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Restricted members and aliases in Oracle Planning Cloud

Recently, while implementing Oracle Planning Cloud for a new client, we experienced an issue where attribute dimensions were not being deployed successfully to the underlying Essbase cube – which was definitely not ideal! As we had never experienced this issue before, we opened an SR with Oracle, and (long story short) the issue was occurring because we had unknowingly used a restricted word as a member name and also had trailing spaces in a couple of aliases. Once we removed the restricted member names/aliases, the attribute dimensions were successfully deployed during the refresh. Unfortunately, these restricted members do not show as an error when refreshing the database, even if used in the outline, so hopefully this is something Oracle can add either as an error or as a warning on the Activity Report. In the meantime, it’s worth double checking the naming restrictions, especially if you seem to be experiencing some strange behaviour with Essbase. Some of the main restrictio...
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Customising EPM File Exports with Groovy

For this blog we will be covering a common use case of exporting data from an EPM application to a file, for upload to a third-party system. While it is possible to export data from EPM Planning using the “Data Export to File” functionality in Data Integration, the formatting options available are quite limited and typically would require some manual file manipulation before it can be uploaded. This is where groovy comes in! In fact, to get the best of both worlds, we will be using a combination of both Data Integration AND groovy scripting , to produce a highly customised file format. This allows us to utilise the powerful mapping capabilities of Data Integration, as well as the file manipulation of groovy rules. Step 1 – Export to File in Data Integration For the first step, we will use the built in functionality to export data to a file. For details of how to do this, please refer to my previous blog here: https://lydia-maksoud-epm.blogspot.com/2025/01/exporting-epm-plan...
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Using Approval Groups in EPM Planning

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Approval groups are a welcome addition to the workflow approvals setup in EPM, which now allows you to submit segments of data defined by multiple dimensions, rather than just one or two. In the past we’ve been limited to submitting by Entity, with an optional secondary dimension; now however, with approval groups, we can setup approvals to submit portions of data which are much more specific and reference combinations from multiple dimensions if needed. For example, if the Revenue team is split into 3 Product streams, plus another stream for Cost submissions, then a combination of Entity, Account and Product is needed. Step 1 – Setup Approval Groups The first step is to create the required approval groups under Application -> Approval Groups . Create a new approval group and add the relevant dimensions. For example below, for Fuel Margin, I’ve selected the Revenue/COS and Fuel metric accounts, combined with the Fuel products. This means when this approval group is submi...
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