| Oracle® Retail Brand Compliance Management Cloud Service Release Notes Release 18.0 E99002-02 |
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| Oracle® Retail Brand Compliance Management Cloud Service Release Notes Release 18.0 E99002-02 |
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Previous |
Release Notes
Release 18.0
E99002-02
November 2019
This document highlights the major changes for Release 18.0 of Oracle Retail Brand Compliance Management Cloud Service.
Oracle Retail Brand Compliance Management Cloud Service is an application designed to meet all aspects of sourcing, developing, and protecting retailer brands. The application provides solutions for product development, compliance, quality, and traceability. It is designed specifically for retail, food service, and manufacturing businesses to develop and protect their brands, manage their suppliers, and ensure full end-to-end product lifecycle management.
Oracle Retail Brand Compliance Management Cloud Service is composed of the following modules:
Library enables the issue, receipt, and acceptance of policies, guidelines, and key working documents.
Product supports the development of products and production specifications.
Project supports the development of project briefs, plans, and workflow management.
Supplier enables the identification, selection, and approval of suppliers.
Oracle Retail Brand Compliance Management Cloud Service is hosted in the Oracle Retail Cloud with the security features inherent to Oracle technology and a robust data center classification, providing significant uptime. The Oracle Cloud team is responsible for installing, monitoring, patching, and upgrading retail software.
Included in the service is continuous technical support, access to software feature enhancements, hardware upgrades, and disaster recovery. The Cloud Service model helps to free customer IT resources from the need to perform these tasks, giving retailers greater business agility to respond to changing technologies and to perform more value-added tasks focused on business processes and innovation.
Oracle Retail Software Cloud Service is acquired exclusively through a subscription service (SaaS) model. This shifts funding from a capital investment in software to an operational expense. Subscription-based pricing for retail applications offers flexibility and cost effectiveness.
The following technology is supported:
The following web browsers are supported:
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Note: Oracle Retail assumes that the retailer has ensured its Operating System has been patched with all applicable Windows updates. |
Microsoft Internet Explorer 11
Mozilla Firefox 45.1.1 ESR
Google Chrome 50+
The following web browsers are supported on Oracle Linux 7:
Mozilla Firefox 45.1.1 ESR
Google Chrome 50+
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Note: Where new fields, User Interface (UI) changes, or glossary entries are introduced as part of a change, the portal owner may need to apply their own translations of the core system text. |
The following functional enhancements are included in this release:
The Reports module is replaced with Oracle BI Publisher being used in place of Jasper Reports. Configurable report templates are combined with predefined data sources and filtering options to produce a suite of standard reports and KPIs.
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Note: The Jasper Reports solution is not being removed in this release. It will coexist until removed in a subsequent release. Any existing report outputs, designs, and schedules will be retained within Jasper Reports, but they will not be migrated to BI Publisher reports. |
Following are the key aspects of the new Reports module:
A predefined set of Data Sources is supplied which defines the data that is available for reporting (similar concept to Reporting Domains).
Report Templates are built based on a Rich Text Format (RTF) document that can be edited using a word processor (a BI Publisher plug-in is available for Microsoft Word to aid the report design process).
Data Sources are combined with Report Templates to form Report Designs. Filters can be applied to further refine the data to be included in the report, either as a fixed rule, a dynamic based on another factor, or entered by the user at runtime.
A standard set of report designs are provided, which may be adapted by reports administrators to form custom variants.
Reports users are able to schedule the report designs to run either as a one-off execution, or on a regular recurring basis. Other recipients can be selected, either as individuals or based on user role.
Recipients of a report are sent an email with a link to the report when it has been generated.
A new Report Attachments REST API allows for automated retrieval of report contents by external systems, for further analysis or processing.
The generated reports may be in PDF, Word, Excel, or HTML format. The KPI report may be presented as graphs or charts using the Home page dashboard app.
A Product Requirements Profile/Tender report is provided which generates a form type report of Product Specification data. Variants of this report may also be created by administrators by copying the supplied template.
Reports administrators have access to a set of data extract options that generate Supplier & Site, Product Record, and Product Specification data as CSV files.
The Reporting module is only available to retailer/portal owner users. Supplier users do not have access to reports, or visibility of the KPI dashboard app.
The Oracle Retail Brand Compliance Management Cloud Service Reports User Guide has been rewritten for 18.0 and is published on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN). It includes details of the suite of BI Publisher standard reports.
New Reports configuration options appear in the Admin area. The Reports option in the navigation bar contains options to access the Report Schedules and the Report outputs. If the Jasper reporting solution remains accessible, it appears under a Legacy Reporting option.
The existing Advanced Reporting User and Advanced Reporting Administrator authority profiles are retained, so existing users will continue to have the equivalent level of access to the Reports module.
A new Advanced Reporting Reader authority profile is introduced which allows the users to view reports they are a recipient of, but does not allow them to create reports themselves. An example of this use would be for laboratory users to view reports that have been generated for the testing schedule, in which case the system administrator will need to assign the authority profile to the Surveillance Laboratory User role.
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Note: In an existing system, users with the Surveillance Laboratory User authority profile will no longer have access to reports by default, neither the new BI Publisher reports, nor the Jasper Report legacy reports. They must be specifically granted access.The authority profiles that access the Reports module will only be grantable to Retailer users. In existing systems, the post-implementation tasks should include a manual check to ensure the ADVANCED REPORTING USER or ADVANCED REPORTING ADMINISTRATOR authority profiles had not previously been granted to any Supplier users. |
New system parameters appear in the System Control Admin area to control the frequency of report purging and the refresh interval of the Data Warehouse data that is used for certain reports. For existing installation upgrades, the system administrator will need to set these parameters to enable the purging (suggested setting is 90 days) and report data warehouse (suggested setting is 90 minutes) facilities as required.
Details of the new Data Warehouse facility for reports, and the reports that utilize it are included in the new Oracle Retail Brand Compliance Management Cloud Service Reports Guide, which is published on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN).
KPI reports are presented as a dashboard on the Home page. In order to enable the KPI Dashboard for the portal, the following CSS will be automatically appended to the portal's branding CSS as part of the release process:
.kpi-dashboard-table {
border: 1px solid #999;
empty-cells: show;
border-spacing: 0px;
padding:5px
width: 100%
}
.kpi-dashboard-table th{
font-weight: bold;
border: 1px solid #999;
padding:5px
}
.kpi-dashboard-table td{
border: 1px solid #999;
padding:5px
}
To cater for clients operating in certain markets, overrides are applied to the core number formatting standards to use a comma as the decimal point separator.
The override is applied to the locales for Argentina (es_AR), Brazil (pt_BR), and Chile (es_CL). Users operating with their locale/language set to one of these will have numbers formatted with a comma as the decimal point separator; all other locales will continue to use a period as the decimal point separator. The overrides are also applied to Product Specification pack copy data if the specification's pack copy language is one of these locales.
Other rules relating to the entry of numeric values are as follows:
The general rule when entering data into a number field is if an incorrect decimal separator is entered for the user's locale/language (such as entering a comma when the user's language/locale is English, or entering a period when the user's language/locale is Brazil), the user is prevented from entering the invalid separator into the input field (it is automatically removed).
When entering data into the number columns of the specification's Nutrition table, if an incorrect separator is entered, the field is flagged as invalid, requiring the user to correct it before saving the section.
For Lite type Nutrition panels, the data to appear on pack is entered directly into the data entry table. The columns are alphanumeric, allowing for a unit of measure to be entered with the value, or values such < 0.1g or trace to be entered. When the nutrition declaration panel is generated, if a column does not contain a true numeric value, the nutrient's unit of measure is not output alongside the nutrient value.
Therefore, it is possible to enter a value containing an incorrect separator into a Lite Nutrition table, in which case the declaration assumes a nonnumeric value, so the unit of measure is omitted.
Thousand separators are not used in the application UI when entering or displaying numeric values. If a thousand separator is entered in an editable number field (such as a comma when the user's language/locale is English, or a period when the user's language/locale is Brazil), it will be treated as if it were an incorrect decimal separator as per the rule above.
The override of the number formatting is not configurable, so any installations that use the Argentina (es_AR), Brazil (pt_BR), or Chile (es_CL) locales will switch to using a comma as the decimal point separator where appropriate.
Numbers that have been keyed into text fields will remain unchanged, as will numbers that have been generated in any external files that were generated prior to the upgrade (such as recipe export spreadsheets or Pack Copy files).
New Alternative Product Number and Divisions fields are provided for use in Product Records and Product Specifications. The fields are optionally enabled through system parameters. The fields are added to the Product Coverage table alongside the existing Product Number, Quantity, and Variant Name fields. The Alternative Product Number can be used to hold the product's identifier such as a GTIN code. Division is a configurable product specifications global glossary.
If used, the new fields are synchronized between the Product Record and Specification as per the existing Product Coverage fields.
Additionally, the new fields can be used to control the updating of the Retailer Product Number. This will typically be used where the Retailer Product Number holds the product's identifier from an external system. If enabled by the new system parameter, when a Product Record is saved, any rows in associated Specifications that have the same Alternative Product Number and Division values have the Retailer Product Number replaced with the corresponding value from the Product Record. For Produce specifications, the cascade is from the Specification to the Product Record, on supplier acceptance.
The new Alternative Product No. and Division fields are included in the Product Record upload facility.
If the new fields are required, they must be enabled through the new system parameters, and the rules for cascade updates set. The contents of the Divisions glossary must be configured. The Alternative Product Number and/or Division values can then be assigned to individual Product Records and Product Specifications as appropriate.
Installations that currently have a custom Alternative Product Number (such as GTIN) will have the field automatically updated to become Alternative Product No. It may then be renamed through the configurable system text if required.
Additional fields are made available to be included in the Projects notification email templates. The emails are those that notify users as a Project or Activity progresses through its workflow stages:
Activity Status Change email template (PROJECT1)
Activity Notification email (PROJECT2)
The additional attributes are related to identifying the Project record and its associated suppliers, sites, and contacts, such as the Supplier and Site names, Project id, Recipient names, and email addresses.
Various enhancements have been made to the ORBC APIs to support the new features, and as general improvements:
The new Alternative Product Number and Division fields are added to the REST Product Record and Product Specification APIs. The fields are also available as filters in the APIs.
The Specifications REST API's GET endpoint is extended to return additional data elements for Business Category, Lead Business Category, and the Product Coverage table (Product Name, Product Number, Quantity, Alternative Product Number, and Division).
The Specifications REST API's GET List of Values endpoint list of filters is extended to include Specification Key (number and version), Product Technologist, Pack Copy Locale, Specification Title, Supplier, Site, Product Record, and Specification Status (from/to).
A new Attachments API is introduced which allows for files attached to the supported record types to be retrieved electronically. Initially provided as a means of automatically accessing the outputs of reports that have been generated using the new Reports module, in time it will be extended to other record types.
Fields that can have language translations within the application are contained within a localeData element in the XML returned by the API. Prior to release 18.0, a separate localeData element was returned for each language the portal had configured. The XML now only contains the localeData elements for languages that the portal actually has active.
A further enhancement introduces a locale parameter in the GET by Id endpoint of the Audits/Visits, Contacts, Product Records, Specifications, Sites, Suppliers, and Users REST APIs. The parameter is optional and supports multiple values; if used, localeData elements will be returned for the specified languages. If no parameter is passed, the processing and returned XML data remains as it is currently (but only the languages the portal has active are returned).
An enhancement to the Specifications REST API's GET by Id endpoint will return additional elements for fields that hold an alternative value in the specification's pack copy language for use on pack.
If the new locale parameter (see above) is passed when calling the API, in addition to the returned localeData elements containing the requested languages, a packCopyLocaleData element will be present for each field that has an alternative value for the pack copy language. If no value is present, the packCopyLocaleData element is omitted.
Certain picklist fields within the application have their options defined as system text rather than a configurable glossary. Referred to as enumerations, these are used where the selections are generally static, such as Yes/No options. Prior to release 18.0, just the code of an enumeration was present in the XML returned by the APIs. The XML now also contains the description of the enumeration.
Certain picklist fields within the application allow for a statement to be selected from a glossary and inline values entered after selection. Referred to as editable text selectors, these are used to build statements with variable content, but using a consistent format; for example, to describe cooking instructions in a common way without having to have an entry in the glossary for every permutation of time and temperature. Prior to release 18.0, just the separate statement and value elements were present in the XML returned by the APIs. The XML now also includes an element containing the formed statement.
For more information, see the following documents in the Oracle Retail Brand Compliance Management Cloud Service Release 18.0 documentation set:
Oracle Retail Brand Compliance Management Cloud Service Administration Guide
Oracle Retail Brand Compliance Management Cloud Service Implementation Guide
Oracle Retail Brand Compliance Management Cloud Service User Guide
Oracle Retail Brand Compliance Management Cloud Service Product User Guide
Oracle Retail Brand Compliance Management Cloud Service Project User Guide
Oracle Retail Brand Compliance Management Cloud Service Reports User Guide
Oracle Retail Brand Compliance Management Cloud Service Supplier User Guide
For information about Oracle's commitment to accessibility, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program website at http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?ctx=acc&id=docacc.
Access to Oracle Support
Oracle customers that have purchased support have access to electronic support through My Oracle Support. For information, visit http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?ctx=acc&id=info or visit http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?ctx=acc&id=trs if you are hearing impaired.
Oracle Retail Brand Compliance Management Cloud Service Release Notes, Release 18.0
E99002-02
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Value-Added Reseller (VAR) Language
Oracle Retail VAR Applications
The following restrictions and provisions only apply to the programs referred to in this section and licensed to you. You acknowledge that the programs may contain third party software (VAR applications) licensed to Oracle. Depending upon your product and its version number, the VAR applications may include:
(i) the MicroStrategy Components developed and licensed by MicroStrategy Services Corporation (MicroStrategy) of McLean, Virginia to Oracle and imbedded in the MicroStrategy for Oracle Retail Data Warehouse and MicroStrategy for Oracle Retail Planning & Optimization applications.
(ii) the Wavelink component developed and licensed by Wavelink Corporation (Wavelink) of Kirkland, Washington, to Oracle and imbedded in Oracle Retail Mobile Store Inventory Management.
(iii) the software component known as Access Via™ licensed by Access Via of Seattle, Washington, and imbedded in Oracle Retail Signs and Oracle Retail Labels and Tags.
(iv) the software component known as Adobe Flex™ licensed by Adobe Systems Incorporated of San Jose, California, and imbedded in Oracle Retail Promotion Planning & Optimization application.
You acknowledge and confirm that Oracle grants you use of only the object code of the VAR Applications. Oracle will not deliver source code to the VAR Applications to you. Notwithstanding any other term or condition of the agreement and this ordering document, you shall not cause or permit alteration of any VAR Applications. For purposes of this section, "alteration" refers to all alterations, translations, upgrades, enhancements, customizations or modifications of all or any portion of the VAR Applications including all reconfigurations, reassembly or reverse assembly, re-engineering or reverse engineering and recompilations or reverse compilations of the VAR Applications or any derivatives of the VAR Applications. You acknowledge that it shall be a breach of the agreement to utilize the relationship, and/or confidential information of the VAR Applications for purposes of competitive discovery.
The VAR Applications contain trade secrets of Oracle and Oracle's licensors and Customer shall not attempt, cause, or permit the alteration, decompilation, reverse engineering, disassembly or other reduction of the VAR Applications to a human perceivable form. Oracle reserves the right to replace, with functional equivalent software, any of the VAR Applications in future releases of the applicable program.
