Manage FCCS (Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud Service) Support

 As famously said, “Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think”

Today, after receiving new target of streamlining FCCS support for one of our clients and try to finally achieve managed service contract instead of staff augmented one, I started thinking about some basics and here is the highlight.

What is FCCS?

Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud Service provides an end to end solution for both effectively and efficiently managing the consolidation and close process.
Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud Service ensures that processes are: dependable and
correct, timely and transparent, streamlined and efficient and, compliant and auditable.

 FCCS features

Ø  Close and Consolidation : Cash flow, Balance sheet, Income statement, Rollovers, Call-to-Actions, and more are automatically calculated. Leverage multi-GAAP driven with full currency support, inter-company eliminations, equity eliminations, adjustments, and applications detailed data tracking.

Ø  Process and Workflow : Provide enterprise level collaboration with dynamic, data-driven approval orchestration. Ensure audit compliance for tasks like Journal Adjustment with enforced segregation of duties, powerful scheduling capabilities, role and data access rights

Ø  Integration : Built-in connectivity to core source systems, such as ERP and others, for consolidation and close needs.

Ø  Best Practice Consolidation Out-of-the-Box : Pre-configured consolidation model making it easy to meet global reporting requirements like IFRS and GAAP, helping drive significant cost and time savings

Ø  User Experience : Provide real-time insight and access to data with interactive process and financial dashboards

Ø  Transparent Reporting : Financial consolidation data with pre-built cash flow, balance sheet, and income statement lets you report with confidence.

FCCS Consolidation and Reporting Process

                                                                                                           

As FCCS support is all on my mind at the moment, here are high level steps. 

·       Daily Health Check report of EPM stack to EPM stakeholders before business hours begin.

The report will include all detailed tasks required like availability of FCCS environments, application status, backup status, any nightly schedule update etc.

We can start with the report we understand from initial requirement and it will then mature over next few days.

·       Application and System monitoring (Depending upon the support band, it can be 24/7 or 16/7 or 8/7 or 16/5 or 8/5)

·       All activities from above table for Corporate Activity and Joint Activity will be managed by FCCS support team under appropriate tickets and correct band SLA.

·       Troubleshooting in any of activities listed in above table.

·       Application and System backups apart from ones provided by Oracle.

 I guess the activities chart and list of support activities will enhance gradually as project proceeds further.

 

EPM LDAP migration to Microsoft Azure

 Recently faced issue in one of my colleague - friend's account on weekend. Thank you Apurv for including me in this issue and resolution process. 

Something new to learn 😃

Issue: Hyperion HFM workspace was only accessible with ADMIN credentials. Business users cannot perform any action within HFM.

Cause: Host Name for ‘LDAP Active Directory’ server changed due to Migration of server to MS-Azure cloud. (Note: Domain name kept same but Volvo HFM was using Host Name to connect Active directory).

Resolution:

1. At first, this looks very easy to update the Host Name in current LDAP Active Directory. But this failed miserably. By updating Host Name, HFM workspace became inaccessible with any credentials (including Admin credentials though they are part of Native Directory).
2. The solution keeping in mind that ‘No credentials allowed to log into HFM workspace’.
1. Deactivate LDAP Directory connection from backend (Through CSSConfig method).
2. Restart the EPM Services. Server reboot is mandatory.
3. Then accessing env with admin credentials to add new LDAP connection.
4. Restart the EPM Services. Server reboot is mandatory.
3. CSSConfig Method:
1. Go to Foundation server. Access ‘C:\Oracle\Middleware\User_projects\epmsystem\bin’
2. Execute command ‘epmsys_registry.bat view shared_services_product’. This will generate a fresh CSSConfig file which is containing LDAP connection details.
3. Open CSSConfig file in Notepad Editor and here you can Deactivate the already present LDAP directory from <Search Order> section. (Note: Do not remove NATIVE directory from file).
4. To check if you have done the changes correctly in CSSConfig file, rename it to CSSConfig.xml and check if changes are reflecting correctly while opening XML file in browser.
5. After editing the CSSConfig file, execute ‘epmsys_registry updatefile shared_services_product/@CSSConfig CSSConfig.xml’ to upload the properties within Shared services.
6. IMP Notes:

                                                               i.      Perform these actions while keeping EPM service running

                                                             ii.      If you are using clustered environment, you have to make changes only on 1 Foundation server & then it will reflect in the other servers too.

                                                           iii.      Reboot of Server is mandatory after this step.

                                                           iv.      After starting the EPM services, wait for Foundation_services & RA_Framework to produce log as ‘RUNNING MODE’. This is crucial because in some cases EPM service restart does not mean complete start of Shared Services. You can check ‘sysout’ logs to reflect ‘RUNNING MODE’.