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[Jun. 16, 2014 Update: Office 2013 is now certified with EBS 12.1.3; other combinations with EBS 11.5.10.2, 12.0, and 12.2 to follow]

Congratulations to my colleagues at Microsoft on their launch of Microsoft Office 2013 last month.  Questions about our certification plans for Office 2013 are filling my inbox, so here’s an interim update on our plans.  If you’ve reached this article via a search engine, it’s possible that a later update on our status is available.  For our latest status, please check the Desktop Client Certifications section of our one-page Certifications summary. Our current plans for Office 2013 We plan to certify Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11.5.10.2, 12.0, and 12.1 with Microsoft Office 2013. When will Office 2013 be certified with EBS? Oracle’s Revenue Recognition rules prohibit us from discussing certification and release dates, but you’re welcome to monitor or subscribe to this blog for updates, which I’ll post as soon as soon as they’re available.    How does the E-Business Suite work with Microsoft Office? The Oracle E-Business Suite is comprised of several product families such as Financials, Supply Chain Management, Human Resources, and so on.  These product families group together collections of individual products.  Some of these products may be optionally integrated with one or more Microsoft Office components such as Excel, Word, and Projects. Individual E-Business Suite product teams have the option of building integrations between their products and one or more Microsoft Office components.  This is not mandatory.  Over forty E-Business Suite teams offer these kinds of Office integrations today. Examples of these integrations include:

  • HRMS Payroll integrations with Microsoft Excel
  • Supply Chain Management Contracts Core integration with Microsoft Word
  • Financials General Ledger (GL) integration with Microsoft Excel
  • Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Proposals integration with Microsoft Word
  • Web Application Desktop Integrator (Web ADI)
  • Desktop Integration Framework
Which Office versions will be certified? Our actual certification plans are under review, but as of today, I expect that we will explicitly test the Office 2013 Professional edition with Oracle E-Business Suite.  We expect that the results of these certification tests will apply equally to the following desktop-installed editions:
  • Home & Student 2013
  • Home & Business 2013
  • Standard 2013 
  • Professional 2013
  • Professional Plus 2013

Support implications: We will attempt to reproduce issues reported on these editions on our reference edition — Office 2013 Professional.  Issues that cannot be reproduced will be handled on a case-by-case basis.  For example, issues that can only be reproduced on, say, Office Home & Student 2013 but cannot be reproduced on Office Professional 2013 will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

We do not currently plan to certify the following editions with Oracle E-Business Suite:
  • SkyDrive-based documents
  • Office On Demand
  • Office Web Apps
  • Office 365
  • Office Home & Student RT

I would not expect the results of our certification with Office 2013 Professional Edition to apply to the above editions or features. What about 64-bit Office? Office 2013 offers a 64-bit version as well as a 32-bit version.  It is expected that we will certify the 32-bit version first, followed by the 64-bit version later. Any Early Adopter Programs planned? No, we don’t currently have any plans to offer an Early Adopter Program for Office 2013 with Oracle E-Business Suite.  If that changes, I’ll post an article on this blog with a call for participants.  What about OpenOffice, StarOffice, LibreOffice? We have no plans to certify the E-Business Suite with versions of OpenOffice, StarOffice, LibreOffice, or other equivalents.  

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