Descriptive Flexfields (DFFs) in Oracle Fusion Cloud are a powerful feature that allows users to extend ERP Cloud by adding custom fields to capture additional information without altering the underlying application framework. They are designed to be flexible and can be configured without programming changes.
Key Features of DFFs in Fusion Cloud:
Customizability: Add fields to capture additional data relevant to your business processes.
Flexibility: Enable or disable fields based on specific criteria.
Non-Technical approach: Configure fields through the application’s user interface without doing much technical work.
Context Sensitivity: Create context-sensitive fields that display based on specific conditions.
Segmentation: Define multiple fields within a single DFF.
Let's see the steps to configure DFF in Oracle ERP Cloud.
- Navigate to Setup and Maintenance
- Search for 'Manage Descriptive Flexfields'
- Let's take an example of Invoices. Search for Invoices.
- Click on Edit
- Under Global Segments section, Click + sign to configure a new field
- Let's create a new field using ATTRIBUTE1 and name it My Description. I'm using 30 Characters valueset as I want it to be a free text.
- Save and Close
- Let's add two more fields by following the above process -
My Date:
DS Comments:
- By now, out Global Segments should look like this -
- At this moment, we have configured the regular DFFs using Global Segments for Invoice form.
Configuring Context Sensitive DFFs in Oracle Oracle Fusion Cloud:
Context sensitive DFF lets us use the same underlying database column by different segments in different contexts.
For example, we can define a Location context that uses the following attributes:
ATTRIBUTE1 column for city
ATTRIBUTE2 column for state
ATTRIBUTE3 column for zip
We can also define a Contact context that uses the same columns for other attributes:
ATTRIBUTE1 column for email
ATTRIBUTE2 column for phone
ATTRIBUTE3 column for fax
Let's see how to configure Context Sensitive DFFs in Oracle Fusion
- Click on Manage Contexts button
- Click + Icon
- Similarly, create another context named My Group 2
- Now, let's create three Segments under My Group 1 Context as shown below:
- And similarly, create two different Segments under My Group 2 Context as shown below:
- Now, we need to deploy our DFF.
- Click on Deploy Flexfield button
- Once successfully deployed, click OK to close the popup
- Now, it's time to verify how our DFF segments appear on Invoices screen
- Navigate to Payables and Create a new Invoice
- Click Show More and navigate to Additional Information tab
- We can see our Global Segments as shown below -
- Now let's navigate to My Group drop-down. This is our Context Sensitive DFF.
- Let's select My Group 1, and we will see the segments pertaining to this specific context are shown:
- Let's select context My Group 2 and we will see the segments pertaining to this context are shown:
Conclusion:
This way we can configure the regular (Global) as well as Context Specific DFFs in Oracle Fusion. DFFs help us configure additional information in ERP without the need of any technical configurations and/or coding. With Context Sensitive DFFs, we can use the same set of ATTRIBUTE columns in multiple contexts facilitating capturing of variety of additional information required for business.