Introduction

The world is changing at a fast pace and Oracle ERP Cloud is trying hard to keep up with the pace. New features and enhancements are incorporated in each major release and efforts are made by development team to ensure that the application is simpler, easy to use and mitigates the challenges faced by customers.

While the development, release and timing of the new features and functionality is yet to be announced let-us try to have a sneak peek into what is coming in:

1. Enhanced Add Person Flows

For those who already had an opportunity to work with Oracle HCM Cloud Application ( known as Fusion Application beforehand) they must have noticed that while we used to perform a ‘Hire an Employee’ Transaction there were several train stops with one of them being ‘Employment Information’

Along with capturing assignment related details like Business Units, Job, Grade, Position, Location, Department. In addition, other related fields, the page used to capture the Compensation Related Information too. While this was good from one point as it was one single page where you were able to enter all details, there were suggestions that it became too lengthy a page and people had trouble scrolling the same. To address this concern the Development team has now introduced a new page ‘Compensation and Other Information’. As a result, employment and compensation information is captured in the same transaction and one would not need to scroll down too.

2. Enhanced Manage Direct Reports

‘Add Direct Reports’ allows adding new direct reports and even assigning different type of managers like Line Manager, Regional Manager. One can make change by selecting or deselecting the direct reports in a single click. I hope that below snapshots would give a clear idea:

Manage Direct Reports functionality is also included in the human resources specialist processes like

• Hire

• Add Contingent Worker

• Create Work Relationship

• Global Transfer

• Global Temporary Assignment

• Temporary Assignment

• Add Assignment

• Add Work Terms

• End Assignment

• End Work Terms

3. Changes in Customization Level for Specific Person Lookup Types

Different legacy system has different codes for storing some fields. As such, it was a major challenge to get the data into Oracle Cloud ERP as the lookup types were ‘Extensible’. What that meant was while users were allowed to add new values they could not add/edit pre-existing ones. This limitation is removed in Release 12 and you can now customize your own values for the following Lookup Types as they are converted from a customization level of extensible to user:

• CONTACT

• MAR_STATUS

• PER_HIGHEST_EDUCATION_LEVEL

• PER_NATIONAL_IDENTIFIER_TYPE

• PER_ETHNICITY

• PER_VISA_PERMIT_TYPE

4. Availability of New System Level Lookup Types

Predefined Legislative and Statutory Reports use the system level lookup types, which are as follows:

1. ORA_PER_CONTACT

2. ORA_PER_MAR_STATUS

3. ORA_PER_HIGHEST_EDUCATION_LEVE

4. ORA_PER_NATIONAL_IDENTIFIER_TY

5. ORA_PER_ETHNICITY

6. ORA_PER_VISA_PERMIT_TYPE

5. Enhanced Duplicate Person Validation

Until release 11 there was no control given while Duplicate person Validation was performed during new Person Record creation via Worker Service. Starting Release 12 a new option is provided (named as ‘Person Creation Service Duplicate Check’) under Manage Enterprise HCM Information

6. Salary Update Allowed While Performing Change Working Hours Task in Manager Self Service

Part time employees who are paid basis the number of hours they have worked needs to get their salary details updated too whenever there was a change in Working Hours. This task had to be manually performed once the Change Working Hours transaction was completed until Release 11.

7. Enhanced Areas of Responsibility

Scope can also be defined based on Job Family and Job Function. ‘Recruiting’ has been added as a new Responsibility. New Scope attributes based on Recruiting Type and Hierarchies have been added.

8. Worker User Accounts Not Created Automatically during Bulk Load

In Release 12, the enterprise HCM options are ignored when you load workers in bulk. To give you greater control, the GeneratedUserAccountFlag and SendCredentialsEmailFlag attributes of the Worker object are now set to N (No) by default. With this enhancement, unwanted user accounts will no longer be created automatically when you load historical data in bulk for workers whose work relationships are terminated.

Inference / Conclusion

All the above are only few of the enhancements / features available in Release 12 (I have concentrated only on Global HR Module ) and how the application behaves when this new features are put to use is still to be seen. However, from an end-user perspective some of the features look promising but the real value they are able to deliver can only be seen when customers start using it and provide a feedback.

Ashish Harbhajanka

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