The Feature

How the PA Date and GL Date Are Determined in Oracle Projects

July 26, 2006 on 10:57 pm | by Marian Crkon | In How To Guides | 3 Comments |  Print |  Email

You need to know how the Project Accounting (PA) Date and the GL Date are assigned in Oracle Projects in order to understand how your project (P&L) reporting and GL reconciliation work. The dates are determined differently for different project transactions based on each transaction type. Oracle Projects determines the dates as follows:

Timecard, Usage, Miscellaneous, and Supplier Invoice Adjustments

The PA date is set to the transaction expenditure item date if that date falls in a PA period with a status of Open or Future. If the expenditure item date falls in a closed PA period, then the PA date is set to the start date of the earliest open or future enterable PA period that follows the expenditure item date.

The GL date is set to the end date of the earliest GL period that includes or follows the PA date of the cost distribution line and has a status of Open or Future according to the period status in Oracle General Ledger (or in Oracle Projects when enhanced period processing features are enabled). Oracle Projects derives the GL Date when you run the cost distribution processes.

Expense Reports (created in iExpenses)

The Oracle Payables Invoice Import program uses one GL date for each expense report loaded into Oracle Payables from Oracle iExpenses. All project cost distribution lines for an expense report use the same GL date.The GL date is set to the end date of the earliest GL period that has a status of Open or Future according to the period status in Oracle General Ledger.

The PA date is set to the transaction expenditure item date if that date falls in a PA period with a status of Open or Future. If the expenditure item date falls in a closed PA period, then the PA date is set to the start date of the earliest open or future enterable PA period that follows the expenditure item date.Oracle Projects derives the PA date for each expense report cost distribution line when you interface the expense reports from Oracle Payables.

Supplier Invoices Interfaced from Payables

The PA date is set to the transaction expenditure item date if that date falls in a PA period with a status of Open or Future. If the expenditure item date falls in a closed PA period, then the PA date is set to the start date of the earliest open or future enterable PA period that follows the expenditure item date.Oracle Projects derives the PA date for each supplier invoice cost distribution line when you interface the supplier invoice from Oracle Payables.

When you interface supplier invoices from Payables, Oracle Projects copies the GL date for each supplier invoice cost distribution line from the GL date entered for the invoice distribution in Oracle Payables. Oracle Projects derives the PA date for each supplier invoice cost distribution line when you interface the supplier invoice from Oracle Payables.

Draft Revenue

The PA date is set to the end date of the earliest PA period that includes or follows the revenue accrue through date and has a status of Open or Future.

The GL date is set to the end date of the earliest GL period that includes or follows the PA date of the draft revenue and has a status of Open or Future according to the period status in Oracle General Ledger (or in Oracle Projects when enhanced period processing features are enabled ). Projects derives accounting dates during the revenue generation process.

Draft Invoices

The PA date is set to the end date of the earliest PA period that includes or follows the invoice date and has a status of Open or Future.

The GL date is set to the end date of the earliest Open or Future Oracle Receivables GL period that includes or follows the invoice date of the draft invoice. The GL Date is derived when the invoice is generated.

Example

Let’s take for example a billable timecard entered in June 2006. And let’s assume the PA Period and GL Period are the same and JUN-06 is open:

• Expenditure Item Date = June 19 through June 23
• Week Ending Date = June 25 (Sunday is the of that week based on the Implementation Options)
• The PRC: Distribute Labor Costs process will assign the expenditure PA Dates and GL Dates the same as Expenditure Item Dates and both the PA Period and GL Period will be set to JUN-06.
• The PRC: Generate Draft Revenue process will assign the revenue PA Date and GL Date based on the Accrue-Through Date selected during the process (e.g. June 30, 2006) and both the PA Period and GL Period will be set to JUN-06.

Now, let’s assume the timecard was transferred between two projects and billed to a client in July 2006 and JUN-06 period was already closed in the PA calendar and GL calendar in Projects. The dates will be derived as follows:

• Expenditure Items Date will stay June 19 through June 23.
• Week Ending Date will stay June 25.
• The PRC: Distribute Labor Costs process will change the expenditure PA Date and GL Date to July 1, 2006, and the PA Period and GL Period will be changed to JUL-06.
• The PRC: Generate Draft Revenue process will change the revenue PA Date and GL Date to July 31, 2006 (based on an Accrue-Through Date selected during the process), and both the PA Period and GL Period will be changed JUL-06.
• Project Invoice that includes the timecard in have the PA Date and GL Date of July 31, 2006 (based on a bill-through date of July 31, 2006) and open AR period JUL-06.

Implementation Tip: In order to correctly report on such adjustments as described above and show all debits and credits (net zero transactions), pull your transaction amounts from the expenditure distributions table, and not the expenditure items table in your reporting data mart.

You Can Decide the New Look of Oracle Applications

July 26, 2006 on 9:10 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Worth Noting | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

The Oracle User Experience groups are currently working on a new user interface of Oracle Fusion applications and all application users can help to decide what the applications will look and feel like by taking part in the process. The Oracle User Experience groups provide comprehensive usability engineering, interface design support, and user interface research for the entire corporation. Team members have experience in a wide variety of disciplines, includingusability engineering, cognitive psychology, graphic design, interaction design, and computer science with a specialization in Human Computer Interface (HCI).

User Centered Design

Each Oracle User Experience group works in cross-disciplinary teams throughout the entire development cycle of Oracle products, in concert with software development and product management teams. The department follows a user-centered design methodology that includes the following activities:

• User requirements research
• Heuristic evaluations of existing products
• Definition of the user experience through sketches and interactive prototypes
• Iterative development and usability testing of interactive and visual design solutions
• Formal usability testing and competitive evaluations of products

Oracle’s long term investments include laboratory and academic research projects in areas such as information visualization, mobile computing, universal access, and distance learning. Advanced projects are carried out on-site and in collaboration with university partner labs such as Stanford University, Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon.

Get Involved

To design software products with the look and feel that the customers desire, it is imperative to perform usability tests with [real-life] software users like you. Oracle is actively seeking software users of all skill levels to participate in their Usability Program. Participation in the program will contribute towards enhancing the ease and satisfaction of using Oracle software products.

If you are interested in participating in Oracle’s Usability Program, please take a few moments to complete either the Technical User Form or the End User Form. This information will help Oracle determine the types of software products you are already familiar with using. Any information you provide will be held in the strictest confidence (see Privacy Policy for details). Once you have completed and submitted the appropriate form, you will be added to our participant database. We will contact you directly when participant openings become available.

The User Experience Groups also provide plentiful career opportunities for those interested in a career in the usability field.

Read the Blogs

Check out the blogs by Luke Kowalski, Adam Winer, and Jonas Jacobi for more “behind-the-scenes” information about designing the applications’ new look and feel.

Listen to the AppCast

Listen to the Oracle’s Fusion User Experience is a Key Ingredient to their Customers’ Success in which Jeremy Ashley, Vice President of Oracle’s Applications User Experience and Luke Kowalski, Corporate UI Architect for Oracle, discuss how User Experience and User Centered Design are key in Oracle’s strategy to deliver quality experiences for its end users, ease of use, flexibility, and finally … the right business flows in the Fusion applications.

Information Source: Oracle Corporation > Oracle User Experience.

Sample DataLoad Templates for Oracle Financials

July 21, 2006 on 9:39 pm | by Marian Crkon | In How To Guides | 3 Comments |  Print |  Email

Let me publish some sample DataLoad templates for Oracle Financials, along with their descriptions and navigation instructions. Note that these are only samples. You may need to modify the spreadsheets based on your application configurations. The blue columns represent DataLoad commands, the yellow columns is where you paste your data. Hope you will find the templates useful. Find more information and spreadsheets about DataLoad here. Share your own experiences with uploading and mainatining data in Oracle Applications as comments below.

Create GL Code Combinations

Define new accounts by creating new combinations of account segment values. You must define all new accounts manually if you do not allow dynamic insertion to create new accounts automatically (most people have it on), or if you need to pre-define your account combinations for data conversions [e.g. employees, assets, invoices, etc.].

Navigation: General Ledger Super User: Setup > Accounts > Combinations

Start Field: Account

DataLoad: Create GL Code Combinations

Create Employee AP Signing Limits

Create employee signing limits for expense report approvals. Managers can approve an expense report only if the total amount of the expense report does not exceed their pre-defined signing limit. The Manager (Spending) Approval Process in the Expense Reporting workflow uses the signing limits to determine which manager has authority to approve expense reports. When you assign signing limits to a manager, you also specify a cost center to which this signing limit applies and you can give managers signing limits for multiple cost centers.

Navigation: Payables Manager: Employees > Signing Limits

Start Field: Document Type

DataLoad: AP Employee Signing Limits

Create AP Expense Report Template

Define your Expense Report Template based on the expense report forms your company uses. You can define default values for expense items and you can choose those items from a list of values when you enter expense reports. During Expense Report Import, Payables uses the expense item information to create invoice distributions. If your employees will be entering project-related expense reports, you need to define project-related expense items and associate them with Oracle Projects expenditure types.

Navigation: Payables Manager: Employees > Signing Limits

Start Field: Document Type

DataLoad: AP Expense Report Template

Create Standard Suppliers

Create suppliers in Oracle Payables.

Navigation: Payables Manager: Suppliers > Entry

Start Field: Supplier Name

DataLoad: Create Suppliers

Create 1099 Suppliers

Create 1099 suppliers and their tax reporting options.

Navigation: Payables Manager: Suppliers > Entry

Start Field: Supplier Name

DataLoad: Create 1099 Suppliers

Create Customers

Create customers in Oracle Receivables. You can enter as much or as little information in the customer accounts as you want. The only information that is required for a new customer account is a party name, account number, and address.

Navigation: Receivables Manager: Customers > Standard

Start Field: Name

DataLoad: Create Customers

Delete AR Transactions

Use the Transaction window to delete the payment schedule by choosing the incomplete button in the and deleting the record. We used this method to remove legacy project invoices, which were generated in Projects (in order to create opening bill balances), and did not belong in Receivables.

Navigation: Receivables Manager: Transactions > Transactions

Start Field: Source

DataLoad: Delete AR Transactions

Create FA Categories

Create your asset categories. Category information is common for a group of assets. Oracle Assets defaults these depreciation rules when you add an asset, to help you add assets quickly. If the default does not apply, you can override many of the defaults for an individual asset in the Asset Details or Books windows. You have to set up default values for each category in each book. The default depreciation rules that you set up for a category also depend upon the date placed in service ranges you specify.

Navigation: Fixed Assets Manager: Setup > Asset System > Asset Categories

Start Field: Category

DataLoad: Create FA Categories

Assign Existing FA Categories To a New Book

Assign the existing asset categories to a new asset book.

Navigation: Fixed Assets Manager: Setup > Asset System > Asset Categories

Start Field: Category

DataLoad: Assign FA Categories To a New Book

Set GL Set of Books Name Profile Option

Set the GL: Set of Books Name profile option for all your responsibilities in the multi-org environment.

Navigation: System Administrator: Profile > System

Start Field: Responsibility in the Find System Profile Values. (Make sure to enable the flag.)

DataLoad: Set GL Set of Books Profile Option

Set MO Operating Unit Profile Option

Set the MO: Operating Unit profile option for all your responsibilities in a multi-org environment.

Navigation: System Administrator: Profile > System

Start Field: Responsibility in the Find System Profile Values. (Make sure to enable the flag.)

DataLoad: Set MO Operating Unit Profile

Set OIE Profile Options

Set the iExpense profile options to match you business requirements.

Navigation: System Administrator: Profile > System

Start Field: Profile

DataLoad: OIE Profiles

Sample DataLoad Templates for Oracle HRMS

July 19, 2006 on 9:58 pm | by Marian Crkon | In How To Guides | 2 Comments |  Print |  Email

DataLoad is a good option to upload data from Excel to Oracle Applications when other options, like Web ADI, are not available. DataLoad is practical when the volume of data to upload is too small to justify creating a custom script with the use of Oracle APIs, or too big to do it manually (let’s say between 10 and 1,000 records).

Below are several sample DataLoad templates for Oracle Human Resources (HRMS) I used before, with their descriptions and navigation instructions. Note that these are only samples. You may need to modify the spreadsheets based on your application configurations. The blue columns represent DataLoad commands, the yellow columns is where you paste your data. Hope you will find the templates useful.

Create HR Organizations

Create HR organization names and their classifications.

Navigation: US HRMS Manager: Work Structures > Organization > Description

Start Field: Name

DataLoad: Create HR Organizations

Create HR Organization Hierarchy

Create organization hierarchy, define parent organizations and their subordinates.

Navigation: US HRMS Manager: Work Structures > Organization > Description

Start Field: Name

DataLoad: Create HR Organization Hierarchy

Update Employee Email Addresses

Update employee email addresses in HR. This email address is used to route Workflow notifications via email and must be the same as employees primary address in your mail server (e.g. MS Outlook) if your Oracle WF Mailer configuration does not allow forwarding of email responses (see the Do Not Forward Oracle Notifications from Outlook! story).

Navigation: US HRMS Manager: People > Enter and Maintain

Start Field: Full Name in the Find Person window

DataLoad: Update Employee Email Addresses

Transfer Employees

Oracle Human Resources provides several flexible options to mass update employees and employee assignments. However, when transferring employees between organizations, you can only update their HR organizations and not their Default Purchasing Information when using Mass Updates. The Purchasing Information is critical for accurate approvals and accounting of employee requisitions and expense reports. This is where DataLoad came in handy.

Navigation: US HRMS Manager: People > Enter and Maintain

Start Field: Full Name in the Find Person window

DataLoad: Transfer Employees

How To Enable Oracle Project Status Change Workflow

July 18, 2006 on 8:30 pm | by Marian Crkon | In How To Guides | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

In Oracle Projects, you can use the Project Status Change Workflow to automatically route project status changes for approval. The Project Status Workflow needs to be enabled for the project status and the project type. When a project status changes, the seeded PA Project Workflow sends an approval notification to the requesting employee’s HR supervisor who will receive a notification (or an email if WF Mailer is enabled) to change the project status. You can customize the PA Project Workflow according to your business requirements. For more details, see the Oracle Projects Implementation Guide (Oracle OTN login required).

Below is a sample workflow of project status changes. A Project Accountant creates a project and manually sets the project status to Submitted. The workflow process is initiated. A Project Accounting Manager (Project Accountant’s HR supervisor) receives an email requesting his/her approval of a new project. If the manager approves and the workflow process is successful, the project status is changed to Approved.

Similarly, when a project needs to be closed, the Project Accountant will manually change the status from Approved to Pending Close. A second workflow process sends an email to the PA Manager, verifies that the manager approved the project closure, and changes the status to Closed.

Following are the required configuration steps to enable the Project Status changes by Workflow:

Enable Project Types for Workflow Project Status Changes

As Project Billing Superuser, navigate to Setup > Projects > Project Types. Define your project type, or update an existing one. Select the ‘Use Workflow for Project Status Changes’ flag to initiate Workflow for all workflow-eligible project statuses in projects with this project type.

Project Statuses for Workflow Status Changes

As Project Billing Superuser, navigate to Setup > System > Statuses. In our example above, we would need to enable following statuses for workflow: Submitted and Pending Close. The value for Item Type is always ‘PA Project Workflow’ for Process is ‘Project’. Using the Success Status and Failure Status is how you control the next status based on the approver’s action.

Few comments in closing. Using the Project Status Change Workflow is great if you create and approve a lot of projects, or project creation is de-centralized. It enforces consistent rules and keeps an audit trail of changes. Having an automatic emails and notifications sent out by the system brings transparency to the process.

Some of the features we did not like included users’ inability to ”withdraw” a project status change. Once you choose a project type that is enabled for workflow, the process is triggered and you cannot “roll it back”. Also, and this applies to any Oracle Workflow notification, if there is anything wrong with your setup, for instance an employee does not have a HR supervisor, or user account is not associated with an employee, or user name changes were not synchronized in the Workflow tables, the approval notifications are routed to SYSADMIN without any acknowledgement to you.

The workflow messages can be little misleading. After a successful status change, the message always says “Project Approved”, even though the status change was to close the project. It would be more meaningful to say: “…project status was successfully changed to ‘actual status name’…”

Automatic Timecard Approval for Terminated Employees

July 18, 2006 on 8:18 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Feature of the Week | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

You may encounter this feature if using Oracle Time and Labor and Oracle Projects 11i.10.

The Feature

Employees enter their project-related timecards in OTL and you want to import them to Oracle Projects. If the timecards are automatically approved by the Workflow Background Process (OTL Workflows for Employees item), they will not get approved for terminated employees and contingent workers. It appears the date of the approval process must fall within the person’s period of employment or placement to complete successfully. If the approval process is outside of the period of employment/placement the approval process fails with the error message ‘ORA-20001: This person does not have preferences for the selected effective date’, which generates an email to the System Administrator.

The Metalink Note 338716.1 describes a similar issue. In the note, Oracle recommends disabling the deferred approval option and approving timecards instantly upon their submission. This would not work because it leaves users with no option to withdraw and correct their timecards once they were submitted.

The Workaround

You need to reverse the terminations for the people on the unapproved timecards list and use the $FND_TOP/sql/wfretry.sql script to approve their timecards. Then run the PRC: Transaction Import Process in Projects to interface the timecards to Projects. And last but not least re-enter the employee terminations.

Another way to avoid this situation is to implement timecard approval by supervisor or project manager. However for those who do require this kind of approval and want to approve timecards automatically, it would be very helpful if the Workflow Background Process had a date parameter, so that it would be possible to run the approval process for past dates.

New Search Capability in Oracle MetaLink

July 13, 2006 on 9:20 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Oracle Press | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

Oracle Secure Enterprise Search (SES) is now available on MetaLink. SES allows you to search from within MetaLink in other non-MetaLink content areas, such as Oracle Product Documentation, Oracle Technology Network (OTN) and oracle.com content. Look for additional repositories to be added in coming months.

Simply click on the “Secure Enterprise Search” link just to the right of the “Quick Find Go” button on MetaLink (Metalink login is required) or, under the “Knowledge” tab, click on the “Secure Enterprise Search” link on the dark blue bar immediately below it. Either link will display the Secure Enterprise Search page in a new window. Please note that, since SES does open in a separate window, any pop-up blockers that you have turned on may prevent the SES search screen from displaying.

Key Features of Oracle Secure Enterprise Search

Oracle Secure Enterprise Search 10g, a standalone product from Oracle, enables a secure, high quality, easy-to-use search across all enterprise information assets. Key features include:

• The ability to search and locate public, private and shared content across Intranet Web servers, databases, files on local disk or on file servers, IMAP e-mail, document management systems, applications and portals
• Highly secure crawling, indexing and searching
• A simple, intuitive search interface leading to an excellent user experience
• Excellent search quality, with the most relevant items for a query shown first, even when the query spans diverse public or private data sources
• Analytics on search results and understanding of usage patterns
• Sub-second query performance
• Ease of administration and maintenance leveraging your existing IT expertise

Click on the “Help” link in the upper right hand corner of the SES screen for additional detailed instructions for refining and filtering your search (inclusion and exclusion keys, wildcard matching, etc.), and also how to use the advanced search capability in SES.

For more information on using SES, please see the News & Notes entry “Oracle Secure Enterprise Search (SES) Now Available on MetaLink” posted in MetaLink Headlines on June 30, 2006.

What Happens with Oracle Severity 1 Service Requests

July 13, 2006 on 12:18 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Worth Noting | 3 Comments |  Print |  Email

Ms Marcia Michalik from Starkey Labs, Inc. has provided an excellent overview of a lifecycle of an Oracle Severity 1 Service Request in the latest OAUG Support in Focus Newsletter (July 2006 edition). If you are an OAUG member and want to subscribe to the newsletter, update your OAUG profile. (Don’t you wish there was an OAUG Support Focus Blog?) Below is an excerpt from Marcia’s article in the newsletter:

If you have not worked a Sev 1 TAR (P1 SR), this article may help to prepare you for that day (and night). If you have had the pleasure, relive the memories! This is a real-life example. The following are just some of the entries from this service request.

How we got to this point We have identified an issue with depreciation that appears to be the result of our recent upgrade. Our business analyst (BA) has narrowed the issue down to two specific patches applied to our production environment; on an older test environment, without these patches, depreciation runs correctly. The Oracle support analyst has been able to reproduce the issue internally and has logged a bug.

Tips Oracle Support will often request an OWC session. Through a secure connection, Support can log in to your application and see exactly what you are seeing. This has provided quick, easy resolution for us in the past. Also, even after you’ve logged an SR, keep working! The more information you can provide, the more you can test, the more notes you can find on MetaLink that address your issue and the quicker you will move toward resolution.

0 HOUR March 22, 16:00:09 GMT — It is two days before cycle end and we need to have this issue resolved before we can close the period. BA and her manager contact the Oracle duty manager to request escalation of the SR to Sev 1. It is accepted. The bug is also escalated to Sev 1. Oracle Development responds that they have accepted the escalated bug status. From this point on, both Oracle and our internal resources must be available to work the issue straight through to resolution.

Tips Oracle indicates that it is appropriate to escalate an SR when the business impact is increasing and/or deadlines are approaching. Severity levels are:

• Sev 3: Typically where an SR begins
• Sev 2: Indicates escalating business ramifications
• Escalated Sev 2: At this status, the issue will be worked continuously during business hours
• Sev 1: Issue will be worked 24/7

Escalation may be done online through the support analyst, but is most often done via phone request to the duty manager. A request for escalation must include the following:

• Reason for escalation, including business impact of the problem
• Business or implementation milestone, critical date(s) (milestone date or resolve by date), along with the type of business or implementation milestone
• Name of the person requesting the escalation and contact information (phone number, pager, e-mail address)

Bugs, like SRs, have their own statuses. The analyst will often report on the status of the bug in the SR so that you can monitor progress. Typical bug codes are:

• 11: Code bug
• 13: Document bug
• 30: Additional information requested
• 32: Not a bug
• 99: Closed, fixed

Be aware of the ramifications of escalating an issue to Sev 1. Not only does Oracle commit to working the issue 24/7, but you, as the client, must also commit to being available to work the issue 24/7. You must have an analyst, a DBA and possibly a developer available around the clock until the issue is resolved. If you are a global organization, like we are, you may have the ability to pass the issue around the globe, as Oracle will do. If not, you’re in for some sleepless nights!

HOUR 7 SEV 1 March 22, 23:48:25 GMT — Within hours, development updates the TAR with a note that they are testing a fix.

HOUR 12 SEV 1 March 23, 4:33:58 GMT — BA receives the call that a one-off patch has been developed and should be tested. BA agrees to do this within hours.

Tips Be careful with one-off patches. It is your responsibility to keep track of these during future upgrades and to identify whether they need to be reapplied if the functionality was not corrected in the base product.

HOUR 31 SEV 1 March 23, 23:33:39 GMT — Support analyst requests that priority be reduced back to Sev 2 since this is in user testing. BA indicates that users have identified issues even after application of the patch, but they are different issues.

HOUR 37 SEV 1 March 24, 5:22:02 GMT — Support analyst indicates that a second TAR should be opened for the new issues identified. This SR remains in Sev 1 status until users complete all testing and are confident that the patch has corrected the original issue.

Tips Oracle Support will be firm about the need to open a new SR when a new issue is discovered while working on an existing SR. When you open a SR that has been “spawned” by a previous SR, be sure to make note of the originating SR number so the analyst will be able to review all of the background and get up to speed more quickly.

HOUR 53 SEV 1, HOUR 742 OVERALL March 24, 21:46:02 GMT — BA closes TAR. Support responds by documenting bug number, one-off patch number and resolution. Everyone gets to sleep tonight!

IOUG Also Wants Your Input on Oracle Fusion

July 11, 2006 on 9:42 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Oracle Press, Worth Noting | 1 Comment |  Print |  Email

The International Oracle Users Council (IOUG) also encourages you [Oracle Applications and Peoplesoft Enterprise Users] to provide your input to Oracle as they develop Oracle Fusion. Below are several examples of how Oracle is working with the Product Development Committee on a number of initiatives running where users can be involved. The research into Fusion is unprecedented and the IOUC urge anyone not already involved in User Group initiatives to take part. The current PDC Initiatives for Fusion include:

General Fusion Surveys

This survey has now closed with over 2000 users worldwide agreeing to help Oracle with their research. If you missed this opportunity and would like to join in for later research please submit your details for future surveys.

Peoplesoft Product Usage Surveys

Oracle has created an initial set of Product Usage Surveys and a SQR script to better understand how you are using various features and functions of PeopleSoft Enterprise applications.

Since Fusion is starting with E-Business Suite as the foundation, Oracle needs specific input from PeopleSoft Enterprise customers on the use of certain features/functions as they move forward in the planning for Fusion. As Oracle progresses through the planning/design process, there will be additional opportunities for the J.D. Edwards and E-Business Suite customers to provide input.

Fusion Applications Communications Profiling

With announcements of Oracle Fusion, and more recently Applications Unlimited, upgrades to current versions and Oracle Fusion continue to generate questions amongst a diverse customer base. A greater understanding of customer types (profiles) and their application roadmap planning approach needs to be addressed. Oracle desires to retain existing customers and help them better position plans along a value-driven roadmap toward the new Fusion applications platform.

The IOUC aim to gather and deliver constructive input to senior Oracle Applications and Support executives. The project focus is the customer view and experience with Oracle’s communication strategy and messaging with respect to application upgrades (to the current release/version) and Oracle Fusion.

Usability of Oracle Products

The Applications User Experience team at Oracle would like to know if you are interested in participating in Oracle’s Usability Program. Participants in the usability studies will work directly with the User Experience team to provide input on developing innovative User Interfaces, i.e. the look and feel’ for Fusion applications. If you are interested, please complete this form. If you fit the profile for an upcoming usability study, Oracle will contact you directly. All information will remain confidential.

Business Process Modeling

In conjunction with the Fusion Strategy Council the IOUC are working with Oracle looking at the high level BPM for the first Fusion releases.

Oracle SOA Technology Day Coming to Select Cities

July 10, 2006 on 7:59 am | by Marian Crkon | In Oracle Press | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

Register now for a free seminar and learn from experts how to drive efficiency through Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). Join us to learn how you can have a complete infrastructure for SOA-based applications, using Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Fusion Middleware, and Oracle Enterprise Management software.

Technical Breakout Sessions may include:

• Transition to SOA with the Oracle SOA Suite
• Leveraging Identity Management in SOA
• Extending Applications with Oracle Fusion Middleware
• Oracle Database 10g Release 2
• Oracle Grid Control
• SOA for Content and Records Management
• Putting a Face on SOA: Oracle Portal
• Securing SOA: Meeting the Compliance and Security Requirements of Tomorrow

REGISTER now for an Oracle Technology Day in a city near you!

• St. Louis MO - Wednesday, July 19, 2006
• Costa Mesa CA - Thursday, July 20, 2006
• Miami FL - Thursday, July 27, 2006
• Indianapolis IN - Tuesday, August 1, 2006
• Rochester NY - Wednesday, August 2, 2006
• Dallas TX - Thursday, August 3, 2006
• Seattle WA - Wednesday, August 9, 2006
• Calgary, ALB, Canada - Tuesday, August 15, 2006 - sponsored by HP
• Toronto, ONT, Canada - Thursday, August 17, 2006 - sponsored by HP

Oracle Technology Day is a global program. Check your local Oracle.com Web site for the schedule of events in your country. Click here.