Oracle Procurement Cloud

What's New in Release 8

21 February 2014

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

OVERVIEW ............................................................................................................................................................. 3

RELEASE FEATURE SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................ 4

ORACLE FUSION SELF SERVICE PROCUREMENT ...................................................................................................... 5

ORACLE FUSION PURCHASING ............................................................................................................................... 7

ORACLE FUSION SOURCING ................................................................................................................................. 10

ORACLE FUSION SUPPLIER MODEL ....................................................................................................................... 15

REVISION HISTORY ............................................................................................................................................... 16

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OVERVIEW

This guide outlines the information you need to know about new or improved functionality in Oracle

Procurement Cloud Release 8. Each section includes a brief description of the feature, the steps you

need to take to enable or begin using the feature, any tips or considerations that you should keep in

mind, and the resources available to help you.

GIVE US FEEDBACK

We welcome your comments and suggestions to improve the content. Please contact

oracle_fusion_applications_help_ww_grp@oracle.com.

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RELEASE FEATURE SUMMARY

Some of the new Release 8 features are automatically visible to users after the upgrade, and some

require action from the user, the company administrator, or Oracle.

The following table shows a quick view of the actions required to enable each of the Release 8 features.

Action Required to Enable Feature

Feature Automatically

Available

End User Action

Required

Administrator Action

Required

Oracle Service Request Required

Oracle Fusion Self Service Procurement

Simplified Approval Rules Management

Oracle Fusion Purchasing

Simplified Approval Rules Management

Procurement Analytics for Line of Business Managers

Oracle Fusion Sourcing

Negotiation Creation Web Service

Supplier Data Access

Additional Descriptive Flexfields

Oracle Fusion Supplier Model

Supplier Registration Approval Rules Management

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ORACLE FUSION SELF SERVICE PROCUREMENT

In Release 8, the management approval of rules has been simplified and additional analytics have been

added.

SIMPLIFIED APPROVAL RULES MANAGEMENT

The new Manage Requisition Approval task provides a simplified user interface (UI) for approval rules

management. This task enables you to:

Enable or disable a participant.

Create rules using simple or nested conditions. The names of the fields and attributes displayed

in the rules creation UI are consistent with the names displayed in the application. You can

choose attribute values from a list of values, when applicable.

Define rule actions that:

Use Supervisory Hierarchy, Job Level, Position Hierarchy, Approval Group, or Single User

routings.

Require approvals, automatically approve, or send information notifications.

Mark a rule active or inactive.

Maintain user-defined attributes, and use these attributes with rules:

Currency based attributes are used to set up conversions of amount or price type

attributes for a specific currency used in rule evaluations.

Summation attributes support the aggregation of data across lines or distributions using

a set of filters. You can set up the filters using requisition attributes, or you can use

rollups in the Procurement Category Hierarchy, Cost Center, Balancing Segment,

Management Segment, or Natural Account hierarchies.

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The following figures show the feature.

You manage requisition approvals from the Manage Requisitions Approvals task in Functional Setup

Manager. The following figure shows the Edit Approvals page.

STEPS TO ENABLE

This feature is enabled automatically.

TIPS AND CONSIDERATIONS

The existing approval rules may not be compliant with the rule syntax supported in the new simplified

rules management and may need to be redefined.

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ORACLE FUSION PURCHASING

In Release 8, the following changes and updates have been made:

Simplified approval rules management

Analytics for line of business managers

SIMPLIFIED APPROVAL RULES MANAGEMENT

The new Manage Purchasing Document Approvals task provides a simplified user interface (UI) for

approval rules management. This task enables you to:

Enable or disable a participant.

Create rules using simple or nested conditions. The names of the fields and attributes displayed

in the rules creation UI are consistent with the names displayed in the application. You can

choose attribute values from a list, when applicable.

Define rule actions that:

Use Supervisory Hierarchy, Job Level, Position Hierarchy, Approval Group, Single User,

or Custom routings.

Require approvals, automatically approve, or send information notifications.

Mark a rule active or inactive.

Maintain user-defined attributes, and use these attributes across rules.

Currency based attributes are used to set up conversions of amount or price type

attributes for a specific currency used in rule evaluations.

Summation attributes support the aggregation of data across lines or distributions

based on a set of filters. You can set up filters using requisition attributes, or you can

use rollups in the Procurement Category Hierarchy, Cost Center, Balancing Segment,

Management Segment, or Natural Account hierarchies.

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The following figures show the feature.

Navigate to the Manage Purchasing Document Approvals page.

Select and edit the approval rule.

STEPS TO ENABLE

This feature is enabled automatically.

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PROCUREMENT ANALYTICS FOR LINE OF BUSINESS MANAGERS

Line of business users, such as cost center or business unit managers are likely to be interested in

operational expense analysis and reporting for their business units. Business Intelligence (BI) subject

areas on common procurement business objects, such as orders, requisitions, and suppliers are

predefined to help such analysis and reporting. However, in prior releases, the information in these

subject areas was accessible only to procurement agents, such as buyers, category managers, or

procurement managers.

This release delivers a new role called "Purchase Analysis" enabling nonprocurement agents, such as

cost center or business unit managers, to run reports and analytics based on these procurement subject

areas. Information access can be secured by the requisitioning business units that these managers are

assigned to.

The following figure shows this role.

STEPS TO ENABLE

The Purchase Analysis role is delivered as part of the application. Use Oracle Identity Manager to grant

the role to your users who require this functionality.

KEY RESOURCES

Provisioning roles to users is described in several Oracle Fusion Applications Help topics. Search for

“provision roles.”

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ORACLE FUSION SOURCING

In Release 8, the following changes and updates have been made:

Negotiation creation web service

Supplier data access

Additional descriptive flexfields

NEGOTIATION CREATION WEB SERVICE

You can use the negotiation creation web service to easily integrate Applications Unlimited or third-

party systems with Oracle Fusion Sourcing. The fully validated web service enables you to specify

different aspects of the negotiation, such as requirements, lines, and invited suppliers.

You can choose to create negotiations in draft status and then continue to edit and publish them online,

or to create and publish negotiations directly through the web service. After the negotiations are

published, you can then use all the functionality in Oracle Fusion Sourcing to manage your negotiations.

KEY RESOURCES

You can access the Oracle Enterprise Repository for detailed information on the Supplier Negotiation

web service.

SUPPLIER DATA ACCESS

Suppliers often have a contact who deals with strategic sourcing events while a different person in the

organization handles tactical negotiations. These suppliers with multiple contacts accessing the supplier

portal can control user access to information by restricting the set of sites that the contact can view.

Oracle Fusion Sourcing now acknowledges this data access setting, and hence supplier users will be able

to view and respond only to those negotiations that they have access to. The additional layer of security

gives suppliers a more granular level of control over data.

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The following figure shows this feature.

STEPS TO ENABLE

This feature is enabled automatically.

TIPS AND CONSIDERATIONS

Because the supplier contact access definitions are honored after an upgrade, there may be situations

where a supplier contact is no longer able to access a previously accessible negotiation and you may

have to redefine the supplier contact.

ADDITIONAL DESCRIPTIVE FLEXFIELDS

You can further extend the data capture-capabilities of Oracle Fusion Sourcing by using two new

descriptive flexfields available on the negotiation.

The negotiation line flexfield enables category managers to capture information at the product or

service level. This information is for internal use only and isn’t shared with suppliers.

The supplier-facing negotiation header flexfield allows category managers to enter information during

the negotiation creation process. This information is visible to internal and supplier users.

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The two new flexfields are in addition to the existing internal negotiation header descriptive flexfield,

which has been available since Release 3.

Line Descriptive Flexfield

The Line Descriptive Flexfields are defined in the Additional Information section on the Edit Line page.

The number of fields and their structure depend on how the flexfield was defined when it was enabled.

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Supplier Header Flexfield

Supplier Header Flexfield is defined in the Additional Information section on the Create Negotiation:

Overview page when the negotiation document is defined.

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The Supplier Header Descriptive Flexfield fields are displayed to the supplier in the Additional

Information section on the View Negotiation: Overview page.

STEPS TO ENABLE

The implementation manager and procurement administrator can enable flexfields using the Functional

Setup Manager application.

KEY RESOURCES

For information on defining descriptive flexfields, see Oracle Fusion Applications help topics.

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ORACLE FUSION SUPPLIER MODEL

In Release 8, the approval rules management for supplier registration has been updated.

SUPPLIER REGISTRATION APPROVAL RULES MANAGEMENT

The New Manage Supplier Registration Approval tasks provide a simplified user interface (UI) for

approval rules management. These tasks are for the setup and maintenance of approval rules for

external and internal supplier registrations. Internal supplier registrations are submitted by internal

users on behalf of a potential supplier. These approval tasks enable you to:

Enable or disable a participant.

Create rules using simple or nested conditions. Condition attributes displayed in this UI are

consistent with the attribute names displayed in the application. You can choose attribute

values from a list of values, when applicable.

Define rule actions that:

Use Supervisory Hierarchy, Job Level, Position Hierarchy, Approval Group, or Single User

routings.

Require approvals, automatically approve, or send information notifications.

Mark a rule active or inactive.

Maintain user-defined attributes and use them across rules.

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REVISION HISTORY

This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All

updates are logged in the following table, with the most recent updates at the top.

Date What’s Changed Notes

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