Highlights from the Oracle EPM Cloud March 2024 Release
Below are what we deem to be the most important changes for our customers in this month’s release. As always, for the full list of changes and supplementary information in the release navigate to the URL at the end of this post, or contact PARC for more information or assistance.
EPM Cloud Platform
REQUESTS TO BLOCK OR ALLOW CONNECTIONS FROM SPECIFIC COUNTRIES NO LONGER ACCEPTED
Oracle will no longer accept the following requests until further notice – the implementation of these requests is not scalable: Blocking of and allowing only connections originating in specific countries.
As an alternative, you are encouraged to use the IP AllowList functionality to give restricted access to your environments.
REDWOOD THEME NOTIFICATION FOR SERVICE ADMINISTRATORS
Starting with this update, a notification will be displayed on the home page of Service Administrators. This notice lets the Service Administrators know about the new and streamlined Redwood experience that will be implemented in the April Update (24.04), which will make available these three new Redwood themes: Oracle, Custom Dark, and Custom Light.
You are encouraged to implement the Redwood Theme in your test environment so that you can become accustomed to the updated theme.
IMPROVED ANCESTOR MEMBER ACCESS
Using the new Default Ancestor Access option to automate access assignment, EPM Cloud users on the web and in Smart View are now able to zoom out to ancestors and see the hierarchy in a tree view, even when, before this feature, they wouldn’t have had access to the members at the parent level. This feature enhances existing member security to provide a choice of default access to ancestor members. Service administrators can set the default access for ancestors to either None, Read, Write, or Display access in the application. They can also grant Read, Write, or Display access to one or more ancestors in, for example, the Dimension Editor. In these cases, the explicit security assignment made in the Dimension Editor takes precedence, unless the access set in the Dimension Editor is set to None, in which case the Default Ancestor Access setting takes precedence.
For more information about this change see the update on Oracle’s site at the URL below or contact PARC for assistance.
CLONE ENVIRONMENT – CHANGE OF BEHAVIOR
Starting with this update, the daily maintenance of the source environment will be prioritized over the clone environment process to ensure that the maintenance snapshot of the environment is created. Any clone that is in progress will be terminated so that the maintenance snapshot can take place.
DAILY MAINTENANCE START TIME – CHANGE OF BEHAVIOR
Starting with this update you will be able to specify the start time of daily maintenance in HH:MM format instead of just at the top of the hour (HH:00 format). Initially, all XX:00 start times will be randomized to a non-zero number of minutes after the hour. Service Administrators will have the ability to modify this to a more desirable minute.
DATA INTEGRATION: EPM INTEGRATION AGENT CUSTOM DATABASE CONNECTIONS
In this update, the EPM Integration Agent now enables customers to implement a custom database connection function using the agent interface library. Customers can use whatever method they desire to get the JDBC connection and then set the connection, which can be then used by the EPM Integration Agent to extract and write back operations when processing the SQL.
IMPORTANT ACTIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS
Within the next 2 months, Oracle is planning to upgrade all environments currently on a non-hybrid Essbase version to a hybrid Essbase version. Once the February update has occurred on your environment and you are currently on a non-hybrid version you should run the Essbase Validation tool. This can be found here:
- Go to Home >> Application >> Overview
- Click Actions >> Essbase Outline Validation >> Pre validate outline
- To view the validation report, select Outline Pre-validation Report and resolve any noted issues.
To check whether your environment is on a hybrid or non-hybrid Essbase version, look at the value of Essbase Version supports Hybrid Block Storage Option in the Activity Report (found in the last tab under Application >> Overview). If the value is Yes, it means that your environment is on a hybrid Essbase version. If the value is No, it means that your environment is on a non-hybrid Essbase version.
Important Actions and Considerations
The following changes will be made in future updates. For detailed information on each please check the Important Actions and Considerations section of the update in Oracle’s advisory at the URL at the bottom of this post.
- Support for Infolets will be discontinued in the 24.04 update. You will be unable to create new Infolets.
- Plan to discontinue non-Redwood Experience themes in April 2024 (see above).
- When exporting data from Task Manager, Supplemental Data Manager, or Enterprise Journals to Microsoft Excel, the format will now be .XLSX instead of .XLS.
- Future deprecation (by the end of 2024) of the Native Mode option for Smart View Ad Hoc behavior.
- The User Variables Dimension column will honor the alias setting in User Preferences.
- Calculation Manager will enforce the use of the Errors and Warnings diagnostic tool before the launch, validation, or deployment of new business rules. If errors are found, you will be forced to resolve these before continuing. Note that currently existing and deployed rules will continue to run as-is.
- Oracle Financial Reporting will be deprecated in mid-to-late 2024 (subject to change with a minimum six-month advance notice). You should migrate your Financial Reports to Reports in advance of this. For more information and instructions to accomplish this, see the following URL:
https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/enterprise-performance-management-common/dmepr/appendix_b_migration_of_reports_from_financial_reporting.html
Update Timing and Information
This update is scheduled to take place during the next maintenance period on or after 2200 UTC (3 AM ET) on Saturday, Mar 2, 2024 (test environments) and on or after 2200 UTC (3 AM ET) on Saturday, March 16, 2024 (production environments).
Customers needing more information or with questions about any of the changes summarized here should contact us.
Oracle’s web page for the full contents of the update can be found here:
