OracleAppsBlog

A day in the life of an Oracle Applications Consultant

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

New Oracle Scripting, Interaction Center and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Author

This post contains details of a new author that has joined OracleAppsBlog who has experience in the areas of Oracle Scripting, Interaction Center and CRM.

Jeff Lollar, an Oracle Consultant based in Dallas, Texas has joined OracleAppsBlog as an author. He is an employee of the Lucidity Consulting Group, a recipient of Oracle’s Partner of the Year award.  His expertise resides within the CRM suite with a strong emphasis on Oracle’s Interaction Center.  Jeff has proven himself as a leading developer of the Oracle Scripting module.  Amongst his functional skill-set, Jeff is also an accomplished Oracle Technical developer with experience in Forms, Reports, and other PL/SQL development.

I wanted to welcome Jeff to the Blog and introduce him to all the other members. I believe he has a unique set of skills and am sure his contributions will be very useful to readers.

You can read Jeff’s membership profile here or if you’re a member you can e-mail Jeff via the profile e-mail console.

Oracle E-Business Suite R11.5.10 (11i.10)

This post contains a short description of what is expected to be released in the next version of Oracle Applications and speculates as to when it might be released.

The Oracle Applications community eagerly awaits the release of 11i10 which was rumoured to be scheduled for release in June 2004. However, it now looks more likely that it will be released closer to November 2004. Don’t expect any official confirmation from Oracle though, I’ve looked for release information on their site and there’s hardly any. Apparently this new release will have dozens of new functions for industries such as manufacturing, health care, aerospace and utilities. It will also include support for transportation planning and transactions based on radio frequency identification tags in manufacturing.

The Fall 2004 Issue of the OAUG Insight Magazine has a short article by John Wookey (Senior Vice President, Applications Development, Oracle) entitled “Oracle E-Business Suite 11.5.10 Powers Revenue Driven Enterprise: New release builds on Oracle Applications foundation to propel higher revenues”. In the article, John talks about how organizations have for several years been focusing on controlling costs and argues that improving economic indicators have now shifted attention towards revenue growth. He states that in 11.5.10, Oracle has oriented their CRM applications capabilities to measurements that reveal what drives revenue and profitability. This helps companies create an information based selling environment with clear visibility into the sales process. The intention of this new release is to create a solution for E-Business Suite Customers that clears the way to building a revenue driven infrastructure, something that is essential for an organizations success.

I would be interested in receiving comments from any readers who have additional information on this release.

Thursday, August 05, 2004

Implementing Oracle Tutor using Author and Publisher

This post explains what Oracle Tutor is and contains links to some very good online examples of organisations that have implemented Oracle Tutor using Author and Publisher

Tutor Overview

According to the Tutor Page on Oracle Appsnet: -

Oracle Tutor, a critical training product for the Oracle E-Business Suite, provides you with a powerful tool to document and track your business processes, determine workflow, and develop and deploy applicable training materials to end-users. It includes a repository of Oracle applications procedural and instructional content that can be dynamically customized to apply to a company’s unique business processes. The result is a set of job-specific desk manuals and student guides that are easy to update and can be deployed online.

The Tutor CD can be found amongst the 11i CD pack you will receive when you purchase Oracle E-Business Suite (a lot of people don’t know that it’s there!). After installing Tutor Author and Publisher as well as the associated documentation, probably one of the most important files to know about is the DOCREG.xls file which is normally located in the following directory \\Tutor11i\User Manuals. The DOCREG.xls file contains the following sheets: -

• Legend
• Procedures
• Instructions
• Business Forms
• References
• Coding Conventions
• EDUC Abstracts (abstracts related to the training slides)
• EDUC Powerpoints (generic training slides for each module)

Each of these sheets will provide you with a listing related to the sheet title. For example, the "Procedures" sheet will provide you with a list of all the generic Oracle procedures that you undertake to perform the processes in a particular module. The related procedural documentation as per the listing is delivered as part of the Oracle Tutor installation. The thing I like about having the procedures in this kind of listing is that you can easily filter and sort the listing to identify the procedures that are relevant to your area of business. Then you only have to find the associated documentation in the Tutor folders created when installing on your local machine.

Tutor Author and Publisher Examples

Despite Tutor being such a wonderful product I haven’t come across many organisations that have implemented. My guess is that with IT Budgets being cut
to the bone, businesses do not have the necessary resources to implement it. The following are some really good online examples of how Tutor can be implemented
for your organisation and distributed across the web: -

US Department of Transportation

Here there is an online implementation of Tutor for Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Cash Management, Fixed Assets, General Ledger, Project Accounting, Purchasing and Reports (Web and Discoverer).

University of Virginia

Here, Tutor documentation is available for Oracle Financials, Human Resources and Payroll.

US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)

According to the site: -

The USACE Project Management Business Process (PMBP) Manual was developed as an web-based on-line tool to assist the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operation as a team-based organization, operating regionally, and focused on delivering projects on-time, within budget and meeting both the customers’ expectations and public interests. The Corps culture must be closely aligned with the project management business process environment. The Manual provides the Corps with business processes that are applicable in every organization:

• to enable the Corps to consistently manage all work under the Project Management Business Process (PMBP), using corporate automated information systems
• to transcend organizational and geographical boundaries, resulting in more efficient and effective work relationships
• to promote a more project-focused organization, while also serving public interests
• to more effectively and efficiently use limited resources
• to enhance the use of cross-functional project delivery teams (PDT) and regional business centers
• to further guide the organization into a team-based, learning organization that operates corporately

The PMBP Manual was developed using Oracle Tutor to facilitate integration of the business processes with P2. This on-line software allows for continuous update and improvement and provides both written processes as well as a flowchart supplement designed to reach all users.  Tutor also provides for specific role identification, using the Tutor term “author,” to allow users to recognize their responsibilities.  As a web-based on-line tool, the PMBP Manual offers immediate access to policy documents, reference documents and an ease of navigation through the execution of a program or project from work acceptance through planning and execution to closeout.

Oracle Tutor will also allow the user to relate actions directly to software usage and provide screenshots of entry pages aiding in navigation of new software.By allowing users to quickly see results (incorporation of comments and feedback), Oracle Tutor will assist in the continuous improvement of the PMBP Manual.

You can read more about the development of the Project Management Business Process (PMBP) Manual here

Key areas of the USACE site that you should take a look at are: -

• Processes Index - here you can access all Process and Reference Documents by their phase in the project life cycle.
• Desk Manual - See the processes as they relate to different roles.
• “Tutor Best Practices” document

  The purpose of this document is to provide the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) with a reference guide that outlines general information regarding Oracle Tutor as well as some of the best practices as identified by the BP/P2 Project Delivery Team (PDT).This guide is not intended to be an Oracle Tutor User Manual, but a guide to aide in standardizing and implementing Tutor as a documentation tool for USACE. The Tutor tool, methodology, training, and roles and responsibilities will be covered along with information on support and installation requirements.

Related White Papers, Presentations and Articles

An article by Howard Penn of Solution Beacon in the R11i quarterly newsletter, entitled “Oracle Tutor 11i”, provides a brief explanation of what Tutor is and why it should be used.

This presentations page at the Perthos Consulting Site contains the following excellent Tutor presentations by Thomas A. Perkins: -

• Oracle Tutor - Product Overview (653KB)
• Oracle Tutor - Using the Product (284KB)
• Tools for a Successful Oracle Tutor Implementation (2.94MB)

This papers page contains the whitepaper on Tools for a Successful Oracle Tutor Implementation (506KB)

Lastly, you should take a look at the Tutor Special Interest Group (SIG) Home Page that is part of the Oracle Applications User Group (OAUG) - here you will find some sample tutor documents.

Tuesday, August 03, 2004

The Oracle Financial Information Systems (FIS) Project at University College London (UCT)

This post contains a link to the Oracle Financial Information Systems (FIS) website at University College London (UCT) and also mentions the key features of the site.

The Financials Systems Project site at the University College London (UCT) provides readers with a comprehensive understanding of what it takes to implement an Oracle Applications System. The site gives readers a holistic view of all the aspects of Enterprise Systems Implementations. UCT initially implemented the following modules of Oracle Application 11.0.3 and later upgraded to 11i : -

• General Ledger
• Accounts Payable
• Purchase Ordering
• Accounts Receivable
• Grants ( including Project Costing and Project Billing)
• Fixed Assets
• Inventory

Following is a review of the key areas of the site:

FIS Project

This section of the site provides an overview of what the FIS project and has related information categorised as follows: -

• Information on the use of the site
• What is the FIS Project?
• FIS Team Members
• Useful Contact Information
• Migration Plan
• FIS Service Times
• FIS Users Group
• 11.0.3 Enhancement Stage Plan
• FIS Technical and Business Consultancy 2003
• Upgrade to Version 11i
• FIS Newsletters
• FIS Training Dates

Procedures, User Guides and General Reference

This particular section of the site is probably one of the most useful areas as it contains project documentation which has been categorised in to the following areas: -

• General Reference and Procedural Notes
• User Guides for the following modules: -
• Accounts Payable
• Accounts Receivable
• Fixed Assets
• General Ledger
• Grants
• Inventory
• Purchase Ordering
• Other User Guides
• Technical Guidance
• How To…?

Monday, August 02, 2004

Oracle E-Business Suite Electronic Technical Reference Manuals (eTRM)

This post contains a link to the site where Oracle E-Business Suite Electronic Technical Reference Manuals (eTRM) can be found and also has a write up on the site.

In a previous post I highlighted where the Oracle E-Business Suite Documentation CD could be downloaded. If you’ve taken a look at this documentation CD you will have noticed that the Technical Reference Manuals (TRM’s) are not there. This is because Oracle is now maintaining the technical reference manuals online. Presently you can access the Oracle E-Business Suite at this site: http://etrm.oracle.com. Once accessing this site you will be redirected to Metalink where you will need to specify a user name and password.

According to the site: -

eTRM is a pl/sql utility that reads design information in an Oracle database and displays its output in html format. It shows database design and dependency information for the Oracle eBusiness Suite.

The present version of eTRM is 3.0 and according to Oracle: -

Version 3.0 is a complete re-write of the eTRM code. Prior versions ran against an Oracle Designer repository. Version 3 runs in an Oracle Applications instance. This allows it to provide a more complete and accurate picture of the Applications data model. New features include a search engine, improved navigator functionality, pl/sql dependencies and static reports for offline working.

The site allows you to search the Oracle Databases from 11.5.4 to 11.5.9 to examine the FND Model or Oracle Data Dictionary. The information you obtain can then be downloaded in HTML or PDF format. I’m sure the information on the site will be very useful to anyone who would like to understand the technical architecture of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems.