The Feature

Few Navigation Helpers for New Oracle EBS Users

February 4, 2008 on 1:08 pm | by Mohan Iyer | In How To Guides | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

I am sure there have been many times that you have sat down at your desk – intent on researching a couple of transactions that the auditor has asked you some questions on. You spend a couple of minutes trying to sift through what needs to be done and start. A little while later you are just a couple of steps into your task, but far from complete. This is a frustrating reality for many Oracle Applications users. They are capable of getting results, but most users are unaware of what to do to get to information quickly.The purpose of this (and other)posts will be to lead the readers down a path of understanding and help them learn tips and tricks that enable more efficient and effective use of the system. It is not intended as a discussion about how frustratingly unfamiliar or unfriendly Oracle E-Business Suite is. This paper is limited to Oracle Applications E-Business Suite, and primarily Financials with some aspects of Purchasing and Order Management. Though the key facets discussed should work in most other modules as well.

When you first log in to your “Home Page,” preferences settings are available in addition to your list of Responsibilities that you see for the first time.

The most interesting and useful feature in the preferences tab is the Date Format. I have heard so many people say that the Oracle Date format (dd-mon-yyyy) is terrible and they want to use their good old mm-dd-yy or dd-mm-yy date format. You can change your preference here. You can also change the way the numbers (amounts) appear on the data entry form, including your password.

You can also change it so that when you log in the first responsibility and form are set to be the one you use most. However, when you do this there are two problems(?) – you lose the Home Page, and if you want to change these setting you need to have a Web based form like the one that is in the ‘i’ products (iExpenses, iProcurement, etc….). This is not a major issue as almost everyone should have the Notification function on one of their Responsibilities, that can be used to change the setting back to default.

Once you log in to the application you see the Oracle forms – the good old forms screen with blue and dark grey colors after you log in. These are the default colors; if your System Administrator has not changed them. Once you reach these screens you see the Navigator – also called the menu list. You have a couple of icons on the toolbar that you may want to check out – the ones that are available for use – Change Responsibility, Print and Help.

In addition, you should see menu options on the toolbar menu – File, Edit, View, Tools, Window and Help. These are available throughout the applications on all the forms.

Take a close look at the following Menu Options as these are handy and are typically available from any form within the application:
Edit > Preferences – used to change password and view and set profile options at user level.

The other option that is used regularly is View à Requests to view concurrent programs that you have submitted and view the output and/or log.

One of the most overlooked is the Tools à Close Other Forms choice. This menu option allows multiple forms to be open within a given responsibility. This allows you to look at Customer, Invoice, and Receipt all together without closing each one of the forms.

The last menu option used also has some valuable choices – Help.

the Help à Record History and Help à About Oracle Applications choices are used very frequently by users to understand and locate generic data about the record and details about the module you in use. The Help à Record History is very crucial if you are trying to figure out what went wrong and would like to know who enterer or updated a particular transaction. This option shows you who created the data set (i.e. created by), when as well as who last updated it and when (last updated by). This information in transaction data entry forms helps when doing some research.

The Help à About Oracle Applications choice can provide you with beneficial information – instance you are using, User Name you are logged in as, Form Name that you are using currently and its version details. All these are very helpful when working with Oracle support for an issue.

The Diagnostics choice is one that, in most cases, you need the Apps password. Unless there is a technical request for you to perform, you will probably not use it. Also, the functions under the Diagnostics choice are very complex and need additional training. This discussion is outside the scope of this post.

On the navigator or the menu list there are submenus and functions. The submenus can be many times deep and to get to a specific function you may have to look for it, and this could be time-consuming. You can then use this option that is a big savior – CTRL-L on the menu form lists all functions available to a specific Responsibility.

I am sure there are many people that understand the Top Ten feature on the menu form and every user should configure this functionality when they start working with the system regularly. The hidden trick however, is that the number assigned to a Top Ten choice; can also be used as a short cut to open the function/form.

In many cases the system is notorious for giving inaccurate or inconsistent messaging, however, the status line for a given form is almost always accurate. The Status Line is shown at the bottom of the screen and in many cases is hidden by the toolbar (Windows toolbar). You can make it visible by clicking on the maximize icon on the top right hand corner of your applications form. Once the status bar becomes visible and messages there are quite useful – especially when you are stuck!

There are multiple tabs on the Navigator menu form – Functions, Documents and Processes. The functions tab gives and lists all the menus and functions associated with the menus for use in the normal working tasks on a day to day basis. The Documents tab can be used to place documents (single transactions) that you may be researching and need to get to quickly until you finish your research, you can have multiple documents (transactions) on the tab, but each is saved separately. The last tab is – Processes. It can be customized to be hidden or not available. The processes tab helps you walk through a process, e.g. Enter Journals through Posting, Reviewing Account Balances, Account Inquiry and Reporting.

The use of this set of functions is a longer discussion and is not covered as part of this post . There is more to come as it would be a little easier to make short posts.