FINDINI 4.0.15 Release - Upcoming April System Outages for Oracle Financials Systems

April 11, 2019

The Spring 2019 FINDINI 4.0.15 release will be available to users on Monday April 29, 2019.

Please continue to review updated release messages and outage information that will be posted in the March & April e-News articles, on the Oracle Financial splash pages, on https://oracle.fss.finance.harvard.edu/oracle-ebs-findini-4015-release-notes, and on the sites listed below.

Short Summary:

The focus of this release continues to be with our collaboration, development, testing, and rollout for two of our ITCRB projects, Buy-to-Pay and Revenue Management. We are also rolling out the new CAPs Builders Risk insurance function, a CPATH application upgrade, & the new Fixed Assets point in time Asset Workbench Report. In addition, we are addressing the standard security and compliance software and database patching to keep EBS and CPATH up to date with many industry security regulations and requirements. These will include updates for PSU, ATG, CPU, JDK, JRE, & Linux & WebLogic Operating System patching.

Beginning Monday, April 29, 2019, the B2P Supplier Portal goes live. In anticipation of this transition, the Oracle Vendor Request Form will sunset on Wednesday April 24th. All vendor adds, updates, and reactivations, along with all supporting documentation, must be received by the central Vendor Setup team by 4 p.m. on Wednesday April 24, 2019. After this date, vendor requests must be submitted via the B2P Supplier Portal beginning Monday April 29th. When logging into Oracle Financials, users with access to the Vendor Request Form will no longer see the Vendor Request Main Menu option. For those users who will be granted application permissions by their Authorized Requestors to request new Vendors and request maintenance for vendors, the new application link will be found on the HUIT Financials Systems Applications page: HUIT Financial Systems Applications under the Buy-to-Pay section called Supplier Portal (Jaggaer Total Supplier Management system).

Oracle Financials Outage - 6:00 p.m. on Friday, April 26th until 7:00 a.m. on Monday, April 29th to accommodate the installation of this release. CPATH (Capital Planning at Harvard), DMS Financial Data Warehouse, & HART Reporting will also be offline during this outage window. CPATH & DMS Financial Data Warehouse are also having a release during this weekend.

Please review the Detailed Summary below for much more pertinent information regarding what this release may mean to you.

Detailed Summary:

The focus of this release continues to be with our collaboration, development, testing, and rollout for two of our ITCRB projects, Buy-to-Pay and Revenue Management. We are also rolling out the new CAPs Builders Risk insurance function, a CPATH application upgrade, & the new Fixed Assets point in time Asset Workbench Report. In addition, we are addressing the standard security and compliance software and database patching to keep EBS and CPATH up to date with many industry security regulations and requirements. These will include updates for PSU, ATG, CPU, JDK, JRE, & Linux & WebLogic Operating System patching.

Beginning Monday, April 29, 2019, the B2P Supplier Portal goes live. During our release, we will be converting all active Vendor and active Vendor Site records to the new Supplier Portal application. In anticipation of this transition, the Oracle Vendor Request Form will sunset on Wednesday April 24th. All vendor adds, updates, and reactivations, along with all supporting documentation, must be received by the central Vendor Setup team by 4 p.m. on Wednesday April 24, 2019. After this date, vendor requests must be submitted via the B2P Supplier Portal beginning Monday April 29th. When logging into Oracle Financials, users with access to the Vendor Request Form will no longer see the Vendor Request Main Menu option. For those users who will be granted application permissions by their Authorized Requestors to request new Vendors and request maintenance for vendors, the new application link will be found on the HUIT Financials Systems Applications page: HUIT Financial Systems Applications under the Buy-to-Pay section called Supplier Portal (Jaggaer Total Supplier Management system). For questions and further guidance, please visit the B2P page located here or contact the Vendor Set-Up team at vendorsetup_ufs@harvard.edu.

Key deliverables of the Spring 2019 FINDINI 4.0.15 Release include:

  • Several new items to support the Buy-to-Pay project implementation including the Conversion & Supplier interfacing for the new Jaggaer Total Supplier Management system which will replace the Vendor Request Form. We are also working towards delivering the new individual digital disbursement processing option (Zelle) within the AP module.
  • Several new items to support the final pieces for the Revenue Management rollout (Accounts Receivable via credit card processing).
  • CPATH application upgrade to EcoSys 8.4.02 & the implementation of SAML Harvard Key authentication for the CPATH application.
  • CAPS and CPATH enhancements which automate the Builder's Risk Insurance (BRI) coverage request process. New BRI requests (or amendments to existing ones) will now be sent to RMAS automatically upon approval of a CA, and the project manager will receive an email notification from CPATH once he coverage request has been approved.  The coverage request and associated certificate of insurance are then reviewable within the Project information screen of CPATH.
  • Creation of a new Fixed Assets Reporting view & the delivery of our first point in time Asset Workbench Report. This view will be the basis for additional point in time Fixed Assets reports coming soon.
  • Continued Improvements with Java Web Start to allow user experience improvements for Mac PC users with Firefox 60.x now able to open Oracle Forms on Mac V10.13 & V10.14 using the Java Web Start Technology.
  • Applying the standard software security patching, weblogic upgrading, and database patching in order to keep the EBS & CPATH systems up to date with many industry security regulations and requirements. These will include the January-2019 updates for PSU, CPU, JDK, JRE, Weblogic middleware, & Linux Operating System patching.

System Outages:

The University's financial systems will be unavailable from Friday, April 26 at 6:00 p.m. until Monday, April 29 at 7:00 a.m. to complete the installation of this release. The Oracle EBS Financial systems that will be offline during this time include:

  • Accounts Payable
  • Accounts Payable Adjustment Form for Assets
  • Accounts Receivable
  • iReceivables & Collections
  • Bottomline
  • CAPS
  • Cash Management (CMRA)
  • Chart Security Maintenance Application (CSMA)
  • Chart of Accounts GL Validator
  • FedEx
  • General Ledger
  • Oracle Assets
  • HCOM & iProcurement
  • PCard
  • Vendor Request
  • Web ADI
  • Web Reimbursement

Also, CPATH (Capital Planning at Harvard), DMS Financial Data Warehouse, & HART Reporting will be offline during this same outage of Friday, April 26 at 6:00 p.m. until Monday, April 29 at 7:00 a.m.. CPATH & DMS Financial Data Warehouse are having a release during this weekend.

Additional Release Details for FINDINI 4.0.15:

The FINDINI 4.0.15 release will include a Java JRE update to 1.8.0_201. For Mac desktop users only, when logging in for the first time after April 29, those users will be required to download this updated Java JRE. This is needed for Mac users who rely on the Safari 11 browser using Java JRE plug-in to open Oracle Forms. Please note, that Safari 12 and higher used on the Mac, no longer supports Java JRE plug-in, thus Oracle forms will not open using this browser. Any Safari browser can be continued to be used for any Web-pages/HTML based modules in Oracle EBS, however, Safari browsers on the Mac are currently incompatible with Java Web Start Technologies. Also, for Mac users, with this release, Firefox version 60.x and greater will now allow Oracle Forms to open using Java Web Start Technology as long as the base level of JRE 1.8.0_201 is installed. The Firefox browser can also be used for any Web-pages/HTML based modules in Oracle EBS. If users receive a popup message that a more recent version is available, they should NOT act upon the request.

Windows PC desktop users will no longer have to install Java JRE updates for Oracle Financials due to the Java Web Start technology. Oracle Forms will no longer prompt Windows PC users to update their Java JRE. All universal browsers, including Safari, will successfully open Oracle Forms on a windows PC using the Java Web Start technology.  At a minimum, they must have JAVA JRE 1.8.0_141 which was pushed to them several FINDINI releases ago. If needed for other applications, there is no harm for those users to update to JAVA JRE 1.8.0_201.

Further information regarding Java Web Start Technologies can be found at https://oracle.fss.finance.harvard.edu/user-resources.

Appendix:

Summary of changes include:

Summary of Changes

Oracle Financials desktop standards can be found on site https://harvard.service-now.com/ithelp?id=sc_cat_item&sys_id=05d7a432dbacc7c083a2f3f7bf961977 under the Enterprise Application Supported Desktop Configurations section. These desktop standards will be updated for this release during our cutover. Further helpful tips & release information can be found on sites http://fss.finance.harvard.edu/popular-resources & http://oracle.fss.finance.harvard.edu/releases & https://oracle.fss.finance.harvard.edu/user-resources.

It is highly recommended for all users to subscribe to the https://status.huit.harvard.edu/ page. This will enable status alerts and notifications to be received by the users regarding all HUIT applications.

Click here for further E-news publication information regarding this release:

March Edition: https://admin-enews.eureka.harvard.edu/news/findini-4015-release-upcoming-april-system-outages-oracle-financials-systems-0

April Edition: https://admin-enews.eureka.harvard.edu/news/findini-4015-release-upcoming-april-system-outages-oracle-financials-systems-1

For questions please contact the HUIT Service Desk at ithelp@harvard.edu or call them at 5-7777.