The Feature

Oracle Projects Invoice Review Report Prints a Blank Page

February 28, 2006 on 1:25 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Feature of the Week | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

You may encounter this feature if using Oracle Project Billing (10.5.10).

The Feature

You are running the MGT: Invoice Review report for draft project invoices before they get approved, released and interfaced to AR. Even though there are draft invoices, they do not show up on the report.

The Fix

It turns out the problem is caused by the project manager being invalid employee in Human Resources. Not exactly the most intuitive way to find out. Assign a valid employee as new project manager, and re-run the MGT: Invoice Review report.

Recompiling Burden Schedule Recalculates Existing Costs

February 22, 2006 on 7:12 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Feature of the Week | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

You may experience this feature if you are using Project Burdening in Oracle Projects 11.5.10.

The Feature

If you updated and recompiled your burden rates in the provisional burden schedule version, or defined a new version with a retroactive start date, the system will automatically update existing transactions (typically timecards) to be re-costed. This might have a major impact on your project costing and reporting since the PA Date and GL Date for re-costed transactions will change to the current period from the period when the transactions were originally calculated.

The Workaround

While this is a great feature if used as intended, watch out if you are not familiar with it. If you do not intend to recalculate the existing burden costs with new burden rates, set the start date of the new burden schedule version to the beginning of the current period to avoid unintentional retroactive recalculation of the existing burden costs.

Do Not Forward Oracle Notifications from Outlook!

February 9, 2006 on 9:44 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Feature of the Week | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

You can encounter this feature if you are using Oracle Internet Expenses and use email notifications to approve expense reports:

The Feature

There is a vulnerability in iExpenses approval workflow. Here is a scenario:

• Employee enters his expenses report and submits to his manager
• Manager receives an email notification to approve the expense report
• Manager forwards the notification USING OUTLOOK FORWARD FUNCTION (not an Oracle link provided in the email) to the the expense report preparer requesting more information.
• Employee receives the manager’s approval email, and is able to approve his own expense report.
• Expense report in iExpenses becomes approved, and shows it was approved by the expected approver.

The Summary

Employee can approve his own expense report after his manager forwarded the approval email to him. Furthermore, in Oracle iExpenses it looks like the expense report was approved by the manager himself.

The Workaround

Configure the Workflow Mailer to not allow a user to respond by email to an email notification that has been forwarded from another user. As Oracle Applications Manager (available from the Oracle Applications Rapid Install Portal window):

• Log in as Oracle Application Manager
• Navigate to Workflow Manager page
• Under Workflow System: click on Notification Mailers
• Click on your Mailer Name, and then Edit.
• Navigate to Edit Workflow Mailer: EMail Servers page.
• Make sure to uncheck the Allow Forwarded Response flag.

Customer Agreements “Disappear” if Created by Contingent Workers

February 8, 2006 on 12:12 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Feature of the Week | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

You may encounter this feature if you have contingent workers managing your customer agreements in Oracle Projects 10.5.10.

The Feature

If a customer agreement is created by a contingent worker (Person Type = Contingent Worker in HR), it “disappears”. It exists in the agreements table, but you cannot retrieve it in the Agreements window. Also, you cannot generate revenue and invoices for projects funded by such agreements.

The Workaround

Update the agreements table and set the agreement owner to be employee instead of contingent worker. You can use the following update script:

UPDATE pa_agreements_all
SET owned_by_person_id = ‘employee person_id‘
WHERE owned_by_person_id = ‘contingent worker person id‘

Please provide your comments, or contact me at marian.crkon@itsafeature.com if you have any questions.

Contingent Worker and Her Supplier Start Date

January 31, 2006 on 3:50 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Feature of the Week | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

You can encounter this feature if you are using Oracle iExpenses and Oracle Payables with contingent workers.

The Feature

A contingent worker starts working on a specific date. Her AP supplier record is not created until few days later. So the effective date of her HR assignment starts before her supplier record was created. When a contingent worker then tries to enter her expenses for the dates prior to the existence her AP supplier record, Oracle rejects the expense report.

The Workaround

Ugly, but there is one … The user has to create and submit an expense report with an item date AFTER the date her supplier record was created. Once she created and submitted the expense report (it can be withdrawn and deleted if needed), she will then be able to submit her expenses for the dates prior to the creation date the supplier record, but after her start date as a contingent worker. There isn’t a way to change supplier start date.

Do You Want to Delegate or Transfer That Oracle Notification?

January 25, 2006 on 2:00 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Feature of the Week, How To Guides | 7 Comments |  Print |  Email

Overview

The WF: Notification Reassign Mode profile option determines the forwarding functionality that is available to employees. If you set the WF: Notification Reassign Mode profile option to Reassign, employees see the Reassign button on the notification.

How This Profile Works with Oracle Internet Expenses

When the expense report notification is delegated to another employees, the original recipient of the notification remains the owner, i.e. remains the approver, and must have sufficient signing authority.

When the expense report notification is transferred, the notification is forwarded and the new recipient becomes the owner of the notification. Now the new approver must have sufficient privileges to approve the expense report.

How This Profile Works with Oracle Purchasing

According to Metalink Note Unable To Reassign A Notification Using The Transfer Option (Metalink login required), transferring the ownership of the notification is not allowed in Purchasing approval notifications! This is documented in the Viewing and Responding to Notifications in the Oracle Purchasing User’s Guide.

The reason why Transfer is not allowed is that it affects only the notification itself and not the document associated with the notification, so the document notification when transferred only transfers the notification ownership and not the document. Delegation of the document delegates the document ownership and thus allows auditing history to occur and to correctly record activity performed against the document in the document’s action history. A transfer action of the notification would miss this auditing capability.

Continue reading Do You Want to Delegate or Transfer That Oracle Notification?…

CEO Reports to a Dummy?

January 24, 2006 on 5:45 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Feature of the Week | 5 Comments |  Print |  Email

Let me start the Feature of the Week column by describing a feature in Oracle Internet Expenses.

The Feature

Employee expense reports must be approved by their supervisors before they can be paid. And the way Oracle Internet Expenses approvals work is by using an employee-supervisor hierarchy. In other words, everyone must have a supervisor to be in a hierarchy, and be able to approve other people’s expense reports. Now, the CEO, or other employee at the top of the food chain, does not typically have a supervisor, right? Hence, any expense reports he tries to approve fail, because he is not in the supervisor hierarchy.

The Workaround

Oracle resources available on Metalink recommend setting up a dummy employee, which in fact we did. Let me tell you that it was a very embarrassing discussion with the client and their HR Management.

It is not a bug, and there is a workaround to make it work. But for the reasons above, CEO Approval of Expense Reports is my first (Fake) Feature of The Week.

Introduction to Feature of the Week

January 22, 2006 on 9:25 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Feature of the Week | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

The Feature of the Week is expected to be the most popular category of all.

If you know an Oracle Applications feature that you think is great, fake, or plain stupid, post it on It’s a Feature! Where else can you do that?

If you sometimes go thinking, “Why the heck did they do that?”, or “That’s great, I am so glad they finally did it!”, write a post about it and assign it a category Feature of The Week.

Remember to do your homework and know what you talk. It’s a Feature! intends to be fun and useful to other Oracle Applications users, as well its creators.

What’s your favorite feature?