Oracle Cloud EPM Updates – March 2022

Published On - March 7, 2022

Angie Caruthers Oracle Cloud EPM

Welcome to the Olympus Consulting monthly(ish) Oracle Cloud EPM update highlights series! Each month (or so) we will provide some of the key highlights from the latest updates from Oracle. This month, we have a few new features and a variety of smaller updates and enhancements. In case you are not already an Oracle EPM customer or you just missed the update e-mail, you can find the full list of what’s new here:

Oracle Cloud EPM Updates Page

Calc on the Fly

One complaint new users have had for years about Hyperion Planning and now Oracle Cloud EPM is that to see calculated data, you have to submit your changes. With this new update, Calc on the Fly is now available which allows users to see calculated data without actually submitting changes. This is an interesting advancement that should greatly increase the end-user flexibility. But, this isn’t going to just be plug and play. Changes will be required to enable the functionality and it seems to work with members that have member formulas only. If you have an application with business rules rather than formulas, you will need to make some serious changes. This may even lead to a change in the way we design business rules going forward.

Data Exchange

For those of you who use Data Management frequently, it may be time start familiarizing yourself with Data Exchange. Data Exchange is where you will find two key pieces of the Oracle Cloud EPM: data maps (for Smart Push, etc.), and Data Integration. Why does this impact Data Management? Because one day Data Integration will likely replace Data Management. The more time I spend in Data Integration, the more this feels like a good thing. The interface is more responsive, and they’ve started adding functionality that doesn’t even exist yet in Data Management. At the end of the day, Data Integration is a more integrated skin for the same back end of Data Management. We are just seeing more and more functionality rolled in to eventually sunset the only Data Management interface.

Other Highlights from March 2022

  • New videos available to incorporate Machine Learning models in Planning.
  • In Strategic Modeling, Consolidation View is now Scenario Rollups to distinguish from Consolidations more easily in FCCS.
  • There is a new Excel template workbook, PlanningApplicationTemplate_FreeForm.xlsx, that allows you to create a multi-cube FreeForm application from Smart View. The new multi-cube FreeForm template replaces the two previously available templates that allowed you to create only a single-cube FreeForm ASO or BSO application.
  • There is a new tutorial for Data Integration
  • There is a new version of EPMAutomate available including enhancements to the Login and Encrypt commands to support an OAuth2.0 refresh token and client ID for accessing OCI (Gen 2) Cloud EPM environments
  • When drilling into Smart View, Data Integration now uses the last used view on the Drill landing page. If no last used view is found, Data Integration uses the default selection in Application Options. Prior to this update, only the drill view in Application Options could be used.
  • Instead of displaying all members in Report member selector and POV controls, the member hierarchies and choice lists will be filtered by security for Cloud EPM Platform data sources throughout Reports. In order to respect Cloud EPM Platform metadata security, this is the behavior going forward, there is not a user preference or server setting to enable or disable this behavior.

Updates Coming…But Not Yet Available

  • New task flow type in Planning called EPM Task Manager. When implemented, you’ll see two task flow type options during Planning application creation: Task List and EPM Task Manager. EPM Task Manager will be the default option. Current Task-List-based Planning applications will not be impacted by this new option and default setting in the App creation wizard. There will be no migration from existing Planning Task Lists to the upcoming EPM Task Manager. Customers who wish to continue using the current Planning Task Lists should choose the Task List Option during application creation. This appears to be the next step in the eventual removal of the original Task List functionality. We’ll have to wait and see exactly how this all gets rolled out.
  • In a future update, the Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP) enablement option will be removed for all Cloud EPM Planning Modules (Standard and Enterprise) and Enterprise Planning applications that have not already enabled this feature in the Workforce Module. Customers who have already enabled this feature will see no change in their existing applications with this feature already enabled. No new applications will support this feature after this change. This product has been moved to the HCM side of Oracle. While it will still be based on the EPM core technology, it is no longer available in the EPM stack.