The August 2025 Oracle EPM updates are out. Really big one this month in my opinion, advanced predictions are here! A few others caught my attention as well. Updates will go to test environments August 1st and prod environments August 15th. Here’s my summary.
Detailed Documentation on SSO and User Synchronization Between Identity Domains Within an Oracle Cloud Account
Improved documentation is always a good thing. Detailed step-by-step directions on how to setup single sign-on (SSO) and user/group synchronization across multiple identity domains is now in the Getting Started Guide for Administrators. This will be especially helpful if you have Fusion ERP and Cloud EPM services provisioned in separate identity domains in the same cloud account.
New Audit and Jobs Application Roles
Four new roles are available to give users the ability to review audit and job information. The roles are
- Audit – Manage: Allows users to view and delete audit records
- Audit – View: Allows users to view audit records
- Jobs – Manage: Allows users to view and delete job status records
- Jobs – View: Allows users to view job status records
Pagination Options for REST APIs for Getting User Variable Values
There are two new pagination options when working with REST APIs for getting user variable values: Offset and Limit. Offset indicates the actual index from which the records are returned. Limit controls how many items to return. Using pagination improves usability when working with REST APIs for user variables.
New Utility for Validating Groovy Business Rule Scripts
Oracle previously announced that the Groovy engine will have stricter validation rules enacted later this year. To prepare for that, the Groovy Script Validator program is being provided in this update. The validator will analyze your Groovy rules and provide a report of issues to be fixed. Use this now so you can fix any of your rules that need it.
New Last 15 Data Management Clear Data Commands Table Added to Activity Report
A new table is being added to the Activity Report for the “Last 15 Data Management Clear Data Commands”. The table will break out the activity as “Last 15 Calc Script Clear Data Commands” and “Last 15 Calc Script Clear Block Commands”. This should help with troubleshooting data issues.
Advanced Predictions Now Available
This is the big one for the month. Advanced Predictions brings multivariate predictions to Auto Predict. Up to now, Auto Predict used univariate predictions. What does that mean you ask. In basic terms, univariate predictions are based on one variable, such as analyzing historical sales volume to predict future sales volume. Multivariate predictions bring in the ability to use more than one variable to predict future data. For example, you can analyze volumes, average sales prices, and GDP rates to predict future sales volume. Multivariate will make Auto Predictions more accurate. Prior to this update to take advantage of multivariate predictions you would need to bring in an ML model created outside of EPM (which is still available).
Some important considerations.
- You must opt in to use Advance Predictions
- You must have EPM Enterprise subscription
- There is no additional cost required to deploy OCI Data Science, it is embedded in Fusion Cloud EPM
- Explainability is only available on the web and not in Smart View
Lastly, this appears to only apply to Auto Predict and not Predictive Planning.
Updated EPM Books Extension for Smart View
There is an updated Smart View extension for EPM Books. As always, I recommend updating Smart View extensions when they are available.
Default Values Automatically Set for Dynamic and Context-Sensitive User Variables in Forms 2.0, Smart View Client, and Dashboards
This is a close second in importance for this month. One of the most frustrating things in a new implementation is getting all the users to initially set up their user variables. For a while I’ve been using a Groovy script to set default values. But finally, we will have functionality within EPM to set default values. For Forms 2.0 and dashboards, the system automatically sets default values for dynamic and context-sensitive user variables based on the highest level of the users access the first time the form is opened.
Notes Summarization with GenAI
In Narrative Reporting, Notes can now be summarized with GenAI. This sounds pretty cool, looking forward to trying it.
Updated Narrative Reporting Extension for Smart View
There is an updated Smart View extension for Narrative Reporting. As always, I recommend updating Smart View extensions when they are available.
Overall, not a bad set of updates this month. My two favorites are Advanced Predictions and Default Values for User Variables. There are other updates that may be of interest to you, check out the full document and be prepared when environments are updated.
As always, happy EPM’ng!
Random EPM Notes 