Support Stages

Oracle has three stages of support:

• Premier Support
• Extended Support
• Sustaining Support

Premier Support is obviously the best level of support and is offered immediately after a product release. The benefits are:

• Major product and technology releases
• Technical support
• Access to My Oracle Support
• Updates, fixes, security alerts, data fixes, and critical patch updates
• Tax, legal, and regulatory updates
• Upgrade scripts
• Certification with most new third-party products/versions
• Certification with most new Oracle products 

With Extended Support all that you lose is the “Certification with new third-party products”. This doesn’t sounds like too much of a problem, but you would need to be careful before rolling out new versions of your browser or integrated products, such as Microsoft Office.

Finally, Sustaining Support is the lowest level of support, but you still have the following benefits indefinitely:

• Major product and technology releases
• Technical support
• My Oracle Support

Coverage End Dates

I would like to draw your attention to a couple of key dates in the near future:

July 2010

In just over 2 months time Oracle Database 9.2 will drop from Extended to Sustaining Support. This will impact any E-Business Suite customers who are using EBS 11i on a 9i database; I would highly recommend that you upgrade to Oracle 10gR2 or 11gR2 as soon as possible.

Also at this time, Oracle Database 10gR2 will drop from Premier to Extended support. This may be less of an issue for our customers, as you still have another three years before Sustaining support kicks in. However, some organisations may prefer to have all their Applications and Technology on Premier support; if so, you need to start planning your upgrade to 11g.

November 2010

Near the end of this year Oracle E-Business Suite 11.5.10 will drop from Premier to Extended support. As with DB 10gR2, you will have another three years before support drops to Sustaining, but if you aren’t already planning an upgrade to R12, I would consider starting the exercise in the next few months.

After some digging around I found a method of cleaning up unused files in the area:

• Source your database environment
• Change directory to the OPatch directory:

    cd $ORACLE_HOME/OPatch

• Run the OPatch cleanup utility:

    opatch util cleanup

Results from our install are shown in this screenshot:

So over 1G of disk space saved!       

This facility should be available in the latest OPatch releases for 10.2.0.x and 11.1.0.x  (and above…) 

Project Foundation

Enhanced Project List Page

In this release Oracle continue to build on past enhancements to the Project List page by making the page more informative, streamline access to common functions and make the page configurable. The enhancements are:

• The project list page includes a report region which was introduced in 12.1.2. With this release Oracle are further improving the usability of this feature by allowing users to delete report views that they have created and to know the criteria and format that went into the creation of a report. The benefits of these enhancements will allow users to have better visibility into their reports and be able to manage the volume of reports over time.
• In “Alternate Search page”, the user can select and save the combination of “search criteria” and “report format” as a report and then run the report from Project List page.
• Easily navigate between project list, simple search, advanced search and alternate search.

Enhanced Diagnostics

Oracle has improved the diagnostics collection scripts in this release around Project Management, Project Performance Reporting, Project Billing and Project Resource Management.

Oracle Project Management

Reporting Performance Improvements

With Release 12.1.3, projects users will greatly benefit from improved performance of the Project Performance Reporting feature. The enhancements include a new parameter that has been added to the Launch Update Project Performance Data and the Update Project Performance Data concurrent programs to filter on project status. Customers will be able to choose a specific project status from an LOV before running the program. This will improve the performance of the programs by allowing customers to streamline the processing.

MSP Integration Enhancements

In Release 12.1.3 there are a couple of significant enhancements to fully extend the coverage of integration with Microsoft Projects.

Support for Non-Shared Task Based Mapping structures

The Non-Shared Task Based Mapping option enables you to map individual workplan structure tasks to individual financial structure tasks. This gives you the greatest flexibility in sharing information between your structures. Prior to release 12.1.3 customers on R12 could not fully integrate with Microsoft Projects if they had chosen to use the Non-Shared Task Based mapping between the workplan and the financial plan.

Support for Partially Shared structure

Partially Shared structure mapping enables you to map workplan and financial structures up to a particular point for your projects, which is useful, for example, when you don’t want all of your workplan details in your financial plans. Prior to release 12.1.3 customers on R12 could not fully integrate with Microsoft Projects if they chose to use the Partially Shared structure option. All structure options are now fully supported in Release 12.1.3 and 11i.

Enhanced Change Management

With this release, the change control features in Oracle Projects have been enhanced to meet specific business needs for the industries that typically use this functionality.

Enhanced Cost & Revenue Planning for Change Documents

You can use a project change document to plan for estimated changes in your direct costs or supplier costs, providing enhanced support for the cost issue planning process. This feature provides project managers improved control over project costs resulting from changes.

Revenue impacts for the cost issue are automatically calculated based on estimated cost changes for cost-based revenue plans, or may be entered manually for projects with separate cost and revenue plans. Users can then view the impact to the project budget, which is automatically generated from the estimated cost and revenue changes. You can then consolidate the planned changes in cost and revenue from multiple change requests into a single change order, to view, approve and implement the budget impacts.

Enhanced Retention Invoice Processing for Outstanding Project Deductions

With this release, the handling of retention invoices has been enhanced to take into consideration any outstanding project deductions. When validating retention invoices in Oracle Payables, a check will be made to verify that all project deductions have been processed. Outstanding project deductions may indicate that there are pending back charges or other miscellaneous costs that need to be recovered from your suppliers, and which need to be taken into account before the retention is released. If there are any unprocessed or unapproved deductions in Oracle Projects, the retention invoice will be placed on hold, until the deductions are processed. This payment hold may also be manually released from the supplier payment control workbench.

Some of you may be aware that similar functionality can already be utilised in 11.5.10.2. However, the DIF is a complete solution that brings all associated integrator setup together. This article will explore the basic features of the DIF by demonstrating how to create a simple custom integrator for loading Events into Oracle Projects.

This article is not intended to be used for training or as an implementation guide. There are however some good Oracle resources that I recommend reviewing. Firstly a link to the Desktop Integration Framework Developers Guide can be found in My Oracle Support note 979354.1. Secondly there is a very good eSeminar on the subject at Oracle University here (don’t miss slide 37 which contains a lengthy video of a working example).

The DIF is not packaged with R12.1.2 by default, and needs to be installed. To install the DIF apply patch 9055234. This will provide a new responsibility entitled ‘Desktop Integration Manager’. It might also be worth installing patch 9366099 at this stage which fixes some known issues with the DIF. Please also read My Oracle Support note 549758.1 to ensure that your system profile options are correctly set.

Once the DIF is installed and setup, use the new Desktop Integration Manager responsibility to create a new integrator. Select the Manage Integrators function to create and amend custom integrators. Note that seeded Oracle integrators can not be amended. The screenshot below shows the Manage Integrators landing page.

When defining an integrator one must enter the integrator name, the integrator’s internal name and the application to which the integrator belongs. In additon the user can also enable / disable the integrator and remove the integrator from the Web ADI create document form. Optionally integrator parameters can also be specified. Although parameters and Parameter Lists are not covered by this article, a useful value for the the Upload Parameter field is ‘HR Upload Parameter List’. This is a seeded parameter list that allows the user to select whether they want to upload all / flagged rows and whether to validate records in the Web ADI document. If you are familiar with Web ADI already you will have no doubt seen this parameter list in Excel when uploading a spreadsheet.

Additionally one can secure an integrator using form function security. By attaching functions to the integrator, the integrator will only be available to user’s who have menu access to said functions. Be warned, in testing this functionality I have found that if you add a securing function to an integrator (and save) then it can not be removed! Another tip is that if you set the profile option ‘BNE Allow No Security Rule’ to ‘Yes’ then function security is ignored in Web ADI. The screenshot below shows the integrator definition.

Once the integrator header is populated we need to define an Interface. An inteface can take the form of a table or an API (procedure or function). In this article I have created an interface using a PL/SQL procedure.

For the more technically minded this is an interesting discussion point. At this stage one may think “Great! There are loads of Projects APIs that I could use straight away to create custom integrators”. However, in reality many of the Projects APIs have initialisation procedures that need to be in sequence i.e. there is not one single procedure that can be called directly. The “create event” Projects API is a good example of this; there are 3 separate PL/SQL procedures in the package pa_event_pub that need to be called one after the other. Another issue with some APIs is that their input parameters contain internal database ids e.g. project_id. These would be fairly useless to users inputting data in a Web ADI document.

In this example I have therefore used a PL/SQL covering procedure that utilises the Oracle “create event” API. The covering procedure has “real” input parameters e.g. Project Number, Task Number, Bill Amount etc. that ‘feeds’ the Oracle API. The interface definition can be seen in the screenshot below.

The next step is to define the interface ‘Attributes’. The interface attributes represent the columns that will be available when you create a Web ADI document using the integrator. Interface attributes are automatically picked up from the interface definition, so in this example the attributes are created as the input and output parameters of the PL/SQL procedure. As can be seen in the screenshot below, one is able to enable / disable attributes, decide whether attributes will be displayed when creating Web ADI Layouts, and also change attribute names. Default attribute values can also be specified such as constant values or SQL queries. Note that default attibute values specified here will not display in Web ADI documents; they are used in the condition that the attribute value is NULL during upload.

Additional attribute properties (like validation of values) can be set using the ‘update’ button next to each attribute. Another neat feature of the DIF is the ability to create and assign what are called ‘Components’ to attributes. As described in the developer’s guide, “A component is a set of metadata that provides a list of values for a field in a desktop document”. For example, you can double click a cell in your custom Excel Web ADI document to get a list of values pop-up e.g. Project Number. Those of you who have used Web ADI documents before will already be familiar with the use of components.

In this example I have changed the name of several attributes and disabled all of those attributes that are not required in my Web ADI layout. Please remember that you must not disable those attributes that are required as inputs for the API! The below screenshot shows the interface attribute page.

There are many more features of the DIF, such as content sets and parameter lists which I can include in future blogs if there is interest. Content sets and associated mappings are necessary if you are creating a custom integrator for reporting or to amend existing records in the EBS. However, in this example we are not extracting any records from the EBS and our custom integrator is now complete.

Before we can use the custom integrator we must define a default Layout (all Web ADI integrators must have at least one layout). Layouts and associated Styles can be cofigured in existing Web ADI responsibilities or from within the DIF page ’Manage Integrators’ (the button can be seen back in the first screenshot). In the layout we can select default values for fields in the document, as well as field placement (context, header or line level).

We can now use an existing Web ADI responsibility (e.g. Desktop Integration) to create a document using our new integrator and layout.

In this example I have defined a Web ADI document for Excel, but documents for Word or MS Projects can also be created. The Web ADI document can then either be created straight away or saved. If you choose to save the document definition you can either create a shortcut (for furture use) or a form function. If you save the document as a form function you can then attach it to an existing EBS menu, as seen in the screenshot below.

The rest of the process is the same as using a seeded Web ADI document. In this example we open the Web ADI document by selecting the form function we added to our Projects menu. The document then opens in our chosen viewer (Excel), and data can be entered and uploaded using the Oracle toolbar.

That’s it! An integrated and secure solution for loading, amending and extracting data from the EBS. Please let me know how you get on using the DIF and/or if there is anything else you wish to see blogged on the subject. I am keen to see other examples of how people are using the DIF.

Editing a Column Formula in OBI Answers

Please let me know if there are any more frequently used functions that you would like to be included.

The Project Management PIP includes:

• Oracle Primavera to Oracle E-Business Suite
• Oracle Primavera to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne

providing seamless integration between the two and Oracle Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management.

This allows users to create projects in JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Oracle Project Portfolio Management (OP) or P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (P6) and synchronize project structures, activities, resource details and assignments, budgets, actual costs, progress and cost to complete.

Projected Consulting have successfully implemented the integrated Oracle Primavera – Oracle Projects PIP at its world class training centre. We are keen to share this success with customers and potential clients and would like to identify some of the key configuration requirements and benefits available for our customers.

High Level Business Process

Oracle Projects Configuration

Complete the required profile options and integration settings for your environment and global objects. Global objects include a planning resource list that will be used by both OP and P6 and planning resource rate schedules. Global Objects are owned by Oracle Projects, any changes made to these in P6 will be overwritten by OP.

You must synchronize the global objects before attempting to synchronize projects between Oracle Projects and Primavera P6.

This allows companies to share resources and resource rates across both applications, while only maintaining them in the one system, cutting out duplication of effort. Any changes made to the resource list and rate schedules in OP are synchronised and interfaced into Primavera. Thus if you’re planning rates change in the future, due perhaps to inflation, then you only need to update rates in OP,  with P6 automatically updated ensuring your planners are using the most up to date planning rates.

Key point planning resources with a resource format of Job are created as roles in Primavera and Financial Elements are created as an Expense Category.

Primavera Configuration

• Defining the Configuration Settings
• Authorizing Users to Send Data to ERP systems
• Running the Primavera P6 Setup Utility

Oracle Projects Planning Resource List

P6 Planning Resource List

Project Templates

• Created in OP and interfaced across to P6
• Update Template for OP/P6 Integration options
• Project Templates are created as Project Codes in P6
• Quick Entry Setup of the template in OP must only contain:
  • Project Name
  • Project Number
  • Project Start Date
  • Project Finish Date

NB – If creating a project in P6, the user will need to assign the related project template code for project creation in OP.

Create Project Template in OP and interface to P6

Project Creation

Projects can be created and updated in OP or P6 and interfaced between the two applications. Synchronization of project data between Oracle Projects and Primavera P6 includes the following components:

• Project header
• WBS
• Resource assignments

For this article we will create a project in Oracle Projects, enable integration, and mark this project to be created in P6. The integration process creates this project in P6 and transfers the project data.

  
P6

 
Schedule and Plan Project in P6

Next we will add a new WBS in P6, add activities to tasks and allocate resources to those activities in P6.

 
The additional WBS is added as a task in OP, the new activities created in P6 are interfaced into OP as lowest tasks along with the planned resource, resource quantities and resource amounts.

Budgets

The planned resource amounts added to the plan in P6 are also interfaced into OP as budget lines and a working copy of the budget created.

 
Notice that the quantities are not being populated

Cost Collection

Costs are collected in OP and interfaced to P6; this gives the Project Managers a more complete picture on how their projects are performing. Prior to interfacing the costs to P6, you must ensure that the project performance programmes are successfully run in OP.

Overview

Oracle’s Project Management’s strength in financial project management complimented by the strength of Primavera as a scheduling and work planning tool delivers the world’s leading project portfolio management solution. Oracle’s Project and Portfolio Management solution helps businesses achieve and maintain strategic advantage.  Only Oracle supports the full lifecycle of project and portfolio management within a single, integrated, accurate view of all project-related activities.

Summary of Tips to avoid issues

Details of the following are contained in this article:-

1. If installing on 64-bit OS use a 32-bit shell if the software is 32-bit
2. Disable SELinux during OS install
3. Be very careful when entering connection details in OSR, AIA and PIP install otherwise install will fail
4. Deploy the OSR application manually after installation
5. Do not create a database user called AIA before the AIA Foundation Pack install
6. Alter timeout values before PIP installation
7. AIA Foundation Pack and PIP install guide has sections to record the information that will be required during installation – use it!
8. Be careful which java version is in use when installing OSR

Software versions

• Database – This needs to be 10.2.0.2 or higher for certification with SOA. We used 10.2.0.4.
• Oracle Service Orientated Architecture Suite (SOA) – 10.1.3.4 + MLR#8 or later. We used 10.1.3.5.
• Oracle Application Server (OAS) 10g Release 3
• Oracle Service Registry (OSR) 10.3.0 (Optional)
• Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA) 2.5
• Oracle Project Portfolio Management: Primavera P6-EBS Projects PIP 2.5

Hardware

The installation was performed on a virtual machine (VMware) which was allocated 2 virtual CPU’s, 2G of memory and 50G of disk space. This virtual machine is running on top of 64-bit AMD hardware.

OS Install

It was decided to use Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.4 64-bit and then where available 64-bit versions of the other software.  The install was standard, however SELinux needs to be disabled for the database software, this can be done during installation or switched off after.

Database Install

The installation of SOA will require a database of 10.2.0.2 or higher, so it was decided to stay with 10g but use the latest release which is 10.2.0.4. This gives a reasonable balance of support lifetime and stability. As we are on 64-bit hardware, we decided to fully utilize this and install the 64-bit version of the software.

All pre-requisites can be found in the installation guide and should be checked for the relevant platform.

A standard install was performed, and a normal empty database was created during the installation. We called our database AIA.

To install 10.2.0.4 it is necessary to install 10.2.0.1 and then apply 10.2.0.4 patchset. You will then need to upgrade the database created during installation to 10.2.0.4 with dbua.

SOA Install

The first step of installing SOA is to create the necessary schema’s in the database created in the previous step. This is done by running the irca.sh script which is found on the installation media under Disk1/soa_schemas/irca.

Before running the installer various pre-requisite patches are required. These enable the installer to run. Check the documentation for the latest patches needed.

As the SOA suite is 32-bit software I ran the installer in a 32-bit shell by issuing the ‘linux32 bash’ command.

To run the installer use runInstaller along with parameters that are detailed in the pre-requisite patches. E.g:

./runInstaller \
PREREQ_CONFIG_LOCATION=/home/oracle/Software/1031SOA/6339508/prereq \
-paramFile /home/oracle/Software/1031SOA/6339508/oraparam.ini

Perform an advanced installation and select J2EE Server, Web Server and SOA Suite:

 
Make the OC4J instance an Administration instance (on Administration Settings page):

and do not select ‘Access this OC4J Instance from a separate Oracle HTTP Server’ on the Cluster Topology screen.

Once the installer completes SOA 10.1.3.1 will have been installed.

Upgrade SOA to 10.1.3.5

In order to get SOA to the latest available version patchset  10.1.3.5 was applied. This involves running scripts to upgrade the bpel and esb schema’s, bouncing the database and then running the installer. Again a 32-bit bash shell was used for this.

Install OC4J instance

Oracle Service Registry is optional in this technology stack, but if it is being installed a separate OC4J instance is required for this (Oracle AquaLogic Service Registry can be used instead  – this has to be installed into Oracle WebLogic Server rather than an iAS OC4J instance).

The media for this is the same as for the SOA install, again run in a 32-bit bash shell and use the parameters to runInstaller supplied in the pre-requisite patches.

This time just install a standalone OC4J instance (into a separate Oracle Home to SOA).

Install Oracle Service Registry

One of the pre-requisites for OSR is an install of JDK. The version of this affects how well the installer runs. I found the JDK installed with the database worked fine (JDK 1.4.2_14), so set your environment to use this.

Also required are a database – use the one installed earlier, and an application server – use the OC4J install as detailed above.

Once again perform the install in a 32-bit bash shell. To run the installer, use the supplied jar file Oracle-service-registry-10.3.jar (requires an x windows session so have DISPLAY set suitably).

The installer will ask for various connections details etc, be very careful when entering these as a slight error (eg wrong case) can cause the install to fail.

When I tried to deploy the app through the installer it kept failing, so I opted to deploy manually after installation (untick the checkbox on the application server details page). To manually install login to Enterprise Manager (OC4J instance), select the OC4J jvm and applications deploy. The OSR installation will have created the necessary ear file for you to use to deploy.

 
Install AIA Foundation Pack

Before installing the AIA Foundation Pack, various pre-requisites need to be met (details can be found in the installation guide):

• Configure Fusion Middleware memory Settings
• Configure java transaction API transaction timeout value
• Enabling Directory Browsing in the Apache Server
• Download and install JDK 1.5_16 or above
• Grant sysdba to system

The last of the pre-requisites is because the installer needs a database login with sysdba privilege. Do not create a new user called AIA to fulfil this requirement as the installer tries to create a new user with this name and will fail if the user already exists. Revoke this after the installation.

The installation guide provides a check list of required information needed during the installation. I would recommend using this to acquire the information before hand.

Run the installer pointing the inventory location to the oraInst.loc file in the SOA Oracle HOME:

./runInstaller –invPtrLoc <SOA_HOME>/oraInst.loc

On the first screen select the Foundation Pack to install and set the Oracle Home to a suitable value.

 
If the installer fails for any reason that install needs to be completely cleared out before re-attempting the installation. Please see Oracle note 876044.1 for details of the procedure to do this.

Install Project Portfolio Management: Primavera P6-EBS PIP

The final stage of this tech stack build was to install the product specific AIA PIP.

In order to avoid timeout errors during installation set the following timeout limits (reset after install):

Update the transaction-timeout=”3000″ value in the

<ORACLEHOME>\j2ee\oc4j_soa\config\transaction-manager.xml

Change the syncMaxTime to 300 in the

<ORACLE_HOME>\bpel\domains\default\config\domain.xml

The following pre-requistes are required in the E-Business suite install:

• EBS 11.5.10 CU2
• Patch 5644830 for Oracle Projects Rollup Patch 4 for Oracle Projects Family Pack M (11i.PJ_PF.M)
• Patch 3485155 for 11iPJ_PF.M
• Patch 8979063 for 11I.MRUP4 : Projects AIA Third Party Application Integration Cumulative Checkin

To actually install the PIP use the AIA installer as per the Foundation Pack install but select the PIP to install.

General UI Improvements

Favorites

As soon as you log in to R12.1.2 you will spot something new near the top of the screen, a “Favorites” drop-down menu.

If I add a few favourites this is what it looks like when you click on it:

This new drop-down is available on all web-based screens, which will make navigating to your most used screens that bit quicker.

Navigator

Once you have opened a web screen, another drop-down appears to the left of the Favorites drop-down.

The Navigator shows you all the Responsibilities and related Menus as a drop-down menu. Here you can see I am in the Employee Self Service Personal Actions screen, and I am using the Navigator to select the Reporting Pack List screen from the Projects SU Repsonsibility:

This UI/UX enhancement is very powerful and should mean that you will never need to see the main menu after you’ve logged in. However, if you have a lot of Responsibilites (like the OPERATIONS user in a Vision environment) the drop-down does become a little cumbersome:

Hover Pop-up Windows

An exciting new feature, called hover pop-up windows, allow users to obtain additional information simply by hovering their cursor over selected fields on the Project List, Edit Budget and Edit Forecast pages. A small window will pop up on the screen providing additional information that was previously only available via drill downs. I will show some screenshots of this new feature under the Project List section.

Projects UI Improvements

Project List

The Project List screen has been improved in a number of ways. The Project List region now has an “Actions” button against each record. Clicking this button takes the user to a new screen, which will save the User having to navigate into the Project Home Page before they can perform a Action against the selected Project.

The Project List screen has been enhanced with several Hover Pop-ups wich provide a lot on information to the User, without needing to drill down into detail screens:

Summary

This article has hopefully given you a taste of some of the new features of Release 12.1.2. It is good to see that Oracle are captialising on their investment in UX, not just in Fusion Applications, but ensuring that the legacy (or “Applications Unlimited”)  users benefit as well.

In the next couple of weeks, my colleagues will cover some of the new Projects functionality, such as the new Report Views and Bookmarks regions on the Project List page and functionality improvements in Performance Reporting and Change Management.

• The patch does not backport the YTD measures that exist under the reporting tab
• The new measures that the patch introduces in R11.5.10.2, under the project list, do not currently exist under the project list in R12. As far as I can understand this is an ‘oversight’ by Oracle in R12, and will be resolved soon.

Anyway, all that aside, below is a link to a PDF file with 5 sections that compares what is available in R11.5.10.2 without the patch, with the patch, and in R12 (as at time of writing).

 Performance Reporting Measures comparison

Sections are:

• Project List Table
• PJI – Task Summary
• PJI – Resource Summary
• PJI Calculated Measures
• PJI Stored Measures

Anecdotally I have heard of other problems with this patch. I am interested to hear about anybody’s experiences with this patch.

This article covers one of the new features in Release 12.1.1: Contingent Worker timesheets with Multiple Purchase Orders.

A Contingent Worker is a non-Employee people resource who works for the enterprise, and for whom the enterprise is responsible for their costs and expenses. A worker record and user are created and tied to the Purchase Order so that the worker can enter a timesheet through Oracle Time and Labor (OTL). The timecard is imported into Oracle Projects and the labor costs can be viewed on the Project. The timecard is also imported into Oracle Purchasing with the import process creating an automatic receipt and an invoice in Oracle Purchasing and Payables respectively.

Contingent Worker records can be created in core HR or through Manager Self-Service responsibilities (Contingent Worker Placements).

Prior to R12.1.1 in OTL, a Contingent Worker could report time against only one Purchase Order number, as associated to the worker’s assignment. The Contingent Worker assignment was defined in the Core HR, wherein supplier name, Purchase Order number, and Purchase Order line were associated. These details were then retrieved in OTL, to enable the Contingent Worker to report time for the above-mentioned combination only.

With the R12.1.1 enhancement, a Contingent Worker can report time for multiple Purchase Orders. Users can associate multiple Purchase Orders to a Contingent Worker assignment. You can navigate to this from the Supplier tab of the Assignment page of Core HR. This enhancement enables an OTL timesheet to retrieve multiple Purchase Orders in the Purchase Order list of values. Now this LOV populates all associated Purchase Orders of the Contingent Worker and enables the worker to report time against multiple Purchase Orders.

There may be occasions where a Contingent Worker is procured but the Project(s) they are going to work on may not yet be agreed. In this case R12.1.1 introduces new functionality in Oracle Projects to help meet this requirement.

This new feature enables you to create Projects as Contingent Worker clearing Projects and associate these Projects with Purchase Orders. Once the Purchase Order is added to the Contingent Worker HR Assignment record they can charge time to any “Live” Project including the Contingent Worker (CWK) Clearing Project. Users should use transaction controls to ensure that Contingent Worker’s can only charge time to Projects they actually work on.

A new check box, Contingent Worker Enabled, has been added in the Project Type window. When you define this type of Project, it will be categorized as Contingent Worker Enabled in Oracle Time and Labor and Procurement.

The Commitment for the Contingent Worker in this case, is included against the Contingent Worker Clearing Project and is written down by every approved timecard. This Commitment view is available in Project Status Inquiry. It is advisable that users consider having only one Contingent Worker Project per business unit (area / resource centre) and that relevant reports include the Contingent Worker Project to provide accurate actual and committed costs.

The business process and auto-accounting rules would need to be defined to provide the offset accounting entries created through the Purchasing/Payables process.

Screenshots

Use the new Supplier tab to enter Purchase Order details for this assignment. If you need to charge multiple PO’s for your Contingent Worker, you can create multiple assignments using effective dates or use the new HTML screen to add multiple Purchase Orders to a single assignment.

Use the New Supplier Tab (Highlighted) to add a single Purchase Order to each assignment. Assignment 49 with an effective date of 07-AUG-2009 is linked to Purchase Order Number 3494

Purchase Order 3494 is associated with a Contract Project, while Purchase Order 3495 is associated with a Contingent Worker Clearing Project.

Distributions for PO 3945

Configuring the Contingent Worker Functionality

HR Setup Steps

It should be noted that this screen is only available when the following HR pre-requisite setup’s are defined using HR Vision Enterprises responsibility. 

Step1 – Confirm seeded values are available N>Other Definitions -> Lookup Tables

Step3 – Confirm seeded values are available for Task Flow Nodes N> Security -> Task Flow Nodes

Step5 – Create new navigation option value in Task Flow Definitions N> Security -> Task Flow Definitions. Query Back Node NASSSIGN and add new navigation option PURCHASE ORDER INFORMATION

OP Setup Steps

Projects Contingent Worker Clearing Project flag

Using the Contingent Worker Functionality

The Contingent Worker prepares and submits a Multi Purchase Order Timecard.

NB: if you enter future dated time, only time recorded for the current day or previous days will be interfaced when a user runs the ‘Retrieve Time from OTL’ process within the Purchasing application. Where as Oracle Projects accepts future dated time when the ‘PRC: Transaction Import’ process is run.

Also be aware that if you mistakenly dated your Requisition with a future start date, your PO will not appear in the OTL LOV’s until that date.

Creating the following timecard based on the PO’s attached to my HR Assignment record above, you can see that for Purchase Order 3494 I can only record time against the Project and Task associated with that Purchase Order i.e. Project Number A101, Task 1.1.

For Purchase Order 3495, associated with the Contingent Worker Project, you will notice that I can charge time to the Contingent Worker Project and any other “Live” Project and Tasks.

Contingent Worker Time Entry

On import to purchasing a receipt for the timecard is automatically created along with the Accounts Payable invoice.

iProcurement Receipt Transactions

Contractor Management in Oracle Purchasing

R12.1.1 introduces new views within iProcurement to help manage Contractor Purchase Order Billed Amounts and Purchase Order Remaining Balances, which are very useful for reconciliation purposes.

To see these screens in a Vision environment use responsibility iProcurement, Vision Enterprises and N> iProcurement Home Page> (T) Contractors

iProcurement Contractors Tab