On November 4, 2021, Oracle announced the availability of the latest version of Oracle E-Business Suite, R12.2.11.
This blog covers the key innovations that were made across the categories of Modern User Experience, Functional Innovation, and Operational Efficiency.
To complement the information provided in this announcement, we encourage you to head over to the “Oracle E-Business Suite: Innovations 2021” video from Cliff Goodwin, Senior Vice President, Applications Development at Oracle, where he gives a run-down of the new 12.2.11 updates, along with complimentary details about the EBS Enterprise Command Centers – November 2021 update announced on November 10, 2021 as well. This video follows the “Oracle E-Business Suite Enterprise Command Centers – March 2021” announcement that was released back in March of 2021.
Back in November 2022, Oracle also announced the release of Oracle EBS 12.2.12. All the details of that release can be found here.
Let’s get started!
A Good Year All Around: Oracle EBS 2021 Innovations
In Cliff Goodwin’s video announcement, he talks about the EBS innovations made in 2021, highlighting the new release of 12.2.11 and the Enterprise Command Centers (ECC) update happening in November 2021.
Since 2018, there have been 7 updates in total for ECCs, which coupled with the new 12.2.11 release, brings an array of new capabilities in the core of EBS.
In 2022, Oracle also announced that they will be extending their support commitment for Oracle EBS through at least the year 2033, with the expectation of having that support commitment extended regularly to ensure there’s always a 10 year lead time for EBS clients.
Oracle EBS R12.2.11: What Does This New Release Include?
Normally, Oracle groups innovations across three key categories: Modern User Experience, Functional Innovation, and Operational Efficiency, so we’ll expand on each one. Also, after including innovations as categorized by Oracle in these three categories, we’ll be expanding on a few more innovation areas included in release 12.2.11, so be sure to keep scrolling through.
To learn about the new fixes, innovations, and security patches included in the latest release, Oracle EBS 12.2.12, head to our focus blog.
Modern User Experience
First made available in 2018, ECCs still rank pretty high as one of the most exciting user experience innovations that Oracle introduced with EBS. The home page is no longer a transactional experience, but rather a Business Intelligence one where dashboards, key indicators, charts, and graphs give you an at-a-glance view of the tasks or transactions so you can easily zero in on what matters to you.
The ECC offering includes 32 command centers with more than 110 dashboards across the following EBS product areas:
- Financials
- Procurement and Projects
- Order Management and Logistics
- Manufacturing
- Asset Lifecycle and Service
- Human Capital Management
To benefit from ECCs, clients must be running Oracle EBS 12.2.4 or higher. The November 2021 ECC updates include a new command center named the Payroll Command Center.
Functional Innovation
Oracle continues to double-down on the investments made to Oracle EBS with rich, industry-specific capabilities, helping organizations with their complex, global operations on EBS. Some of the most important functional innovations made in 2021 and as part of release 12.2.11 include:
- G-Invoicing for US Federal Program Agencies for both projects and procurement
- Shared Service Procurement functionality to support project-centric purchases
- Budgetary control for labor and non-labor transactions improving cost control with fund checking
- EBS manages and accounts for returns on internal sales orders
- Milestone Billing lets users insert and re-sequence billing milestones with additional info via descriptive flexfields
- Warehouse Management Rules Engine guides putaway and picks operations by classification code
- New Distributed Sampling to define subsets of quality specifications for several product dimensions
- Time entry for discrete manufacturing
- Additional APIs for extensions and integrations, including areas like Inventory, Product Hub, Discrete Manufacturing, Warehouse Management, and more.
- Support for Outbound REST services
Operational Efficiency
This year, with the looming expiration date of Premier Support for those below 12.2 and an industry-wide shift of moving workloads to the cloud, there was a surge in EBS environments moving to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). To help, Oracle offered EBS Cloud Manager automation to provision EBS environments on OCI, “lift and shift” on-premises to OCI, and lifecycle management of EBS environments running on OCI.
With release 12.2.11, EBS now provides:
- Adoption of Database standards, public APIs, features, and architecture to modernize how EBS takes advantage of the latest database capabilities.
- New EBS system architecture with the EBS System Schema Architecture, optimizing the use of system privilege.
Next, we’ll expand on some of these innovations across several areas, as well as mention other updates and features that are also part of release 12.2.11.
Applications Technology
Color coding for infotiles: You can use color coding for infotiles via predefined sets of colors to create contrast between individual tiles. Users can statically color code their views for increased differentiation. System admins can customize several color coding conditions for the site and developers can use static or dynamic color codes based on view name or count.
Collapse and expand infotiles: Users can collapse and expand infotiles when looking at a page with list search implemented.
Improved export of table data to PDF and Excel: Users can now export a wider range or table data to PDF and Excel including:
- Transient columns
- Data from an alternate view attribute different from the view attribute associated with the column metadata
- Total number of rows exported
- A total row displaying the sum total values for relevant columns
- Row header column defined via the “Row Header View Attribute” metadata for Advanced or Classic TablesUsers can also export table data to PDF and Excel for Advanced and Classic tables that appear in a pop-up. In addition, export performance is now significantly improved.
Enhanced charts: Oracle Framework Chart components are redesigned to render charts with a new technology used by default instead of BI Beans. Users can optionally change back to BI Beans rendering by setting the FND: Enable JET Graphs and Charts profile option to “None” or “JET Graph Only”. The new technology charts include zoom and scroll features, which are very useful for data spanning a larger timeline.
Support for ECC pop-up: There’s now a pop-up for use by ECC to promote greater integration of dashboards within Oracle EBS.
Direct display for descriptive Flexfields in the Simple Search Panel: The release now supports displaying individual segments for a descriptive flexfield directly in the simple search panel instead of displaying a flexfield in a pop-up window. Users can control the display by modifying the “Render as Popup” property.
Semicolon as separator for exported CSV files: Users can use a semicolon as the separator when exporting data to a CSV file. This is a change aimed at localities where the semicolon is used as the standard separator.
New API for List Search: A new API is available for developers that clears the row count cache so when a page is loaded again, the row count is run as a fresh request.
Saved search notifications in Classic Query Bean views panel: The Saved Search notifications feature introduced in 12.2.10 is extended to the classic query bean Views panel where developers.
New key Flexfield Web Bean attribute: This new attribute lets the values of key flexfields be refreshed in tables when a LOV is updated.
New profile option to disable diagnostic console button: New profile option to disable the Diagnostic Console button even if the diagnostic profile option is set to On.
Redwood theme: There’s a new Redwood theme that meets Oracle’s latest standards for application look and feel. The global header icons have been modernized.
Oracle Application Object Library
Default retention period for inactive sessions and sign-on audit data increased to 400 days: The default value for purging inactive sessions in the current Purge Inactive Sessions program is changed to 400 days. The Purge Sign-On Audit Data program now uses a retention period of 400 days by default as a parameter instead of a date to determine which records to purge.
Control proxy user selection by organization for internal and external users: In this release of EBS, users can grant delegates the ability to act on their behalf when performing specific EBS functions. In this release, internal users select proxies from a list of internal users by default. Also, a new security policy can be used to limit the list of potential proxies for a user to the user’s organization.
Secure configuration console check for CPU level: The Secure Configuration Console now checks for the CPU level of the Oracle EBS instance. Oracle strongly recommends that users apply the latest CPU.
Secure configuration console check for FND Global File Manager authorization: The console now checks whether the system is compliant with the recommended configuration for FND Global File Manager authorization.
Secure Configuration Console Check for unused resources: The console now reports on any resources defined for the Allowed Resources feature that have been unused for the last 400 days.
Increased severity for allowed resources configuration check in secure configuration console: The “Allowed Resources Configuration” guideline has a severity level of 1 to give importance to this configuration.
Oracle EBS Applications DBA
Oracle EBS Schema Migration: In release 12.2.11, EBS has implemented a set of structural changes that modernize the EBS database architecture. It introduces a new schema named EBS_SYSTEM which includes a privilege model that leverages public database APIs. Connections from the application tier to the database are updated using database service names. A key benefit of the EBS_SYSTEM schema is that it removes the requirement for access to the database SYSTEM schema, enabling the enhanced separation of duties between the core database administrator and the Oracle EBS database administrator. Migrating to the EBS_SYSTEM schema lays the foundation for faster certification of Oracle EBS 12.2 with new database releases and new database features going forward.
Certification with Oracle Database Unified Auditing: With release 12.2.11, Oracle EBS is now certified with Oracle Database Unified Auditing, which is the latest auditing feature for the Oracle Database introduced with Oracle Database 12c. Users can leverage Unified Auditing with Oracle EBS release 12.2.11 and Oracle Database 12c or 19c, Oracle’s latest Long Term database release. With this certification, Oracle EBS recommends that users enable predefined database Unified Auditing policies and a set of Oracle EBS-specific policies (see Document 2777404.1). See the Oracle Database Unified Audit: Best Practice Guidelines for more details.
Oracle EBS Integrated SOA Gateway
Support for REST services in Oracle EBS integrated SOA gateway: In release 12.2.11, similar to the support provided to invoke SOAP services through the Service Invocation Framework, Oracle EBS Integrated SOA Gateway enhances the framework to support REST service invocation. It leverages the Oracle Workflow Business Event System, letting users invoke REST services through GET and POST HTTP methods with XML and JSON payloads. The framework supports HTTP basic authentication security, error and exception handling, callback, and test features. It also provides advanced configuration options to extend HTTP header requests with Signature and Digest header options on top of defining metadata for the REST service to be invoked.
Release 12.2.11 is cumulative, including new updates and updates made as one-off patches for earlier 12.2 releases. Also, keep in mind that release 12.2.11 must be applied on top of Oracle EBS 12.2. Oracle EBS 12.2.11 is available as Patch 31856789.
For clients still below 12.2, there are several risks and vulnerabilities associated with losing Premier Support, which will happen at the end of December 2021.
Download our latest ebook ”Exposing the Risks & Costs of Not Upgrading to Oracle EBS R12.2” where we go in-depth about the risks and costs of losing Premier Support, offering real-world client cases that exemplify how failing to modernize EBS can negatively impact organizations at scale.
There’s little time to waste as Oracle EBS instances between 12.2.3 and 12.2.6 will enter into Sustaining Support on July 1, 2024, so it’s imperative that organizations take concrete steps to upgrade their EBS to release 12.2.7 as soon as possible, as it is know deemed the baseline version of the software by Oracle. As such, clients on version 12.2.7 of Oracle EBS will benefit from Premier Support benefits.
Read the official announcement of Oracle EBS 12.2.11 here. For more resources on availability and deployment, please refer to: