I am really excited to get to go to Seattle this year for KScope19.  I was on the selection committee and I think we have a record number of new speakers.  If you haven’t signed up and still have an opportunity to go, get out there and do it.  Please stop by our booth and introduce yourself or say hello.

Besides entertaining everybody at the booth, I have a few events I am participating in.  I would love to see you at all of these.

Monday, June 25 –  Lunch and Learn

Location: 6A, Level 6

Sponsored by Oracle Groundbreakers
Grab a quick bite from 12:45 to 1:00 p.m., then join one of the information-packed sessions led by a panel of Oracle ACE Directors and Oracle ACEs. Bring your questions; these are the people who have the answers!

Glenn Schwartzberg, Tim German, Jason Jones and I will there.

Getting Started with Groovy for the Non-Technical Superstars

Session Number: 8056
Track: Planning
Sub-Categorization: Planning Cloud
Session Type: Solutions
Primary Presenter: Kyle Goodfriend [Manager – Accelytics]

Technologies or Products Used: ePBCS, Groovy

Session Summary for Attendees:  Groovy calculations are not just accessible to those with lots of experience writing Java, Groovy, or other coding languages. With a little guidance, you can become extremely productive and add some world-class functionality to your applications. This session will be delivered with both the experienced and non-experienced in mind, by a person with a finance degree who learned on the fly.

This session will provide an administrator with the knowledge needed to get started writing Groovy calculations immediately. We will introduce how to get started with Groovy and use it to interact with PBCS via the API. Three to four key concepts will be covered, which will help you leave with an understanding of the possibilities. We will discuss where and how to get help and learn from examples, and how to avoid spending time going down some of the wrong paths like I did.

Attendees will leave this session with the knowledge to implement basic Groovy calculations, examples of more complicated solutions, and a foundation to grow from. They will take home working examples and references to all the concepts needed to go from zero to 60 in four seconds.

The presentation will be structured as follows:
• Introduction
• How to get started
• How to add user functionality
• How to add pre-save validation
• How to add real-time data model synchronization on data form save
• Where to go to get help

Hidden Gems in PBCS—The Benefits They Don’t Tell You About

Session Number: 8054
Track: Planning
Sub-Categorization: Administration
Session Type: Product Updates

Session Summary for Attendees:  There are a million reasons to move to the cloud, but these enhancements are not marketed. As someone who fought the drawbacks, I now cringe when I have a client still using the on-premises version of Planning.

This session will provide an administrator five to 10 hidden secrets that you won’t hear from your Oracle sales rep. Unless these secrets are pointed out or you attend training where they are discussed, they will likely never be found. We will discuss foundational improvements like how to evaluate where to focus your time on calculation performance issues, debugging calculations by stepping through the calculation, and stress testing your application. This presentation will include hands-on demonstrations of all the functionality and features discussed.

Attendees will leave this session with knowledge and examples that will allow them to go back to their workplaces and improve their applications. Users looking to move to the cloud will learn about some of the hidden gems that are often forgotten.

I don’t normally write up monthly updated, but this month there are a number of intriguing changes/updates/enhancements that are important to know.  Some may change existing processes.  This is not an exhaustive list, but these are things I think all of us should take note of.

The changes that you will see in the UI may not be visible unless you clear your cache.

EPMAutomate

• You MAC users are going to like this, it can now be installed and work on a MAC. By the way, I am one of them.  I can’t wait until the beta is finished for the Smart View to work with office360, meaning MAC, Ipad, etc.
• You can now run multiple instances of EPMAutomate. So, logging out of one will not log you out of the other.  This will help those that want to run test and prod on one VM.  It will also remove any issue of one process stepping on another.
• Admin mode can be enabled with EPMAutomate, which was a huge missing piece, in my opinion.
• A sortMember command to order members in dimensions is now available.

Forms

• No more composite forms, sorry guys!

Smart Push

• There is a new Smart Push option called Use Database Suppression that enables you to apply row suppression at the database level instead of at the application level, thus eliminating the impact on query thresholds and improving Smart Push wait times.

Settings

• There is a new setting to set the accounts that are linked between plan types to false. This will use the  a new attribute of HSP_LINK (not HSP_NOLINK).

Groovy

• We now have the ability to use the new suppression option on the data map / smart push. This will improve performance and reduce the need to break up pushes in groups of members.
• Groovy can now run jobs. This means a rule can execute other jobs within that rule.  They show as tasks in the job console.  This is limited to the execution of rules, rulesets, and templates.
• All RTPs are now supported in ASO.

Smart View (AMEN on some of these as us old timers will love) – You will want to download the updated version to take advantage of these.

• In-grid, cell-based POV—POV members are placed on the grid instead of in the POV toolbar.
• Submit without refresh—Using the default Submit Data button in the Smart View ribbon, all data cells in a single grid (modified cells and unchanged cells) are marked dirty and submitted. Once the submit operation is complete, the entire grid will be refreshed.
• Enhanced free-form—Users can insert empty columns and rows anywhere in a grid and change the alias table. Additionally, supports member auto-refresh where deleted members are returned to the grid upon refresh.
• Multiple-grid ad hoc—Multiple ad hoc grids can be placed on the same Excel worksheet. With multiple-grid ad hoc, users can submit data from any grid on the sheet. Grids based on aggregate storage cubes and block storage cubes are supported on the same sheet. Each grid is independent; for example, if required, you can change the alias table for only one grid on the sheet.
• Users will now get a warning when the version installed is out of date. Hopefully this can be turned off!

General

• Jobs can now have a new return, success with warnings. An example of this might be loading data.  The job finished successfully but there were rejected records.  Make sure your automation accounts for this!

DM

• There is now an option to not run the validation when data is loaded. For those of you that despise the performance challenges of using DM, this might be a game changer.  The longest part of the process is the actual validation, not the import or export to Planning.

Modules in ePBCS

• Rolling forecast can now be configured for length.
• There were some critical bugs that were fixed in WFP (I know first-hand).
• Some CapX forms were improved as well.