What’s New in Hyperion EPMA 11.1.2?

What’s New in Hyperion 11.1.2?

EPMA

The release of version 11.1.2 has brought a plethora of improvements to the entire Hyperion suite of products, and EPMA is no different. This post will cover some of the significant changes that were included.

Improved Support for Essbase

This release has provided several updates that increase the functionality of EPMA as it relates to Essbase. Some of the more important ones include:
  1. Utilizing the Reorder Children dialog box, a new sort order can now be created to reorder members in the hierarchy.
  2. Performance settings for dimensions can now be modified in EPMA
  3. Dynamic Time Series (DTS) is now supported on the period dimension (BSO cubes)
  4. The ability to add Typed Measures and members with a Date Format has also been included.
    1. Varying Attributes are still not supported in this release

Application Troubleshooting Support

As we all know, EPMA can occasionally become out of sync with the dimension library or one of the products to which we are trying to push metadata. A new application diagnostic feature has been added in this release to help users fix this issue. This diagnostic tool determines inconsistencies between the source and target. Once the inconsistencies have been discovered, they can either be corrected manually or dealt with automatically.

Financial Management Copy Application Utility

HFM supports the ability to copy an EPMA app using the Copy Application Utility. This can be done two different ways:
  1. Select the Financial Management app. It will then be copied as a Classic application. Once this has been done, the EPMA upgrade feature can be uses
  2. Alternatively, the LCM tool can be used to migrate the application. Once this is done, the Copy Application Utility can be utilized to move the data.

Batch Client

 This release includes a couple of adjustments to the batch client that improve the automation process.
  1. Login through a proxy is now supported
  2. Single Sign On (SSO) login is also supported
Follow the link below to view the complete document of changes

Oracle EPMA Documentation



What’s New in Hyperion Planning 11.1.2?

What’s New in Hyperion 11.1.2?

Shared Services

 

As you’ve no doubt noticed by now, this has turned into a series of posts involving new features in the 11.1.2 release of the Hyperion products. This post will cover some of the significant changes to Shared Services, including improvements to Security Administration, Lifecycle Management, and Taskflows.

Security Administration

It’s been well-documented at this point that there have been multiple issues with the OpenLDAP approach to the Native Directory. In 11.1.2, the OpenLDAP has been replaced with a relational database as the storage point for native accounts and provisioning. This has already proven beneficial, as it allows for the next improvement below.
There is no longer a need for Essbase synchronization for users, as it is now done automatically. This is a welcome change from most, as it was always very easy to forget to refresh security. However, group synchronization must still be done manually.
The supported SSL configurations have also seen significant improvements. These include:
  1. SSL Offloading
  2. 2-way SSL deployment
  3. SSL termination at the web server
Oracle Single Sign-On (OSSO) is also supported in this release. The Oracle Internet Directory (OID) is used to provide SSO access to web applications.

Lifecycle Management (LCM)

Like the rest of Shared Services, LCM has adopted Oracle Diagnostics Logging (ODL) as the standard logging mechanism.
Perhaps the biggest improvement to LCM is that it now supports the extraction of data. Essbase data now appears as a selectable artifact when performing an export, and can be updated with the outline. On this note, I should probably point out that for cross-product migrations, LCM determines the correct order based on dependencies.
Some other modifications to LCM include:
  1. Additional information in migration status reports, including source and destination details.
  2. Users must be provisioned with the Shared Services Administrator role to work with the Deployment Metadata tool.
  3. The Calc Manager is supported, and has its own node under Foundation. As a result, business rules can now be migrated to classic HFM and Planning applications.

Shared Services Taskflow

This release has seen the addition of two new roles in Shared Services
  1. Manage Taskflows – This role allows users to create and edit a taskflow
  2. Run Taskflows – This role permits users to view and run a taskflow, but they cannot create or edit taskflows

 

Follow the link below to view the complete document of changes
 
Oracle Shared Services Documentation


Getting large numbers in FR Reports?

When using Workspace to view reports, some users have seen excessively large numbers that don’t belong. If you are having this issue, it could very well be because the default Essbase query engine in 11.1.1.x is the MDX query engine, which can cause documented bug 9062413. Essentially, this bug will cause users to see the same astronomical number in every cell that sits on an intersection to which the user does not have security access. Understandably, this can cause some concern. This issue is expected to be fixed in a future release, but until then, the query engine will need to be manually changed.
The first option is to fix the issue at a report level. This is a relatively quick process and is a good idea if you only have a handful of reports.  To change the query engine setting for a particular report, follow the steps below:

1. Open the report.
2. For each grid, select the entire grid.
3. Right-click and select Data Query Optimization Settings.
4. Deselect the option “Essbase Queries Use MDX.”
5. Save the report.

Repeat the above process for each report.

For users that have a larger number of reports, a better option may be to change the query engine in the properties file on the server.  The benefit to fixing the issue in the properties file is that changes only need to be made once, and all reports will reflect this change.
The file that needs to be edited is located on the Financial Reporting (app) server, typically on the path D:\<Hyperion Home>\products\biplus\lib where <Hyperion Home> represents the root location of the Hyperion install. The file that needs adjusted is the fr_global.properties file.
Open the properties file and add these lines:

# MDX Query Engine has been set as the default in Essbase 11.1.1.x. This can cause bug 9062413 
# which may cause unauthorized users to see a long series of numbers in each cell when running  
# reports. To solve this issue, the below line was added, which switches the query engine.
EssbaseUseMDX=false

Any line preceded by “#” is commented out. Therefore, these can say whatever you prefer, but should give anyone that views this file a good indication why this text is in the file.

Once the properties file has been updated, the following services must all be stopped in the following order, then started in the same order for the changes to take effect.

1. Hyperion Financial Reporting – Print Server
2. Hyperion Financial Reporting – Report Server
3. Hyperion Financial Reporting – Scheduler Server
4. Hyperion Financial Reporting – Web Application (Note – This service may be on the FR (Web) server, not the FR(App) server like the other three services.)

Note – This modification will apply to everyone using the server on which they are made, so be careful when making changes to a shared server.