Rules or Rules? The Answer is Artifact Labels

Anyone who has used EPM Cloud Planning, whether new to the product or since its inception, probably will agree with me on this question: Why in the world did Oracle put the name “Rules” on two different selections in the navigator menu listing?  One opens the rules launcher in Planning while the other launches Calculation Manager.  Wouldn’t it have made more sense to name the one for Calculation Manager as “Calculation Manager”?  Sure, this is a relatively minor inconvenience, but after explaining to numerous clients the difference, and clicking the wrong one a number of times myself, it does get to be an annoyance.

The solution is actually rather simple.  Artifact Labels offer a way to re-label many of the predefined artifacts in Planning.  Open Navigator and select Artifact Labels.

You will be presented with an empty page, click on the filter to select the labels to view.

Select Card and click Apply.  Leave Property set to All.

The table will display Navigation Flow Name, Card, Property, and Default columns.  Click the Add Language dropdown to select the language column to display.

Scroll to find the Rules line with the label to change.  Be sure to find the second grouping just above the Rules Security lines.  The first grouping is for the Rules card that opens Planning rules launcher.

Update the English label to a distinctive name.  I chose to make it “Rules (Calculation Manager)”.

Click Save and return to the home page.  Click on your login name in the upper right corner and select Reload Navigation Flow.

Now when you open the Navigator menu, there are two distinct names to identify rules.

You could change the name of the first one as well, I decided to keep it simple and just change the label for opening Calculation Manager.

Another card I’ve found useful to re-label is the Variables card.  I’ve had users get confused between the application variables available from the Variables card and the User Variables on the User Preferences card.  I updated the card for Variables to be Application Variables.

If you have multiple navigation flows, you can modify labels on the default flow which should then apply to other flows with those artifacts, or you can modify the different flows individually.  For example, in the above example I modified the default flow card for Rules to be Rules (Calculation Manager).  In the custom navigation flow, I updated the card to be just Calculation Manager.

This gives you a lot of flexibility in how to customize the user experience.  We only updated a few of the labels on cards, but artifact labels can be modified on many other objects besides cards.  Scroll thru the list of objects in the filter to see what is available.

I’ve used artifact labels in the past to re-label some of the prebuilt forms provided with the Financials Module.  The re-labeling made it easier for users to adapt, they were able to recognize the forms with terms that were familiar.  Other use cases could include re-labeling prebuilt rules and dashboards, or if in a multilanguage application, using region specific labels on various artifacts.

As always, happy EPM’ng.

Update 2.11.2021 – The EPM Cloud 20.02 update resulted in the changes to labels reverting back to defaults. Oracle is aware of the issue and a fix will be implemented in the future.