OracleAppsBlog

A day in the life of an Oracle Applications Consultant

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Thursday, July 29, 2004

Download Oracle Documentation

This post contains a link to a site where you can download a comprehensive range of Oracle Documentation.

Certainly I might be stating the obvious but I thought it would be good to have the information on this site. This Oracle Technology Network (OTN) page contains Oracle Documentation for the following key technology areas: -

• Database
• Development Tools
• Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence
• On Demand
• System Management
• Application Server
• Oracle Collaboration Suite
• Technologies / Utilities
• Applications / E-Business Suite

Of interest to Oracle Apps users will be the online documentation CD which can be downloaded for each release of Oracle E-Business Suite from R11 to R11.5.9

Sunday, July 25, 2004

New Oracle Presentations from the OpenWorld Conference in Melbourne

After a bit of a wait it now seems that the Oracle OpenWorld Melbourne Presentations are now available in pdf format (sorry to those people who like copying and pasting). This post lists the key areas covered and also reviews the presentations delivered for some of the Oracle E-Business Suite 11i Tracks.

You can download presentations for the Oracle OpenWorld Australia and New Zealand Conference here. According to the site: -

There were over 100 Sessions to choose from over the course of the OpenWorld conference. They were delivered via 10 concurrent Tracks - focussing on Oracle’s entire range of business solutions and technologies.

Following is a complete listing of all the tracks as well as some personal reviews I have prepared: -

Keynote Presentations

Charles Phillips presentation on Creating Corporate Value - Information Matters contains a short but interesting look at Oracle’s financial performance. I was interested to see that Oracle Applications Sales have grown by 4% in the last 12 months. The competitors didn’t do so well - SAP (-6%), Peoplesoft (-17%), Siebel (-31%). The only software company beating Oracle’s operating profit margins is Microsoft. I must be in the right business - at least for now anyway! The session goes on to discuss the Oracle Strategy a large component of which seems to be helping organizations Standardize IT in the following areas: -

• Processes 
• Data
• Architecture
• Infrastructure

Keith Kellogg’s presentation on Oracle’s Perspective on Homeland Security gives a nice high level view of the

Oracle E-Security Suite

solution bundle.

The presentation I like the most was by John Wookey on the Information Driven Organization. Firstly it ask’s the question, what defines the information driven organization - to which the answer is: -

• Alignment - encourage behaviour that supports organizational objectives through communication, consistency and incentives.
• Effectiveness - drive enerprise information and enterprise business processes into every aspect of your business.
• Collaberation - coordinate processes across direct, partner, supplier and online channels through distributed access, integrated processes and shared information.

He then defines the Oracle Solution for the Information Driven Organization by outlining the key features of the new 11i release (namely 11i.10 or 11.5.10) which are: -

• Integrated Business Driven Intelligence
• Continued Aggressive product extensions
• Best in Proven Technology
• Broad Industry Investments
• Opening of the E-Business Suite: -
• Integration Services
• Customer Data Hub

The presentation outlines Oracle Solutions for Specific Industries and then goes on to explain the three paths to higher quality information, which are: -

1. Full E-Business Suite right away - best information, lowest cost.
2. E-Business Suite with Integration to Legacy Apps - More graceful on-ramp to E-Business Suite.
3. Data Hub - Retain Legacy Apps; benefit from single data model.

I like the presentation because although it does mention Oracle Specific Solutions, it gives a good idea of what organizations are trying to achieve and how IT is helping them meet their business goals.

Oracle Database 10g - Tracks A & B

Oracle Application Server 10g and Application Development - Tracks A & B

Oracle Collaboration Suite Track

Business Intelligence & Data Warehousing Track

Enterprise Resource Management - (Oracle E-Business Suite 11i) - Tracks A & B

Certainly the best presentation in this category was The Enterprise Iceberg - a hidden resource or a hazard to business by John Julian. The presentation relates to the University Systems Project (named Themis) undertaken at the University of Melbourne. It’s quite a lengthy presentation but makes good reading and will provide you with a really good understanding of all aspects of ERP implementation. The presentation begins with a project overview and states why the University needed to change. One of the strong points of the presentation is that it clearly outlines the hardware and software architecture being used. A comprehensive listing of all the costs involved as well as the quantifiable benefits is also given. Lastly, the presentation mentions how you can avoid implementation disaster and goes on to mention several good books that you can read relating to enterprise systems implementations.

A presentation I was certainly interested in reading was E-Business Suite Special Edition - benefits for small and medium sized enterprises. Oracle E-Business Suite Special Edition is Oracle’s Packaged Solution for midsize businesses. Key features are: -

• Pre-configured E-Business Suite 11i modules (packaged but tailorable)
• Rapid, fixed price, fixed scope implementation
• Ready to expand when you are 

The presentation contains a case study for Sunny Queen (Pty) Ltd - the largest egg supplier in Queensland. I’m hoping at a later point to try and provide readers with a bit more information on this release, in the mean time you can read more about E-Business Suite Special Edition at this Oracle Page

Another presentation of interest was Leadership in Leasing by Brett Kennedy. The presentation discussed the leasing industry in Australia, the leasing lifecycle and the platform and then finally took a look at the Oracle Lease Management Solution. I was interested in the presentation primarily because I didn’t realise Oracle had a solution for Lease Management. After reading the presentation it became clear to me that this was only released in 11.5.8. The presentation states Oracle’s commitment to leasing as follows: -

• First Production Release 11.5.8, Dec 2002
• Joint Development with GE
• Current Release 11.5.9
• New functionality - syndications, asset terminations. Multi-GAAP
• Australian Launch of Lease Management, Feb 2004
• Local Training, Implementation and Support Capability
• Next Major Release 11.5.10, due mid 2004
• Significant Resources
 
• Effort has been underway since 1999
• Deep Leasing Experience on Oracle Development Team
• Many Enhancements to Existing Products
• Significant Investment by Oracle Consulting and Partners Since Inception

I liked the Value Proposition slide which had an interesting “graph” and states: -

A lease management solution delivers significant profitability improvement, through cost reduction and better operational control, scale economies for future growth and reductions in the cost of capital.

The presentation also clearly outlines the lease business flows.

I was interested to see the screen shots of the Oracle Lease Management solution as most of the interface seem to be web based (using Java Server Pages - JSP’s) which makes me think that Oracle is moving more towards a web based solution than using forms. The very last section of the presentation also has some cool looking Oracle Discoverer reports.

Customer Relationship Management - (Oracle E-Business Suite 11i) Track

Supply Chain Management - (Oracle E-Business Suite 11i) Track

Friday, July 23, 2004

Oracle Financials R11.5.9 at Stanford University

Recently I came across the Oracle Financials site at Stanford University. This post contains a review of the various sections of the site.

The Oracle Financials Site at Stanford University is an excellent resource for anyone interested in learning and reading about Oracle Financials implementations. Being a University, the site gives you a good idea of how Oracle E-Business Suite can be implemented in a Higher Education Institute. It’s also interesting to note that Stanford has recently upgraded to the latest version of Oracle E-Business Suite, namely R11.5.9. You can read about Stanfords Upgrade from 11.5.8 to 11.5.9 here. The Oracle Financials System site is categorised in to the following sections: -

• Learning Centre
• Chart of Accounts
According to this page: -

The Chart of Accounts is the underlying structure for organizing financial information at Stanford. Stanford adopted a new Chart of Accounts along with the new Oracle Financials system in 2003. News and general information about the Chart of Accounts and associated issues may be found here.

In the news item "What is the Chart of Accounts" the University explains: -

The Chart of Accounts is the set of codes used to classify and record financial transactions in meaningful ways. These codes enable Stanford to: -

• identify specific “pots” of money; 
• specify what that money may be used for; and 
• record the transactions related to that money

By fulfilling the above functions, the Chart of Accounts also: -

• facilitates financial reporting;
• provides a framework for understanding the financial results of Stanford’s operations; and
• controls how financial transactions and balances are collected and stored in the Oracle system

Under this news item you will also find the Universities Chart of Accounts Segment Structure as well as mapping tables and spreadsheets which outline how the legacy Chart of Accounts translates to the new structure.

 

• Authority
• Reporting
• iJournals
• Purchasing
• Reimbursements
• Labor Distribution
• PCards
• Sunflower

Saturday, June 19, 2004

Oracle Documentation for the Enterprise Accounting System 〈EAS〉

The George Washington University has implemented an Enterprise Accounting System (EAS) using Oracle Applications. This post contains links to the business forms, procedure documentation and training materials used in the implementation.

The Universities implementation of an Enterprise Accounting System (EAS) has been very well documented. On this site you will find various business forms, procedure documentation and training materials which I am sure will be helpful to anyone implementing Oracle E-Business Suite.

Monday, June 14, 2004

Understanding constraints (ceilings) in Oracle Public Sector Budgeting (PSB)

The objective of this post is to explain in more detail certain concepts relating to constraints. In particular I will be looking at thresholds and severity levels and explaining how they work.

According to the Oracle Public Sector Budgeting documentation, “Constraints are used to notify users regarding specific conditions for account ranges, elements, or position sets. For example, users can be notified if the total expense for a range of accounts exceeds a particular dollar amount.

Account constraints are used to prevent budget amount violations for line items.

Element constraints are used to prevent modification of element rates for a selected group of positions.

Position constraints are used to prevent element cost violations for selected positions or positions that are assigned to invalid element options”.

Constraints (otherwise known as ceilings in most of the Government organisations I have implemented in) are used to place limits on budget estimates. In Oracle Public Sector Budgeting, estimates are prepared in budget worksheets and after these estimates are prepared they are checked against constraints or ceilings that have been put in place by the relevant authorities.

The screen shot below shows the constraint setup screen in Oracle PSB. 

One of the concepts I struggled to understand was severity levels and thresholds and how these worked together. I felt that the Oracle documentation was a bit weak in this area and did not clearly define how these two settings worked together. In the next couple of paragraphs I will attempt to clarify how these “parameters” work.

Essentially two types of ceilings exist, namely: -

Hard Ceilings (can also be referred to as absolute)

This occurs is the threshold is less that or equal to the severity level. In the diagram shown, lines two (“General Fund”) and three (“Finance FTE”) would be classified as hard ceilings.

If a ceiling is hard, when a budget worksheet preparer submits a worksheet for review, a constraint violation will be produced and the user will be required to amend the violation to the worksheet and then re-submit it. Essentially, the worksheet will remain stuck with the preparer until such time as he ensures the constraint violation is rectified.

Soft Ceilings (can also be referred to as advisory)

This occurs if the threshold > severity level. In the diagram shown, line one (“Budget Dept”) would be classified as a soft ceiling.

In this instance, when a budget worksheet preparer submits a worksheet for review a constraint violation will be produced, however, the authoriser will still be able to work on the worksheet and post it to the General Ledger. Essentially, a warning message will be produced that there is a constraint violation but this will not stop the worksheet going through all the remaining processes needed to post it to the General Ledger.

Note: If the severity level is left blank then it is assumed to be less than the threshold level.