How can you easily manage metadata in Oracle FCCS and PBCS?

You can now easily manage metadata in Oracle FCCS and PBCS! Oracle EPM Cloud products FCCS (consolidation) and (E)PBCS (planning and budgeting) introduce a very useful feature for managing this metadata. People who are used to working with Oracle EPM on premise applications, such as Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) and Hyperion Planning (HPL), usually use the dimension library (EPMA) to manage their metadata. However, they often experience dimension maintenance or management as time-consuming. Oracle has simplified this task in its EPM Cloud products; you can set up and maintain your metadata (dimensions) through the familiar Excel interface, Smart View.

New: Smart View Add-On for administrator

A new add-on, Smart View Add-On For Administrator, allows you to perform dimension management within the Excel interface. This allows you to effortlessly add, remove and change members in your metadata. Adding a large set of members, such as a list of employees or projects, is easy.

In the Smart View panel on the right, we can see the underlying dimensions of our application. In this example, we have the Scenario dimension open, with currently only one member 'Actual' and no descriptions or aliases. We want to expand the Scenario dimension by adding a Budget and three Forecast Scenarios. There is one step you need to take in the application, which is to set up member security. Often this does not apply because the security is not set for the correct dimension or only applies to a limited number of members, such as a limited number of parents.

With a few clicks, we can copy-paste the second row and retype the label and alias for each new member.

As with data submission, submit your changes.

Looking at the dimension part of our application, we can see the new members.

And -as it should- you can deploy the changes directly from Smart View. Right-click on 'Dimensions' in the Smart View panel and you'll see the deploy link ('Refresh Database'). Check 'Database' in the pop-up window and press 'Refresh'.

A new pop-up window appears where you can track your progress:

And you're done!

Importing into Smart View

Entering in Smart View is also easy because you can use drop-down menus to select the valid value. In the example below, when setting up the Account dimension, you can select account settings from drop-down menus, such as Account Type.

It is also possible to import a metadata file into FCCS. This is similar to loading an "ads" file into HFM. However, in HFM this is a very tedious task and much less intuitive than modifying and loading directly from Excel, as shown in this article. As we have experienced in our implementation projects, Smart View for Oracle cloud applications not only simplifies metadata maintenance, the feature also speeds up the initial setting of dimensions. In particular, being able to copy & paste rows and change member names, aliases and parent increases the speed of metadata management.

How to install the Smart View Add-On for administrator

The dimension section in Smart View is available after you download and install it. You can download the manual for installing this Smart View add-on as follows:

In the next pop-up window, choose:

After downloading, install the plug-in.

Open Excel, the Smart View panel and you will see a new folder "Dimensions.

Double-click on the desired dimension and choose (or enter) any member and press refresh.

Results:

Now add members, modify them, send them and don't forget to refresh the Database.

Simplify your metadata management

The new Smart View Add-On For Administrator feature allows you to easily manage your metadata. This new way to add, modify and delete members from your metadata saves you time and effort.

Oracle FCCS and (E)PBCS - the Oracle EPM cloud products for consolidation and planning & budgeting - have many more time-saving features. Want to know more? Then send me an e-mail! I'll be happy to explain which features are useful for your organization.