false if needed and we can do a separate commit when this interface is part of a package so that we can maintain transaction for the objects used in ODI package.
CREATE_TARG_TABLE - creates target table if it doesn't exist at run time.
DELETE_TEMP_OBJECTS - deletes temporary I$ tables after target loading.
Select the controls tab and select the control knowledge modules. select the constraints to be enabled.
we have few options here to modify if any. we can ask ODI to drop the error table or check table here.
Save the interface.
With this we have completed creation of the interface. Lets run it now. Right click on the interface and click execute. Select global context, No agent and required log level. select ok. select ok on the session started dialog.
Go to operator tab to verify the run. expand all executions. Verify that our execution is successful. We can also expand the interface results and drill down to the steps executed at LKM, IKM and CKM levels and see the SQL generated and results here.
 
Let’s verify the temporary tables created now. Go to the ODI_STAGING schema and verify the E$, check tables. If we make delete temporary objects to false in LKM and IKM options, we will see C$ and I$ tables also here.
Lets check the target table for data.
With this we have completed the table to table loading using ODI interface.
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Posted: 22 Jun 2016 07:56 AM PDT
Introduction
This article is intended to be used as a ready reference handbook for either Technical/Functional/Techno-
While in most cases an expert Fusion Application Functional / Techno Functional Consultant is expected to be aware of how to initiate a self-service transaction in Oracle Fusion Application a newbie can face issues because implementers usually login with an Admin user profile and hence it should not be a surprise if they are unaware of initiating self-service transactions.
Also this article could be of use to Functional Tester / Business End Users who would be using Fusion Applications for the first time and would like to get started with the work in case there isn’t a formal handover or training planned.
So without much delay let’s get started.
Self-Service Transactions
As the name suggests these are some transactions which are carried out in the system by the individual. Typical examples could be Change in Location, Request for Transfer, Change Manager, Termination and many more. A complete list in tabular format below
Sample Example – Initiate Termination
While some of the above transactions are auto approved ones like Manage Person where you would be able to change personal details like Phone Number, personal email id ..etc
Some of the transactions do go through an approval process.
In this example we would try to initiate a termination action.
Login to application with proper login credentials as shown:
Click on the ‘Sign In” button and this will take you to the HomePage:
Next click on the Navigator Icon on the top left hand side beside the Company Logo and this will bring a Pop-Up List.
This is the place where from one would be able to execute most self-service transactions
The Actions Tab on the left hand side area of the page (as shown in snapshot below) when expanded lists all available actions.
Note: Use the ‘All Actions’ hyperlink text to view all the actions.
Choose the terminate action for initiating a transaction
Once you click there you will either be navigated to the termination screen or shown a message in case there are dependencies (as in this example)
In your case if there are no dependencies you should be able to proceed with the termination.
This was just a sample example and you may try out the other available options and explore more.
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Posted: 20 Jun 2016 02:28 AM PDT
Introduction
The Title of the document sounds weird isn’t it. I admit it does but only until we are not aware what a Category is as per Page we all probably know we refer to a User Interface which has input box, Text items, buttons, informational text, logo, icons.., in a nutshell a placeholder which displays some information or expects user input to capture some or other information.
But let us try to focus now on what we mean by a category. Category in simple English means Classification for example if you have multiple electronic gadgets we classify them into Laptops, Desktops, iPads, Smartphones…….
Each of the links under the category is a Application Page which points to a specific page within the application.
Until Release 9 it used to take considerable amount of effort and time in order to add custom pages/web-link onto Fusion Application but starting Release 10 onwards things have become very simple and even newbies can add a new category and application page / static URL.
Let us try to understand the same with a sample example.
Worked Example
In this example we will try to create a Custom Category say ‘Search’ and add a Static URL let us call it Google Search which when clicked upon would take us to Google Search Engine Homepage.
 
Once we click on the hyperlink ‘Structure’ it takes us to the below page:
Once you click on the ‘Edit’ button you would be asked to activate a sandbox (popup message would appear)
 
Do check that a horizontal strip appears on the top confirming that you indeed are in a Sandbox Environment
Yep, the strip does appears. So far so Good. Let us proceed further.
A mouse click on the ‘Create Category’ link brings up a new page which looks as:
Enter the following Values:
Once the values are entered the screen would appear as below:
Next Click on ‘Save and Close’.
 And this would bring us to the following page:
Next, we will populate the fields with the below values from the table:
And the UI screen post the values are populated would look as below:
Next Click on the ‘Save and Close’ Button (on the top right hand side) and we would see that the new Category ‘Search’ and Page ‘Google Search’ appears on the ‘Structure’ Page
Also note that the ‘Show on Welcome Springboard’ option is unchecked for the ‘Google Search’ Page which means that the icon would not be available on the Welcome Springboard.
Hover your cursor over the ‘Google Search’ icon and
It takes us to the Google Search page
Good!
But let us see how the Welcome Springboard looks like. We can navigate to the same via using the ‘Home’ icon on top of the page
  
As we can see from the above screen that there is no visual resemblance of the new page here and that’s because we chose the same to not be visible on the springboard.
Let us now change the settings and bring the icon here.
To incorporate this change we need to again navigate to Tools->Structure, select the ‘Google Search’ page and change the ‘Show on Welcome Springboard’ attribute value to ‘Yes’ from ‘No’.
And then click on ‘Save and Close’
Next we will navigate to the homepage and we should be able to see the new page ‘Google Search’ along with the icon.
An icon does appear as shown above. But let us verify (whether the same takes us to the expected screen) this before we conclude this demonstration. And we would do so by a simple click on the icon
 
We could see that we were re-directed to the Google page as expected and with this we come to the conclusion of this article.
I believe this was useful and you all would be able to use the feature in your implementation projects.
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Posted: 16 Jun 2016 05:20 AM PDT
Objective : Solution for ERROR :: "io error got minus one from a read call" while connecting to Oracle Database
You may face a minus one from read call error while trying to connect to database through sql developer
The root cause of this error is sqlnet.ora is not allowing any connection to oracle database due to below entry in the sqlnet.ora file
tcp.validnode_checking = Yes
tcp.invited_nodes=(r12.
You can follow these steps to avoid the error:
1. Go to directory $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin
2. Modify sqlnet.ora file with following parameter:
tcp.validnode_checking = no
3. If you don’t want to disable this, you can put the machine names as follows:
tcp.invited_nodes=(machine1, machine2) ( where machine1, machine2 will be the hostname of the machine )
4. Bounce the listener (lsnrctl stop , lsnrctl start)
Once you bounce the listener , and update the sqlnet.ora file you will be able to connect to the database without any error .
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Posted: 15 Jun 2016 02:55 AM PDT
Objective: In the previous article Creating ODI Repository, we saw how to create Master and Work Repository in ODI. In this article, we will show the step by step process of implementing table to table integration in ODI.
Topology Configuration
Creating table to table integration involves only creating a interface in ODI. But there are some perquisites before we get in there.
Step 1. Create a physical server and logical servers.Check if they already exist.
Physical Servers are the configuration which point to the physical connection security details for database (oracle, sql servers, sybase etc), File, JMS, XML, Complex files etc. We can create physical connection for each environment (Dev, Test, Production) . Logical server is what used to run the interface. Based on the environment currently the interface is run, logical server points to the respective physical server.
Step 2. Check model is already existing for the database tables we are going to use. Model is nothing but reverse engineering the database tables, view, AQs etc for use in ODI objects. Model is applicable for File, XML, Complex files and JMS also. Even for File,XML, Complex Files and JMS the model is created in a relational way (as table datastores) in ODI.
Once both the steps are complete, we can create the interface. In this example, I have three schemas in XE database.
1. Oracle seeded HR schema - Has all HR related tables for demo purposes.
2. ODI_STAGE schema - I have created a new schema. This i will use for holding the temporary objects created by ODI
3. DATA_TARGET - I have created a new schema. I will use this schema to create target tables.
I have employees table in hr and data_target. hr schema employees table has some data but data_target employees table is empty. Using the interface I create in ODI, i will load the data from hr.employees to data_target.employees table. Also create a primary key constraint on the employee_id in target.
CREATE TABLE "EMPLOYEES"
("EMPLOYEE_ID" NUMBER(6,0),
"FIRST_NAME" VARCHAR2(20 BYTE),
"LAST_NAME" VARCHAR2(25 BYTE) NOT NULL ENABLE,
"EMAIL" VARCHAR2(25 BYTE) NOT NULL ENABLE,
"PHONE_NUMBER" VARCHAR2(20 BYTE),
"HIRE_DATE" DATE NOT NULL ENABLE,
"JOB_ID" VARCHAR2(10 BYTE) NOT NULL ENABLE,
"SALARY" NUMBER(8,2),
"COMMISSION_PCT" NUMBER(2,2),
"MANAGER_ID" NUMBER(6,0),
"DEPARTMENT_ID" NUMBER(4,0)
);
Physical Server and Logical Server definition
In the jdbc section, select the jdbc driver and connection details for oracle database instance.
Test the connection by selecting test connection. select Local(No Agent) to simulate odi client as agent.Select ok, if you get pop up to create physical schema, select ok.
Right click on the data server we just created and select new physical schema.
 Right click on the data server and select new physical schema. lets create a physical schema for HR and DATA_TARGET schemas. In the create physical schema window, select the main schema and the work schema (schema where odi creates work tables like loading, error, integration tables). we can also provide prefix convention for the error, integration, loading tables which ODI creates in the work schema ODI_STAGE. we can also configure the masks which are specific to the technology we use.
Work Tables:-
Error - This table by default created with E$ prefix and it stores the primary key of the record which errored out and its corresponding error.
Loading - This table is the exact copy of the source data before any joins are done. This by default has C$ prefix.
Integration - This table is used to check the integration constraints check for data errors
Lets create a physical schema for DATA_TARGET also with schemas as data_target and work schema as ODI_STAGE.
Lets create a logical schema for hr and data_target here which maps to physical schema based on environment In logical architecture section right click on Oracle and select create logical schema. Here we are mapping it to Global context. We can also create DEV, TEST and PRODUCTION context and point the respective physical schema for context (which is nothing but environment reference).
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Posted: 14 Jun 2016 03:05 AM PDT
Introduction
While this article is about creating a flow pattern it makes sense to understand what a flow pattern is and the need/importance/advantages of using the same. In simple words a Flow pattern is a combination of multiple Task Flows (seeded/manual actions) along with a provision of creating security options (to ensure who would be allowed to view/edit and execute the same).
We must have seen the guided train stop flows in Oracle Fusion Applications be it during New Hire or during Extract Creation yes you guessed it right they are indeed a Payroll Flow Pattern.
Similar to Task Flows in EBS suite where we can have completely custom processes build with a combination of Reports, Checklists, Sub Tasks, Parameters Flow patterns in Fusion also does the same.
In short a Payroll Flow Pattern may be defined as a sequential process which has certain subtasks supposed to be performed one after another.
One important thing to note here is that while Flow Patterns are generally associated with Payroll the same is used through-out the Application with Create Accounting, Create Batch,……… being the commonly used ones.
We may add single or multiple tasks within a flow pattern and the same holds true for BI Publisher Reports and HCM Extracts too. Imagine a situation where you want to run a BI Report, verify the data using some checklists and then perform another task. Designing a Flow pattern would help you in accomplishing the same. In this example we will create a Flow pattern for a Custom BIP Report and we would be able to view the output. The Output file will be based on the template of the BIP Report.
This article would also try to address the following important questions:
Q1. When should we use Payroll Flow Patterns?
Ans. We can implement Payroll Flow Patterns to incorporate seeded flows along with checklists and custom reports/extracts/processes.
Q2. Is this just a way of stitching together multiple pre-defined tasks delivered by Oracle in a set?
Ans. The answer to this question is a bit descriptive one and we would need to go through the below table to understand the list of available tasks:
So we can see that although the Activity Type are fixed but it gives a lot of options which can be used and multiple permutations can be used to create a new flow pattern
Q3. Does it allow creation of new tasks or one can only use the seeded prebuilt ones?
Ans. Its both a YES and NO. Yes if you create a Custom HCM Extract / BIP Report / Custom Process, NO Otherwise.
Q4. Does this allows one to Build a Flow as an Activity is Performed (say Journal Entry Creation), followed by another ( Journal gets Approved), which then would get extracted and send as a flat file via BIP
Ans. Yes this can be accomplished. You would need to create one flow of Activity Type Accounting and one flow with Activity Type Statutory (Task Name – Run BI Publisher Report) and then create a third flow which would combine both of them.
So that’s about the theory part and now let-us begin with creating a Flow Pattern based upon a BIP Report.
As a first step login to the application with a user having appropriate roles (user should have access to Payroll Checklist and Data Exchange Area which are present in the Application Roles Payroll Administrator and Human Capital Management Integration Specialist Role).
We would be using hcm_impl user (who has the required roles as mentioned above) in this example.
Next we would need to navigate to the ‘Manage Flow Patterns Task’ and there could be multiple ways of reaching the same. They are:
From the navigator icon click on ‘Checklists’ link which would take you to a new page where in you should be able to locate the Manage Payroll Flow Patterns as shown below (with help of two images)
 
We may even navigate to the Flow Pattern area using the Data Exchange-> Refine Extract Option (shown below)
 
A click on the ‘Go to Task’ Icon takes us to the following screen:
One important observation at this point is the fact that out of the above 3 options mentioned only the 3rd option (Setup and Maintenance) provides us the feature of creating new payroll pattern. As we can clearly see the
 icon only on this page the other two pages are used for search and making edits ( only after a Pattern has been created).
So we will now click on the
icon and a new page will appear which would ask for a specific legislative data group for which we want this pattern to be created. We are interested in running a BIP Report here which would fetch data for all Legislative data groups hence we would keep the same as blank and proceed. 
When you click on the ‘Continue’ button, a new page will appear where we need to fill the relevant details as shown:
 
Click on Next and choose the ‘Yes’ radio buttons for ‘Flow Task Start Notifications’ / ‘Flow Task End Notifications’ / ‘Warning Notification’ and ‘Error Notification’
Once the appropriate radio button options are selected move on the next train stop (using the ‘Next’ Button) which will take you to the ‘Task Sequence’
The first task is the Start Task followed by Run BI Publisher Report and the last one being the End Task.
In the next step we should de defining the parameters for the flow pattern as shown below (Yes we need to click on the next button to move on to next train stop)
As shown above we do not need to enter any detail ( for this example as we are using a BIP Report which do not has any parameters and this is done specifically ) and move to the next step where we need to enter the Report name and Report path
Next use the
 icon to delete all parameters except the report name. We do not need all the other parameters namely: Legislative Data Group (The Report we are going to use fetches data which is independent of any specific legislation) and the other parameters (argument 1, 2 ,3 .. are used in case the BIP report needs input parameter, the current report being used in this example does not has any input parameter).
After you remove the parameters there will be two parameters left as shown:
 
Report Name Details Screenshot (post populating the details as displayed in table above)
Report Path Details Screenshot(after populating the details as displayed in table above)
Once we have populated all the tabs we may move to the review tab to verify the same.
Once the verification is complete click on the Submit button (on the top right hand side of the screen)
Now the setup part is complete and we would now try to run the newly created Payroll Flow Pattern and try to understand the behavior.
For the same navigate to the Payroll Checklist Workarea (Navigator -> Checklists) and click on ‘Submit a Process or Report’ as shown:
Select the appropriate payroll flow pattern (CustomFlowPattern-
Give a name to the payroll flow (for example TestRun1)
Again choose the familiar next button to advance to the next train-stop.
Next we should move to the schedule tab and choose the ‘As soon as possible’ option to run the payroll flow:
Now, we are ready to have a quick review of the entire payroll flow before doing a submission of the same. Once we click on the submit button we should get a confirmation message along with an informational text guiding us about what to do next.
A click on the ‘Ok and View Checklist’ takes us to the following screen:
We now need to click on the ‘Go to Task’ to view the results
Summary Tab give us the following view:
Reports and processes tab displays a snapshot which when captured appears as:
Next Click on ‘View Results’
And the below screen will appear
Click on the ‘Default Document.pdf’ and the Output appears as shown:
Thus we have now seen how to create a very simple Custom Payroll Flow Pattern making use of a BIP Report. We may add multiple tasks before or after the same to create a complex flow pattern.
This brings me to the end of this article and I hope this was a nice thing to learn.
Do explore more on similar lines and unravel the mystery which is waiting to be discovered
Good Bye ..!!
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Posted: 10 Jun 2016 03:59 AM PDT
Objective : In this article we will learn how to Unlock XELSYSADM account in OAM with Fusion applications.
If xelsysadm user account gets locked , then you can unlock the user using ODSM.
Perform the following steps in order to unlock the xelsysadm account .:
1)Enter the odsm url http://host:port/odsm
2) Click on Connect to directory and then on the respective OID connection
3) Enter the password for connecting to OID and click on Connect
4) Click on Data Browser
5) Search for xelsysadm user
And click on the xelsysadm user
 
6) Click on Attributes tab
7) Set the oblockouttime and oblogintrycount values to 0 and click on Apply
8) Once the values for these attributes are set to 0 , you will be able to login using xelsyadm user .
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Posted: 08 Jun 2016 11:27 AM PDT
Introduction
In a typical ERP Implementation for a large Multinational Firm it is a very common need to have multilingual reports. Say for example Employee Basic Details Report which holds information like an individual’s First Name, Last Name, Department, Employee Number etc and for the ease of use the need could be to have the flexibility to generate the same report in multiple languages like English, French, Spanish, Chinese.
These multilingual report generation till sometime back were considered to be a complex activity and required multiple RTF layout designs each specific for one language.
So there used to be multiple RTFs. But Oracle Fusion Applications gives the flexibility to have a single template which can get incorporated with multiple language translated files (xlf) which enables us to create reports in multiple languages from a single base one.
Fig 1. Illustrating Traditional Method of generating Multilingual Reports
Fig 2. Illustrating Current Method of Creating Multilingual Reports
So by now we must have understood the concept. Let us now try this out with a worked example
Worked Example
So for this example we would need to create a BIP Data Model.
We will create a very simple SQL for this example and for this we would login to the application with appropriate login credentials as shown:
  
We will use the below simple query:
And once we use the same the UI would appear as:
As we can see that we have named the Data Set as EmpData and Data Source as ApplicationDB_HCM. Also we have used a bind variable which is the employee number.
We will go to the Data Tab and pass on a Person Number and check the data values :
Next we will click on the ‘Save as Sample Data’ button so that we have some sample data (this is a perquisite for creating BIP Report)
We would now press the ok button and save the Data Model.
Next we would create a Report using the same Data Model.
Now we need to choose the Data Model we just created (EmpData.xdm) and a RTF layout which we created.
Once you click a new popup will appear and you would need to populate the following values:
The UI screen after we provide the above mentioned values would look as below:
Click on the upload button and then we can point to the Data Model to be used for the report.
Now we will save the Report and try to view the Report output.
So now we have created the Report and able to view the output in Base language (English)
Let us now try to generate the report in another language too. For this example we would try to create the same report in Spanish Language too.
 
Once we click on the same we could see the following screen:
 
Couple of important points to note here are
Now we need to extract the current translation files by clicking on the “Extract Translation” button and a file would be downloaded into your local system as shown:
The contents of the file looks as:
In the above file you could notice that there is an attribute named Source language holding the value ‘en’ and a Target Language which has the value ‘en-US’ , this is because this is the base translation file where no translation has been applied yet. This will be clear from the next snap-shot
So as it is self-explanatory from the above screen-shot we could observe that the source and target values are the same.
We need to change the target values so that they corresponds to the same words/phrases of the translated language. This could be done via some third party tools which are able to generate xlf files if we provide the base files but in this case we would make the changes using Google Translate. The translated file post making all changes would look as:
 
We will save the new file as Spanish.xlf and upload to the translation section. The UI should appear as below:
Click on OK
Now we have done all requisite setups.
Next we need to view the report in Spanish Language. For this we would have to login to the application and choose the language as Spanish (on the login screen as shown)
 
Next we navigate to the Report and view the output:
And we do see the Report in Spanish Language as expected.
Kudos! Great isn’t it.
So this is how we may create multilingual reports in Oracle Fusion Applications thereby ensuring we still have the same graphic/images/logo and other common features which could be part of the RTF layout with different language translation files (xlf) which could display the reports in different languages.
With this we have come to an end of another interesting topic and I hope you all would try to use this cool feature and develop reports in multiple languages (even the ones you aren’t aware of).
Cool isn’t it. Good Luck!
Bye and have a nice day!!
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Posted: 06 Jun 2016 09:39 AM PDT
Creating ODI Repository:
Objective: In the previous article we have given a brief Introduction of Oracle Data Integrator. In this article we will learn how to create ODI Repository in ODI studio.
We are going to create master and work repository for your Oracle Data Integrator.
First we are going to create schemas for our repositories, you can put your repositories in one schema but it is common to have them in separate schemas. If you run the script below you will have two schemas for your repositories with all privileges.
create user Masterodi_rep identified by Admin123;
create user Workodi_rep identified by Admin123;
grant all privileges to Admin123;
grant all privileges to Admin123;
Creating Master Repository:
So if your schemas are ready, we can continue with the master repository. In the main ODI screen, go to File > New.
Now you’ll see three options, we’ll continue with Master Repository Creation Wizard, select it and click OK to continue.
Now it is time to setup our connection to database, you will need DBA connection to setup your repository. Fill in the required fields.
Note: if you are going to use SYS user as DBA account, you have to fill DBA User area like ‘SYS as sysdba’ otherwise it will not connect. If you are using another DBA account then you don’t need to declare ‘as sysdba’. Hit the Test Connection button to see if you can connect.
There is another text box which asks for the repository ID, be sure to remember this ID, as you’ll also be asked for another ID while creating work repository. And it is important that all repositories have different IDs. As ODI does every operation with ID’s, it’s crucial not to have duplicated IDs.
Next step is the generating a password for SUPERVISOR user, this user will be our ODI admin until you will create another user with SUPERVISOR privileges. The password for this user is set as Welcome1.
Here it goes, now we will wait until ODI finishes its job. If you check your master repository schema you can see it is being populated by SNP_% tables. SNP prefix is also a heritage from Synopsis.
And here we have created our master repository. Now it is time to setup a connection and create a work repository.
Creating a Master Repository Connection:
So for connecting master repository, click Connect to a Repository in ODI Home Screen. A little window will pop-up. This is the window where you can select between your predefined connection, edit them or create new connection. As we do not have any predefined connection, we will create one from scratch. Click on +(plus) sign to add a new connection.
Now this is the connection details window. First blank will be the alias for this connection so it should be something to remind you to which repository you are connecting. First login information is for ODI user we are going to use, which is the SUPERVISOR in our case. And the second login information is for the Master Repository’s database schema, this is Admin123 in our case.Make sure Master Repository only radio button is checked before testing the connection. Because we do not have any other repositories yet. Test your connection then connect your master repository with SUPERVISOR. It’s time to move a step further.
Creating Work Repository:
When you are connected to Master repository go into Topology view and extend the repositories accordingly. Right click on Work Repositories and click on the New Work Repository on pop-up menu.
Enter your schema information, test your connection and move on. In our case we are going to use Admin123 schema as we want our repositories to be separated.
Give a name and ID to your work repository. Don’t forget to give a different ID from your master repository’s ID. Select your work repository type in this step.
There is two types of work repositories: Development and Execution. Execution repository does not have a development ability and does not have an active Designer tab. It only holds, scenarios, load plans, sessions and topology information. Development repository has an active Designer tab, which adds this repository to hold, create, edit, delete ability of interfaces, packages, variables, scenarios, knowledge modules, model objects like tables and views.
Now let ODI to finish creating work repository.
Now ODI will ask if you want it to create a connection for new created work repository.
When you click Yes, it will ask for connection name, which we said it is connection alias. And when you click OK. It will create a connection.
Connecting to Work Repository:
ODI has created a connection for us. When you disconnect your master repository. (Under ODI > Disconnect) You can connect to work repository, click on Connect to a Repository, select your work repository connection from dropdown list. Password field will be empty, enter your SUPERVISOR password and click connect.
As we do not have any other user yet, we will connect to work repository by SUPERVISOR user.
Thanks for your patience to finish reading. Next ODI post will be about creating a user in detail, and assigning profiles to a user.
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Posted: 31 May 2016 03:20 AM PDT
Introduction
In one of the previous article we have seen how to modify the look and feel of fusion applications (read complete article here ), but in case an individual user would like to change preferences like language, currency, date format ... etc. then we might make such changes too.
In this article we would try to explore the same.
Since we are trying to set-up preferences for a specific user we would login with a named user (Robert.Jackman) instead of the implementation user.
Once we click the submit button, this takes us to Fusion Applications Homepage as shown:
Now on the top right-hand side we could see the name (‘Robert Jackman’) and just beside it is a drop down arrow which when clicked will show a popup menu and would have a hyperlink named ‘Set Preferences’ under the Personalization Menu.
Yup correctly assumed, we now need to click on the link and what appears on performing this action is:
On the left hand area we could clearly see the following regions:
This link has the following attribute fields (Tabular View)
A graphical view of the same when captured looks as below:
Now we may change any/ all of the values displayed on this page, but we would take a look at that part post we go through all the links.
Attributes like Default Language, Current Session Language and Display Name Language are the attribute fields which are present here:
A typical screen-shot appears as below:
This particular caters to attributes like accessibility, color contrast and font size.
And the corresponding screen looks as:
This particular link takes the user to the ‘Password Management’ screen and is tightly coupled with ‘Oracle Identity Manager’. Usually every user is supposed to change his/her password after a specific period. The password policy rules are also displayed.
Yes the proxy feature as the name suggests, where in some other user is given authority to login and he will have roles/responsibilities of the logged in user. We need to mention the start date and end date too (ensuring the time period until which the proxy user has the privileges)
This displays all the workareas / object/ processes for which an individual is interested to receive notifications. One may use check/un-check feature to enable/disable receipt of the same
This is a preference where in individual can opt to be a participant of Activity streams related to specific interests like sports , music , books etc. This needs specific setup to be done and generally appears blank (unless explicitly programmed)
This is a place where from user can interact with other applications via mail, messaging, file transfers , activity streams , people connections ( separate screenshots below ):
        
And with this we have seen the features available on the ‘Set Preferences’ link.
We will now try to have a Worked Example of the same for clear understanding
Worked Example
As a worked example we would take the simplest feature and just try to change the language settings.
We will now change the Language from American English to German as shown
Once you click on the save button the texts would change to German Language and would appear as:
We could clearly see how the language settings have changed for this user in the same session and we didn’t have to undergo a system downtime, none of the users got effected nor did any of the background processes. Good so thus we are done with an example showcasing the personalization capabilities in Oracle Fusion Applications.
We would now end this article on the note that you all would try and use this features and explore more on similar lines.
Thank you for your time and have a nice day ahead!!
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Posted: 31 May 2016 03:01 AM PDT
Dear Friends,
You may decide to subscribe to the articles on this website. This will facilitate you to receive emails when I publish new articles on this Website.
This functionality is being made available via FeedBurner.
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Posted: 27 May 2016 06:54 AM PDT
Objective:This article provides detailed OIM installation steps on Linux .
Steps to install OIM.
You need to download all the binaries / installables for weblogic, IAM, database , and Java required for OIM installation . You can download the OIM installables from below link:
http://www.oracle.com/
1)Once you download first thing is Repository Creation Utility (RCU). RCU creates all the required schemas for OIM . 2) Install weblogic server 3) Install IAM 4) Configure Weblogic ( to create a domain ) 5) Starting Weblogic
You need to install database first. You can follow the instructions in this article to install the database .
After the database is installed we will start with our first step i.e. RCU.
1)Creating Database Schema Using the Oracle Fusion Middleware Repository Creation Utility (RCU) :
RCU is available only on Linux and Windows platforms. Use the Linux RCU to create schemas on supported UNIX databases. Use the Windows RCU to create schemas on supported Windows databases. After you extract the contents of the rcuHome.zip file to a directory, you can see the executable file rcu in the BIN directory. Before running RCU, ensure that you have the database connection string, port, administrator credentials, and service name ready. 
1.1) After you execute the rcu binary file (./rcu) Repository Creation Utility Welcome screen will appear you just need to click on Next .
1.2) Select the option Create and click on Next
 1.3) You need to provide the Database Connection Details in order to connect to the database .After entering valid details click on Next  Once all the entries are correct and you click on Next Prerequisites will be checked  Once that is successful click on OK and then on Next
1.4) For Oracle Identity Manager, select the Identity Management - Oracle Identity Manager schema. When you select the Identity Management - Oracle Identity Manager schema, the following schemas are also selected, by default:
SOA Infrastructure User Messaging Service AS Common Schemas - Oracle Platform Security Services AS Common Schemas - Metadata Services After selecting Oracle Identity Manager click on Next , 
Once you click on Next it will check the prerequisites before going ahead . Click on OK once prerequisite check is successful.
1.5) Select the option Use same passwords for all schemas and give the password for the schema.
1.6) Click on Next to create the required schemas.
It will ask for confirmation click on OK to create the tablespaces
First it will check the tablespace requirements for selected components and if it succeeds it will start creating the table space.
 
1.7) Click on Create all the required repositories will be created
   2) Installing Weblogic Server :
To install weblogic you need to download the weblogic installable . You can download the weblogic from below link:
Once downloaded we can start the installation :
2.1) Before starting the Weblogic installation you should make sure that Java is already installed . To start installation we need to enter the command java -jar wls1036_generic.jar. As soon as you enter the command extraction will start and GUI will appear for installation .
 
2.1) Welcome screen will appear just click on Next
2.2) Choose the Middleware Home Directory .You can keep the default path for middleware or change as per your wish and click on Next
2.3) It will ask whether you want to register for security updates . Uncheck I wish to receive security updates and click on Next
Click on Yes when it asks Do you wish to bypass the initiation of configuration manager and remain uninformed of critical security issues in your configuration .
 2.4) Check on I wish to remain uninformed and click on Continue button 
3) Select Custom option and click on Next
We don’t want evaluation database and coherence so we will uncheck both the options and click on Next
2.5) Select the appropriate JDK and click on Next
2.6) Keep the default path for Weblogic home that appears and click on Next
All the utilities and commands required for Administration of weblogic will be available in middleware home and weblogic home
2.7) Installation Summary will be displayed summarizing what all products will be installed so just click on Next
Once you click on Next , installation for weblogic will start which will take around 5 minutes .
Once installation is completed uncheck Run Quickstart option since we do not want to configure weblogic now and click on Done button
Our second step is done . Now we will start with the this step wherein we have to install IAM
3) Installing Identity Access Manager
Identity and access management (IAM) is the security and business discipline that "enables the right individuals to access the right resources at the right times and for the right reasons." It addresses the need to ensure appropriate access to resources across increasingly heterogeneous technology environments and to meet increasingly rigorous compliance requirements
--> To start with IAM installation we will first move to the folder where we have downloaded its installable and unzipped them
--> Then we will move to Disk1 folder with the help of cd Disk1 command
 When you list contents of Disk1 folder with the help of ls command you will see runInstaller command . We will be running runInstaller command to start our IAM installation . 
--> To execute the runInstaller use the command ./ . Also it will require jdk location as shown in below screenshot. So the complete command will be ./runInstaller -jreLoc “path of jdk”
Once you execute runInstaller , it will check for swap space , temp space , and cpu speed if they are above 150 MB , 512 MB ,300Mhz respectively then only it will launch the Oracle Installer
 
3.1) Welcome screen will appearance installation starts just click on Next button .
3.2) Select Skip Software Updates option and click on Next
3.3) In 3rd step prerequisite check will be performed
Once all the prerequisite checks are successful click on Next .
3.4) In 4th step you need to specify Home Directory for IDM and Middleware home location . Keep the default one appearing and click on Next .
3.5) In 5th step Installation Summary will be displayed listing Location , Available Space and the Applications that will be installed . Just click on Install to start with the installation
3.6) Once click on Install, Installation progress will be displayed , you need to wait till its done 100%.
 
Once the installation is successful we need to configure weblogic which will be our next step
4) Configuring Weblogic Domain
-->To configure weblogic domain first we will go to Middleware home by using command cd /app/u01/middleware
Next when list the contents of middleware folder you will find IDM Home i.e. Oracle_IDM1 as shown in below screenshot .
So we will move to the Oracle_IDM1 folder by using cd command .
Now we want to move to bin folder so first we list the contents of Oracle_IDM1 folder
-->After moving to bin folder run the config.sh file to configure the Weblogic
Once you run config.sh It will start the installer and will check whether temp space , swap space are greater than 150 Mb and 500 MB respectively , and also will check whether Monitor is configured to display at least 256 colors . If all these three checks are passed the only configuration wizard for OIM will start and GUI will appear .
 
4.1) Welcome screen will be seen in the first step , so just select Create New Weblogic Domain and click on Next to move forward to step 2 .
4.2) In second step it will ask you what are the components you want to configure . Select Oracle Identity Manager all the dependencies will be automatically selected and then click on Next (Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle Enterprise Manager ,Oracle Platform Security Service , Oracle WSM Policy Manager , Oracle JRF WebServices Asynchronous services , Oracle JRF will be automatically selected )
  4.3) In this step it will to enter the name and location for the domain and its applications. Change the Domain name from base_domain to security_domain or as per your naming conventions.Keep the default value appearing for Domain location and Application location and click on Next 
4.4) In 4th Step you need to set the password for weblogic administrator. Enter the passwords you wish and click on Next .
4.5) In 5th step you need to configure Server Start Mode and JDK . There will be two modes for server startup one is Production mode and Development mode . The difference between these two modes is that in Production mode there will be 14 workers threads that run whereas in Development mode there will be 4 Worker thread . Also in Development mode resource consumption will be less as compared to Production mode. We will select Development mode and JDK that is already installed and click on Next .
 4.6) In this step you need to configure JDBC Component Schema . To configure first select all the listed Component Schema 
Then enter the common password for all the schemas , change the host if it’s not correct or simply enter localhost if the database is running on the same local machine and click on Next . Also make sure SID and other database details are correct before clicking on Next.
4.7) Now it will test the database connectivity .
Once all the Schema connection is successful click on Next .
4.8) It will ask for any optional configuration you want . If yes select the appropriate one and click Next . In our case we will not select on option and directly click on Next . Once domain is created we will go back and configure it.
4.9) At last it will give the Configuration Summary . Just click on Create button to start with the domain creation .
  
We have created the domain now we will configure it . There is one python script named as configureSecurtyStore.py that is to be executed which also requires the domain name. (For security store you need to specify domain name ). Once you create the security store you will be able to run the managed server , admin server , oim server etc.
Lets us create one security store . -> First we will move to bin folder under Oracle_IDM1 .  -> Now we will run the python script using wlst.sh file . ./wlst.sh /app/Middleware/Oracle_IDM1/    
Security store is nothing but an encrypted table where OIM uses this table for saving all the audit data , audit policies you create . This was introduced from 11g r2 release onwards , it was not available in earlier release .
Once security store is created we can start weblogic .
5 ) Starting servers
5.1 )To start the servers first we will move to weblogic domain we created .
5.2) We will start soa server by using command ./startManagedWebLogic.sh soa_server1
Wait until its shows the running status .
5.3) Start OIM server by using command ./startManagedWeblogic.sh oim_server1 
Once all the servers are in running mode our OIM installation and configuration completes .
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Posted: 25 May 2016 01:14 PM PDT
Introduction
In the previous articles we have already learned what an analysis is and how do we create a custom analysis (detailed article here).
In this article we will try to explore another feature Master-Detail interaction (a very old feature in OBIEE) maybe not that much explored one in context of fusion applications though.
A Master-Detail Analysis is basically an analysis where-in we have two or more views with one view being the Master and the others being detailed ones too.
Any change in the master view simulates a change in the detailed view.
So let us try to understand the same better with the help of an example.
Worked Example
For this example we would try to perform the following steps as shown:
Create a Master View on Analysis
For this example we would build a headcount by country report and will use ‘Workforce Management – Worker Assignment Real Time’.
While I hope all of you might be aware how to navigate to the New Analysis page by now but in case you aren’t this is what is to be done
Step 1-> Login To Fusion Applications with a User login (individual with Manager Roles and preferably some super-user who has rights to access employee data from different countries) We will use the user Robert.jackman for this example
   
Next use the following folder attributes
And we should get the following screen
Next move the cursor to the Results tab (adjacent to the Criteria Tab)
Now we would need to set one column as a Master Column (we choose the Country Attribute for same). For doing so we need to select the column drop down list ( under criteria tab after selecting the column) click on Colum Properties.
This will open up a new tab named style, move the cursor to the interaction tab
And select Send Master-Detail Events
Choose Column Name in the Channel Input Box (the value entered should match the exact name and should be case sensitive too)
Next Click ok and move to the results tab to create another view (detail view)
From the toolbar menu select the new option, then choose the Graph icon and select the vertical bar as shown in screen-shot below (notice the highlighted text)
Once you select the same the following screen would appear ( a careful observation would show a vertical bar graph on lower section of the page)
We would now drag this graph to the right side of the table layout
Next we need to click on the pencil icon of the Graph
 
Next we need to Drag the ‘Country’ Attribute on the Graph prompts and also ensure that the bars have varying color codes by location (for this we simply need to drag the Location Name attribute to the Vary Color By (Horizontal Bars)
Once the above steps are performed the graph layout would look like below:
Next we need to set the properties of the detail view and for doing so we need to navigate to the ‘Edit Graph Properties’ icon of the toolbar
And then populate the Master-Detail Events Section
Next click on the ‘Done’ button
We could clearly see the graphical headcount view location wise based on the country. If we change the country (master column) the behavior of the Detail View (Graphical View represented by horizontal bars do change) as shown below:
When we choose ‘United States’ as the value on Country we could see the following detail view
Changing the same (value of country column from United States to Ireland displays the change on the graph as shown below)
And with this we come to the end of this article.
Hopefully this article was able to serve the purpose of demonstrating the Master-Detail feature in OTBI analysis and all of you would at some point of time during your real time project implementation would be able to build flashy real time reports and woo your customers …. Good Luck !!
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Posted: 20 May 2016 04:14 AM PDT
Introduction
This article will helps to understands basic functionality as available in Oracle Fusion Receivable. Oracle Fusion Receivables provides integrated functionality to perform most of day-to-day accounts receivable operations. Receivables functionality is managed via three Overview work areas: Billing, Receivables Balances, and Revenue Management. All three work areas provide access to general ledger account activities, including creating accounting, creating manual journal entries, and reviewing journal entries. Most of the functionalities available in Oracle EBS 11i/R12 are available as is and all the mandatory setups are also similar to the setups available in 11i/R12.
Let us understand briefly about work areas-
Billing Work Area
Billing work area helps to perform tasks related to customer billing activities. Monitor and review incomplete transactions, and approve and research pending adjustments. Use AutoInvoice to import transactions from other systems and generate invoices and credit memos automatically according to your requirements. You can easily review and correct AutoInvoice import errors and resubmit AutoInvoice. Create new invoices, debit memos, credit memos, and on-account credit memos. Perform related activities to manage your transactions: update, duplicate, credit, adjust, dispute, and preview a transaction. You can also create a new customer record and manage existing customers from the Billing work area.
Receivables Balances Work Area
Use the Receivables Balances work area to perform tasks related to customer payment activities and the management of accounts receivable balances. Review actionable items, including open receipts and receipt batches, unapplied and on-account receipts and credit memos, receipt remittance batches, and funds transfer errors. Create receipts manually, import receipts via lockbox or spreadsheet, or create automatic receipts. Perform related activities to manage your receipts: apply, unapply, reverse, delete; create invoice adjustments or chargebacks during receipt application; and remit, clear, or risk eliminate factored receipts. You can manage receipt remittances: create, modify, and approve receipt remittance batches. You can also perform tasks related to managing accounts receivables balances, including reconciling receivables and managing receivables accounting period statuses.
Revenue Management Work Area
Use the Revenue Management work area to perform tasks related to revenue recognition and revenue adjustments. Run the Recognize Revenue program to generate revenue distribution records for invoices and credit memos that use invoicing and revenue scheduling rules. Perform revenue adjustments on one or more transactions, including scheduling and unscheduling revenue; reviewing, adding, and expiring revenue contingencies; and transferring sales credits. You can also manage revenue policies, revenue contingencies, and rules that assign revenue contingencies to transactions automatically.
Customer Information
From either the Billing or Receivables Balances work area, you have access to manage both customer information and customer account activities, in summary and in detail. You can review customer account information by a single business unit, bill-to site, or across all business units and bill-to sites. For each customer account, you can review transactions and receipts, dispute and adjust transactions, and drill down to current or historical customer account activity.
Oracle Fusion Receivables provides a comprehensive solution for running day-to-day accounts receivable operations. It includes a host of services for customer billing and payment activities, revenue recognition and adjustments, accounts receivable balances, and reconciliation to the general ledger. Oracle Fusion Receivables introduces SmartReceipts, an industry leading automated cash application solution, and role-based work areas that provide embedded intelligence and focused to-do lists of transactions, receipts, and other activities requiring immediate attention. You can actively monitor transactions and drill down to details with its sophisticated reporting tools. Oracle Fusion Receivables comes complete with Excel integration, tagging, watch lists, collaboration, and context-sensitive embedded help.
Fusion Receivable Mandatory setups are-
New Features in Oracle Fusion Account Receivables
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Posted: 19 May 2016 04:26 PM PDT
Introduction
The topic for discussion appears self-explanatory but in case it doesn’t let-me try and help all the readers. Fusion Applications has a specific look and feel (skin color, background/foreground color of its page, logo on first page).
This article will try to explore and showcase a scenario where we could try to change some of the seeded attributes and at this point it makes sense to understand the advantages/need/use for making such changes and why should we rather spend our time and energy on making some changes. Some of the salient points justifying such a move are:
Each company prefers to have its own logo on the Welcome Page instead of the seeded one delivered by Oracle. While on one hand it does helps individuals to identify the Environment that they are working on the other hand it also does a bit on the advertisement part. No harm displaying the company logo on the ERP application being used by the company.
While Oracle has tried its level best to present the application in the most pleasant way carefully choosing the background and foreground colors, some companies might decide to have a different shade on their environment. The application provides a flexibility and enables users to do so.
oFor a typical organization using Fusion Applications or for that matter any other ERP system there are multiple environments (Also referred as Instances / Pods) like Development, UAT, SIT, Pre-Production and Production.
Since all of the above looks similar at times it becomes difficult to identify the Environment on which a specific task is being carried out. A change supposed to be done on Development Environment may be performed on UAT or vice versa and this might cause issues.
One smart way of avoiding such mistakes would be using smart color coding scheme on the environment (maybe as displayed below):
There could be many more reasons but for now we would restrict ourselves to the above three and continue with our example.
Worked Example
In this example we would change the logo from the seeded one (VISION as displayed in the first screenshot) and replace the same with a new logo (customer specific one).
As a first step we have to login to the application (specific Fusion POD where we intend to make the changes) and click on the ‘Appearance’ (under Tools menu) hyper-link as shown below
This takes us to the following screen:
Once you click on the Edit button you would be asked to activate a sandbox (this feature ensures that all the changes are made in a specific customized area ensuring that in case something does not goes well the changes can be reverted)
We already have a sandbox “ApplcoreLongSB_01” and we will use the same here instead of creating new sandbox.
Once the same is set as Active you would notice the same displayed on the topmost region (snap-shot below)
Snapshot of the image(logo)
We need to click on the ‘Update’ Button and point to our logo/image (in this example we have used an image which is stored in a local machine but this could very well be an online image too).
Next we should click on ‘Ok’ button followed by the ‘Apply’ button.
A snap-shot of what appears when captured shows:
This change will appear on all the pages and the same could be verified too by navigating to different Fusion pages. In this example we will verify the same on the homepage to get a confirmation.
One important point to note here is that all this changes did not required a downtime and was on the go which is a big plus and very good feature to have.
We are on the homepage now and it would be hard to miss that the logo has been changed to the new one
Although we have already made the change in the logo but the change is too small and so to make the change simple and clearly visible let-us try to change the background color too. We would change the same to ED6A24 (for this example).
And once we click on ‘Apply’ we are able to view the change:
And finally a look at Homepage:
So we have now seen how easily we are able to change the appearance of a Fusion Enviornment and we may change the skin, theme and various colors available. Each one of the same can be tried and verified by using the same process and hopefully you all would be able to get desired results.
That’s it for now. We will be back for a new and interesting feature of Fusion Applications in a new article very soon, till then you all keep experimenting and playing around with new features and do share your knowledge in case you come up with some interesting revelations.
Good Bye!!
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Posted: 16 May 2016 05:07 AM PDT
While some if not all of us are aware of the OTBI Reports, Dashboards, Prompts and other components, there must be some curious to know how does a dashboard helps when compared to a traditional report.
A dashboard is a fancy way of displaying data with the help of nice pie-charts, bars, numbers, colors and what not and the best part being you need not do something explicit to reach out to them. They are placed on the Homepage, Welcome Page and gives you a quick answer to your questions whether you are a Team Member, Project Manager and CFO/CTO/CIO.
Different individuals working in an organization seek different answers from the system for example:
Would be interested in knowing about his vacation balance, pending tasks, goals/objectives…
Would be interested in project deliverables, resource availability, project fund……..
Would be interested in most valuable resources, attrition rate, and reasons for people leaving the organization…..
Senior Officials/Decision Makers would be interested in which products are doing well in market, which are the most valued customers, past trends, forecasting, budgeting and many more…..
All such information and many others which are needed on a day to day basis are good to be displayed on a homepage or a most frequently visited page (may be delivered using agents too) so that individuals get the information which help them to get their job done smoothly.
These dashboards can be created either as a sub-object within an existing page or can even be embedded in a completely new custom page.
They could be added on the SUI springboards too. To give a brief overview of SUI its stands for Simplified User Interface and as the name suggests it is an alternative link which is mostly used by employees for performing self-service transactions. This particular interface has icons instead of the hyperlinks (of a typical Fusion Environment) which saves a lot of time and effort for end-user to directly navigate to his/her area of interest (by a simple click on icons which are available on homepage). We will try to understand the same (look and feel of a Standard Fusion Page versus a SUI Page) with help of screen-shots below:
 
This is how a SUI page differs from a typical Fusion one and now coming back to our original topic of discussion about “Dashboard use and its importance” ,while each one of the above mentioned subtopics may be discussed in detail with worked examples and implementation methodologies we will cover one specific worked example here and we will name it as an ‘Employee Engagement’ Dashboard.
This was a novice thought for one of the customers who moved from a traditional ERP System to Fusion Applications and were keen to ensure that their workforce get used to the new system.
Before elaborating more on the same let us try to have a look at the dashboard created and that might help us grasp a better understanding of the same:
Employee Awards (End User View)
The above dashboard comprises of multiple Dashboard objects and are placed on a same dashboard page by making smart use of columns.
Each one of the object are embedded with a column (a more detailed and clear view being represented in the design view shown below)
 
We would just look into detail one of the specific column (Column 7) of the above snap-shot and try to understand the same:
A close look at Column7 reveals its content and they appear as:
We could see that this particular object is a text object and its properties reveal that ‘This particular type of object allows us to Enter Text and formatting tags to include on the Dashboard”
It has provision of choosing styling (Bold, Italics and Underline as shown) also we may choose whether we need a HTML Markup or not.
There is a preview section too which shows how it would look when on a dashboard.
Each Dashboard Page when in design mode has certain control buttons on top right hand side as shown below:
While the icon with (+) sign is for Adding a Dashboard Page, the one with (X) icon is for deleting the same, the list icon ( is a drop down list … options shown in below screen) , preview and run option ( we would look in detail how they work) and lastly the other two icons besides the rightmost (? Icon) which is for help are for saving the dashboard (save and save-as options respectively).
We would now try to click on the preview button to check what its functionality is and as per the name given to it appears it would give a static view of the page:
One important point to note here is that in ‘Preview’ mode we do not get any input box where-in we might expect the dashboard page to behave in a interactive way.
But, when we choose the ‘Run’ option the same page will behave in a interactive way as shown below:
 
We would try to pass on a different value in the input box and hopefully there will be a new value for the fields (Hours for Extra (Gross))
We provided a new value in Input Text box as (60) and it shows values of 2,1,1 for Standard , Time and a Half and Double Time Hours for Extra (Gross) income and with this we will conclude the topic with the hope that this article was useful and all of you would try to dig deep further into more detailed features to get a better grasp of the functionality offered.
Thank you, for your time and have a Great Day Ahead!!!!
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