DEFINE BUSINESS UNITS, MANAGE LOCATIONS, MANAGE DIVISIONS & MANAGE DEPARTMENT IN ORACLE FUSION HCM

The following video illustrates the topic of Defining Business Units, Managing Locations,  Divisions & Manage Department in Oracle Fusion HCM

Business Units
Business Unit offers your organization a flexible structuring device through which you can implement Oracle Fusion HCM, based on how your business is organized. Business Units are always associated with a SetID, which determines values in control tables to which a business unit has access to.

Business Units and Reference Data Sets
Reference data sharing is a feature within Oracle Fusion that enables you to group set-enabled reference data such as jobs or grades so that the data can be shared across different parts of the organization. Sets also enable you to filter reference data at the transaction level so that only data that has been assigned to certain sets is available to select. To filter reference data, Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management (HCM), applications use the business unit on the transaction. To set up reference data sharing in Oracle Fusion HCM, you create business units and sets and then assign the sets to the business units.
Common Set Versus Specific Sets
Some reference data in your organization may be considered global, and should therefore be made available for use within the entire enterprise. You can assign this type of data to the Common Set, which is a predefined set. Regardless of the business unit on a transaction, reference data that has been assigned to the Common Set will always be available, in addition to the reference data that has been assigned to the set that corresponds to the business unit on the transaction.

Other types of reference data may be specific to certain business units, so you want to restrict the use of the data to those business units. In this case, you can create sets specifically for this type of data, and assign the sets to the business units.

Manage Locations
A location identifies physical addresses of a workforce structure, such as a department or a position. You can also create locations to enter the addresses of external organizations that you want to maintain such as employment agencies. You enter information about a location only once. Subsequently, when you set up other workforce structures you select the location from a list. Locations that you create are represented on a map for easier identification and access.
When you create a location, you must associate it with a set. Only those users who have access to the set's business unit can access the location set and other associated workforce structure sets, such as those that contain departments and jobs.
You can also associate the location to the common set so that users across your enterprise can access the location irrespective of their business unit. When users search for locations, they can see the locations that they have access to along with the locations in the common set.

Manage Divisions

A division refers to a business oriented subdivision within an enterprise, in which each division organizes itself differently to deliver products and services or address different markets. A division can operate in one or more countries, and can be comprised of many companies or parts of different companies that are represented by business units.Divisions are used in HCM to define the management organization hierarchy, using the generic organization hierarchy. This hierarchy can be used to create organization based security profiles.

Manage Department

A department is an organization with one or more operational objectives or responsibilities that exist independently of its manager. For example, although the manager may change, the objectives do not change. Departments have one or more workers assigned to them.The financial performance of departments is generally tracked through one or more cost centers. In Oracle Fusion Applications, departments are defined and classified as Department organizations. Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management (HCM) assigns workers to departments, and tracks the headcount at the departmental level.

OVERVIEW OF BUSINESS UNIT IN ORACLE FUSION APPLICATIONS

Overview of Business Unit in Oracle Fusion Applications

Objective:

The purpose of this document is to make the reader understand about the concept of Business Unit and points which needs to be accounted for before creating the same.

Business Unit:

A business unit (BU) of an organization/enterprise is a unit which performs all such business transactions that are defined by the management. This of course should match with the objective of the organization. A business unit can process transactions on behalf of a legal entity which would finally be rolled up in a management hierarchy provided the Chart of account is designed accordingly. So we are required to assign the business units to one primary ledger. Usually a BU would have a manager, strategic objectives, a level of autonomy, and responsibility for its profit and loss.

A business function represents a business process, or an activity that can be performed by people working within a business unit and describes how a business unit is used. The following business functions exist in Oracle Fusion applications:

• Billing and revenue management
• Collections management
• Customer contract management
• Customer payments
• Expense management
• Incentive compensation
• Marketing
• Materials management
• Inventory management
• Order fulfillment orchestration
• Payables invoicing
• Payables payments
• Procurement
• Procurement contract management
• Project accounting
• Receiving
• Requisitioning
• Sales

A business unit can perform many business functions in Oracle Fusion Applications. Prior to Oracle Fusion Applications, operating units in Oracle E-Business Suite were assumed to perform all business functions, while in PeopleSoft, each business unit had one specific business function. Oracle Fusion Applications blends these two models and allows defining business units with one or many business functions. In Oracle Fusion, business unit can be used in processing any transaction, reporting and data security.

Creating Business Unit:

While creating business unit we must specify the level at which it is to be created. Business units in an enterprise may be represented at the business function level, such as Sales, Consulting, Product Development, etc. We can create business units at following levels-

•  Country
•  Country and Division
•  Country and business function
•   Division
•   Division and legal entity
•   Division and business function
•   Business function
•   Legal entity
•   Business function and legal entity

HOW TO SELECT BUSINESS UNIT LEVELS?

Let’s discuss an example of a company Apps2Fusion Corporation which has two divisions, one for Vision Care, and another for Surgicals. They operate in four countries: US, UK, Japan, and India, and they have created a legal entity for each of the countries. Sales and marketing functions are based in both India and Japan, while the US and the UK have only the sales function. Please refer to below chart which illustrates Apps2Fusion Corporation's enterprise structure-

Below are the listed options for business unit levels and the resulting business units that the application suggests for Apps2Fusion Corporation-

Business Unit Level	Suggested Business Units
Country	·         US ·         UK ·         Japan ·         India
Country and Division	·         Apps2Fusion Surgicals: Japan ·         Apps2Fusion Surgicals: US ·         Apps2fusion Vision Care: UK ·         Apps2fusion Vision Care: India
Country and business function	·         Sales: Japan ·         Marketing: Japan ·         Sales: US ·         Sales: UK ·         Marketing: India ·         Sales: India
Division	·         Apps2Fusion Surgicals ·         Apps2Fusion Vision Care
Division and Legal Entity	·         Apps2Fusion Surgicals: Japan ·         Apps2Fusion Surgicals: US ·         Apps2fusion Vision Care: UK ·         Apps2fusion Vision Care: India
Division and Business Function	·         Apps2Fusion Surgicals, Sales ·         Apps2Fusion Surgicals, Marketing ·         Apps2Fusion Vision Care, Sales ·         Apps2Fusion Vision Care, Marketing
Business Function	·         Sales ·         Marketing
Legal Entity	·         Legal Entity: Japan ·         Legal Entity: US ·         Legal Entity: UK ·         Legal Entity India
Legal Entity and Business Function	·         Legal Entity: Japan, Sales ·         Legal Entity: Japan, Marketing ·         Legal Entity: US, Sales ·         Legal Entity: UK, Sales ·         Legal Entity India, Marketing ·         Legal Entity India, Sales

GETTING STARTED IN ORACLE FUSION APPLICATIONS

Getting Started in Oracle Fusion Applications

As we know Oracle Fusion Applications are designed by using the latest technology advances and incorporating best practices gathered from thousands of customers as well as best of Oracle acquired companies like Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel etc. These are completely open, service-enabled enterprise applications. Designed with features for the best-in-class user-interface designs and workflows that optimize usability and deliver business value.

First of all, Lets understand different adoption option to Fusion Application for existing customers. As shown in the diagram, below are the different options to Implement Oracle Fusion Applications-

In the first Option, customer has to do nothing as they do not have to adopt Oracle Fusion Applications if they do not opt for need of Oracle Fusion Applications right now. In a coexistence option, below are the 3 adoption strategy for Oracle Fusion Apps-

A user can implement an Oracle Fusion module alongside their existing applications with little or no integration. If they have multiple instances and want to implement Oracle Fusion Customer Relationships Management (CRM) in one region but keep it separate from the other regions.

Other option is -Coexistence with loose interoperability applies to situations where batch loads make the most sense. For example, if you are a PeopleSoft Human Capital Management (HCM) customer and want to add Oracle Fusion Talent Management, then they can integrate employee data via a batch ETL process every night. Next scenario is when users want to upgrade a specific pillar, such as HCM, Financials, Supply Chain Management (SCM), or CRM.

Finally, a new or existing customer may decide for complete suite for his needs. However, majority of the customers will fall into the first or second options, either waiting to adopt Oracle Fusion Applications or adopting individual modules.

Oracle Fusion Applications- Getting Started

All functionality revolves around the Oracle Fusion Applications Welcome page which can be personalized.

User Interface

Pages can be divided into different components and below are the details of main components in the Oracle Fusion User Interface.

1. Global Area - Contains links to help you navigate user interfaces, personalized links and tools, and the name of the user who is logged in.
2. Regional Area - Contains links to tasks and reports.
3. Local Area -  Contains the transaction or form that requires creation, editing, or review.
4. Contextual Area - Contains information that is linked to the transaction displayed in the Local Area.

Dashboard

Oracle Fusion dashboards provide details on prioritization to take quick action for further exploration. The main dashboard within Oracle Fusion is the Welcome dashboard, or Oracle Fusion Home, which is a collection of dashboards. In addition two other types of dashboards are available:

Role-based: Examples include Line Manager, HR Specialist.

Business intelligence-driven: Examples include Balance Sheet and Sales Pipeline.

Diagram showing General Accounting Dashboard

Work Areas

A work area is a grouping of similar tasks. For example, the Period Close work area includes tasks for opening and closing accounting periods for the Oracle Fusion General Ledger and subledgers.Below diagram showing period opening and closing Work Area.

Another important part is Recent Items menu which enables users to return to flows that have been recently accessed, usually within, but not limited to, a single session

CREATING BI PUBLISHER REPORT FROM A WEB SERVICE

Introduction

Most of us have been creating BIP (Business Intelligence Publisher) Reports in Oracle Fusion Applications using SQL query. Also in one of the previous posts we learned how we may create the same using static data the complete article may be read here.

In this example we will take a publicly available Web Service and try to develop a report out of it. This kind of report generation primarily involves 3 steps as below:

Configuring the Web Service as a BI Publisher Data Source

1. Creating a Data Model from the configured Data Source
2. Developing a BIP Report from the data model created

As a perquisite I have found a public web Service called ‘Weather’ and we would use the same in this example. A detailed step by step approach follows:

Configure Web Service as BI Publisher Data Source

As a first step we need to login to the environment with a user with BI Publisher Administrator Role (We will use ‘HCM_IMPL’ for the purpose as shown below:

Next Navigate from Reports and Analytics (image1) link to the Catalog (image2) and ultimately to the Adminstration (image3) as shown:

Once you click on the link it will take you to the Catalog Page as shown:

A mouse click on the Catalog Icon takes us to a new screen

In the next screen we will find different sections which will highlight different configuration and admin control features like security, session management, maintenance and troubleshooting…..

We will concentrate on the BI Publisher Admin controls and so will click on link (Highlighted in yellow color)

This opens up a new page where we can define various controls including defining data sources, security settings, integration setups, runtime configurations, setting up delivery options as well as system and maintenance options.

As we are trying to configure a web-service connection we will use that link:

Next we need to select the ‘Add Source’ option under the tab ‘Web Service’ (pre-selected)

Next populate the following details while defining the Web Service Data Source:

Click on ‘Apply’ and the setup is complete.

We may now move to creating a BI Publisher Data Model.

Creating a Data Model from the configured Data Source

Click on the “New’ icon. Select ‘Data Model’ from the drop down menu and then while selecting the ‘Data Set’ choose ‘Web Service’

We now need to enter details for the Data Source and they listed in a tabular format below:

Click on the ‘OK’ button on the bottom right hand-side and a new screen similar to the one shown below will appear.

But, we need to define a Parameter (Zip) of string type. So let us do that:

Once done, we should next move to the Data tab and it should display a Parameter with a Prompt as (Zip) , yes that is the one we defined at the time of parameter creation.

We will pass on a random value of Zip Code (94065 which is the zip code of Redwood City) and let-us hope we get weather details

We are able to see the results. We will now press the ‘Save as Sample Data’ button (which is a perquisite for creating a report) and Click ‘Ok’ on the new pop-up screen

We have now created the Data Model and should now move to next step where we will try to create a Report from this Data model.

Developing a BIP Report from the data model created

We have already learnt how to do this in previous articles, but no harm re-visiting the basics.

Click on the ‘Create Report’ Icon and then point to your Data Model by using the search (icon)

For this example we will use the ‘Guide Me’ and click on next

Select the default values (Page Options as Portrait and Layout as Table) and then click on ‘Next’

Click on the Finish Button and then you will be prompted to give a name to the Report. We would name it as WeatherDetailReport

When we navigate to the Report Section and pass ‘94065’

Oh we have encountered an error.

There could be many reasons for it, the primary one being we have chosen the Report Output Type as Interactive (shown in screen below) and we have not defined a layout. This combination isn’t supported as you need to have a template for an interactive report.

Click on the Edit Layout link and this takes us to a page (displaying a Report layout which is Blank)

We will define the template (by Creating a Data Model, Adding Relevant Columns) and post that we will have the following screen:

If we again try to View the Report it displays data:

So we have now completed creation of BIP Report.

Cool stuff!!

We can extend the same logic and create even more complex reports based on Web Service as a Data Source. You may try with any other publicly available web service and verify the results.