About Flex Forms

Flex forms are a form type that provides flexible row management in Oracle Smart View for Office.

Data source types: Planning, Planning Modules, Financial Consolidation and Close, Tax Reporting

Flex forms retain all regular form properties and features, such as running business rules attached to the flex form. However, using flex forms, you can rearrange row members, and sort or move rows. Modified row order is maintained on refresh and during submit. You can also filter data using Excel's filtering functionality. Dimension and member row cells and all data cells in a flex form are unprotected. Column headers and the top left blank cells of a flex form are protected.

In the web interface, during form definition, administrators select Enable flex form under Smart View Options in the Layout tab to enable flex form-specific features.

In Smart View, the Sheet Info dialog displays the Sheet type for flex forms as "Flex form."

Note:

Flex forms are used only in Smart View and not in the web interface.

Related Topics:

• Video

• Requirements

• Guidelines

Video

Your Goal	Watch This Video
Learn about how to enable and work with flex forms in Planning	Planning with Flex Forms in EPM Cloud Planning

Requirements

• Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud 20.04 or later

• Smart View 11.1.2.5.910 or later

Guidelines

Following are guidelines for working with flex forms:

• Any modification to a flex form will not be persisted between sessions.

  When a user modifies a flex form, the modified grid layout will only be persisted in the context of the current session. Reopening a flex form reverts the flex form layout to its original state.

• These form features are not supported for flex forms:

  • Segment level properties, including validation rules.

    After rows are rearranged or sorted, segment properties will not be retained.

  • Spreading

  • Row dimension drop-downs

  • Row or column formulas

  • Using flex forms inside composite forms

• You cannot modify column members. You can only modify row members.

• You may insert and delete rows in a flex form using the right-click menu in Excel.

• Inserting or deleting columns is not supported on flex forms.

• Copy and paste is limited to the scope of the form definition. Flex forms must adhere to the hierarchies as defined in the form. Therefore, you cannot have any flex form members that are not part of the defined row members of the form.

• Subtotaling calculation scripts and currency conversion calculation scripts will be generated and executed based on the original form definition.

• Comments are not preserved if they are entered directly below the form. Enter comments to the right of the grid.

• When working with flex forms with multiple dimensions on rows (when two or more dimensions with multiple members are placed on a row):

  • By design, + and - for expand/collapse are not supported for flex forms. Instead, use the Expand/Collapse command on the right-click Smart View context menu.

  • During form definition, to place dimensions members on separate rows, in Member Selection on the flex form, choose Place selection in separate rows. See Selecting Members for Forms in Administering Planning.

• Filtering does not disable Submit Data as it is only hiding certain rows. Sorting disables Submit Data as it changes member order in the column. After sorting you must refresh to submit data.

• When a user adds a member that is a parent or child of a member already present on a flex form and refreshes, the child member will be collapsed, even in cases where the Dimension property, Start expanded, is selected during form design. To the user, it may look like the child member was removed, but the child member can be viewed by expanding the parent using the Expand/Collapse commands on the Smart View context menu.

• When entering numeric member names or shared members on a flex form, enter a single quotation mark ( ' ) before the member name.

  For example, for a numeric member name, such as 4077, enter:

  '4077

  For shared members, enter member names in the format:

  '[Parent].[Shared Member]

  For example:

  '[Sales Director 2].[410]

  '[Default_Sales Director 2].[Default_International Sales]

• To avoid undesirable sorting results, do not apply sorting to an entire column. Instead, select the grid members to sort, and then use Excel's Sort commands, Sort A to Z or Sort Z to A, or perform a custom sort.

• After applying a filter to a row dimension, and then applying a sort within the filter drop-down dialog, the sort indicator arrow appears on the filter button within the grid. However, after a Refresh, the sort indicator arrow on the filter button is no longer displayed.

• User variables, dynamic user variables or substitution variables are supported on flex form rows. Users should change variables on the POV and perform a refresh for the rows to update them to the new members.

• Excluded members may be entered on flex form rows. Members that are excluded in the form definition can be entered on flex form rows and users are able to enter values and submit.

• During form definition, when the Allow flexible definition property is applied to row dimensions in flex forms, Smart View users may enter members outside the form definition for dimensions within the row axis of the form. This allows flex form users to enter data for members that are not displayed on the flex form. Users must have access to the valid members that they enter.

  For example, using the Vision application, suppose the Product dimension is placed as a row dimension in a flex form. During form definition, only the Sentinal Standard Notebook and Sentinal Custom Notebook members in the Product dimension have been selected for display on the form. By enabling the Allow flexible definition option for the Product dimension, Smart View users may enter other products from the Product dimension, such as Tablet Computer or Keyboard, in the rows in the flex form. As long as they have access to those members, users can either add rows for additional members to the existing flex form or replace existing Product members with the Product members they require.

  During form definition, note the following when enabling the Allow flexible definition property:

  • In Dimension Properties, the Enable flexible definition option will only be visible if the Enable flex forms option is selected in Smart View Options.

  • When there are multiple dimensions on the form rows, Oracle recommends that you select the Enable flexible definition property for each applicable row dimension individually. You may use the Dimension Properties option, Apply to all row dimensions, to apply the Enable flexible definition property to all dimensions; however, use with care as all other dimension property selections will also be applied to all other dimensions on the row segment.

  See Designing Flex Forms in Oracle Hyperion Planning Administrator's Guide .

• The form definition segment properties Hide and Read-only are supported for columns only, not for rows, in flex forms.

• When a flex-enabled form is opened in an ad hoc mode, the row dimension indentation is lost on submitting data. Refreshing the data restores the indentation to normal.

• The Suppress Missing Blocks and Suppress Missing Rows options defined in the web for a flex form are applied only when first opening the flex form in Smart View. These Suppress options are not applied on Refresh or Save operations in Smart View. Once you perform an operation on a flex form, the Smart View option settings for Suppress Missing Blocks and Suppress Missing Rows are applied.

  Note:

  In Smart View, the Suppress Missing Blocks option is not applied on a Submit. Instead, perform a refresh after saving.

• Data validation rules within forms are not supported when using flex forms. Instead, convert data validation rules to Groovy rules.

• Smart Push is supported on flex forms.

• On a filtered flex form, Smart Push does not honor the context of the selected form.

• An administrator can configure action menus to run business rules or open a flex form from a flex form. The action menu items are accessed from the right-click Smart View context menu. The action menu items may be defined to appear on the right-click menu anywhere on the flex form or when right-clicking, for example, in specific dimensions, members, rows, columns, or cells.

  Right-click menus that are available in the web application for the POV and Page dimensions are not available on flex forms in Smart View.

  For information on setting up action menu items for flex forms, see Designing Flex Forms in Administering Planning.

• Flex forms do not support enabling Show Currency for the Entity dimension.

• Flex forms are not supported for Smart Forms.