FDMEE Patch Set Update 11.1.2.4.100 is Here!

The latest FDMEE patch set has been released.  Patch Set 11.1.2.4.100 (Patch Number 20648390) has a number of great new features and will resolve over 40 defects.

Best New Features

Universal Data Adapter
The Universal Data Adapter enables you to integrate external source table/view information directly into FDMEE, bypassing the open interface table. This feature allows the user to easily connect to any source data where they have access to the underlying database in the case where a prepackaged adapter is not available, or if the pre-packaged adapter does not provide the required data. This feature effectively provides direct integration to any source table or view.

Testing Check Rule Expressions
Check rules have been enhanced so that you can now test a rule in the Test Expression tab of the Rule Logic screen and validate conditions for a combination of dimensions. When a test check rule is submitted, you can display errors that were found in the rule being tested.

Loading Exchange Rates to Financial Management
You can now load exchange rates from EBS and Peoplesoft to Hyperion Financial Management.

Extracting Financial Management Journals
Source parameter and source filters have been enhanced to extract the type of journal.

Purge Scripts
FDMEE now supports system processes that enable you to maintain and cleanup all runtime artifacts, such as the Process tables, Staging tables or Inbox / Outbox folders. Often these tables and folders contain vast amounts of data, which you may no longer need. With the Purge Script feature, you can purge standard tables and folder by scheduling system processes and executing them.

Map Monitor Reports
Two new Map Monitor reports have been added to the Audit Reports report group: Map Monitor for Location and Map Monitor for User. Map monitor reports show changes made to the data load mapping rules using any of the methods data load mappings UI, Excel template imports, text file imports, and Lifecycle Management imports.

The Map Monitor reports do not capture historical data earlier than release 11.1.2.4.100. Map Monitor reports are enabled only if the Enable Map Audit is set to “Yes” in System Settings.

You can find additional details about this patch set here: https://updates.oracle.com/Orion/Services/download?type=readme&aru=19686356#_Toc434314047

 

EPM Autowhat? Getting Started with EPM Automate.

If you have been working with Oracle's Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service you probably have heard a little bit about EPM Automate.  For those of you that don’t know what EPM Automate is - EPM Automate is a utility that allows you to perform various tasks in your PBCS instance through the command line.  This comes in especially handy when using third party scheduling tools, or need to run various automated batch processes overnight to perform application refreshes, backups, metadata or data loads.  EPM Automate is your key to meeting this requirement and will quickly become your best friend (We’ll walk you through some examples of how EPM Automate saved us in another blog post).So now that you have a little background, let’s walk through getting connected.

First step, connect to your PBCS instance and navigate to Tools à Install à EPM Automate (for Windows).  This will prompt you to save the EPM Automate client down to your machine.  Go ahead and run it once it has finished downloading.  The default for a local installation of EPM Automate is C:\Oracle\EPM Automate.

The next step is to open a new command prompt window and change directory to where you installed the EPM client.  In our case, we used the default: C:\Oracle\EPM Automate

To connect EPM Automate to your PBCS instance you need to use the login command (you can find a complete list of the commands here).  The login command has the following parameters: ‘username’ ‘password’ ‘PBCS URL’ ‘Identity Domain’.  Below is a (censored) screenshot of me logging into our PBCS instance. 

Once you are connected you can start running commands, such as listing files in the PBCS inbox/outbox, uploading files and kicking off data loads.  Tune in to my next blog post which will cover practical uses for EPM Automate.