How to Fix duplicate timecard notifications and approval issue in Oracle Fusion Time and Labor (OTL)

In Fusion Time and Labor we came across a requirement where where every entry made on the timecard was supposed to be routed for an approval. We configured this solution by defining ‘Entry Level Approvals’ for the timecards.

Approvals at all the timecard entry levels should be completed/approved to move the time card into “Approved” status. If there are multiple approvers involved in the BPM workflow then each of the approvers must approve their corresponding entries.

While implementing this in Entry Level Approvals (ELA), we observed that multiple approvers were receiving multiple notifications for the same time card.  

Also, when both the approvers were approving their respective entries, the timecard was still remaining in Submitted status instead of moving to Approved status. Due to this issue, users' timecards were not getting approved at all.


Here's what can be done to fix this type of issues.


- Navigate to Setup and Maintenance

- In Search, look for 'Manage Task Configurations for Human Capital Management' task

- Open the task. This will take us to Business Process Management (BPM) worklist

- Search for task 'TimecardApprovalELA'

- This will show us two tasks one for Project Timecards and other for just Timecards. This is because Entry level Approvals are available for Project Costing Consumers as well as Payroll Consumers.

- Let's click on TimecardAprovalELA to edit it.

- Once opened, navigate to Notifications tab

- Click More

- Find and Check the box that says 'Don't send multiple notifications for the same human task event'

- Let's make sure Group Notification Configuration is set to 'Send Individual Emails with separate task form based on locale'

- Optionally, we can also enable 'Send task attachments with email notifications' so that attachments are sent to approvers via email

- Now, let's navigate to Configuration tab

- Scroll down and locate Task Aggregation option and set it to 'Once per task'

- Optionally, we can also configure other features of the approval such as allowing participants to route the approvals to others or allow them to edit future participants etc.

- Save and Commit the changes

With above configurations, we can fix the issue of BPM sending multiple notifications to multiple approvers when the Timecard contains multiple rows for two different assignments. 

This will also fix the issue of Timecard not getting approved even after all the underlying entries have been approved by corresponding managers.

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How to customize the BPM Notifications in Oracle Fusion Cloud

In this post we learned about customizing Workflow Notifications using BIP templates and in this post we learned about customizing the pages using Sandboxes.

Now, let's learn about customizing some BPM Notifications using Sandbox option. 

But before we begin, let's understand Why is this option needed ? This is because there are many BPM Notifications which do not have a BIP component associated with them. In such cases, we cannot customize a BIP template to add our customizations and that's why we need to use Sandboxes to enter and customize such BPM notifications. So let's see how it can be done.

- First, we need to create a Sandbox

- Navigate to Configuration -> Sandboxes

- Create Sandbox

- Select Page Composer tool, give a suitable name for the Sandbox and click Create and Enter

- Now click on the Bell icon (Notifications) and click on Show All button

- Now, click on Worklist button

- This will open the BPM Worklist page

- Navigate to Administrative Tasks option

- Now, lets select 'Any' Option under Status and click Advanced option under Search

- Now, find the BPM task you want to customize, select it and click Ok

- Click Search

- This will show all the notifications matching the search criteria

- Let's click on one of the notifications

- Locate the Edit option on top right corner and click on it

- This will load a new page that provides us the access to customize this BPM Notification

- Let's click on Structure tab

- Now, lets assume we want to add a custom static text in Recommended Actions section

- Let's click on Recommended Actions Section and then click on + sign in the Right Pane

- Click on Components

- Let's select Text component and click Add and then click Close

- Now, we will see a new Text box has been added to this section

- Now, navigate to Add Content tab

- Now, click on Edit Text option under the newly created Text box

- Enter the custom text message in the box and click Done Editing

- Now click on Close button

- This will take us back to the list of all the BPM Notifications based on our search

- Let's click on any of the notifications in this list

- A pop-up will show this notification and we will be able to see our changes are reflecting under Recommended Actions section

- Now, we have successfully incorporated the BPM Notification customization but it's still not available to any other user in this environment since the Sandbox has not been published

- Let's close the BPM Worklist page and click on our Sandbox name in left top corner and click on Publish

- This will show a pop-up asking for confirmation. Click Yes

- This will take us to the Sandbox details Page where we will be able to see the Page Composer under the Active Tools section and we will also see the actual Page (.jspx file) that we modified by doing the BPM Notification Customization

- Let's click on Publish. This will ask us the final confirmation because this action cannot be undone. Click on Yes to publish these changes so that the customized BPM Notification is available to all the users in this environment

That's it. With these steps, we have successfully customized a BPM Task Notification using Sandbox feature.

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How to integrate Fusion Cloud REST APIs into Excel using VBCS

In earlier posts, we have seen how the REST APIs in Fusion Cloud work and how we can leverage them for various use cases. Normally we invoke REST APIs either via integration layers like Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) or some other cloud platforms like Azure, APEX etc.

But, what if there's a requirement to fetch the Fusion Cloud data into an Excel sheet ? Well, technically in some cases we can use ADFDI to achieve some part of this but it's not a desired option as it also opens options like inserting or updating new data into Fusion Clous. What if the requirement is only to provide an option to the users where they can refresh/fetch the latest Fusion data into Excel sheet with just one click ? Well, we can achieve this by using Oracle Visual Builder Excel add-in. Let's see how we to do this.

- Download Oracle Visual Builder Add-in for Excel from here

https://www.oracle.com/downloads/cloud/visual-builder-addin-downloads.html

- Install the Add-in on your machine

- Once installed, you will be able to see the Add-in in Excel options as shown below. Make sure it's enabled.

- Open a new workbook in Excel

- Now we will see a new option named 'Oracle Visual Builder' in Excel menu

- Let's click on Designer option

- This will bring up a pop-up asking the Web Address of the Fusion REST API

- We have to enter the Web Address as Instance Link/ followed by REST API endpoint followed by 'describe'

- For example, let's assume we want to invoke Get All Suppliers REST API to fetch all suppliers from Fusion Cloud.

Get All Suppliers API:
Instance_URL/fscmRestApi/resources/11.13.18.05/suppliers

- Now, the Add-in will try to connect to your Fusion Instance and you will be asked to provide Login credentials for a valid Fusion user.

- After successful login, you will be shown all the business objects provided by the REST API

For example, for our Supplier REST API, we will see Business Objects pertaining to Suppliers, Business Classifications, Contacts, Sites etc.

- Select the business object you would like to populate in the Excel and click Next. Let's select Suppliers for our use case

- Select Table Layout on the next screen and click Next

- Now, we will be asked to select any Optional business objects on next screen. Let's not select any in our use case and click Next.

- Click Finish

- Once done, you will see a new Sheet named Suppliers has been created and you will also see Layout Designer section on the right side

- To avoid performance issues, Oracle restricts the download of bulk data. So we have to mention at least some search criteria. This is very much like the Standard Suppliers page/form.

Under Query, we must enter at least one search criteria. Once done, click on the Download Data option under the Add-in menu.

let's add a search criteria for Supplier name containing 'xyz'

-  Click on Download Data button

- Once download is completed, you will see the Status details in a new section on the right side and actual data on left side. In our case, it extracted 5 Suppliers from the REST API.

- As we can see, by default, it shows all the fields provided by REST API under business object. So let's remove additional fields and keep only the ones we need.

To do so, let's navigate to Columns section in Layout Designer, select the columns we want to remove and click Delete button.

- Now, let's click on Download Data option again and this time it will download all the eligible Suppliers based on our search criteria and will generate the sheet with only our selected columns.

So, this way we can leverage Visual Builder Excel Add-in to provide flexibility to users by creating some excel sheets to show certain information from Fusion Cloud. This can also be used to create or update information in Fusion Cloud, depending on which REST API we use and base on the user account selected to invoke the REST API.

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