BizTech Blog

Although yet to be confirmed, Oracle is expected to release version R12.2 of it’s eBusiness Suite in October 2011. BizTech has compiled a list, module by module, of the main features that have been added, amended, or removed in this latest release.

BizTech has analyzed the following modules, and has determined that at this time, no new functionality is expected to be added in R12.2

This is a continuation of my earlier post, ‘You have been tasked with developing an interface to AR and you’ve never used Oracle’s Auto Invoice before. What do you do?’. This time, the idea is to show some of the scenarios one would face while trying to import the invoices.

As most of you would agree, most of the time, the code never works the first time you run it. When you try to run Auto Invoice, after developing the code to interface the invoices into AR, you are naturally going to see some rejections.

If you are using R12 you may have encountered a requirement to setup all your legal entities with intercompany accounting for each. That is, for each legal entity, whether your setup requires that you configure intercompany relationships for each entity you have, or you are able to use the all other setup, it can still be a lot of work to configure.

In my last post, I walked through the process for restricting specific responsibilities from creating or updating Key Flexfield Segment Values. For smaller companies with the same people doing multiple functions, this could be enough to meet this requirement. For my client, this restriction wasn’t enough. They needed to prevent specific responsibilities from seeing specific Flexfields, Titles, Structures, and Segments.

Recently, I received a call from a customer requesting my assistance with troubleshooting Purchase Order Import errors in R12. The customer was trying to import 1000 purchase orders that were related to projects. They were encountering the following error and were having difficulty finding the root cause as the message was vague:

Project information on the distribution is not valid. &PJM_ERROR_MSG

Here are some tips on places to look to resolve such issues:

Many of my clients were initially surprised that, while Oracle provides a form to create and edit segment values, there is no seeded method to provide view-only access. Some have been further surprised to find out there was no seeded method to restrict access to specific segments.

A client of mine, a global financial institution, had identified 80 individuals who would require view-only access to all the segments in 2 Charts of accounts, and I was able to meet this challenge using 2 separate forms personalizations. I’ll discuss restricting access to specific modules, flexfields, structures, and segments in a follow-up blog entry, but for now, let’s look at preventing specific responsibilities from creating or editing segment values.

In my previous blog entry, I talked about the overall picture of developing a custom Oracle Projects interfacing process. In this entry, I’ll review the steps for creating the initial Project record and associated components. For the Projects Interface Application used as my reference, the main Project record requirements are: Customer; Project Manager; Tasks; Budget (Cost/Revenue)

For those familiar with developing API based interfaces, calling the Create-Project API functions in the same way. For those unfamiliar with API development, prior to the actual API call, inbound data from the third-party application should be assigned to the available API record-fields, for creating the Oracle Project (much like populating the fields of an Interface table). Some fields are required and will cause the Create Project API to fail, returning and error if missing or invalid.

Recently I had a call from a customer that had a requirement to mass update their supplier site payment method defaults in R12. They were updating the PAYMENT_METHOD_LOOKUP_CODE on the AP_SUPPLIER_SITES_ALL table and it was not reflecting the change in the applications.

Oracle finally released a reporting tool that reports on the differences in E-Business Suite database objects between one release and another. That's a very useful reference to Tech users to understand EBS dictionary at a module level, but EBS defaults are delivered as seed data within the database objects themselves. What about the differences in this seed data between one release and another?

You have been tasked with developing an interface to AR and you’ve never used Oracle’s Auto Invoice before. What do you do? Unfortunately, at one time I was in this situation. Though I knew the concepts of the process, the real time implementation involved a lot of challenges. The following is for those who have never interfaced invoices through Auto Invoice. My goal is to provide an overall understanding of the process and pitfalls that one should be aware of.

What is Auto Invoice?