Three new Order Management Diagnostic Tests available for 12.1.1+ via Patch 18013753 (Please visit E-Business Patching (MOSC) to request the initial password to download).

The Apps Check Diagnostic is now available via the Oracle Diagnostic Framework.  This is the same as what is executed from the Concurrent Program.  Executing the Diagnostic Test via the Diagnostic Framework 'Applications Diagnostics > Diagnose' offers a user friendly execution experience and HTML output that is validated and can be directly uploaded to a Service Request.  Please see Doc ID 1631911.1 for details.

Duplicate Lines From OE Drop Ship Sources, is new to the Diagnostic Framework.  This Diagnostic Test selects all duplicate lines from OE Drop Ship sources table.  Please see Doc ID 1632022.1 for details.

RMA Lines Stuck At Awaiting Return Or Disposition, is new to the Diagnostic Framework.  This Diagnostic Test selects all the RMA lines that are stuck at Awaiting Return or Awaiting Return Disposition status, even after the order lines had been fully received and fully or partially delivered.  Please see Doc ID 1632024.1 for details.

The new 12.1.3 Procurement Rollup Patch (RUP) 18120913:R12.PRC_PF.B offers so much more than just a cumulative collection of bug fixes.   Here’s just a few reasons you should apply this patch:

•    Extensive improvements to the Buyer Work Center (BWC) searching, preferences and Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) Lead Time are included
•    Enhancements to the Purchasing Document Open Interface (PDOI) in the area of document creation and referencing, Advance Pricing and more
•    Includes all fixes for iSupplier Portal, Sourcing & Supplier Lifecycle Management (SLM) Rollup Patch :17525552:R12.PRC_PF.B detailed in Note 1591198.1
•    Includes all the fixes for the Purchasing Approvals Rollup Patch : 16932593:R12.PO.B which includes AME and is detailed in Note 1567464.1

For all the information you need to know about the new RUP see Doc ID 1468883.1.  Now I know RUPs contain several hundred files, but the impact on your system is most likely far less. Patches contain hard-prerequisites that are intended to make a patch work on a very low code baseline.  So in this note there is a link to the Patch Wizard which will provide a detailed impact analysis for the RUP. The analysis gives you an idea of how the patch application will impact your environment.

So don’t delay apply Patch 18120913:R12.PRC_PF.B Today!

ADVISOR WEBCAST: Understanding & Troubleshooting Invoices With Rules & Revenue Recognition

Date:  March 19, 2014 at 11:00 am ET, 10:00 am CT, 9:00 am MT, 8:00 am PT, 3:00 pm, GMT Time (London, GMT), 8:30 pm, India Time (Mumbai, GMT+05:30)

This one-hour session is recommended for technical and functional users who would like to understand how invoices with rules and revenue recognition work. In addition to providing an overview of invoicing and accounting rules and revenue recognition, we will review underlying table data, revenue rates, deferred revenue, and provide troubleshooting tips.

Topics will include:

• Overview of Invoicing and Accounting Rules
• Underlying table information for Invoicing and Accounting Rules
• Daily Revenue Rate for All Period and Partial Period
• Deferred Revenue
• Underlying table information for Revenue Recognition
• Illustration of impact of running Revenue Recognition
• Troubleshooting Tips

For more details and how to register see Doc ID 1612600.1.

Cash Management SR Options Have Changed!

You might recall in an earlier blog entry that we changed the options you have when logging a Payables SR in MyOracleSupport to try and help you get your SRs to the right engineers - first time.  We hope you are finding the new options beneficial and getting your issues resolved faster.  

The good news is that we have now extended this change to include Cash Management SRs.

Next time you create an SR for Cash Management you will notice different options available to you to ensure you get shown the most appropriate content for your problem area.  If the recommended solutions don't resolve your issue, then we ensure we ask relevant questions that will help the support engineer get to the root of your issue faster. We have also revised the diagnotics that we will request from you to further aid the resolution of your issue.

The new options available are structured as follows:

Patch Application Issues For E-Business Patching Community
Reconciliation/Clearing and Accounting	Receipt Issues
	Payment Issues
	Accounting Issues
	Reconciliation and Clearing
Bank Statement	Accounting
	Load/Import
	Bank Balances
Internal Bank Accounts
Bank Account Transactions	Bank Account Transfers
	Sweep
	Cashflows
Report Issues	GL Reconciliation Report
	Other Reports
Cash Pools/Forecasting/Positioning	Cash Pools
	Cash Forecasting
	Cash Positioning
Localization Issues	Oracle Financials for EMEA
	Oracle Financials for the Americas
	Oracle Financials for Asia/Pacific
	Oracle Financials for India
Performance Issues
Other Cash Management Issues

We hope these new options are useful and help you log your problem with the correct team - the first time.

Let us know what other topics you want to hear about on the Payables Blog by updating the thread on the Payables Community that was created for your feedback.  

Working together, Oracle Proactive Support and Demantra Product Management Organization deliver thirteen excellent whitepapers and a new sizer announcement!   These white papers touch on some difficult functional and technical areas: New Product Introduction (NPI), Business Logic Engine (BLE), Business Application Language (BAL) , modeling techniques, Application Programming Interface (API), Configure to Order (CTO) integration, plus more!   Take a look, you might find some valuable ideas.  Don't forget the Sizer Announcement at the bottom of the article!

• Configuring an Audit Log in Demantra Using Database Triggers Doc ID 1629974.1
• Demantra Configure to Order (CTO) Integration EBS Model BOM Example How To Doc ID 1630040.1
• Demantra APIs to Facilitate Integration with External - Third Party Source Systems Doc ID 1630505.1
• Demantra Indirect Modeling, Lift Decomposition, Definitions and Issues Doc ID 1630545.1
• Demantra Indirect Customer Modeling, Customer Scenarios, Modeling Approaches Doc ID 1630604.1
• Demantra PTP – Shipment vs. Consumption Forecasting Doc ID 1630628.1
• Demantra Database Best Practices Doc ID 1627586.1
• Demantra Customizations and BAL Upgrade Doc ID 1627590.1
• Demantra New Product Introduction (NPI) - Pooled Time Series (PTS) Doc ID 1627623.1
• Demantra Platform or Application Upgrading - Program Manager Recommendations Doc ID 1627664.1
• Demantra How Caching can be Leveraged to Potentially Reduce Performance Doc ID 1627652.1
• Level Member Caching Purpose Performance Guidance Doc ID 1627689.1
• Demantra BLE Mechanism Explanation and Details Doc ID 1627716.1

Announcement:
Replacement of APS Sizer with Value Chain Planning Reference Sizing Tool (RAS) Doc ID 1630684.1

Our blog entry CRM: Payments - ISO Direct Debit Consolidated Patch back in November told you about EPA ISO Direct Debit Patch 17016197:R12.IBY.B.  This patch has been superseded and replaced with SEPA ISO Direct Debit Patch 18053306:R12.IBY.B.  Any customers that have previously applied Patch 17016197:R12.IBY.B should ensure they apply the replacement Patch 18053306:R12.IBY.B.

For details about the patch, including the new and changed features see Doc ID 1600137.1: R12: SEPA White Paper - ISO20022 Direct Debit support in Oracle EBS.

A useful resource an all things SEPA is the SEPA Information Center:  Doc ID 1594441.2: R11i/12: AP/AR/IBY: Setting Up, Using, and Troubleshooting SEPA Payments in Oracle.

We have created a new Troublehshooting Assistant for Oracle Fixed Assets for the Create Mass Additions process.  This process (also known by its short name in Assets as FAMACR and in Payables as APMACR) is used to bring addition and adjustment lines from Accounts Payable into Fixed Assets via the mass additions interface.  There have been a number of changes to the process and enhancements made in recent releases.

Troubleshooting Assistants are resources created to help you find a resolution to an issue by guiding you from the problem, through the possible scenarios, and to the proposed solution.  These troubleshooting assistant types of resources were formerly called Search Helpers.  Called by either name, they are designed to provide a path through various topics related to a process and, based on the selections you make, provide suggested solutions. 

The troubleshooting assistant for create mass additions includes solutions for these issues, and more: 

• Addition lines that were not transferred from Payables to Assets
• Addition lines that were transferred into Assets but should not have been 
• Merging of addition lines 
• Transferring freight, tax or miscellaneous lines
• ORA-30926 errors
• Performance issues

You can access this troubleshooting assistant in Troubleshooting Assistant: Create Mass Additions From Payables (AP) to Fixed Assets (FA) (Doc ID 1609542.2)

Oracle eBusiness Suite OTM Analyzer Version 1.04 is now available!

This version of Oracle Transportation Management's analyzer includes new features such as collapsible sections, file name includes time, subsections with Show More are limited to 200 rows and improved formatting.

There are four new sections: Agent Health Checks, System Health Checks, System Transaction Checks and Process Control Request/History Check. Each contain several subsections of information with warnings.

Download the latest version from OTM Analyzer script for Analysis and Performance Monitoring, Doc ID 1579683.1.

The Demantra Setup and Performance Analyzer is a Self-Service Health-Check script which reviews the overall footprint, analyzes the current configurations and settings for the environment providing feedback and recommendations on Best Practices.  This is a non-invasive script which provides recommended actions to be performed on the instance it was run on.  For production instances, always apply any changes to a recent clone to ensure an expected outcome.  

Benefits:

• Immediate Analysis and Output of your Demantra Environment
• Reveals Current Environment
• Delivers Known Recommendations and Solutions
• Perform Sanity Checks for Known Issues
• Easy to add Tool for regular Maintenance
• Execute Analysis anytime to compare current environment 
  

Audience:

• DBA's / System Administrator's should run the script and review the output
• Output usually will be reviewed by technical application DBA or super user
• This script was designed for 7.3.1 and later.

Where to Run the Script & How to fix Items Identified:

You may run the script on a Production environment as it's non-invasive.  We recommend fixing items identified from the output first in a clone of production to test/verify the expected outcome.  Visit Doc ID 1618885.1 to download the script and view a complete output example. 

Proactive Support has created another great tool for you to use when facing Invoice Validation issues!

There are  many Troubleshooting Assistants available to help customers find solutions to their issues faster but we have just added another assistant for Invoice Validation because customers continue to have problems in this area and we wanted a quick way to help them find their answers.

Check out the new Troubleshooting Assistant: Oracle Payables (AP) Invoice Validation (Doc ID 1616563.2).

You will also see this tool when raising an SR for validation issues and you should defintely give it a try as it's been created from common issues and takes you directly to the known solutions.

You can interact with the tool to locate specific common error messages, review by symptoms or dig right into the issues we are aware of with the online validation or batch processing sections.  There is even some EBTax common problems included.

We also address corruption in the assistant, because often corruption can be the cause of your problem.  Why waste time trying to figure out what's wrong when you can run a simple request and find out?  

R12: Master GDF Diagnostic (MGD) to Validate Data Related to Invoices, Payments, Accounting, Suppliers and EBTax [VIDEO] (Doc ID 1360390.1) 

The MGD (Master Generic Data Fix) concurrent request can be ran for a date range or for a single transaction and the output will tell you exactly what is wrong with that transaction and tell you what you need to do to fix it. This is the reason why under the data corruption topic we refer to the MGD as your solution!  

It should ALWAYS be the first thing you check any time you have a payables issue so if you aren't aware of it, please read up on Payables #1 problem solving document or watch the video and get your data corruption issues fixed and prevent those headaches at month end.

References

EBS: Assistant (Search Helper) Index (Doc ID 1501724.1) 

So next time you have an Invoice Validation problem give the Troubleshooting Assistant a try and you might be surprised how easy it was to resolve! 

Oracle Transportation Management, Global Trade Management, and In-Memory Logistics Command Center 6.3.3 are available for download as of February 7, 2014.

You can download Oracle Transportation Management, Global Trade Management, and In-Memory Logistics Command Center 6.3.3 from Oracle Software Delivery Cloud.

For complete details on this release (Release Notes, Documentation, Installer Notes, etc.), refer to Doc ID 1596782.1.

The EBS CRM team are happy to announce that we've added a new document to our series of EBS Business Process Advisors: Trade Planning and Execution to Claim Settlement - EBS Business Process Advisor: CRM Channel Revenue Management [Video] (Doc ID 1602524.2).  The Advisor will be of particular interest to users of the EBS Channel Revenue Management product (formerly known as Trade Management).  It covers the full channel revenue management lifecycle, from creation and allocation of budgets and quota, through trade planning exercises and offer creation, through to the investigation and settlement of claims.

This new note has a similar layout to our earlier note (Doc ID 1589750.2: Service Request Creation to Resolution' E-Business Suite Business Process Advisor).  The note contains:

1. Business Flow Details: details of the modules used within the flow together with a demonstration script and example setup with an explanatory video.
2. Hotspots:  highlights areas of the business flow where data and control passes between different products, or where the underlying logic requires further explanation or clarification.
3. Related Flows: over time the aim is to extend the library of EBS Business Process Advisor documents to cover multiple business flows.  This tab will act as a link between these by indicating directly and indirectly related business flows documents.

What are Business Process Advisor Documents?

Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) is released as a collection of separate modules with supporting material, such as Implementation and User Guides.  These tend to focus on the setup and use of an individual module without detailing how that module interacts with other related modules.  A typical implementation will include multiple modules which together provide a business flow, so there is a need to know how these modules function together.  The EBS Business Process Advisor documents assist in the modeling of specific business flows by describing the flow from a product and process perspective.

Who are they aimed at?

These notes are aimed at users and implementers to help with the understanding of the end-to-end business flow.

How you can help

Are there particular business flows that you are interested in seeing covered in an EBS Business Process Advisor document?  What do you find useful about the Business Process Advisor content and format?  Let us know by leaving a comment here, or you can mail us.

Are you looking for integration of transportation of goods into your Advanced Supply Chain Planning (ASCP)?  Most planning systems have no visibility of delays in transportation and their impact to manufacturing utilization or customer service. With version 12.1.1+ ASCP can now integrate with Oracle Transportation Management (OTM). 

The integration will provide:

• Leverage Oracle Transportation Management Supply Chain Event Management to obtain real time, projected material arrival dates.
• Provide a Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) process and associated web services to consume events and generate planning exceptions to provide planners real time visibility to transportation delays.
• Use the updated dates in ASCP interactive planning calculations to calculate the impact of transportation delays on downstream orders and take corrective action.

For details, you can refer to Integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle Transportation Management (Doc ID 1546042.1).

What is the rollup (RUP) schedule history for Inventory, Warehouse Management, and Receiving (INV/WMS/RCV)? 

RUP-IT!

RUP-IT is an Inventory Support Initiative meant to improve customer support experience, reduce outages, improve user productivity, and decrease total cost of ownership of the Oracle Application Inventory modules.  As you  might already know, keeping on the latest Rollup is the fastest way to avoid SRs and to get fixes for common issues.

Avoid SRs and stay on the latest RUP now through Doc ID 726226.1 INV/WMS/RCV Family Patch Release History / Patchsets / RUPs.

Latest Rollup (RUP) Patches

* For R12, also, see  Doc ID 423541.1 for EBS-wide R12 Rollups.

As of R12.2.2, you can now add a service item (for example, warranty for a specific period) as a ‘promotional get item’ for the parent item.  After you define a line level promotional modifier for an item (for example, a PC) in the Define Modifier window, you can add a service item (for example, warranty for a specific period) as a ‘promotional get item’ for the parent item.

Use the Get region in the Define Modifier Details window of the parent item to specify the following for the promotional get item:

• The service item quantity.
• The UOM, which the application uses as the primary UOM for conversion.
• The duration of the service program such as 1, 2, or more.
• The period of the service program such as day, month, or year.
• The percent price for the service item.

Please refer to Oracle Advanced Pricing Release Notes for Release 12.2.2, Doc ID 1582797.1, for additional details on this new feature.