FCC Consolidation Status - "Completed" does NOT mean Successful

FCC has a similarity to Microsoft Excel on manual calc. Change data, then press F9 for the calculations/formulas to run. In FCC, the similar process is consolidation, just like it was in its predecessors MicroControl, Hyperion/Enterprise, and HFM. This process is central to how all four products work. Unlike those great products of the past, however, FCC consolidations have one big deficiency: the status reporting. Did the consolidation work or not? Without going to multiple screens, you don't always know.

Look at these two consolidation results from the Jobs listing. One of them failed and one succeeded. Can you tell which is which?

Looking at the details of one of the consolidations, can you tell now? No, you can't.

Actually, this consolidation failed. Clicking the word "Completed" shows that the consolidation didn't even run.

It could be that "Completed," internally, means someone started the process, the process started running the software code that Oracle told it to do, and the code reached the end of the process. Whether the process actually encountered an issue during that; well, that's up to you the user/admin to figure out. In my mind, this is like saying whether I have eaten. I start the process of eating: something goes in mouth, I chew, I swallow. Ok, I ate something. Did I like it, did I hate it, did I get sick, did I eat something poisonous and die, am I still hungry: who knows.

I posted an enhancement idea on Oracle Cloud Customer Connect on this over four years ago. Maybe everyone is okay with this level (I want to use other words here but am trying really hard not to) of status reporting. I'm thinking that Oracle can do better. If you want to upvote the idea - please do -  here's the link:

https://community.oracle.com/customerconnect/discussion/558521/consolidation-jobs-should-indicate-error-not-just-complete

Since FCC has been reporting consolidation status this way for so long, you'd think everyone would know about it. That's not true - I just had this conversation with a client today. The issue appeared in downstream processes: reporting was weird, data wasn't correct, etc. So if your consolidations run but you don't get the results you expect, unfortunately a little digging is required.

Financial Reporting - Another Nail in the Coffin

 Logging into a test EPM environment after the 25.02 release (February 2025), I saw this message.

Oracle announced in the release notes that support for Financial Reporting in EPM is ending in June 2025 and this message is a confirmation. As noted above, this transition has been planned for some time now.

Fortunately, it's not a hard process to convert existing Financial Reporting reports to Reporting. But before trying to migrate reports, check first that they run and have no errors (if a report doesn't work now, it's not going to work later). Also check with the users about which reports need migrating.

Click the Navigator and go to Reports. On the Financial Reports tab where the FR reports are listed, there is an icon on the far right for each report for migration. Click the icon to begin the migration.

When prompted, click on the desired folder for the new report. If the folder isn't there, then cancel, create the folder on the Reports tab, and then run the migration.

After the process runs, a confirmation message is shown.

There is also a way to migrate all of the reports at once. Click the Migrate All button at the top right. Choose the top level destination folder and optionally select whether to recreate the existing folder structure.

The status of the process can be seen in the Jobs screen.

A common sense approach would be to migrate everything, deal with any issues (see below), and then migrate individual reports again if they require updating before the conversion is complete.

This process seems too easy, right? The documentation - link below - has two pages on (a) dealing with migration errors and (b) the differences between the two reporting tools. Depending on the report design and build, there may significant work still to do.

https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/enterprise-performance-management-common/dmepr/epm_cloud_migrating_reports_from_financial_reporting.html

So the next step, even if no errors are reported, is to edit each report and check for validation errors (open the report in edit mode and see if the red bar shows at the top of the screen) and verify the output with three objectives: does the report run, is the content correct, and is the formatting correct. 

For example, open a report in edit mode and you may see something like this:

When I've done the migration, I've noticed that the report/folder security within Financial Reporting is not copied over. I can't say whether this is normal, but also plan to verify and apply security as needed.

Last, the Financial Reporting books do not migrate. These will need to be recreated.

Admins should start on this migration soon if they haven't already. When Oracle refers to the "June 2025 (25.06) update" above, remember that does not mean the end of June - it's the third Friday in June. 

FCC - Loading data as admin not working (issue, workaround, and fix)

Some FCC applications have an issue where data loads done with an admin ID are not calculating correctly after the data load. What is happening is that the data status isn't correctly being set to impacted and so the subsequent calculation/consolidation doesn't bring forward opening balances, calculate movement, etc.

The workaround for this is simply to do the data loads with a non-admin ID. Or do something that impacts all status, like a database refresh.

Sources tell me that Oracle is planning (safe harbor statement applies) to do an off-cycle update to the test environments this week, probably on Jan 14. Once that happens, admins can test the fix in the test environment and then file an SR to request that their production environment gets an early update. Both the test and production updates would happen during the daily maintenance cycle, which can either be run on the normal schedule or on-demand using EPM Automate. Or, if the early update is not desired, then continue with either workaround until the regularly scheduled production update.

Update: Jan 14: The test pods were updated to 25.01.31 overnight from 25.01.30. Early testing is showing the fix to be in place.

Kscope24 Speakers' Awards

Kscope24 was a great conference this year. The content was good and the organization was almost perfect. There was even vegan food which was a huge bonus for me. After the conference the evaluations were reviewed and the annual speaker awards were announced. I'm honored to have made the list for the top close and consolidation speaker this year. Without getting into all of the details, I had a choice of two topics to present: FCC constant currency and EPM Automate job monitoring with a web page. I chose the FCC constant currency and that topic was well received by the attendees. But I must have talked fast as I finished and we had 10 minutes left in the session, so I gave everyone a crash course in the EPM Automate job monitoring. A few people enjoyed that topic more than the constant currency. I'm glad I was able to provide some value to everyone one way or the other.

Congratulations to all of the Kscope24 award winners. To see the full list, go to https://www.odtug.com/awards

And also put Kscope25 on the calendar: June 15-19, 2025. More details are available at https://www.odtug.com/odtug-kscope25

Happening Now: ODTUG Board of Directors Election

The ODTUG (Oracle Development & Technology User Group) FY2025 board of directors election opened up today. Members with paid memberships as of May 31, 2024 are eligible to vote. This year there are nine candidates running for two three-year board positions. The voting window ends on July 1, 2024 at 2:59AM US eastern daylight time. All eligible voters are encouraged to go to the site (link below) and vote.

This year I did something I haven't done before: I chose to run for the board. ODTUG started including the Hyperion products at Kscope about 12 years ago. Through this time I have benefited tremendously from the knowledge, contacts, and experiences from my interactions with ODTUG: Kscopes, webinars, etc. My primary goal as a board member would be to cultivate this sense of community learning and knowledge sharing throughout ODTUG. I believe that everyone can contribute to others, whether they are an experienced community leader or new to their profession. So I plan to meet my goal by guiding others to replenish positions of leadership and expertise and by attracting new members to share in and benefit from the same traditions.

Here's the link to vote for those eligible or if you just want to see who else is running. I encourage everyone who can to vote, and I ask that one of those votes be for me. Thanks!

Jun 19: This link was updated to match the new ODTUG website.

https://www.odtug.com/vote-for-the-2025-board

FCC - Showing Calc Status on a Report

With HFM and Financial Reporting, there is a function that pulls the calculation status into a report. This is useful for those who want to ensure the data has been consolidated when looking at the results. I've seen conditional formatting used in conjunction with this to alert the users that the data is suspect if the consolidation hasn't been ran.

With FCC and Reporting/Narrative Reporting, there isn't such a function. But there's still the same need. I filed an idea lab submission to request the function. I thought I (and my clients) was out of luck, but then I thankfully ran across a simple solution, and it's built in!

When building the report, look at account FCCS_CSTATUS FILTER. This account just doesn't give you some number that you have to convert - you get the proper text status. Along with specifying the account, you have to set the point of view to FCCS_No Data Source (which isn't used often) and FCCS_No Movement. The rest of the point of view should be normal for other data retrieves, but the intercompany and custom dimensions should be set to FCCS_No Intercompany or No custom.

When the report runs, it looks like this. Note this report is also showing the out of balance amount. The column headers for the data source and the movement are hidden. Not shown, the rows for the report are level 0 entities.

And being an account, this means that the calculation status can be pulled into Smart View with either ad hoc or functions, which is a big bonus.

When was the last data load?

I had a request recently for a simple way for users to know when the last data load occurred. They could go into process details or jobs, maybe, but was there a simple way to check from within a report, data grid, or even Smart View. There may be something better, but here's what I did.

I created an account called LL_DateTime. I originally was going to put the year in one account, month in another, etc. but I ended just using the one account.

Within data management (this part isn't in the new interface yet) I created a logic group to duplicate a record. I picked a retained earnings account for one of the primary legal entities so there would always be a data point to duplicate.

After assigning the logic group to the location, I used a SQL map to change the amount. The two SQL functions in use here are SUBSTR (get a subset of a string) and SYSTIMESTAMP (date and time on the server).

The SYSTIMESTAMP returns a format of 28-MAY-24 02.34.56.654321 PM -00:00  which isn't something we would be able to load as an amount. So SUBSTR is used to pull out pieces of this and to combine them into something useful. There are a few components that need mapping. The month of May needs to be converted to a number. The AM/PM indicator needs to be converted to a 24 hour clock (again, trying to load the date and time as one amount. There are a couple of different WHENs in use to direct the calc (if May, then 05; if PM, then add .12 [12 hours]). Admittedly there is probably a more elegant way of converting the month to a number without having to enumerate all of the options.

So, the format of the output looks like this: 20240528.1434. This is an easy number to load and report.

The last part of the output (00:00) indicates the timezone. In this case, it is UTC. This could be converted to a specific timezone but in the case of worldwide users, most people would have to convert anyway. It's better to just use UTC and let each user deal with summer time, etc.

The last part of the puzzle here was to create a simple data grid with all of the point of view members locked except for the year and period. This way users can check and see when the data was last loaded. They can also replicate the point of view and use Smart View, etc.