Updated 15-May-25

Quarterly updates deliver continuous innovation to Oracle Cloud customers. This post summarizes key features of quarterly updates and makes recommendations to IT, stakeholders and business users.

What is a Quarterly Update?

Every quarter, Oracle updates your environments with fixes and new features. Changes may include customer enhancements, legislative changes and updates to the underlying technology stack.  In Cloud ERP alone, we deliver more than one hundred new features each quarter.

Your cohort determines when the quarterly update is applied to your pods:

  • Cohort A: February-May-August-November
  • Cohort B: March-June-September-December
  • Cohort C: April-July-October-January

Stage pods are updated on the first Friday of your quarterly update month. Production pods are updated two weeks later on the third Friday of the month.

Quarterly update names combine the year and A, B, C or D. For example, the release for the first quarter of 2023 is 23A; the release for the second quarter of 2023 is 23B; and the release for the first quarter of 2024 will be 24A.

Oracle Cloud ERP: Quarterly Updates and Cohorts


The Oracle Cloud Readiness site publishes details of changes included in a quarterly update at least 30 days prior to cohort A’s stage pod update.

You can also leverage the Cloud Applications Feature Listing (Excel) to help your planning and tracking. Clicking on the Feature Name will take you to the full content for that feature. The listing is updated every Friday.

Quarterly updates cannot be delayed or skipped. This ensures that all customers use the most up-to-date and certified versions of the applications.

Quarterly Updates and Monthly Maintenance Packs

You can, optionally, request that Oracle Cloud Operations apply monthly maintenance packs to your environments. Monthly maintenance packs contain only fixes and therefore do not alter the user experience.

Like quarterly updates, we apply maintenance packs to stage pods on the first Friday of the month and to production pods on the third Friday of the month. Bear in mind:

  • You request opt-in to a monthly cadence by logging a service request with My Oracle Support at least two weeks prior to the update to the stage pods.
  • Monthly maintenance packs are cumulative. For example, cohort A’s April maintenance pack also contains Cohort A’s March maintenance pack.
  • Quarterly updates contain the corresponding monthly maintenance packs including the current month. For example, cohort A’s May quarterly update contains cohort A’s March, April and May maintenance packs.
  • Monthly maintenance packs are based on quarterly updates. For example, in March 2023, cohort A’s monthly maintenance pack is based on 23A, but cohort C’s monthly maintenance back is based on 22D.

Support note 1603154.1 publishes links to Maintenance Pack documentation prior to the update of cohort A’s stage pods. There is also a concurrent maintenance option documented in Oracle Support note 1646394.1

Most customers apply monthly maintenance packs during the implementation phase. Once in production, they migrate to a quarterly cadence.

Cumulative Weekly Bundles (CWB)

In exceptional circumstances, Support may offer a cumulative weekly bundle to address a critical issue you have encountered. Support note 2816277.1 details which fixes are included in each weekly bundle.

Production Cadence Stage Pod

Customers with three or more stage pods should assign one of them to the production pod update schedule. It means a stage pod will always be available to reproduce production issues and test solutions on the same software. It also avoids production to test (P2T) black out windows for that pod.

Business Benefits of Quarterly Updates

Oracle Cloud ERP is upgrade safe which means quarterly updates preserve existing setups, transactions and user processes. The most significant business benefits include:

  • The cost and effort to monitor and apply certification, compatibility and security updates is eliminated.
  • Users benefit from the latest technology without provisioning additional hardware and software.
  • As market challenges and opportunities arise, we will enhance the applications to include relevant features. For example, expansion of supplier integration, automation of expense reporting, etc.
  • Business users are guaranteed a modern UI that evolves with latest trends and technology thus boosting user satisfaction and employee retention.

Continuous Innovation and Business Process Change

The continuous innovation inherent in Cloud replaces the traditional concept of an on premise upgrade. Rather a one-off upgrade effort, quarterly updates call for a permanent business function to manage their impact.

The activities associated with quarterly updates fall into two categories.

  • Testing: to confirm existing business processes are not impacted.
  • Assessment and uptake of new features: to review and implement enhancements to business processes.

Confirm Existing Business Processes are not Impacted

Here are some tips for what you should test and why.

Integrations and Extensions

Oracle Cloud ERP offers a range of technologies to support inbound and outbound synchronization of reference data and transaction flows. These include FBDIs, REST APIs, SOAP web services and BICC. Generally speaking, changes to these tools are backward compatible and hence, upgrade safe. Nevertheless, since Oracle Cloud development has limited visibility into their use by on-premise or external applications, it is prudent to confirm that they continue to work as expected.

Custom BI Publisher Reports

All standard reports delivered with Cloud Applications are backward compatible and hence, upgrade safe. So are custom reports and processes that access Cloud setups and transactions via OTBI, BICC, Smart View and HFR. We will clearly document any exceptions on the Oracle Cloud Readiness site.

But, Oracle Cloud development has limited visibility into BI Publisher reports based on custom data models that access application database tables. Hence, it is prudent to confirm that they continue to work as expected.

Custom Workflows

Custom workflows that refer to non-standard attributes or descriptive flexfields are similar to custom BI Publisher reports. Hence, it is also prudent to confirm that they continue to work as expected.

Custom Subledger Accounting Rules

Quarterly updates do not overwrite Subledger Accounting rule components, for example account rules, that you have modified. Consequently, modified accounting rules will not reflect changes made to the corresponding seeded rules that resolve issues or implement enhancements.

In addition, Oracle Cloud development has limited visibility into accounting rules that use sources not referred to the seeded rules.

For both reasons, we recommend that include custom Subledger Accounting rules in your quarterly update testing. If you encounter an issue, check whether the quarterly update modified the corresponding seeded rule.

Key Business Processes

Unexpected changes in behavior can result from misinterpretations of enhancements and occasionally, from the impact of fixes. We recommend identifying and testing key business processes that use Cloud applications.

Regressions

A regression is an undocumented and unintended change to an existing Cloud application feature. Genuine regressions are rare and impact few customers. Nevertheless, testing key business processes eliminates doubts and reduces risk.

You may be tempted to regard all issues encountered in quarterly updates as regressions; however, closer examination usually reveals other causes such as those described in the previous sections.

Automated Testing Tools

You are given approximately two weeks to test a quarterly update on a stage pod before it is applied to production. We recommend that you test soon after the update to the stage pods and log service requests for any issues encountered.

Automate testing as much as possible to give time for your team to adapt integrations, customizations and user procedures. Oracle does not officially recommend any tool for test automation, but we have good experience with Selenium and TestNG which are free under an open source software license.

For example, you can create automated regression tests against a stage pod by following the set of instructions for Oracle ADF – Runtime Automation Sample Library. To enable:

 

Uptake of New Features

 

It is vital that you thoroughly review new features each quarter. Include business process owners and implementers who understand whether a feature is relevant to you. Not all features will be applicable, but without a detailed review, you risk disruption when the update is applied to production.

Oracle Cloud Readiness provides the following information:

Delivered Enabled

In general, features delivered enabled include reports or small scale UI or process-based new features that have minimal impact on your business users. Typically, these features are minor field, validation, or program changes. 

Impact to Existing Processes

Almost all features have no, or minor, impact on existing processes.

Action to Enable

Indicates whether action is needed before your business users can use these features. You control when to enable them. For example, a new BI Subject Area, new web services, or features that must be assigned to user roles before they can be accessed.

New features that may alter the end user experience are delivered disabled. You must explicitly enable them in the Opt-in UI. They may also require additional setup or configuration steps before being used.

Opt-in features give you time to review and test the feature on a stage pod. Once you have determined its relevance, you can prepare for its rollout to your business users.

Opt-in Expiry

Occasionally, Opt-in features have an Opt-in expiry release at which point, the feature will be automatically exposed to end users. You don’t have to wait for the expiry: once the Opt-in has been enabled on the production pod, no further steps are necessary.

The period between feature’s availability and its Opt-in expiry varies, but for features that need additional setup or configuration, it is at least two quarters. Make sure you give yourselves sufficient time to review, implement and rollout the feature before the opt-in expiry.

Note that we don’t automatically propagate changes to seeded security roles to custom roles. If a quarterly update modifies a seeded role that you have used as the basis for a custom role, assign resources to manually apply and test the corresponding changes.

Opt-in features with expiration for all Fusion Cloud applications can be reviewed on the consolidated Opt-in expiration features page.

Our Recommendations

Establish an Interdisciplinary Team

Establish a permanent team responsible for the coordination of quarterly testing and the assessment and rollout of new features. Your IT, stakeholders and business users will need to make themselves available when necessary.

Prioritize Testing

Focus on key business processes including relevant reports and integrations. Execute your tests as soon as reasonably possible after the stage pod update has completed and log service requests for any issues encountered.

Automate

Repeated manual testing of quarterly updates and maintenance packs in the two weeks between stage and production updates is resource intensive and error prone. Automation yields results earlier and frees resources to analyze results.

Request a Production to Test Copy (P2T)

Quarterly release testing will be most valuable if performed on a stage pod that has similar configuration and transaction volumes as production. Ideally, you should request a P2T prior to the quarterly release update bearing in mind the guidelines and scheduling considerations documented Oracle Support note 2015788.1

Review and Act on Oracle Cloud Readiness Documentation

Carefully review the Cloud Readiness Documentation to assess the impact of quarterly updates on your business processes. Pay special attention to Opt-in expiries which require additional setup or configuration steps.

Conclusion

Oracle Cloud’s quarterly updates offer many benefits but must be consciously managed for the smooth running of your business. Anticipating quarterly releases and planning to review and test them is key to realizing these benefits.