2 Pre-Provisioning

Pre-provisioning is the period after contracts are signed, but before receiving your environments, where some key activities can occur related to your upcoming implementation. For Integration Cloud Service implementations, your Customer Success Manager (CSM) will be your main point of contact for these activities.

Activate IDCS

Identity Cloud Service (IDCS) is the user identity solution for most Oracle Retail cloud services. A foundation-level IDCS subscription comes with your retail subscription, but can also be purchased separately, if desired, such as for use as an enterprise identity provider or to manage PaaS or IaaS instances, metrics, and so on. However, it should be noted that these are not applicable for your Merchandising subscription, as Merchandising solutions utilize it only for administration of users. IDCS requires your subscribed cloud service to be attached within an Oracle Cloud Account.

Multiple IDCS instances can be set up within a single Oracle Cloud Account, enabling several activation options. For example, if you use a single set of administrators to manage the pool of users across all your retail services, you may want to have just a single IDCS instance. Or you might consider separate instances by product area (for example, Merchandising, Planning, Omni-channel) or by business unit (for example, Brand A, Brand B). Using one instance for all your retail services is the most common approach.

You will receive an activation e-mail from Oracle in the initial stages of provisioning — often immediately following your subscription order being booked. You will need to activate your IDCS account in order to begin the Merchandising provisioning activities. Promptly completing the activations steps will better enable on-time environment delivery.

Note: Activation for IDCS does NOT impact billing or the subscription service period - those details are connected to the subsequent environment delivery of the Merchandising cloud services.

Creating an Oracle Cloud Account^Foot 1 

To start the setup, you'll click the Activate link provided in the e-mail received. Then the following steps are required:

1. Provide the desired name for the Oracle Cloud Account

   A best practice is to use a name which will encompass the scope of services to be managed in the account, such as a combination of your company name and "retail". For example, mystoresretail. After activation, you can adjust the displayed name for the cloud account.

2. Provide your e-mail address as the customer administrator who receives the activation e-mail.

   The e-mail address must match the initial e-mail. If you would like a different contact to be used as the administrator, this can be managed after activation in coordination with your CSM.

3. The activation success message will display, and you will receive a new welcome e-mail with access credentials.

New IDCS Instance in Existing Oracle Cloud Account

Activate a new IDCS instance for your Retail cloud service within the Account Management section of your existing Oracle Cloud Account.

1. Log in to your existing Oracle Cloud Account.

   Clicking the Activate link brings you to the login page.

2. Within the Dashboard, click on the Account Management menu and then select the Activate tab.

   Available services to activate will be listed; you may need to select Show: Pending Activations.

3. Click the Cloud Service Account Setup button to complete setup.

If you have any issues with the above, see the Frequently Asked Questions chapter.

Prepare Project Team

During this time, you will also be putting together your project plan for the deployment and go-live phases of your implementation. It is important to consider the following during this planning phase to prepare your project team for the Retail Integration implementation:

• Identity Cloud Service - As noted above, you will be using IDCS for user management for your Retail Integration Cloud services. During the pre-provisioning timeframe, familiarize yourself with this solution and its features.

  • https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/paas/identity-cloud/index.html

• Project Team Training - Consider the training that the members of your team will need in order to make your implementation successful. This includes both your employees, as well as your systems integration partner. Suggested training topics to consider include:

  • Retail Integration Cloud Service configuration

• Security Configurations - During this phase, you should designate a portion of your team to becoming familiar with IDCS and the enterprise roles, duties, and privileges that will be part of the Retail Integration Cloud Service you are implementing. You can also start designing the roles that you will need for your users, and what duties will be assigned to your custom roles. For more details, please refer to Retail Integration Cloud Service Integration Security Guide. For more information on IDCS, see Managing Users, User Accounts, and Roles.

• System Options Configuration - Start reviewing the system options available in all the Retail Integration Cloud Service to determine how these should be configured. Work with your systems integrator to identify those you are unsure about or need to be considered in the program planning.

• Integration Planning - Start reviewing the available existing integrations available as part of the Retail Integration cloud services to support internal Oracle integrations, as well as any integrations you may need to external solutions. Key documents to review include:

  • Operations Guides - Each of the Oracle Retail Cloud Services has an operations guide which outlines batches and integrations.

    For example: the Merchandising Foundation Cloud Service, there are two volumes. The first is mainly batch processes, but also contains some integrations that are batch and/or flat file based. The second volume is where RIB, ReST and SOAP services, and BDI integration details are held.

  • Retail Reference Library - This tool is free to all Oracle Retail customers and can be downloaded from My Oracle Support under Doc ID 2058843.2. This tool is composed of multiple parts, but the most critical to become familiar with are the Retail Reference Models (business process flows) and the Retail Reference Architecture (integration diagrams, payloads, and so on).

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Footnote Legend

Footnote 1: An Oracle Cloud Account is not the same as your My Oracle Support account. The Oracle Cloud Account account exists within IDCS and is used for managing user security within the Merchandising solutions.