OracleAppsBlog

A day in the life of an Oracle Applications Consultant

Thursday, August 19, 2004

Oracle Partner Feature - Red Rock Consulting Group

This post contains a review of the Red Rock Consulting Group web site and highlights some useful downloads they have.

Recently I came across the Red Rock Consulting Group web site. Red Rock is an Oracle Certified Advantage Partner and according to their site: -

Red Rock Consulting is an innovative, dynamic and energetic consultancy formed to support clients who have chosen Oracle business solutions. Red Rock is the largest independent Oracle consulting firm in Australia and New Zealand, with a highly skilled and experienced pool of Oracle consultants across the Asia-Pacific region including offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Auckland.

They have some really good white papers, articles and presentations which have been delivered at numerous Oracle Conferences and User Groups or featured in reputable Oracle Publications and Magazines. In particular, there’s quite a bit of information available on upgrades. Highlights are as follows: -

Whitepapers

• Tracking your assets
• Help yourself with Oracle Service
• Reporting in 11i
• Hunt Down and Harness those Upgrade Project Risks
• Multiple Organisations in Oracle Applications
• What is a Portal?
• The art of supporting Oracle Applications
• Practical Applications of Folder Tools and Report eXchange
• How iProcurement Stands Out From Oracle Purchasing
• From Simple Spreadsheets to Project Costing 11i, Vodafone Wins
• Two Roads to 11i - Upgrade Versus Re-implementation

Articles

• Archiving and Purging (You know you need to)
• Customer Spotlight – Australian Hearing
• Mass Maintenance
• Ten Quick Tips for your Upgrade
• Investment Value Assessment (IVA)

Presentations

• Portal Presentation
• Workflow in action- Oracle Purchasing
• GST and Oracle Applications
• GST BAS

As an when I get the chance to take a detailed look at each of these articles, white papers and presentations I will prepare a write up for this site. In the mean time, happy downloading and reading. You should also consider subscribing to the Red Rock Newsletter entitled HotRocks.

If you are reading this post and you know of any really good partner sites where you can get useful information and downloads, then please add your comments.

Wednesday, August 18, 2004

Atlanta OAUG - August Meeting Agenda

This post contains details of the upcoming Atlanta Oracle Applications User Group (ATLOAUG) monthly meeting.

The next meeting of the Atlanta OAUG is scheduled to take place on Friday the 20th of August 2004 and you can find the Agenda here. Highlights are as follows

• Vendor Spotlight - 9ci, Inc.
• Member Spotlight
• Cingular
• WC Bradley: Teaming for Success - How the WC Bradley Company combines Functional and Technical Teams for Implementation, Optimization, and Support
• Internal Controls Manager - Mike Hipps, Oracle
• Challenges of Point Release Upgrades - Jeffrey Walsh, CSC and Arul Murugan, enrich IT
• Kanban Replenishment for All Types of Industries (Manufacturing & Non-Manufacturing) - Tom Brown, Manufacturing Systems Services Inc.

Presentation abstracts and descriptions relating to the highlights can be found on the User Group site where you can also register to attend. Registration is FREE so if you are in the vicinity you should make the most of this opportunity.

You can download historical presentations and white papers delivered at Atlanta Oracle Applications User Group Meetings from 1997 -2004 here - there’s certainly plenty of good material to take a look at. 😊

Other areas of interest on this site are the newsletters section where you can download/subscribe to their newsletter.

Oracle Appsnet gets a face lift

This post discusses the new look and design of the Oracle Appsnet web site.

Recently Oracle Appsnet updated their site to give it a more consistent look and feel with their main Oracle Site as well as better integration with the Oracle Technology Network site. The site now looks as illustrated in Fig. 1

Figure 1: The new look of Oracle Appsnet

I’m sure that in the long run this site will be just as good as it’s former self but I have to say that as of now it’s rather frustrating to use and I don’t believe that Oracle did a particularly good job of the migration. I’m not sure what their web development standards are but typically when you remove an old page from a site you should create a redirect to the new page that has replaced it. I’ve noticed that a lot of the links I had to this site are now broken. Please bear with me whilst I update the links - I may in some instances have to wait for Oracle to create the new page where that information is now stored as I’ve noticed that in some instances certain pages have been removed completely and have yet to be replaced by new pages.

Monday, August 16, 2004

Printing Reports in PDF format with Oracle Applications

This post explains how you can modify an Oracle Applications report output format so that it displays as a PDF document. It also outlines how to fix a recent error I received when trying to generate PDF reports.

Oracle Applications allows you to print your reports in a variety of formats. To change the report output format you will need to have access to system administrator responsibility and navigate as follows: - Concurrent > Program > Define. Using the Query or find facilities retrieve the report name you would like to print in PDF format. In the “Output” area of the form as displayed in Fig.1 you will notice a drop down box which gives you the following options: -

• HTML
• PCL (HP’s Printer Control Language)
• PDF
• PostScript
• Text
• XML

It should be noted that if you choose HTML or PDF as the output type with Oracle Reports Programmes, you should use a printer driver that handles HTML or PDF files. Selecting PDF as the format output will ensure that the next time you print the report and view the output, it generates in PDF format (you will only be able to view it if you have Acrobat PDF Reader installed on your PC).

Figure 1: How to modify your report output format to print a PDF Document

Personally, I quite like this option to view output in a PDF document type since it looks a lot “prettier” than looking at the report in plain text or HTML format. You also have the option of saving a copy of the file to your local PC in much the save way as you could save the text or HTML output locally.

One thing I would like to know from any readers that have utilised this feature is whether it’s possible to make use of the security features of Acrobat (such as controlling content copying or extraction) within Oracle Applications so that when the report is generated you have control over the content and form of the document.

Fixing an error received on PDF generation

Last week I received a bizarre error message when trying to view the output of a report whose format was PDF. The error message was - File does not begin with ‘%PDF-’. Considering I was not encountering this message when using other PC’s it became clear to me that the problem was related specifically to my PC. A quick search on Metalink revealed note 206727.1 which made me realise that somewhere along the line I needed to change my browser settings for Internet Explorer. I made the following changes to my brower options which rectified the problem.

Selected Tools > Internet Options > General tab > Settings. Under “Check for newer versions of stored pages” there were four possible selections: -

• Every visit to the page
• Every time you start Internet Explorer
• Automatically
• Never

I had “Every visit to the page” selected and discovered that choosing any of the other three options would now successfully generate my PDF report within IE when choosing to view report output.

11i Upgrade Project - a move from 11.0.3 to 11.5.9

This post contains a link to the Financial Information Systems Upgrade site at University College London (UCT) and also gives an overview of the upgrade documentation prepared for this organisation.

In a previous post I discussed the Financials Systems Project site at the University College London (UCT). One portion of this site that I think is particularly useful is the section that talks about Upgrading to Version 11i. It provides the following documentation relating to upgrades: -

Business Case

I’m a personal advocate of making sure that a value proposition is prepared for any major IT projects you are going to perfom in your business. This business case contains a summary according to the following points: -

• Fit with UCL Strategy
• Demand for change
• Alternative Options
• Reasons for the Upgrade
• Costs
• Expected Benefits
• Investment Appraisal

It then provides more detail for the business case and then outlines what Functional and Other improvements will be made. Lastly it speculates as to when Future Upgrades will need to take place.

11i Communications Plan

According to this document: -

The aim of this plan is to identify the stakeholders of the 11i upgrade project, to identify the information needs they have, and to provide a plan to provide up to date and accurate information in the most effective format and medium and in the most timely way.

Clear, timely and effective communications will enable the project team to:

• Ensure that all principal stakeholders are aware of and in support of the reasons for undertaking the project, have realistic expectations of it and are prepared for it.
• Communicate information needed by other departments or organisations who are affected by or need to know about the project’s progress towards its outcomes, enable them to prepare (e.g. with appropriate training and equipment) and enlist their support.
• Communicate to users the direct requirements for using the system.
• Keep up to date at all times with users’ requirements and make sure the project aims continue to meet these right from the beginning and continue to do so in the light both changes to users’ needs and new information apparent as the project develops.
• Inform advisors and consultants of the project of all progress and developments so that the best available help can be received when required.
• Enable appropriate action to be taken on an informed basis by those responsible for managing the project so that appropriate decisions can be made and the best level of support can be offered to the project at the right time and in the right way.

11i Project Initiation Document

This is a fairly comprehensive document and according to the site, it’s purpose is to: -

Define the 11i Upgrade project, to form the basis for its management and to help with the assessment of the project’s overall success. The two primary uses of the PID are:

• To provide a baseline document against which the Project Board and Project Manager can assess progress, project issues and on-going viability
• To ensure that the project has a sound basis before asking the Project Board to make any major commitment to this project

The document is structured as follows: -

1. Background
2. Business Case
• Business Case Summary
• Budget
3. Project Definition
• Objectives
• Scope and Exclusions
• Project Deliverables
• Approach
• Constraints
• Dependencies
• Assumptions
4. Project Plan
• Project Plan Summary
5. Project Structure
• Project Organisation
• Outline of Roles
• Project Meeting Structure
6. Communication Plan
7. Issue and Risk Logs
8. Change Control

PC Specification for Version 11i

This document lists the hardware and software requirements for PC’s being used to access Oracle 11i.