What is New in Oracle EBS R12.2.10 | Features and Updates

October 14, 2020

Last week Oracle announced the availability of the latest version for EBS, R12.2.10. This blog will cover the main updates and features in this new release.

Oracle EBS 2020 Innovations

In a video announcement, Oracle presented all of Oracle EBS innovations made available in different release vehicles throughout 2020. These include:

  • Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2.10
  • Two releases of new and enhanced Enterprise Command Centers (ECCs) (available for 12.2.4 and higher)
  • EBS Mobile Release 9: updates to smartphone apps (available for 12.1.3 and all 12.2 releases)
  • EBS Person Data Removal Tool (PDRT) updates to the tool that helps to safely remove sensitive data associated with people in EBS systems (available for 12.1.3 and all 12.2 releases)
  • EBS Cloud Manager for EBS on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI): increased automation to help enterprises run Oracle EBS on OCI (available for 12.1.3 and all 12.2 releases)
  • HRMS Release Update Pack: annual legislative updates for Oracle HCM (available for 12.1.3 and all 12.2 releases)
  • G-Invoicing for US Federal Program Agencies: support for more efficient management of intragovernmental buy/sell transactions (available for 12.2.7 and higher)

Almost a year ago, Oracle was announcing the availability of R12.2.9. In what seems to be like a yearly structure, Oracle is continuing with the pattern of releasing new versions of their EBS that is consistent with their “Continuous Innovation” Strategy for EBS, which delivers ongoing updates without major upgrade required and along with Premier Support for EBS 12.2 through at least 2031.

EBS Support timelines 2020

 

What Does EBS R12.2.10 Include?

As it has been usual with other releases, this a consolidated suite-wide patchset that includes new features, statutory and regulatory updates, and enhancements for stability, performance, and security. Oracle EBS advances, organized by product area and theme, are provided below.

EBS Order Management: 

  • Oracle iStore leverages ECC technology to provide a modern user experience in B2B shopping. Using consumer-like search and filters, trading partners can quickly zero in on the best products and pricing.
  • The Oracle Advanced Pricing Command Center streamlines pricing maintenance with improved visibility to pricing setups using metrics, charts, and enhanced search. The command center supports selective updating of price lists and promotions using Web ADI.
  • The Oracle Incentive Compensation Command Center: Performance Evaluation Dashboard improves the timeliness of the sales compensation process by allowing administrators to view sales attainment and performance across roles, plans, and periods, and to compare sales quota vs. achievement.
  • Order Management customer-driven enhancements increase order flow productivity and control with:
    • Increased control for promotional and included items
    • Spreadsheet upload for Quotes and Orders using Web ADI
    • Extensibility and custom attribute support in frameworks and rules

EBS Order Management 2020 Innovation Highlights

EBS Logistics:

  • Increased Efficiency and Throughput
    • The Oracle Inventory Command Center: Receiving Dashboard streamlines receiving activities with features such as:
      • Track material by “Expected Date”
      • Track pending inspections
      • Manage pending putaway
      • Prioritize high value and high demand items
      • Focus on back-ordered items shipping today
    • The Oracle Inventory Command Center: Reservations Dashboard and the Reservations HTML UI enable flexible management of demand-driven reservations with:
      • View demand-by date, item, and customer for sales orders, ISOs, and discrete jobs
      • Highlight back-ordered and short demand lines
      • Act to create, update and transfer reservations
    • Oracle Warehouse Management (WMS) adds customer-driven enhancements, including:
      • Pickers can select related tasks from more document types (including delivery, trip, discrete job, zone, and label)
      • The system optimizes a picker’s travel path to allow completion of all picks with a single pass through the warehouse
      • Project-centric organizations can consolidate, ship, and receive materials via nested LPNs for multiple projects and tasks
    • Oracle Inventory allows more flexible capture and tracking of on-hand inventory with Material Classification Codes (MCCs)
    • Improved Warehouse Productivity Analysis
      • Oracle Warehouse Management / MSCA: User-Defined Activities allow managers to define, and warehouse workers to track hours for, activities unrelated to EBS transactions, such as trailer loading/unloading, equipment cleaning, and training.
      • The Oracle Inventory Command Center: Activity Dashboard improves resource utilization and productivity with capabilities to:
        • Track resource (labor and equipment) time per activity, including user-defined activities
        • Compare resource utilization with past days and the average • Identify top performers
        • Assign training plans and assignments based on performance
    • Better Control of Item Information and Landed Cost
      • The Oracle Inventory Command Center: Items Dashboard supports item catalog management across organizations
        • Search and browse catalog items across organizations
        • Compare item transaction attributes setup
        • View item associations with approved suppliers, manufacturers, and related items
      • The Oracle Landed Cost Management Command Center increases visibility to landed costs for better procurement decisions and product profitability
        • Identify and manage landed costs beyond item purchase price • Compare unit landed costs by supplier and country
        • Source efficiently with a better view into charges and taxes

EBS Logistics 2020 Innovation Highlights

EBS Procurement: 

  • Oracle iProcurement provides an enhanced consumer-like shopping experience for employees
    • Enhanced comparison flow streamlines the shopping experience
    • Auto-suggest feature steers employees to catalog items that match non-catalog requests
  • Enhanced Visibility for Procurement Professionals
    • The Oracle Procurement Command Center: Employee Shopping helps procurement professionals improve catalog content based on employee shopping searches
      • Identify goods and services that employees look for but cannot find in the catalog
      • Evaluate details of search terms, frequency and dates
    • The Oracle Procurement Command Center: Sourcing Dashboard increases sourcing productivity
      • Manage sourcing negotiations to objectives
      • Track negotiation cycle times and savings
      • Manage buyer workload
    • The Oracle Procurement Command Center: Item Analysis Dashboard increases procurement team insight across the procurement lifecycle
      • Manage catalog items based on procurement history and performance
      • Compare and select items based on supply source, approved supplier lists, and agreements
  • Enhanced Operational Efficiency for Project Procurement
    • The Oracle Project Procurement: Project Buyer and Procurement Plan Dashboards ensure procurement throughput for a project-centric organization
      • Increase supply chain performance to meet project needs
      • Align supply contract Terms & Conditions with project cash flow
      • Track progress and enhance workload management for better prioritization

EBS Procurement 2020 Innovation Highlights

EBS Projects:

  • More Accurate Financial Management for US Federal Trading Partners
    • G-Invoicing support for US Federal Program Agencies enables more efficient management of intragovernmental buy/sell transactions, including the ability to process and integrate with General Terms & Conditions and Orders
  • Customer-driven Enhancements for Improved Control and Efficiency in Project Costing and Billing Agreements
    • The Oracle Projects Command Center includes an enhanced Budgetary Control Dashboard
    • Oracle Project Costing integrates with Oracle Payroll for supplementary payroll runs
    • Oracle Project Billing adds an Agreement Approval workflow

EBS Projects 2020 Innovation Highlights

EBS Manufacturing:

  • Enhanced Tracking and Traceability in Process Manufacturing
    • The Oracle Process Manufacturing Command Center: Outside Processing Dashboard effectively manages outside processing operations
      • Identify outside processing delays and expedite operations
      • Analyze and act on delays due to supplier deliveries
    • Oracle Process Manufacturing: Enhanced Genealogy for Multi-Lot Batches improves the traceability of multi-lot batches
      • Track individual ingredient lots to a specific product lot
      • Apply to long-running production batches of continuous manufacturing
      • Critical to regulated industries such as Pharmaceuticals and Food & Beverage
    • Oracle Process Manufacturing MES: Multiple Process Parameter Readings enhances tracking of production process parameters
      • Record equipment parameter readings at multiple different times in a production process
      • Applicable to regulated industries such as Pharmaceuticals and Food & Beverage
  • Enhanced Control in Discrete Manufacturing
    • Oracle Discrete Manufacturing: Reservations Support for Component Items provides improved control of component availability for on-time job completion
      • Auto-reserve at item org level upon job creation or release
      • Manually reserve at detail level for the item, subinventory, locator, lot, and serial number
      • Supported for non-WMS organizations
    • Oracle Quality Command Center allows proactive management of product and asset quality to minimize business disruptions
      • Quickly find and resolve quality non-conformances
      • Identify root causes to increase yield
      • Establish better controls on quality deviations to prevent costly recalls
      • Discover under-performing products to take corrective actions
      • Gain insights into the cost of quality to assess business impact
  • Streamlined Flow for Outsourced Manufacturing
    • Consolidation of components on a single subcontracting PO into one replenishment sales order to manufacturing partner
    • Available as part of Oracle Discrete Manufacturing and Oracle Process Manufacturing licenses
  • Simplified Maintenance of Product Information
    • Product Hub/Items provide enhanced maintenance and setup options
    • Update of item multi-row attributes in Web ADI
    • Enhanced UOM setup options
    • Item long description increased from 1000 to 4000 bytes

EBS Manufacturing 2020 Innovation Highlights

EBS Asset Lifecycle Management:

  • Mobile Maintenance App: Supervisor and Technician Overviews facilitate quick action on priority maintenance work
  • Customer-driven Enhancements for Increased Control of Maintenance Activities
    • Oracle Enterprise Asset Management: Work Order and Assets provide many new capabilities, including:
      • Mass assign work orders to employees
      • Notify employees of work order assignments
      • Enhanced Assets Search with creating express work order action and view asset route details
    • Oracle Enterprise Management Command Center adds:
      • Descriptive flexfield support
      • Additional attributes for refinements
      • Operations data set
  • The Oracle Asset Tracking Command Center: Capitalization Dashboard streamlines the asset tracking capitalization flow
    • Quickly act on pending asset conversion transactions to increase throughput
    • Tailor the capitalization process
      • Select asset lines by fixed asset category
      • Leverage request sets and refinements

EBS Asset Lifecycle Management 2020 Innovation Highlights

EBS Service:

    • Increased Productivity in Service Delivery and Contracts
      • Oracle Field Service Command Center: Task Summary Dashboard improves operational performance
        • Quickly find unscheduled and delayed service tasks
        • Immediately act on tasks at risk of missing SLA dates
        • Optimize work allocation based on task priority
      • Oracle TeleService allows faster creation and processing of Service Requests and Charges
        • Create service requests using templates
        • Enhanced Charges HTML UI
        • Support to use of multiple HTML browser tabs
      • Oracle Advanced Scheduler: Enhanced & New Dispatch Center HTML UIs increase productivity with configurable HTML UIs for dispatch service personnel
        • Modern HTML UIs as alternatives to Forms UIs
        • Embedded analytics for schedule quality
      • Oracle Service Contracts reflects customer-driven enhancements for improved productivity, including:
        • Rollback terminations
        • Contract follow-up actions in HTML UI
        • Cascade action in HTML UI
        • New metrics and actions in the Oracle Service Contracts Command Center
    • Increased Repair Velocity in Depot Repair
      • Oracle Depot Repair recommends root cause and best fix based on past service orders
  • Oracle Depot Repair Command Center
        • Repair Technician Dashboard enables efficient processing of repair backlog, increased focus on highest priority work, and quick resolution of escalations holds and late/aging orders
        • Manager: Closed Service Orders Dashboard provides insight to speed, quality, and cost of past repairs and enables investigation of past issues

 

EBS Human Capital Management:

  • Enhanced Control and Visibility for Mobile Timecards Entry and Processing
    • Employees can view overtime and other details based on a Time and Labor Rules Evaluation engine
    • Employees can enter change and late audit reasons, if applicable
  • Streamlined Process to Remove EBS Personal Sensitive Data
    • The EBS Person Data Removal Tool (PDRT) is enhanced with API support

EBS Financial Management:

  • The Oracle Payables Command Center and the Oracle Receivables Command Center add Period Close Dashboards to optimize month-end processing and improve the accounting cycle
    • Gain insight into closing with a view into SLA accounting events
    • Identify potential bottlenecks due to accounting errors and unaccounted events
    • Correct source transactions
  • Enhanced Lease Management for IFRS 16 / ACS 842 (for Financials Customers)
    • Oracle Lease Contracts Command Center enables the curation of lease information, forecast and management of lease costs, and improved lease negotiations
    • Oracle Property Manager: Enhanced Lease Accounting Support improves control and accuracy of IFRS 16 / ACS 842 compliance
  • Enhanced Lease and Finance Management (for Lessors of Equipment)
    • Oracle Lease and Finance Management Command Center drive revenue-generating activities, reduces investment in leases, and improves operational efficiency
    • Oracle Lease and Finance Management adds customer-driven enhancements to increase throughput across the end-to-end process
      • Finance after-market services
      • Simplify transfer and assumption
      • Finance previously-retired or sold assets

EBS Financial Management 2020 Innovation Highlights

 

Applications Technology: 

Expanded Configurations using EBS on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) 

Oracle continues to invest in automation to help companies run EBS on OCI. The automation is focused on:

  • Provisioning of EBS environments on OCI
  • Lift and Shift of fully-configured, on-premises EBS environments to OCI
  • Lifecycle management of EBS environments running on OCI

 

The EBS Cloud Manager provides a UI for managing automated EBS provisioning, lift and shift, and lifecycle management operations on OCI.

Earlier in 2020, Oracle enhanced the EBS Cloud Manager to support additional EBS on OCI configurations. For example, we expanded support for configurations that include Oracle Database 19c.

Many additional EBS Cloud Manager enhancements are in progress.

 

Modern User Experience Enabled via Frameworks 

In 2020, Oracle enhanced the applications of technology frameworks to increase user interface modernization.

  • The ECC Framework: Activity Audit Dashboard lets IT Professionals monitor and fine-tune ECC dashboard usage
    • Track dashboard usage
    • Capture audit trail of user activities on dashboards
    • Tune deployment and ETL processes
    • Monitor search activity
    • Identify and analyze user intents
    • Resolve issues as they arise
  • The Oracle Application Framework (OAF) provides more modern UI interactions to enable quick action
    • My Worklist Popup in Global Header with the option to take action
    • Saved Search: Display as info tile
    • Saved Search: Email Notifications
    • Enhanced Filtering in List Search
    • Query by Example in Tables
    • Export Table Data to PDF

To see a comprehensive list of all the new features, refer to this MOS Note 1302189.1.

Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2.10: Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2.10 is currently available on My Oracle Support as Patch 30399999, includes new updates as well as updates made available in one-off patches on 11.5.10, 12.0, 12.1.3, and prior 12.2 releases. The 12.2.10 patch must be applied on top of Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2. Instructions for downloading and applying the patch are in the “Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2.10 Readme”, Doc ID 2666934.1.

 

Common Questions and Answers About Upgrading EBS to 12.2.10

Q: Is there a direct upgrade path from EBS 12.2.x to 12.2.10?

A: Yes, customers on EBS 12.2.x can apply 12.2.10 directly to their environments. Since EBS 12.2.10 is an online patch, it can be applied while an existing Release 12.2 system is running.

Q: Is there a direct upgrade path from EBS R12.1 to R12.2.10?

A: No, customers on EBS R12.1 need to upgrade to 12.2 first, then they could apply 12.2.10.

Q: Is there a direct upgrade path from EBS R12.0 to R12.2.10?

A: No, customers on EBS R12.0 need to upgrade to Release 12.2 first, then they can apply 12.2.10.

Q: Is there a direct upgrade path from EBS 11i to 12.2.10?

A: No, customers on Release 11i need to upgrade to Release 12.2 first, then they could apply 12.2.10.

 

Upgrading to EBS R12.2.10 or Migrating to Oracle ERP cloud?

Regardless of what your next step in your ERP roadmap is, whether that is migrating to Oracle ERP Cloud or upgrading to Oracle EBS R12.2’s latest release, you need to expedite and prepare for your transition away from 12.1. Join our webinar series and learn why you need to take action now and how best to move forward with your ERP plans.

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