In Depot Repair one real-life scenario is that an item that is returned for repair turns out to be unrepairable.  This often causes headaches in modelling the transactions in the Depot Repair application, because originally the item was transacted back with the expectation that it would be returned to the customer.

Take a look at Doc ID 1599209.1 which has step by step instructions on what to do in Depot Repair to ensure that your system transactions match the real-life scenario.  Watch that headache go away! 

Attention United Kingdom Payroll Customers! 

As in previous years, Oracle UK Payroll Support is providing customer seminars on the legislative updates for completing processing for the 2013/14 tax year, implementing legislative changes, and new RTI processes from April 2014. You have the option of either a WebEx or Oracle office-based seminar.

WebEx Seminar:

Date: Wednesday 22nd January 2014            Time: 10.30 London (GMT), 11:30 Berlin (GMT+1), 05:30 New York (EST),  03:30 Denver (MST)

To register to attend this webcast, please go to E-Business Suite HCM Advisor Webcast Schedule Doc ID 1455851.1 and follow the instruction details.  Alternatively, you can directly register here.

This Webcast will be an hour long session detailing the UK Legislative changes and changes to processing.

Office-Based Customer Seminars :

The agenda for each of the Office based seminars will be similar to previous years and will cover the requirements for legislative changes and new RTI processes from April 2014.

Agenda

• Registration and Coffee
  
• Legislation Update & New Functionality
  
• Oracle Payroll – RTI Processes and Start of Year
  
• Questions 
• Close

All seminars will take place in Oracle Offices and the scheduled dates are:

Wednesday 29th January 2014           Henley Suite, Thames Valley Park, Reading
Wednesday 5th February 2014           Linlithgow Offices, Scotland
Wednesday 12th February 2014         Hockley Suite, BVP, Birmingham 
Wednesday 19th February 2014         Henley Suite, Thames Valley Park, Reading    

The Sessions will start at 10:30 am, registration 15 minutes earlier.
Each session will last for approximately 2 1/2   hours.  There is no charge for attending the seminars.

To register for the office based seminars, please send the following information to Karen Dray  by 11th December 2013:

Information Required:

Company Name
Preferred Date / Time
Alternative Date / Time 
Name (s) of attendee(s) - (up to 3) including Email addresses to confirm attendance

Due to the popularity of these seminars and our expanding customer base, this year we must again restrict registration to 3 attendees per company.
Places will be allocated on a 'first come, first served basis'.  To ensure you are able to attend your preferred session, please respond as early as possible.

Please contact Karen Dray if you have any queries about the seminars.

The ASCP Data Collections Analyzer (available in Doc ID 1596457.1) is a Self-Service Health-Check script which reviews the overall Footprint, analyzes the current configurations and settings for the environment providing feedback and recommendations on Best Practices.

This is a non-invasive script which provides recommended actions to be performed on the instance it was run on. For production instances, always apply any changes to a recent clone to ensure an expected outcome.

The benefits include:

• Immediate Analysis and Output of ASCP Environment:
• Identifies MLOG$ Materialized Views Volume
• IIdentifies Source and Destination Side Information
• Perform Sanity Checks for Known Issues
• Easy to add Tool for regular Maintenance
• Execute Analysis anytime to compare trending from past outputs.

This script may be safely run at any time. It can be used either reactively, when you are experiencing issues with a particular item, or proactively, to detect issues with all items in an operating unit from a specified date forward. No data is created, updated, or deleted by this script.

So download the ASCP Data Collections Analyzer today from Doc ID 1596457.1 and let us know what you think by replying to this posting.

Webcast: BI Publisher Enterprise Best Practices

Date:  December 10, 2013 (EMEA & APAC) & December 11, 2013 (US)

If you use BI Publisher in your implementation, then join us for this session to get a generic overview on BI Publisher Enterprise Edition.  Hear direct from a Support expert and learn from his experience in resolving customer SRs.

We are covering following topics in this Webcast :

• BI Publisher Deployment
• System Requirements
• Data Model
• Reports and Templates - Best Practices
• Reference Information
• Q & A (15 Minutes)

 We will be holding 2 separate sessions to accommodate different timezones:

EMEA / APAC - timezone Session :

• Tuesday, 10-Dec-2013 at 09:00 UK / 10:00 CET / 14:30 India / 18:00 Japan / 20:00 AEDT
• Details & Registration : Doc ID 1598897.1
• Direct registration link

USA - timezone Session :

• Wednesday, 13-NOV-2013 at 18:00 UK / 19:00 CET / 10:00 PST / 11:00 MST / 13:00 EST
• Details & Registration : Doc ID 1598915.1
• Direct registration link
  

If you have questions about the schedules or if you have a suggestion for an ATG Advisor Webcast to be planned in future, please send an e-Mail to Ruediger Ziegler.

Remember that you can access a full listing of all future webcasts as well as replays from Doc ID 740966.1.  A summary of ATG webcasts and access to replays is also available from Doc ID 1186338.1.

Attention Mexico Payroll Customers!   We would like to make you aware of several important points.

A. Important End of Year Patch Information
B. Mandatory Patch Information for Oracle Mexico Payroll
C. Regulatory/Statutory Support for Release 11i EBS Payroll

A. Important End of Year Patch Information

Please note the following:

The Oracle Mexico (MX) Payroll Year End/Year Begin patches are released separately from the US and Canada Year End patches.
The Americas Year End patches do not contain the Mexico Year End updates.
Global customers need to apply both the Mexico Year End/Year Begin patches and the US and Canada Year End patches.

Important Year End Prerequisite Information for Mexico Payroll customers:

* HRMS Release Update Pack 11 for 12.0 (patch 16077077) is a mandatory prerequisite for Year End 2013/Year Begin 2014 for R12.0 customers.
* HRMS Release Update Pack 6 for 12.1 (patch 16000686) is a mandatory prerequisite for Year End 2013/Year Begin 2014 for R12.1 customers.

End of Year 2013 Mexico Payroll Patch Release Schedule:

The patch release schedule for 2013 Year End/2014 Year Begin patches for Oracle Mexico Payroll is as follows:

• December 15, 2013: End of Year 2013 Phase 1
  - this patch will include Mexico payroll bug fixes and is mandatory for year end processing.
• December 31, 2013: Year Begin 2014 Patch
  - this patch will include minimum wage and ISR Tax rate updates and is mandatory for existing customers.
• January 31, 2014: End of Year 2013 Phase 2
  - this patch will include phase 1 and Year Begin patch content plus any other statutory update posted after Year Begin.

Notes:
- This is a tentative schedule and may vary depending on the legislative postings in order to provide timely patch releases to Mexico Payroll customers.
- For complete details on the Oracle Mexico Payroll Year End Patching Schedule, see Doc ID 975677.1.

B. Mandatory Patch Information for Oracle Mexico Payroll:

For the complete R11i Payroll Mandatory Patch List, see Doc ID 941673.1.
For the complete R12.0 Payroll Mandatory Patch List, see Doc ID 941742.1.
For the complete R12.1 Payroll Mandatory Patch List, see Doc ID 941743.1

C. Regulatory/Statutory Support for Release 11i EBS Payroll

Please note that Mexico statutory legislative support for Release 11i customers ends November 30th, 2013. For further details, please see: When Is Statutory Legislative Support for Payroll Going To End For Release 11i  Doc ID 1384995.1.

Payroll World is an email distribution list for North American Oracle Payroll customers used to quickly disseminate information regarding product updates, patches, and statutory changes. To subscribe to this email distribution list, send e-mail with your contact name, CSI number, and company name to cshrdev_uk@oracle.com

The 1099 US Tax Reporting patches for the 2013 tax year have now been released and are available for download from My Oracle Support.

Patch Details: 

R12.0.x: Patch 17842317:R12.AP.A:1099 CHANGES FOR YEAR 2013: R12 (12.0)

R12.1.x: Patch 17842317:R12.AP.B:1099 CHANGES FOR YEAR 2013: R12 (12.1)

R12.2.x: Patch 17842317:R12.AP.C:1099 CHANGES FOR YEAR 2013: R12 (12.2)

R11i: Patch 17763198:1099 CHANGES FOR YEAR 2013 FOR 11i(11.5.10.CU2/11.5.10.2/AP.O)

For full details please review the 1099 Document that is updated every year at this time in preparation for the upcoming 1099 tax season:

Oracle Payables Plans for 2013 1099 Reporting (Doc ID 209913.1)

See the table below for latest patching information for CRM family products. 

Product	Details	Reference
Lease and Finance Management	Patch 17624521:R12.OKL.B - OLFM : 1213 RUP3 DELTA 15	Doc ID 1597291.1
Payments	R12.1: Payments Recommended Patch Collection (IBY RPC), Sep 2013	Doc ID 1481221.1
Sales & Marketing, Channel Revenue Management,Quoting, Order Capture and iStore	Recommended and Latest Patch Listings for Sales & Marketing, Channel Revenue Management,Quoting, Order Capture and iStore	Doc ID 1596130.2

You'll notice that the link for the Sales and Marketing product family points at a new information center note where you can find listings of all the latest patches that are released for these products.  These are dynamic listings of the patches and are updated every night, so you can be sure you can see the latest available information.

Oracle Loans Diagnostic Patch 17835988 has been released to My Oracle Support for download and use with Release 12.  Using Loan ID and Responsibility ID as input parameters, the Loans Diagnostic provides details for the related loans.

Do you use the My Oracle Support Communities?  Sometimes it is hard to tell if you got the information you needed! As the person asking the question, you can let the community know which replies you found correct and which ones were helpful.

By marking replies correct or helpful, you make it easier for community members to find replies that might help them in a similar situation, since your designation will change the background color of the reply to make them stand out. In addition, you are rewarding the member who posted the reply with points.

How Do I Mark an Answer Correct or Helpful?

In each reply to a question, extra options are visible to the person who posted the question. At the bottom of the reply, you can select either “Helpful Answer” or “Correct Answer.”

Build the Community’s Knowledge and Acknowledge Members that Help You

The time you take to mark your question as answered provides value to the community and expresses appreciation to the person who provided the answer that solved your problem or gave you new insight on an approach.

You may find other members follow your example, making it easier for you to find the answers you need in discussion threads too!

Read more and watch the short video in Doc ID 1180503.1 which will tell you all you need to know about helpful and correct answers.

The purpose of this blog is to raise awareness of GDF patch availability for R12.2.x customers and customers preparing to upgrade to R12.2.x.

Development have been actively working on generating the Generic Data Fix (GDF) patches for R12.2 customers and when they are made available they will be delivered with a .C suffix:

i.e.

R12.0.x Customers would apply Patch 17714320:R12.AP.A

R12.1.x Customers would apply Patch 17714320:R12.AP.B

R12.2.x Customers would apply Patch 17714320:R12.AP.C 

At present, around 60 GDF patches are available for R12.2.x, so if the Master GDF script (Doc ID 1360390.1) detects corruption and recommends a GDF patch that is not yet released for R12.2.x, then please understand that work is currently in progress to get the remaining Payables GDF patches released for R12.2.x as soon as possible.  Until that time, customers on R12.2 can use the following workaround:

IMPORTANT: THESE INSTRUCTIONS ARE FOR EBS PAYABLES (AP) ONLY. IT DOES NOT APPLY TO EBTAX (ZX), PAYMENTS (IBY) OR ANY OTHER PRODUCT.  FOR THOSE PRODUCTS, IF THE GDF IS NOT AVAILABLE PLEASE OPEN A NEW SR REQUESTING DEVELOPMENT TO CREATE THE REQUIRED GDF.

1. Run the Master GDF script from Doc ID 1360390.1 - Master GDF Diagnostic (MGD) to Validate Data Related to Invoices, Payments, Accounting, Suppliers and EBTax [VIDEO])
   
   
2. Review the output of the report to determine ig a GDF patch is required.  
   
   
3. Determine in My Oracle Support if the GDF patch is already released for R12.2 (Check for .C version). If so, then that is the recommended patch to be applied and no further research is needed. Proceed to apply the .C version of the GDF patch.
   
   
4. However, if the required 'GDF'.C patch is NOT available then do both of the following steps:
   
   a) Review My Oracle Support Doc ID 1597490.1 - R12.2.x Payables Generic Data Fixes - which advises customers to install GDF infrastructure patch 17637775:R12.AP.C.  This only needs to be done once per installation even if multiple GDF patches are required.
   
   b) Download the R12.1 version of the recommended GDF patch (i.e. Patch 17445464:R12.AP.B) and run the scripts from the patch as indicated in the README manually. Do not try to apply the patch as the system will prevent this due to incompatible release.

Solution: Apply Infrastructure Patch 17637775:R12.AP.C + Patch 17445464:R12.AP.B manually.

Example 2:
Customer  running R12.2 - Master GDF advises they need to apply patch 1771432 to correct their data.
Patch 17714320:R12.AP.C is available.

Solution: Customer should apply Patch 17714320:R12.AP.C.

Back in July we told you about the new multi-platform functionality available for Mobile Field Service Store and Forward Multiple Platforms.  This solution allows field service technicians to remotely access customer, product, service request and task related information on mobile devices.  Technicians can continue to update their tasks, capture materials, time, expense details, access inventory levels, return, transfer and request parts, regardless of the internet connectivity and synchronize when they are online.

The details of implementing and using the MFS Multiple Platforms application are explained in Doc ID 1564644.1 but now there is also available a recorded presentation available : R12.1.3+ TOI: Implement and Use Mobile Field Service - Multi Platform Applications. 

The presentation covers:

• General overview
• Technology overview
• Feature overview
• Implementation tips
• Troubleshooting tips
• Upgrade path.
  

Tune in and hear the details of what's new and changed, direct from Development. 

ADVISOR WEBCAST: R12: Business Flow Accounting In Financials Accounting Hub (FAH)

Date:  December 12, 2013 at 11:00 am ET, 10:00 am CT, 9:00 am MT, 8:00 am PT

Oracle Financials Accounting Hub (FAH) is used to account for third party transactions. The Business Flow Accounting feature of FAH allows the accounting of downstream transactions (i.e., payments) to be derived based on the accounting of upstream transactions (i.e., invoices). Our discussion will focus on how to utilize Business Flow Accounting in FAH. This session is recommended for technical and functional users who have a basic understanding of the components FAH and want to learn about the Business Flow Accounting feature of FAH. We recommend reviewing Doc ID 1465987.1, Accounting for Transactions from a Custom Application Using R12 FAH, prior to the webcast.

Topics will include:

•     Relevant Fundamentals of FAH
•     How to use Business Flow Accounting feature of FAH to account for logically related third party transactions
•     Demonstration of Business Flow Accounting
•     Drill down to Subledger Accounting from General Ledger

For more details and how to register see Doc ID 1596331.1.

Enterprise Asset Management, Asset Move functionality was introduced in Release 12.1.1. 

You may need to move assets from one organization (often a different location) to another organization for different reasons; for example, to replace a failed asset , or to borrow an asset for a particular job or project. The Asset Move Workbench enables you to transfer an asset and its child assets from one maintenance organization to another as a single unit, and the parent child asset relationships are preserved.

For a detailed white paper of this functionality, please refer to document: Fundamentals of Asset Move Functionality, Doc ID 1580799.1.

If you use Oracle Incentive Compensation (OIC), then new Doc ID 1600221.1- Guidelines to Optimize Calculation Performance via Oracle Incentive Compensation Settings is recommended reading.

In an effort to parallelize calculation, a single calculation concurrent request can spawn thousands of calculation subprocesses. By understanding how OIC spawns calculation, implementers can better understand how to optimize the 3 core OIC settings that drive performance in the calculation process. There are non-OIC factors, like DB tuning that drive OIC Calculation performance, but these are not the focus of the document which is focused on an understanding of the 3 core OIC settings:

• Transaction Batch Size
• Salesrep Batch Size
• Number of Concurrent Managers Workers

Read more in Doc ID 1600221.1 which contains explanations of these settings and guidelines on how to set them.

The OTM Analyzer is a Self-Service Health-Check script which reviews the overall footprint, analyzes the current configurations and settings for the environment providing feedback and recommendations on Best Practices. 

Benefits include the following:

• Immediate Analysis of OTM Environment
  
  • Identifies Entity Data Volume
  • Identifies Database Parameter and recommendations
  • Identifies OTM processes volumes.
• Easy to add Tool for regular Maintenance.
• Execute Analysis anytime to compare trending from past outputs.

Please refer to the following document for additional information: ASCP Performance Analyzer script for Performance Monitoring (11.5.X and R12) (Doc ID 1579683.1).