The Feature

Oracle Fusion Feature Request Voting Is Now Available

June 29, 2006 on 8:25 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Oracle Press | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

Below is full text of the OAUG broadcast message regarding the Future Feature Request Voting process:

As you may be aware, the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) has embarked on a mission to assist Oracle in collecting and voting on feature requests for Fusion, as well as on strategic, tactical and operational improvements to current Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise and Oracle Retail application functionality.

To date, the OAUG has received more than 1,100 submissions, nearly 400 of which are feature requests for Fusion.

Now is the time to voice your opinion to Oracle! Voting for enhancement/Fusion feature requests is now open to OAUG members only through July 17, 2006. If your organization is not a member of the OAUG, but is interested in participating in the voting process, OAUG membership information is available on the OAUG Web site.

If you are an OAUG member and eligible to vote, your OAUG key contact must designate you as an enhancement contact. Talk to your key contact to ensure you have access to voting. It is important for you to vote on all requests even if you have not submitted one, but please limit your votes to the applications you use.

To learn more about how to use the OAUG ERS, please review the Users Guide (PDF file) or download and view the ERS demo (10.5MB) (Please note: this session was recorded via WebEx and requires the WebEx Player, which you may download and install from the WebEx Web site).

Again, OAUG member voting in now open, so please work with others in your organization to vote and share your requests with Oracle! All voting results will be submitted to Oracle for evaluation. Any formal response the OAUG receives from Oracle regarding the prioritized requests will be made available for viewing in the ERS.

If you have any questions, please contact the OAUG at enhancements@oaug.com or +1 404.240.0897.

Best Regards,
OAUG Technology Committee

P.S. Only OAUG Key Contacts can identify who they wish to vote on behalf of their organization. Allowing OAUG member contacts to vote is easy!

Sneak Peek at Oracle e-Business Suite User Interface in Release 12

June 24, 2006 on 6:51 am | by Marian Crkon | In Worth Noting | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

Steven Chan of the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog has posted several informative posts regarding Oracle eBusiness Suite Release 12. Peoplesoft customers will be happy to hear that Oracle Applications will look more like Peoplesoft. Personally, I like the blue. As for Oracle users, let’s hope the changes will also bring some usability improvements. For now we know there will be no need for JInitiator anymore. To see samples of new Release 12 forms, look at this article by Steven.

Consulting at Far End of the Long Tail

June 23, 2006 on 8:13 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Ideas and Opinions, Worth Noting | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

Let me join the Long Tail bandwagon and apply its concept to ERP consulting. The Long Tail idea was first popularized by Chris Anderson in his article in Wired in October of 2004 and grew into a blog devoted to the subject. The essence of the Long Tail is defined by the following chart:

The red areas in the chart represent the most commonly sought after markets, products and services. Think of them as the “bestsellers”. The yellow area represents the niche markets that only appeal to a small subset of people, and due to the lack of economies of scale, these markets tend to be under-served.

The concept of the Long Tail is that successful on-line businesses have thrived by providing adequate services to the people under the yellow area of the curve. You can go to Amazon to find the latest best sellers (red area), but you can also go to Amazon to find hundreds of thousands of titles that you won’t find at your local bookshop (yellow area). The internet is best situated to serve otherwise “hard-to-serve” people.

Let’s look at the Long Tail of ERP consulting. There used to be a lot of “blockbuster” implementation projects back in the 90s when companies migrated to new software packages and technologies. Action today seems to be in smaller engagements (upgrades, mergers and acquisitions, SOX compliance, etc.). As vendors provide more complex and comprehensive packages, the need for niche and specialized skills increases.

From service providers’ perspective, how do we service the clients profitably on short engagements? From the clients’ point of view, how can they find the IT talent that they don’t have in house for short periods of time when they need it? The ERP vendors are finding answers in providing modular, on-demand applications. Service providers and consultants need to do the same – become more flexible in providing niche knowledge when is needed and service the Long Tail of systems implementation work in the marketplace.

Favorite Fusion Features – General Ledger

June 14, 2006 on 10:06 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Ideas and Opinions | 1 Comment |  Print |  Email

By now you probably know what this is about. The time has come to think about what you want in Oracle Fusion. If you are an expert user with real-life, hands-on experience and have ideas on how to improve the applications; if you had to customize a module to get the features you need, or additional functionality would save you time and money, submit your strategic requests via the OAUG Enhancement Request System (ERS) today! As an Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) member and/or Oracle Applications user, Oracle wants your feedback on strategic improvements to current Oracle E-Business Suite functionality for their initial Fusion releases.

Alternatively, if the option above does not work for you, then let’s also try something different. Let’s keep a weblog of improvement tips, enhancement requests and your best features in Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel applications you want to have in Oracle Fusion. Let’s have discussions about what enhancements and features make most sense, and then log Fusion Requests before the Oracle’s June deadline. There won’t be any wrong questions or bad ideas (or at least, we’ll let the “group intelligence” decide). Your involvement can be as easy as providing comments with your ideas to this post.

Boy, what can you fundamentally change in GL? By now we know that 4Cs are coming in Release 12. And a couple of people had few more ideas. Below is a list of improvement tips and enhancement ideas based on Oracle General Ledger 11i.10 as submitted by Oracle users at the OAUG Enhancement Requests portal. Use the portal to provide you own enhancement requests, or submit comments to this post to do the same.

Note: I believe the idea of Fusion Requests is to submit enhancement requests on top of the existing releases, not to request the existing features. Somebody correct me if I am wrong. I suppose it never hurts to reiterate what your “best features” are.

• Allow Separate Sequential Numbering by Balancing Segment. Submitted by Gerard Fuller. In several European countries (example Germany) the law requires us to maintain separate sequential numbering sequences by Legal Entity. Most organizations model legal entities by the Balancing Segment in General Ledger. We therefore need to be able to maintain and assign separate sequential number sequences by Balancing Segment. Currently this is only possible by Set of Book and Journal Category. Set of Books is too high level and prevents distinguishing between entities (i.e. Balancing Segments). Using Category requires us to create as many categories as we have legal entities, and assign them. This is quickly unworkable once we have more than a few entities per set of books.

• Data Integrity between Submodules and GL. Submitted by Cyndie Winrow. Each individual transaction is posted only once, eliminating data redundancy and the need to reconcile multiple ledgers.

• Carry Forward Encumbrances at Year End. Submitted by Cyndie Winrow. In Oracle, the carry forward process does not create journals, and not at period activity, but rather creates a view for inquiry and reporting with designated amounts as beginning balances. I believe that this functionality eliminates the need for “period zero” as currently used in PeopleSoft, unless there are other uses for it of which we are unaware.

• Interfund Balancing Capability. Submited by Cyndie Winrow. Allows set up for assignment of default natural account (nacct) segment values for fund balancing that can be specified to balance multiple journal sources and categories.

• Financial Statement Generator (FSG). Submitted by Cyndie Winrow. Used to generate financial reports based on data in general ledger. FSG is an integral part of the general ledger application. Many standard reports are provided in the general ledger application, such as trial balance reports, account analysis reports, and budget to actual reports. FSG gives great flexibility in allowing for the creation of customized reports. It is an easy-to-use tool and can be utilized and maintained without substantial technical resources. Define your reports with reusable report objects, making it easy to create new reports from components already defined. Design custom reports. Schedule reports to run automatically. Produce ad hoc reports. Print reports to tab-delimited files for easy import into client-based spreadsheet programs.

• Reporting Segments (Attributes) Off the Accounting Flexfield. Submitted by Cyndie Winrow. Used for required reporting to regulatory and appropriations agencies.

Which features would you like to become your favorite features in Oracle Fusion? Granted, it may take two years before you get them, if ever, but this is your opportunity to provide your own improvement ideas and enhancement requests. The voting to determine “best features” starts in July 2006.

Good Oracle Applications Books from Amazon.com

June 12, 2006 on 10:08 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Worth Noting | 2 Comments |  Print |  Email

My users keep asking me for some good ERP and Oracle Applications literature and I keep sending them emails with individual links. That’s sooooo yesterday. Below is a list of the currently available Oracle eBusiness Applications 11i books with their brief descriptions. Hope you will find it useful. Most of these books are a very good start for novice application users. Visit Oracle Online Documentation site for more in-depth and detail Oracle Application user guides (OTN login required).

E-Business and ERP: Rapid Implementation and Project Planning

Almost all large and midsize corporations worldwide will be involved in implementing enterprise resource planning and/or e-business applications over the next two to three years. This is the only book that discusses how to implement a rapid ERP system and shows how e-business is impacted by the implementation of an ERP system. This book also provides valuable tried and true methods of keeping the project under or within budget. A quality ERP transaction foundation is a prerequisite for taking advantage of many of the new e-business opportunities that executives have placed high on their list of priorities. This valuable guide examines the strengths and weaknesses of ERP and shows when rapid implementation is not appropriate. The book also provides outsourcing alternatives and the use of application service alternatives, and shows how e-business is impacted by the implementation of an ERP system.

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Enterprise Resource Planning Systems: Systems, Life Cycle, Electronic Commerce, and Risk

…The chapters are well written, with objectives, figures, and clear divisions into sections … I highly recommend it.’ Brad Reid, Computing Reviews. ‘The book is divided into four parts: introduction and background, ERP systems, the ERP life cycle, and electronic commerce and risk. It contains case studies, references, chapter questions, and a complete index. the chapters are well written, with objectives, figures, and clear divisions into sections. The book does not contain canned answers, but carefully walks readers through thinking about ERP systems. I highly recommend it.’ Brad Reid, Computing Milieux…

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ERP: Making It Happen: The Implementers’ Guide to Success with Enterprise Resource Planning

Effective forecasting, planning, and scheduling is fundamental to productivity-and ERP is a fundamental way to achieve it. Properly implementing ERP will give you a competitive advantage and help you run your business more effectively, efficiently, and responsively. This guide is structured to support all the people involved in ERP implementation-from the CEO and others in the executive suite to the people doing the detailed implementation work in sales, marketing, manufacturing, purchasing, logistics, finance, and elsewhere. This book is not primarily about computers and software. Rather, its focus is on people-and how to provide them with superior decision-making processes for customer order fulfillment, supply chain management, financial planning, e-commerce, asset management, and more. This comprehensive guide can be used as a selective reference for those, like top management, who need only specific pieces of information, or as a virtual checklist for those who can use detailed guidance every step of the way.

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Oracle E-Business Suite Financials Handbook

Officially endorsed by Oracle Corporation, this detailed resource from Oracle Press explains how to maximize the centralized planning, accounting, treasury, purchasing, and management features of Oracle Financials–and revolutionize your company’s finance infrastructure.

Deploying Oracle applications in any organization is an enormous task, and Oracle Financials Handbook should be considered prerequisite reading for any technical or business process specialist involved in such a project. The applications provide core business processes based on Oracle Corporation’s database architecture, and the book discusses some of the most popular applications in the suite.

The book opens with a brief executive summary of Oracle Financials. The authors place financial applications in perspective, explaining where they fit into the overall Oracle Applications strategy and what the benefits are of choosing them for core business processes. This section also presents some of the important organizational choices you must make at the outset of deployment.

In the middle section of the book, the authors discuss the modules: general ledger, receivables, payables, asset management, purchasing, inventory, order entry, and others. The General Ledger module forms the core of the strategy and is discussed in great detail. The book provides plenty of flow diagrams to explain each module. The authors devote an additional chapter to budgeting and allocations, and address different accounting models.

Oracle Financials Handbook closes with technical details on deploying Oracle Financials in an enterprise. The entire computing environment is considered in this discussion, which includes information on customizing and modifying the modules to meet your needs. The final chapters cover project management and training issues that you need to work through.

</p> <p><strong>Oracle E-Business Suite 11i: Implementing Core Financial Applications</strong></p><p><strong><strong> Oracle E-Business Suite 11i: Implementing Core Financial Applications will walk the reader through the process of the Oracle 11i upgrade/conversion and provide a tutorial path for navigating through financials. Its step-by-step guidance shortens the implementation process by providing the menu paths of the actual package and in-depth descriptions of how to use the screens as well as explanations of such user-friendly aspects as customizing the program for individual use. Whether your company has been a dedicated Oracle customer or is considering adopting the powerful capabilities of this latest version, Oracle E-Business Suite 11i: Implementing Core Financial Applications will help you quickly master the program and turn it into one of your business’s most powerful back-office tools.</p> <p><iframe> <div align=”center” /></strong></strong></p> <p><strong><strong><strong>Oracle E-Business Suite Manufacturing & Supply Chain Management</strong></strong></strong></p> <p><strong><strong>Implement Oracle’s Internet-based Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management products using this Oracle authorized resource. This comprehensive guide explains how to implement the planning, engineering, pricing, order fulfillment, and inventory management components of Oracle Manufacturing and Supply Chain–and develop and deliver goods and services faster, cheaper, and more efficiently than your competitors.</strong></strong></p> <p><iframe></div></div></div></div>

Special Edition Using Oracle 11i

The first part of Special Edition Using Oracle 11i introduces the Oracle ERP applications and R11i concepts. The reader is then educated on proven techniques for implementing these complex and integrated systems. Configuration and usage of each of the financial, distribution, manufacturing, HRMS, and projects applications are covered, followed by a discussion of working with Oracle Support, consulting firms, and compatible software vendors. The appendixes review the employment market, consulting opportunities, and provide the reader with an implementation checklist. All of R11i’s new features are covered in-depth and in practical terms. Not only will readers understand Oracle’s new capabilities, they will be able to apply them right away.

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Favorite Fusion Features – Internet Expenses

June 11, 2006 on 7:51 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Ideas and Opinions | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

Which features would you like to become your favorite features in Oracle Fusion? If you are an expert user with real-life, hands-on experience and have ideas on how to improve the applications; if you had to customize a module to get the features you need, or additional functionality would save you time and money, submit your strategic requests via the OAUG Enhancement Request System (ERS) today! As an Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) member and/or Oracle Applications user, Oracle is requesting your feedback on strategic improvements to current Oracle E-Business Suite functionality for their initial Fusion releases.

Alternatively, if you want to get involved but don’t know how, if you are not an OAUG member, or none of the available options works for you, then let’s also try something different. Let’s keep a weblog of improvement tips, enhancement requests and your best features in Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel applications you want to have in Oracle Fusion. Let’s have discussions about what enhancements and features make most sense, and then log Fusion Requests before the Oracle’s June deadline. There won’t be any wrong questions or bad ideas (or at least, we’ll let the “group intelligence” decide). Your involvement can be as easy as providing comments with your ideas to this post.

Below is a list of improvement tips and enhancement ideas based on Oracle Internet Expenses 11i.10 as submitted by Oracle users at the OAUG Enhancement Requests portal. Use the portal to provide you own enhancement requests, or submit comments to this post to do the same.

• Offline Expense Report Upload. (OAUG Login required). Improve the Offline Spreadsheet Upload process. The existing functionality (OIE 11i.10) is clunky, prone to errors, and unintuitive. And you cannot upload expense item details if you require them for specific expenses types. An upload from an offline spreadheet is a great idea, for the reasons above, most users stay away from it. Provide a WebADI like upload, which would validate cost centers, employees, expense report templates, projects, tasks and expense types against the database? Clients also ask for ways to customize the offline spreadsheet so that they could input company logo, expense policy, etc.

• List of Alternative Approvers. Provide a valid list of expense report approvers. The current list shows everybody in the HR employee-supervisor hierarchy. Employees can choose Alternative Approvers who are not defined as approvers in Payables, and their expense report submissions fail. This can be avoided by simply limiting the list of employees in the Alternative Approver field to valid approvers in Payables.

• Usability Improvement in the Create Expense Report: Cash and Other Expenses View. Provide an option to switch the default Create Expense Report: Cash and Other Expenses view between Summary and Detail. Also, provide an option to let users resolve their expense report line errors in a separate window without scrolling through all expense report lines to find the ones, which failed.

• List of Override Cost Center Values. Users can currently enter only valid cost centers, but they are unable to choose them from the list of values.

• Expense Report Printing. Printing expense reports does not fit on any standard paper size (e.g. 8.5 x 11). Since most people are required to provide a printed copy of their expense report with their receipts, this is a major pain in a butt.

• Project Online Validation Views. Provide customizable views to limit lists of projects, tasks and expenditure types (similar to OTL views).

• Improved Approval Management. Provide a better tool to define different approval rules including line-level approvals, project manager approvals, or other types of approvals, which would not require HR supervisors. The current AME tool (11i.10) is far from being the “robust tool for line-based and cost center-based approvals” as the data sheet boasts.

• CEO Approvals. Provide a better solution for CEO expense report approval. The default approval workflow uses the supervisor hierarchy to approve expense reports, i.e. everybody needs a supervisor in order to approver expense reports. Assigning a dummy employee to be CEO’s supervisor is not a good solution.

• Allow Cross-Charge. Allow cross-charge between multiple business units even if the initial combination of employee’s default company and override cost center is invalid with an override cost center.

• Project-Related Expense Allocations. Enable an option to review and adjust distribution lines for project-related expense reports BEFORE they get submitted.

• Better Way to Manage Expense Report Attachments. Provide a better way for iExpenses auditors to manage (view, save, export or print) expense report attachments. Currently, administrators do not see whether expense reports have line-level attachments until they actually open each expense report.

• Project-Related Expense Report Adjustments. Provide a way for expense auditors to change project-related information for submitted expense reports before they get imported to Payables.

• Expense Auditor Veto. Provide a way for expense report auditors to reverse approver’s approval and return the expense report into a ‘Rejected’ status.

• Direct Deposit Integration with 3rd Party Vendors. Provide direct deposit integration with 3rd party payroll vendors. Not as much iExpenses feature, but a requirement for better integration with Oracle Payroll, or other Payroll providers like ADP and PeopleSoft. Companies need to be able to reimburse expense reports via direct deposit without replicating bank and bank account information in Oracle Payables. Most employees now have their paychecks deposited directly, and expense reports should be paid the same way.

• Expense Reort Payment Remittance E-Mail Notification. Provide email notification when expense reports get paid (same as currently available for credit card payments).

Which features would you like to become your favorite features in Oracle Fusion? Granted, it may take two years before you get them, if ever, but this is your opportunity to provide your own improvement ideas and enhancement requests. The voting to determine “best features” starts in July 2006.

Favorite Fusion Features – Project Billing

June 10, 2006 on 11:05 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Ideas and Opinions | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

Which features would you like to become your Favorite Features in Oracle Fusion? If you are an expert user with real-life, hands-on experience and have ideas on how to improve the applications; if you had to customize a module to get the features you need, or additional functionality would save you time and money, submit your strategic requests via the OAUG Enhancement Request System (ERS) today! As an Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) member and/or Oracle Applications user, Oracle is requesting your feedback on strategic improvements to current Oracle E-Business Suite functionality for their initial Fusion releases.

Alternatively, if you want to get involved but don’t know how, if you are not an OAUG member, or none of the available options works for you, then let’s also try something different. Let’s keep a weblog of improvement tips, enhancement requests and your best features in Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel applications you want to have in Oracle Fusion. Let’s have discussions about what enhancements and features make most sense, and then log Fusion Requests before the Oracle’s June deadline. There won’t be any wrong questions or bad ideas (or at least, we’ll let the “group intelligence” decide). Your involvement can be as easy as providing comments with your ideas to this post.
Below is a list of improvement tips and enhancement ideas based on Oracle Project Billing 11i.10 as provided by the Feature authors and readers. Items with a link have an existing OAUG Fusion Request already created. You will need an OAUG login to see the details.

• Agreements Upload. Provide a Web ADI interface using the existing Agreements APIs to upload and baseline project agreements and funding.

• Events Upload. Provide a Web ADI interface using the existing Events APIs to upload bill and revenue events. Same as above, the new API is great, but a WebADI upload integrator is still needed.

• Find Agreements Function. The Agreements form (PAXINEAG) needs a Find window with Customer, Agreement Number, Agreement Type, and Project Number as parameters.

• Validation of AutoAccounting Lookup Sets. We use them as mapping tables between project attributes and chart of accounts values. Having no validation in lookup sets gives you great flexibility to map anything you want, however, it also creates a maintenance nightmare. Why not build parameters into lookup sets, similar to AutoAccounting Rule parameters? You could store lookup values based on IDs, not values. That way, if for instance, HR organizations change in HR, so would their representations in the lookup sets in Projects.

• Revenue and Receivable AutoAccounting Functions. The Revenue and Receivable Account functions in AutoAccounting could use more parameters in order to create more robust and flexible rules for the revenue and receivable accounts.

• More Details in AutoAccounting Errors. Error Reporting during the revenue and invoice generation processes could be use more details. The “Invalid AutoAccounting” error doesn’t explain it.

• Billing Rates Upload and Maintenance. Bill Rate Schedules could use a new API and WebADI upload integrator. You maintain hundreds of rates in a typical rate schedule (e.g. by job title), and maintaining them can be a challenge.

• Billing Rates Schedule as Project Quick Entry Field. Add Bill Rate Schedule as an available Quick Entry field in project templates.

• Revenue Reporting. There are no revenue reports (similar to the Expenditure Detail and Expenditure Summary in Project Costing) that would show revenue details. New reports by revenue type, revenue category, etc. would be cool.

• Unbilled Expenses Reporting. It would be useful to have a report that would show unbilled billable expenses, which are yet to be billed (similar to Potential Labor Revenue report).

• Recurring Revenue and Billing Events. Many billing contracts specify recurring monthly billing amounts, which need to be billed on a specific date. It would be nice to be able to submit a recurring billing events, which would become invoices when you generate draft invoices (similar to recurring AP Invoices).

• Inactive Project Manager Notification. Project Billing Accountants need a better way to be notified about Project Manager becoming an invalid employee. Currently, they find it out the “hard way” by not being able to print MGT: Invoice Review report, or when interfacing project invoices to AR.

• Better Handling of Terminated Employees. Project Billing, just like other Oracle Applications except of Human Resources, does not support date-tracking of employee record changes. This is causing challenges in Projects when you need to retroactively make someone a Key Member, define employee bill rates overrides, or search for inactive employees in the inquiry forms after they were terminated in HR. Similar to the HR forms, it would be great to change the effective date in selected Projects forms.

• Project Type Changes. It would be very beneficial if users could change the project type (e.g. from Fixed Price to T&M) even after there are expenditures and revenue generated in a project. People make mistakes, contracts change, and having to close and re-create projects is not always a feasible solution.

• Percent Complete Upload. Provide a Web ADI interface using the existing Events APIs to upload bill and revenue events. Same as above, the new API is great, but a WebADI upload integrator is still needed.

Which features would you like to become your favorite features in Oracle Fusion? Granted, it may take two years before you can get them, but this is your time to provide your improvement ideas and enhancement requests. The voting to determine “best features” starts in July.

Favorite Fusion Features – Project Costing

June 9, 2006 on 9:18 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Ideas and Opinions | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

Which features would you like to become your Favorite Features in Oracle Fusion? If you are an expert user with real-life, hands-on experience and have ideas on how to improve the applications; if you had to customize a module to get the features you need, or additional functionality would save you time and money, submit your strategic requests via the OAUG Enhancement Request System (ERS) today! As an Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) member and/or Oracle Applications user, Oracle is requesting your feedback on strategic improvements to current Oracle E-Business Suite functionality for their initial Fusion releases.

Alternatively, if you want to get involved but don’t know how, if you are not an OAUG member, or none of the available options works for you, then let’s also try something different. Let’s keep a weblog of improvement tips, enhancement requests and your best features in Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel applications you want to have in Oracle Fusion. Let’s have discussions about what enhancements and features make most sense, and then log Fusion Requests before the Oracle’s June deadline. There won’t be any wrong questions or bad ideas (or at least, we’ll let the “group intelligence” decide). Your involvement can be as easy as providing comments with your ideas to this post.
Below is a list of improvement tips and enhancement ideas based on Oracle Project Costing 11i.10 as provided by the Feature authors and readers:

• Project and Task WebADI Upload Integrator. Provide Excel integration (WebADI Integrator) for uploading projects and tasks using the existing project and task APIs.

• Project Maintenance. Maintaining projects and their options could be a drag. Yes, there are APIs to create and update projects, tasks and budgets, but in order to use them you have to create your own custom code. Many companies rely on manual project maintenance by their users. Similar to Quick Project Entry function, which is used to quickly set up projects, why not create a Quick Project Update function, which would update them? It would be great, for instance, for updating project dates, task dates and transaction controls dates when the project duration changes. You may also need to change burden schedules, price rule schedules, or any other project or task-level attributes. You get the idea…

• Expanded Project Administration. This one is similar to the one above, but it is more related to the changes to you need to make across several projects. The Project Administration functionality currently allows you to change only Project Owning Organization. It would be great to have better selection criteria like project type, customer, project manager, project classification, etc.to choose what projects need to be transferred from one organization to another. Also, it would be fantastic to be able to change additional projectattributes like Key Members, Customers, or Project Classifications using the Project Administration.

• Improved Project Allocations Rules. Project Allocations is a great feature but it could use a little more flexibility in defining rules on how to create new transactions. Being able to define only one Expenditure Organization and one Expenditure Type per rule makes it very difficult to define flexible accounting rules for allocation transactions. Having a separate AutoAccounting Function for allocations would also help.

• Validated AutoAccounting Lookup Sets. We all use them as mapping tables between project attributes and chart of accounts values. Having no validation in lookup sets gives you great flexibility to map anything you want. However, no validation also creates a maintenance nightmare. Why not build parameters into lookup sets, similar to AutoAccounting Rule parameters? You could store lookup values based on IDs, not values. That way, if or instance, HR organizations change in HR, so would their representations in the lookup sets in Projects.

• Expanded AutoAccounting Functions for Cost Clearing Accounts. The clearing account functions in AutoAccounting could use more parameters in order to create more robust and flexible rules for the cost clearing accounts. Add additional parameters like expenditure type, expenditure category, service type, project classification, etc.

• Better Error Handling for AutoAccounting Errors during Cost Processing. Many of us spend endless hours trying to figure out why costing processes fail due to “Invalid AutoAccounting” errors. Provide more detail AutoAccounting errors in the cost distribution processes.

• Expenditure Item Adjustments. Provide a way to “transfer” expenditures between Expenditure Organizations, and between Expenditure Types (similar to the existing transfer between projects and tasks). It is a major headache, especially with transactions imported into Projects (timecards, expense reports, supplier invoices) to not to be able to change these two parameters.

• Find Expenditure Types Function. It would be great to have a search function in the Expenditure Types form with Expenditure Type, Expenditure Category, Revenue Category, UOM and Expenditure Type Class as search parameters would be very helpful. Also, provide a folder/export function so that we can easily export expenditure types and their attributes. The IMP: Expenditure Type Listing is pretty useless.

• Rate Schedule Upload. Provide Excel integration (Web ADI Upload Integrator) for creating and updating Rate Schedules. It would also be nice to be able to end-date the schedules you no longer need.

Which features would you like to become your favorite features in Oracle Fusion? Granted, it may take two years before you get them, if ever, but this is your opportunity to provide your own improvement ideas and enhancement requests. The voting to determine “best features” starts in July 2006.

Favorite Fusion Features – Payables

June 7, 2006 on 9:50 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Ideas and Opinions | 3 Comments |  Print |  Email

Which features would you like to become your Favorite Features in Oracle Fusion? If you are an expert user with real-life, hands-on experience and have ideas on how to improve the applications; if you had to customize a module to get the features you need, or additional functionality would save you time and money, submit your strategic requests via the OAUG Enhancement Request System (ERS) today! As an Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) member and/or Oracle Applications user, Oracle is requesting your feedback on strategic improvements to current Oracle E-Business Suite functionality for their initial Fusion releases.

Alternatively, if you want to get involved but don’t know how, if you are not an OAUG member, or none of the available options works for you, then let’s also try something different. Let’s keep a weblog of improvement tips, enhancement requests and your best features in Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel applications you want to have in Oracle Fusion. Let’s have discussions about what enhancements and features make most sense, and then log Fusion Requests before the Oracle’s June deadline. There won’t be any wrong questions or bad ideas (or at least, we’ll let the “group intelligence” decide). Your involvement can be as easy as providing comments with your ideas to this post.
Below is a list of enhancement requests based on Oracle Payables 11i.10 as submitted by Oracle users at the OAUG Enhancement Requests portal. Use the portal to provide you own enhancement requests, or submit comments to this post to do the same.

• Invoice Price Instead of PO Price on RTS Debit Memos. (OAUG login required) Submitted by Eric Guether. A Debit Memo is automatically created when a Return to Supplier (RTS) is made against a PO that has already been invoiced in the Payables module. The automated Debit Memo created by RTS is desirable (it’s a good thing). However, Debit Memos for PO returns to PCL are valued using the PO Unit Price. We would expect the Debit Memos to be valued using the Invoice Price.

• Supplier Name has no translation (TL) table column in EBS. Submitted by Eric Guether. Our single global EBS 11i instance is American English with Japanese NLS. We are unable to maintain English translations of supplier names, addresses, contacts, etc. because EBS lacks translation tables for vendors.

• New Suffix for Intercompany Payables Invoices. Submitted by Eric Guether. Starting in EBS 11.5.10, intercompany A/P invoices are auto-assigned the same number as its corresponding intercompany A/R invoice plus a new suffix, which is the ship-from org ID (seen only by IT people in SQL queries). Users prefer if the suffix were the org code that they are used to seeing through the EBS forms.

• Vary the Accounting on Intercompany Payable Debit Entries. Submitted by Eric Guether. When an intercompany A/P invoice is created, the G/L account used for the debit entry is very limited — just one G/L account per inter-org relationship. Functionality should be added to allow the G/L used to vary by product, perhaps using the default Cost of Goods account for the invoiced item.

• Combined batch processing to net Customer/Suppliers Payables and Receiveables invoices similar to the Contra Charging form. Should include ACH and Notification processes. Submitted by Carl Mealha. Combined batch processing to net Customer/Suppliers Payables and Receiveables invoices similar to the Contra Charging form. Should include ACH and Notification processes.

• Integrate employee bank account information with Oracle Payroll and/or 3rd part payroll vendors. Submitted by Marian Crkon. Provide an interface to integrate employee direct deposit information (banks, bank accounts, addresses, etc.) with Oracle Payroll and/or 3rd part payroll vendors. Currently, customizations are required to keep the employee bank information in sync between Payables and Payroll.
• Supplier Certification. Submitted by Howard McKinney. Provide addtional fields on the supplier record to track any necessary certification requirements that might be required, for example, a supplier may be required to carry insurance as a 3rd party provider of shipping services in the event of accident caused by the driver. Being able to track the insurance certificate information as well as entering an expiration date of the certificate would be helpful. Also have a form trigger or concurrent program that will place the supplier on hold if the certificate expiration date is met and no renewed certificate has been received.

Which features would you like to become your favorite features in Oracle Fusion? Granted, it may take two years before you can get them, but this is your time to provide your own improvement ideas and enhancement requests. The voting The voting to determine “best features” starts in July 2006.

Interview with Steven Chan from Oracle

June 7, 2006 on 8:41 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Conversations | 2 Comments |  Print |  Email

I logged on for a virtual chat with Steven Chan, an Oracle Technology Adoption Programs Director and author behind the new Oracle eBusiness Suite Technology blog. We talked about his dream job, customer relationships, Fusion, blogs and other topics. Read on for more details below.

Let me start by asking about your Oracle beginnings.

I started with Oracle in 1998. Prior to Oracle, I’ve held management consulting positions with Deloitte Consulting and development positions with a variety of firms including IBM.

What are you responsible for now?

I’m a Director in the Applications Technology Group, the group that owns the technology stack for the E-Business Suite. My formal title is Director, Technology Adoption Programs, which means that I manage Early Adopter Programs for certain E-Business Suite technology stack components. I also participate in the general development process for some of our technology integrations.

So are you in Development or Support?

The Applications Technology Group is a development group, so I’m in Development. I get the opportunity to work across a broad variety of areas. This includes product development, working directly with customers via our Early Adopter Programs, and speaking at various conferences. I consider this my dream job.

Sounds like it. Have you always been involved with the applications? You seem to have a technology background…

I started as a Development Manager in Oracle’s Consumer Packaged Goods group, a systems integration product suite that has since been superseded. I have also held development and release management responsibilities for a variety of other products, including the Business Intelligence System (BIS), the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW), Product Lifecycle management (PLM), and others. The Applications Technology Group is the central group that owns all of the E-Business Suite integrations with Oracle technology, so I was extremely lucky to find a role within this group. I’ve been with ATG since 2001.

I am familiar with some of those products. I assisted with implementing BIS for Financials and Projects a couple of times. As consultant, you learn what your customers buy and use.

How did the environment at Oracle change since all the acquisitions, in particular Peoplesoft? Are you playing nice with all your cousins?

From my limited perspective, we’ve had new staff from the acquisitions join our team. They uniformly have terrific skills and we’ve been learning a tremendous amount from each other.

I find it interesting that all of our respective organizations have been working on similar “Next Generation” ERP suites in parallel. Fusion is an exciting opportunity to pool our shared expertise and ideas. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much energy and the sheer volume of new ideas since joining Oracle.

The amount of development activity underway right now is staggering. Keeping up with all of the new developments that occur on a daily basis can sometimes be challenging. I’m trying to give glimpses of that in my new blog, but there’s so much new information, it’s sometimes difficult to determine what’s stable vs. what’s newsworthy at this stage.

Speaking about Fusion and developing next generation ERP, Ray Lane said in his key note at the Software 2006 conference: “…We [ERP vendors] made a mistake in the 90s of developing applications for their buyers, not users“. I realize he might have been playing to the crowd. But, not trying to put you on a spot here, how would you respond to people who agree with Mr. Lane?

As with all generalizations, there’s probably a kernel of truth in that, but I don’t have the perspective to comment on the general ERP industry’s strategy.

I don’t personally work with the functional side of our Applications, but as an end-user of certain modules like iExpenses and Self-Service Human Resources, I can see design aspects that could be improved. There’s always room for refining a user interface and functional flows.

From the Apps DBA perspective, we have a lot of very strong system architects who are trying to provide tools to make systems administrators’ lives easier. The challenge for us is prioritizing all of our ideas and hearing from Oracle customers and users about real-world use-case scenarios.

This is one of my goals of our new E-Business Suite Technology Stack blog – to open up dialogues with other Apps DBAs.

And God bless you for that. I love your blog and wish all Oracle product managers had one.

One of the themes that I repeatedly touch on when speaking at conferences like OpenWorld and the OAUG Collaboration Conference is that a handful of committed and vocal E-Business Suite users can have a profound effect on our product development directions.

The important thing, as a customer, is to make your voice heard via enhancement requests, customer advisory boards, direct emails, customer visits to Oracle HQ, personal conversations with us at conferences, and even blog comments.

We take all of these things into account when prioritizing new features or changes to existing technology stack functionality.

Being a “techno-functional” consultant I wish that we [Oracle applications users] had a better communication about the functionality, not just technology of the applications.

Now that Oracle has officially given the green light for blogs, our functional product teams have an opportunity to open up their own dialogues with their customers. I hope that others will follow in my footsteps.

There are a large number of “pure” Oracle technology blogs out there now, and my colleagues in the Server Technologies Division are passionate about getting the word out. I hope to see more Applications bloggers join the bandwagon eventually.

As for enhancements, it is very difficult to get excited about requesting enhancements to functionality you needed 6 months ago that only might be available two years from now…

I agree. Enhancement requests have as long a development cycle as internally-generated new feature requests, sometimes longer. What helps accelerate the process is hearing from a large number of customers who urgently need a particular feature or configuration. Hence the importance of logging Metalink Service Requests or getting your feedback to us somehow.

Here’s an illustrative example: We originally released Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i without turnkey instructions for setting up Demilitarized Zones or reverse-proxies.

Our Oracle field staff – our Sales Consultants and [Delivery] Consultants – started implementing Release 11i for customers. It quickly became clear that firewall, DMZ, and reverse-proxy support was an urgent architectural requirement for our enterprise customers.

So, we moved that to the top of the priority list, which triggered development on AutoConfig, new profile options, new server-based hierarchies, and so on. This cloud of interrelated dependencies coalesced into what we now have documented officially in Note 287176.1 (Metalink Login Required).

Although it took a while to get there as a certified, supported solution, we were pleased to get this configuration out at last. So, the [customer] feedback does make a difference… eventually.

The development cycle is not just Oracle’s problem. It is a challenge for any proprietary software vendor. At least, it is now easier for Oracle Applications users to submit their enhancement requests at the OAUG web site. But I wonder how many passionate hands-on users actually know about it and have access to it. Judging from a number of currently submitted Fusion requests, not many.

We’re eager to get as much customer feedback as we can on existing and new functionality. It would be wonderful if we could get the user community excited about participating in these discussions.

What I find curious is the relatively small number of end-user websites on the E-Business Suite. There are a few blogs, including yours, but they’re hard to find and few and far between.

I absolutely agree that feedback from customers and users is critical. The ways to provide it are not always obvious though. I also feel for customers who are early adapters of new solutions. They have to spend a lot of their own time and resources to first figure out what is even wrong and then work with Oracle to get it fixed.

Our Early Adopter Programs are extremely valuable for getting customer feedback.

The last Early Adopter Program I ran was for the integration of Oracle Application Server 10g with the E-Business Suite. This was a two-year program with over 260 customer participants. Their feedback dramatically reshaped the end solution that we eventually made Generally Available.

I’d love to see more of our Applications product teams running Early Adopter Programs, too. They’re very expensive to run but the benefits can be extraordinary.

OK, let’s talk about blogs. I see them as another way to communicate. You have already touched on some of the reasons why you blog. Why do you blog?

I get the opportunity to speak with a lot of customers and partners on a regular basis. I can’t help but come away with the nagging sense that we can do a better job of getting high-quality information into your hands. This information can range from announcements about new features, sneak previews of things in the pipeline, and technical tips for Apps DBAs.

There’s a lot of information on Metalink and various discussion groups, but it’s scattered. Worse yet, Metalink is behind Oracle’s firewall, so all of that priceless content is invisible to search engines like Google.

In a perfect world, blogs would be unnecessary. My hope is that my new blog will provide another way of getting information out to our customers, and getting feedback on our directions in return.

And, there’s another selfish reason. I get a huge volume of email daily. A lot of this email addresses the same general questions. I also maintain an extremely popular E-Business Suite Technology Stack FAQ: Note 186981.1. I’ve found that investment in the FAQ reduces my email volumes. I’m now finding that investment in the blog has the same effect with the added benefit that I have a useful repository of information for my own reference purposes, too.

And one other thing: There’s a certain degree of professional reserve that limits how we can communicate via “official” channels like Installation Guides, Metalink Notes, and so on. That’s a byproduct of the need to produce formal documentation. The blogging medium allows for a more informal, freewheeling style, which is much more personal.

That’s the beauty of blogs. It is good to see that after the blogging hype of 2005, blogs are being used more and more for productive purposes… Taking a quick glance at Oracle Blogs, there are over 100 technology blogs, two applications blogs (excluding yours) and no application blog by an Oracle employee.

In fact, besides mine, there exists one Applications blog today: Martin Millmore’s iRecruitment Blog. I hope that others will be joining us soon.

Sorry, my mistake. What I am getting at is a general perception that the applications have always been a secondary product line to Oracle (to increase the database sales). Fusion has brought a lot of attention to the applications. John Wookey talked about “the need to change the mindset of the company to act more like an application vendor, not technology one”. Do you see a change in the company’s culture/mindset?

I don’t think I’m able to assess the company’s mindset effectively. We’ve certainly seen changes in the Applications Technology Group following our acquisitions. These changes have a lot of potential to improve the scope and feature-richness of our products. I’m very optimistic about our upcoming releases.

Do you have any favorite blogs?

I currently use Bloglines to track a massive number of blogs and website feeds, so it’s gotten to the point where I don’t really distinguish between blogs and “official” news sources any more. This certainly supports the recent Supreme Court ruling on Apple vs. bloggers – the notion that there are no viable means of differentiating between credentialed journalists for conventional print media and bloggers.

The few E-Business Suite-related blogs that exist are on my blogroll, including yours, Richard Byrom’s, Eddie Awad’s, and the OAUG Customizations Special Interest Group. But actual E-Business Suite-related posts are relatively scarce, even on those.

For general technology topics and just pure fun, I also read sites like Slashdot, Engadget, Gizmodo, Digg, Wired, CNET, and many others.

I better be careful what I blog about. Somebody actually reads it! I wish I had more time and energy to write about everything I want to.

How is Larry doing these days? Do you ever see him in person?

Like many Development staff, I get to see Larry primarily at conferences and via internal and external webcasts. From what I can see, he’s doing very well…

Our conversation wouldn’t be complete without my asking about Web 2.0. How do you see new web tools like wikis, blogs, mashups, online communities, etc changing the enterprise? Can you imagine the OAUG web site being an “online space” for Oracle Applications users, or Metalink Knowledge Base being updatable through wikis?

The “Web 2.0″ name is useful shorthand for new web technologies, but I have had reservations about the implication that there’s an overall web architect overseeing “versions” of the net.

That said I’m extremely encouraged by interactive features that make the web more like dynamic conversations and information-pooling spaces. For all the controversy around Wikipedia, it represents the ideal of a collectively-managed, ever-growing pool of information. The collective anarchy of MySpace (whose nova-like popularity is starting to fade, even now), and sites like Slashdot and Digg show the power of the net to highlight interesting topics and drive collaborative action. Witness the recent case where the blogosphere revealed the shady New York online camera scams.

On the other hand, the hysterical scrum that followed the O’Reilly “Web 2.0″ service mark incident illustrates that there certainly is room for improvement. That’s just a result of the relative youth of this technology; like all communities, the conventions, mores, and formal and informal rules will evolve in time to reflect the purer journalistic standards.

As for [Oracle] technology, I hope that Metalink and OAUG will continue to evolve to take advantage of the latest mashup, AJAX, dynamic and collaborative technologies. They should exist in parallel, with vigorous participation of our user communities in both spaces.

I agree. Conferences and personal relationships are still important but they should be supplemented by new web tools. I love one quote from a Business Week article: “The divide between the publishers and the public is collapsing. This turns mass media upside down and creates media of the masses…” There is always room for good content and information on the internet.

Quite true. This is starting to emerge even in inchoate form in my own small part of the blogosphere. For example, one of the recent comments posted by a blog reader pointed out the implication of HP’s Tru64 de-support for E-Business Suite system architects considering Release 12. This is the purest form of collaborative customer-corporate discussions that end up providing really useful information to people struggling with real-life practical decisions.

Marian, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks for your support, and I look forward to our continued dialogues online.

I really appreciate your time and opinions, Steven. I really enjoyed it. We have to do it again sometimes. Talk to you later. Take care.

If you would like to join the dialogue with Steven, submit your questions as comments in this post, or at Steven’s blog. Find this and related items in Conversations.