How to Fix Merged Columns in BI Publisher Excel Output in Oracle Fusion

So, you have created RTF template which has output in excel form. 

But in the output, some of the columns are shown merged. Please see below column G and H are merged under SDO header -

But the users don't want merged columns and you don't see this in RTF template at design time .. So how to fix this ?

Here are the steps -

- Navigate to BI Publisher Catalog 

- Go to Report Properties - > Formatting

- Look for the property 'Keep Values in same column'

- Set the value to True

- Save

- Run the report and you will see the columns are no more merged.

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How to create ESS Job Set in Oracle Fusion

We've seen the definition and structure of a custom ESS Job in Oracle Fusion here

Now let's see how to create a job set comprising of multiple ESS jobs.

ESS Job Set is useful when there's a need to run multiple ESS jobs for any activity (in sequence or parallel) in Oracle Cloud. Basically, the traditional Concurrent Request Set from EBS has been replaced with an ESS Job Set in Oracle ERP Cloud. 

Let's see how to define an ESS Job Set.

Below example will create a job set which will run two HCM jobs shown below. Read Only initial parameter values come from the job set but  non-read only parameters come from the job definition.

1. Identify the jobs to be included in ESS Job Set -
    a. Generate Cloud Usage Metrics (seeded job)
    b. XX HCM Job (custom job)

2. Run these jobs individually. This will ensure that the jobs are running without issues and users will be able to collect  runtime information about the ESS jobs.

3. Create Job Set

- Navigate to the product specific task. In this example "Manage Custom Enterprise Scheduler Jobs for HCM Core Processes"

- Click on Manage Job Sets tab.

- Enter the new job set details.

- Press on the Add Job Set Step button to add the first job details.

- Give a name for Step ID.

- Search for first Job. For example search by Name CloudMetricsNumberOfNamedUsers.

- Click on the Add Job Set Step button to add the second job details

- It should look like this -

- Under the System Properties add the SYS_effectiveApplication as the value of the application identified in the second SQL from Step 3. In this case EarHcmEss

- Save the Job Set

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Default BU Specific Templates for Receivables Transactions in Oracle Fusion

Under Bill Presentment Architecture in ERP Cloud, we can create custom templates for AR Invoices, Debit Memos and Credit Memos. But what if we want BU specific templates for these receivables transactions 

We are going to take a look at the setups to default Business Unit specific Templates in Print Receivables Transactions.

- First, create custom templates in BI for each Business Unit

- Now, navigate to Task: 'Manage Standard Lookups'

    - Create Lookup type “ARBPA_SELECT_INV_TEMPLATE”

    - Module: Receivables

    - Create Lookup Code : <Business Unit Name>

    - Meaning: <Custom Template name>

    - Description: <Default Output format>

- Save and Close.

- Now, navigate to Scheduled Processes and select ESS Job: 'Print Receivables Transactions'

- Provide Business Unit Name in the parameter. You'll see that the corresponding Custom Template Name defined in the Lookup will appear in the parameter -

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Oracle Developer Connect Portal and SOAP Web Services in Oracle Fusion

Oracle Developer Connect portal is an integrated repository of all the SOAP Web Services provided by Oracle ERP cloud.


What is it ?

- A cloud developer portal that runs on your cloud instance and provides information about the specific set of services deployed to your cloud instance.

- Very useful resource to integrate or extend Oracle Cloud Applications and develop customized business solutions.

- Discover business object services, look up service endpoints and view metadata.

- Includes definitions for all SOAP-based web services that are marked for external use.

- Reflects the current service interface and includes patches as well as service data object customizations, if any.


What are the prerequisites ?

- To use the Developer Connect portal, your job role must have one of the following privileges -

FND_INTEGRATION_SPECIALIST_JOB

FND_APPLICATION_DEVELOPER_JOB ZCA_CUSTOMER_RELATIONSHIP_MANAGEMENT_APPLICATION_ADMINISTRATOR_JOB. 

- Alternatively, you can create a custom role with ATK_WEB_SERVICE_INFO_ACCESS_PRIV entitlement and then grant the custom role to desired user

What does it offer ?

- Searchable list of all the available web services.

- Quick access to complete URLs for the Service Endpoints as well as WSDL locations.

- Easy to UI with detailed information including service statuses and meaningful descriptions.

- Additional details on all related Service Operations, Service Data Objects and Sample payloads.

How to access ?

- In your ERP Cloud instance, Navigate to Tools > Developer Connect

- Search for the desired Web Service

- Locate Web Service Summary and WSDL

- Web Service Description Language (WSDL) - Describes structure of a web service. Provides location and the operations offered by a given service

Sample -

- Locate Web Service Operations

- Locate Web Service Payload details

- Locate Web Service Service Data Object structure

- XML Schema Definition (XSD)

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Web Service Security Policies in Oracle Fusion

Indeed we can use basic authentication (login/password) to authenticate all Webservices in Oracle ERP Cloud .. but what if we want to have a better level of security ? Let's see more effective methods to securely access Webservices in Oracle Fusion.

Oracle Web Services Manager (OWSM) policies enforce and enable web service security in Oracle Fusion Applications.

Whilst the basic authentication might be sufficient in some cases, there are more secure ways to use Fusion Applications web services.

This involves the use of a secure session header token. The token expires within a few hours of being generated.

Tokens are encrypted and signed.

SOAP Web services policies -

• SOAP web services are secured by a global server-side policy called oracle/wss11_saml_or_username_token_with_message_protection_service_policy
  
  
• SOAP WSDLs contain an X509 certificate in binary format.
• This needs to be imported into the client machine certificate key store.
  
  
• This helps the client application in encrypting the web service requests made to ERP Cloud and the cloud environment decrypts the request upon receipt.
  
  
• Additionally, a certificate needs to be generated on the client machine and then imported into the Fusion Applications environment certificate keystore. Oracle Support can help with importing the certificate into a Fusion Applications environment.

REST Web services policies -

• REST services are secured by a single global server-side policy called oracle/multi_token_over_ssl_rest_service_policy
  
  
• This policy supports three different authentication mechanisms -
• Basic Authentication - A combination of the username and password are base64 encoded and passed in the header to authenticate to use the Web Service.
  
  
• JWT https header token
  - JSON Web Tokens (JWT) are used to store session data
  - Oracle Fusion Applications stores session information within a JWT token and therefore it can be used to maintain a session.
  - The JWT token is retrieved during the authentication process and is then placed in the header of every REST service request.
  - JWT tokens expire after a few hours and a new one is necessary to continue the session.
  
  
• SAML 2.0 https header token
  - Similar to JWT, Security Assertion Markup Language 2.0 (SAML 2.0) tokens can be stored in the HTTP header to authenticate and authorize a user.

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