You can now quickly add attribute dimensions to an ad hoc sheet using the new Insert Attributes button available in the Planning Ad Hoc ribbon.

Click Insert Attributes to launch the Insert Attributes dialog box, where you can select the attribute members to add to the POV. When the attribute dimensions are in the POV, you can pivot or drag them to the grid as required. Once on the grid, you can use the Remove Only command to remove any unwanted attribute dimension or members.

You can add attribute dimensions at any time during the ad hoc session.

If the grid already contains some, but not all, attribute dimensions in the database, you can click Insert Attributes to select any of the remaining attributes to the POV.

Note that you can still use Member Selection to add specific attribute dimensions as required.

In the Oracle Smart View for Office User's Guide, see “Inserting Attribute Dimensions on the Sheet.”

The usability and readability of forms and ad hoc grids in Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud is increased with support for duplicate aliases for members from different dimensions and for members within dimensions.

In brief, the guidelines are:

In free-form mode, when referencing an alias that resolves to multiple members, an error is returned noting that the alias cannot be resolved to a single member. You can resolve the alias to the correct member either by using the Member Selector to select the correct alias name or by hand-typing the qualified name. Using the parent member name as a qualifier should be sufficient in most cases, given that only duplicate alias names are supported, not duplicate member names. In the Oracle Smart View for Office User's Guide, see “Duplicate Aliases in Free-Form Mode” for more information.

To use the duplicate alias feature, you must have Smart View 11.1.2.5.600 and you must be connected to Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud version 16.06 or later.

In the Planning Admin Extension, you can now work with attribute dimensions and the Time Period dimension. Just as with regular dimensions, you can use the Planning Admin Extension in the Smart View application to quickly import and edit attribute and time dimension application metadata.

For information on using the Planning Admin Extension, see Administering Planning for Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service on the Oracle Help Center.

Report package variables provide centralized maintenance of common text, numbers and dates that are displayed in doclets throughout a report package. Variables can also be used to reference content between doclets, such as inserting Excel data from a reference doclet into a Word doclet paragraph.

The variables can be created by any report package owner or doclet author, using either Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud on the web, or the Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud Extension for Smart View. Smart View is required to define a reference variable value. After the variables are created, use the Variables option in Smart View to insert the variables into a Word doclet (in headers, tables, cells or paragraphs) and Excel doclet cells.

Two types of variables are available:

After the variables are inserted, view the doclet to ensure all your variables are correctly displayed. There is no indication of the variable location in the final review or signoff document. The variables are displayed in the appropriate text size and font to match the surrounding text.

A doclet author can create their own stylized Microsoft Office Excel reports and then link to the report content in a Word doclet, without adding the file to the report package. In Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud, this source Excel file is known as a reference file.

A reference file is an Excel file that a doclet author created and saved to a location where they can retrieve it. The reference file contains report content that the author has identified as named ranges using Excel’s Name Manager. The named ranges can then be embedded in a Word doclet. The reference file is attached to a regular doclet and is associated with only that doclet.

To summarize, a doclet author can:

Embedded content provides an easy way to add stylized content in your published reports.

Using reference doclets as the container where certain types of reporting content is created, authors can then embed that content in their assigned areas of the report package. You can design content such as highly formatted reports, ad hoc grids, and text within an Excel spreadsheet, and add that spreadsheet to the report package as a reference doclet. The available content in a reference doclet becomes common report content that can be embedded in doclets by assigned authors. Embedded content can be reused as required throughout the report package, and is refreshable, so the content will always reflect the latest data.

When connected to Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud, you can now import metadata in Word documents, as described in Import Metadata Available for Word.