Hard to believe, but another month has passed. And with a new month comes EPM updates. October 2024 updates have some platform items, a couple of Planning items, a ton of EDM, and one in Narrative Reporting that in my opinion is a really big deal. Updates will go to test environments October 4th and prod environments October 18th.
New Version of Smart View and Updated Admin Extension
Normally I just encourage users to update to the latest version of Smart View when available, but something caught my eye in this update. A new Trace Traffic tool to view network traffic details in real time. There is not any additional information in the update document, so I will need to download the latest Smart View to check it out. An updated Admin Extension is also available which contains additional debugging information useful for the new Trace Traffic tool.
Enhanced Member Selection Dialog for Smart View (Mac and Browser)
Always good to see improvements being made to the Mac version of Smart View.
New Audit Types: Report Artifacts and Documents
This only applies to Reports within the business processes EPCM, FreeForm, and Planning. Though I’m a firm believer that if you have an Enterprise license you should be using Narrative Reporting application for reporting, for those that have Reports within Planning (or are not on an Enterprise subscription), this is a useful improvement. The new audit types will track changes made to Report Artifacts and changes made to Documents.
Last 15 Clear Data and Clear Block Commands Tables
Previously only available after submitting Provide Feedback, the Activity Report will now contain information showing the details of Clear Data and Clear Block commands. This is useful for troubleshooting issues with data.
Predictive Cash Forecasting Historical Opening Bank Balance and Bank Balance
Improvements to the process for loading, reviewing, and updating bank balances in Predictive Cash Forecasting.
Generative AI for Management Reporting Narratives
I cannot wait to try this out! While I am sure it will take a bit of time and practice to set up, this will be a massive efficiency improvement for everyone responsible for reporting. A human most certainly will still need to review the generated narrative and tweak it, but getting an automated summary is awesome. Per Oracle, it is used for the following three use cases:
- Describing exceptions: Describe the cell(s) where a condition is satisfied. For example, a grid cell that satisfies the variance threshold defined by the report designer as a condition.
- Describing the causality for exceptions: Examine one of the relevant cell dimensions where the condition was satisfied and describe the top 3 contributors to it.
- Performing a comparative analysis: If the grid has prior time periods in the columns, describe the cell value in comparison to the prior period.
The narrative summaries are within the conditional text framework using corresponding machine learning property files. These files will need to be set up for each use case to generate the text. This is a big deal, Oracle is leading the way in AI.
Updated Narrative Reporting Extension for Smart View
I recommend updating Smart View extensions whenever they are made available.
Of course, there are other updates in the October release that may be of more interest to you, especially if EDM is your thing, lots of updates in EDM this month. Check out the full document and be prepared when environments are updated.
One last thing. Oracle changed the layout of the document page. I believe the change occurred last month, but I had grabbed the September document before it was revised. I’m trying to keep an open mind about the page layout changes, but so far, I do not like it. The old format made it easy to scroll through the whole document and read in a smooth manner, the new layout takes a lot of clicking to advance for each page.
As always, happy EPM’ng!
Random EPM Notes 