Introduction

As some of you might already be aware that as of current release of Oracle Fusion Cloud Application we do not have the feasibility to associate a Custom LOV to an ESS Job Parameter. One either has to use a Text Input or have to submit the BIP Report from the Schedule Option available.

However, there is an ever-increasing need to have a Custom LOV input available while submitting anESS Job some of the most common reasons being:

1. User Friendly:

Business Users who have been working with earlier ERP products (specifically EBS and I guess applicable to other ERP Products too) are used to have to a Custom LOV available while submitting a request. Having the similar setup while submitting a Report in Cloud obviously brings about a high degree of comfort and easiness.

2. Ensure Data Validity:

In case we do not have a LOV associated with a parameter, we do not have any control over the input passed on by the end user. Having a List of Values ensures that only valid values are passed and user does not has to worry about the specific data values to be passed. They can simply choose any of the available values.

Unfortunately, till date this feature is not available in Oracle Cloud Application (I hope this comes out early, would bring a smile on lot of faces for sure…) and so an alternative option is to Submit the BIP Report using Schedule Option . But this option too comes with some challenges like:

1. Provide Access to BI Catalog:

In order to allow end-users to run a Report one would have to provide access to the BI Catalog Section, which has options of Edit/Delete too available there. There might be instances that some of the Report Components might get accidentally modified/deleted. We would like to avoid such a situation

2. Too Many Reports Available:

The BI Catalog displays all available reports and does not necessarily points out the specific report users are interested to submit.

As an alternative, one might consider creating a Custom Payroll Flow Pattern, which allows us to associate a Custom LOV (List of Value) with a BIP Report Parameter. In this article, we would try to demonstrate how to get this done.

Pre-requisites

We would need to have two custom components created (namely Custom Lookup and a Custom Report) created.

1. Custom Lookup:

We have a custom lookup named ‘RECORDS_TO_SHOW’ present in the application, which holds numeric values like 1,2,3,4 and 5.

Navigation: Navigator->Setup and Maintenance -> Manage Common Lookups

2. Custom Report: We have a custom report created in the application, which asks for an input (Records to Show) and displays the same number of records. For example it would display 1,2,3,4 and 5 records in the report when the input is 1,2,3,4 and 5 respectively.

Creating Custom Payroll Flow Pattern

Now since we have all the pre-requisite components present we may start with creation of a Custom Payroll Flow Pattern.

We would need to use the below navigation:

Navigation: Navigator-> Payroll (Checklist) ->Manage Payroll Flow Patterns

We would need to populate the following details into the UI

Once done we would need to click on ‘Next ’ button and this would take us to the new screen

We need not make any changes on this page and we can proceed further by clicking the ‘ Next’ Button:

This page too does not need any modifications and we can safely move on to the next train stop (Yes! by Clicking ‘ Next’ Button again)

We would now need to click on the Add Icon (+) highlighted in yellow colour in above snapshot and populate the following details:

Once populated the screen would appear:

We now need to Click on ‘Next ’ Button and we would land up on the Task Parameters task, This UI task has already multiple parameters along with Report Name and Report Path fields present.

Since we only have one input parameter for our report, we would need to delete all other parameters and once done we should be left out with only three parameters namely Report Path, Report Name and Records to Show (the name we have given to our Report Parameter)

Details of the Report Path Parameter is:

Details of Report Name Parameter is:

Details of First Argument (Renamed as Records to Show)

Once all the changes are done we would move to the review page:

We can now submit the same and the Payroll Flow Pattern will be created.

Running the Payroll Flow Pattern and Verifying Results

As a last step, we would be running the Payroll Flow pattern and verify the result.

Navigation: Submit a Process or Report

We could see that a LOV appears with a predefined list of available values to choose from.

We would select 5 for this run and would expect to get 5 records fetched in the report.

We would now click on the ‘Ok and View Checklist’ to find the results.

We will see that the results are in complete sync with our expectation.

Inference

With this we have now come to the end of our article. I hope you guys have now got an idea of how to create a Custom Payroll Flow Pattern and associate a Drop Down List with the Custom BIP Report Parameter thereby allowing the end user the ease and flexibility to choose valid value from a predefined list.

Thanks all for your time and have a nice day ahead.. Good Bye till we meet next time…

Ashish Harbhajanka

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