Wednesday, August 6, 2025

Oracle EPM - Updated Narrative Reporting Extension for SmartView !

Updated Narrative Reporting Extension for Smart View

An updated Narrative Reporting extension for Oracle Smart View for Office is now available to download and install. This update includes general improvements and defect fixes.

Business Benefit: Downloading and installing the latest Narrative Reporting extension for Smart View gives you access to the latest improvements and defect fixes.

Steps to Enable

To take advantage of the improvements and defect fixes in the Narrative Reporting extension, choose an option to install the extension update:

From within Smart View, click the Check for Updates, New Installs, and Uninstalls link in the Options dialog, Extensions tab, select your Narrative Reporting instance, then follow the prompts.

From the Narrative Reporting web interface, Downloads page, download the "Smart View Extension for Cloud EPM Narrative Reporting" SVEXT file, then double-click the file to install.


To install the Narrative Reporting extension from Smart View:

From the Smart View ribbon, select Options, and then Extensions.

- Click the Check for Updates, New Installs, and Uninstalls link.

- In Select Location for Extension Updates, select the connections to check for extension updates, and then click Get Updates.

- Smart View checks for all extensions that your administrator has made available to you.

- To check for available extensions in all your connections, check Select All, and then click Get Updates.

- The dialog box expands to display a message window providing you with the progress and status of the extension query.

- Locate the extension named Narrative Reporting and click the Install link. The Install link with the red arrow next to it, to launch the installer.

Note

In release 25.100+, a message alerts you if a minimum version of Smart View is required and the current Smart View installation is not at the minimum version.

Monday, August 4, 2025

EPM Narrative Reporting - Notes Summarization with GenAI

Notes Summarization with GenAI

This feature leverages Generative AI (GenAI) to automatically summarize Notes sourced from either a Note Segment or a Note Text Box. Notes summarization is available either in a text box (designer setup) or as an end-user action.

  • Text Box: Using either the Notes or GridNotes text function (with an additional parameter) or the SummarizeGridNotes text function, the report designer can specify to have Notes summarized.
  • End User Action: While previewing a report, a user can select Summarize Notes from the Actions menu to display a pop-up window with the summarized Notes.



Using the Action menu, click Summarize Notes



Summarize Notes Dialog

When using the SummarizeGridNotes function or the end user Summarize Notes action, you can choose to Use Context, which will include the data value for the member associated with the Note segment.

Set Use Context to True or False

Set Use Context to True or False

For example, the main driver of higher other purchases and supplies expenses was additional contractor services, resulting in a 0.53% variance in Fees Outside Services. Finally, a minor decrease in facilities maintenance costs led to a 0.12% variance in Facilities Expenses.

Business Benefit: This feature allows you to create an executive summary and enhances the decision-making processes.

Oracle EPM New Audit and Jobs Application Roles

New Audit and Jobs Application Roles

This update introduces new application roles that enable audit and job management operations to be performed from the application screens or by executing EPM Automate commands and REST APIs. Previously, only Service Administrators were authorized to perform these tasks. 

With the addition of these roles, users who are not Service Administrators can now be granted access to perform these operations.


Audit - Manage: Enables users to view and delete the audit records in the environment. Also enables users to import audit records into the environment using the importAppAudit EPM Automate command.

Audit View: Enables users to view audit records. Also enables users to export audit records from the environment using the exportAppAudit EPM Automate command and the Export Audit REST API.

Jobs - Manage: Enables users to view and delete the job status records in the environment. Also enables users to import job console records using the importJobConsole  EPM Automate command.

Jobs - View: Enables users to view the job status records in the environment.  Also enables users to export job Console records from the environment using the exportJobConsole EPM Automate command and the Export Job Console REST API.


Applies to: Enterprise Profitability and Cost Management, Financial Consolidation and Close, FreeForm, Planning, Tax Reporting

Business Benefit: These new application roles enable more users to manage the import and export process of jobs and audit data and facilitate the delegation of duties.


Friday, July 25, 2025

Oracle EPM - Advanced Predictions Now Available

 Advanced Predictions Now Available


This is the big one for the month. Advanced Predictions brings multivariate predictions to Auto Predict. Up to now, Auto Predict used univariate predictions. 

What does that mean, you ask? In basic terms, univariate predictions are based on one variable, such as analyzing historical sales volume to predict future sales volume. 

Multivariate predictions bring in the ability to use more than one variable to predict future data. For example, you can analyze volumes, average sales prices, and GDP rates to predict future sales volume. 

Multivariate will make Auto Predictions more accurate. Before this update to take advantage of multivariate predictions, you would need to bring in an ML model created outside of EPM (which is still available).


Some important considerations.

  • You must opt in to use Advance Predictions
  • You must have an EPM Enterprise subscription
  • There is no additional cost required to deploy OCI Data Science; it is embedded in Fusion Cloud EPM
  • Explainability is only available on the web and not in Smart View
  • Lastly, this appears to only apply to Auto Predict and not Predictive Planning.

Oracle EPM August 2025 update - New Audit and Jobs Roles !

 New Audit and Jobs Application Roles


Four new roles are available to give users the ability to review audit and job information. 

The roles are

Audit – Manage: Allows users to view and delete audit records

Audit – View: Allows users to view audit records

Jobs – Manage: Allows users to view and delete job status records

Jobs – View: Allows users to view job status records

Friday, July 18, 2025

Oracle ARCS - Loading Bank Files - New Length Format !

Oracle Account Reconciliation and Loading Bank BAI Files 


Length of Bank Text Column Increased to 1200 Characters When Using BAI Format Bank Files

When loading transactions using BAI Format Bank files, the Bank Text can now be up to 1200 characters long. Three new columns, Bank Text2, Bank Text3, and Bank Text4, are added. 

If the Bank Text exceeds 300 characters, one or more of these new columns are used to store the Bank Text. For example, if the Bank Text is 850 characters, then it is loaded into the Bank Text, Bank Text2, and Bank Text3 columns.

Business Benefit: This feature enhances the usability of BAI Bank Format files by allowing users to load longer Bank Text values and then use these during matching.

Integrating BAI, SWIFT MT940, and CAMT.053 Format Bank File Transactions

When loading bank file data, you create a data source associated with the bank file source system. Data Integration converts the BAI, SWIFT MT940, or CAMT.053 file formats to CSV format for loading into Transaction Matching. The CSV load file can be viewed in the Transaction Matching Jobs results.

The source application for BAI Format Bank File Transactions has the following pre-defined constant columns and headers:

  • Account
  • Amount
  • Transaction Type
  • Currency
  • Transaction Date
  • Bank Reference
  • Customer Reference
  • Bank Text
  • Bank Text2, Bank Text3, and Bank Text4

The source application for a Swift MT940 Format Bank File Transactions has the following pre-defined constant fields:

Oracle EPM - New Data Integration Administrator Role !

In the July 2025 update, we have seen Oracle release a new  Application Role - Data Integration - Administrator


The Data Integration - Administrator application role can now be assigned to any user, regardless of their predefined role, allowing broader access to all functional activities within Data Integration. 

Users with this role can:

Create and manage integrations between source and target systems

Execute and monitor pipeline activities

Perform data and metadata extraction and transformation from on-premises sources using the EPM Integration Agent

Applies to: Account Reconciliation, Enterprise Profitability and Cost Management, Financial Consolidation and Close, Freeform, Planning, Profitability and Cost Management, Tax Reporting

Business Benefit: This update supports flexible role-based access, empowering non-Service Administrators to take ownership of data integration tasks, improving efficiency and operational control across teams.