Important Announcement: A Customer Connect session regarding this advisory is scheduled for Thursday, December 4, 2025. Service Administrators, System Integrators, and Implementation Consultants are encouraged to participate in this interactive forum. This session provides an opportunity to seek clarification, ask questions, and discuss concerns directly with the Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management team.

Summary

Oracle regularly updates the technical components of Cloud EPM and Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Data Management to maintain a current and secure technology stack. As part of this process, Oracle Essbase—a key component used in Planning, FreeForm, Financial Consolidation and Close, Tax Reporting, Profitability and Cost Management, and Enterprise Profitability and Cost Management business processes—was upgraded to version 21c (21.7).

After thorough internal testing, many customers were upgraded to Essbase 21c with the October 2025 (25.10) update in both test and production environments. Following the successful rollout of 25.10, Oracle updated the remaining test environments to Essbase 21c in the 25.11 update. However, a few customers reported issues in their test environments related to calculation accuracy and system slowness. Although these problems were specific to customizations within certain customer applications and were only observed sporadically across different customers, Oracle has paused the deployment of 25.11 to production environments and the deployment of 25.12 and 26.01 to all environments.

This advisory addresses frequently asked questions about this decision and offers guidance for specific customer scenarios.

Note:

If you need assistance determining the best approach for your environments, please open a service request.

What specific issues prompted the decision to withhold the 25.11 (November 2025) update from production environments?

  • The 25.10 update successfully upgraded a significant number of customers to Essbase 21c in both test and production environments, with no reported issues.
  • In 25.11, a few customers reported issues in their test environments related to calculation accuracy and system slowness. These problems were specific to customizations within certain customer applications and were only observed sporadically across different customers.
  • Although the reported issues impacted only a few, specific applications, Oracle chose to proactively mitigate the risk for all customers by pausing the planned 25.11 updates for production environments.

Why did Oracle also decide to skip the 25.12 (December 2025) and 26.01 (January 2026) updates?

  • Year-end is a critical period for many customers’ business processes.
  • To avoid any risk of disruption during this time, Oracle deferred production updates.
  • This deferral allows additional time to fix reported issues and to thoroughly validate them before deploying future updates.

What steps should we take if our test environment is on 25.11 while the production environment is on 25.10, or if we are running an older update?

The issues reported with 25.11 appear to be specific to certain use cases and may not be applicable to other environments. The decision to stay on 25.10 or move to 25.11 should be based on your business risk and specific application requirements.

  • You may remain on 25.10 on your production environments if it meets your business needs until monthly updates resume. However, the snapshots from an environment on the 25.11 update cannot be imported to an environment on the 25.10 update. See the next question on what to do if you want your test and production environments to be compatible.
  • If features in 25.11 are critical for your operations:
  • If you use quarterly updates and your production environment is on 25.08, you can request to align your test environment with the production environment by submitting a service request to revert the test environment back to 25.08.

How do we manage cloning between test and production when they are on different monthly updates?

Cloning is only supported when both the source and target environments are on the same monthly update.

If your test environment is on 25.11 and your production environment is on 25.10, submit a service request to revert the test environment to 25.10 before performing any cloning or migrations. See Requesting a Rollback of Production or Test Environments to a Previous Update in the Operations Guide for instructions.

What should we consider and be cautious about when reverting our test environment from 25.11 back to 25.10?

Reverting from 25.11 to 25.10 results in Oracle recreating the environment.

  • Recreating the environment resets it to its initial, provisioned state and removes all application content, including:
    • Data
    • User-created artifacts (such as applications, cubes, and scripts)
    • Any customizations
  • You can import only a 25.10 snapshot into a 25.10 environment. After reverting the test environment to 25.10, you cannot use the backup snapshots created in 25.11. You may take one the following actions:
    • Import a snapshot created for this environment before it was updated to 25.11
    • Clone from the production environment (which is on 25.10)

Action items:

  • Use the listBackups EPM Automate command to verify that you have a valid 25.10 snapshot for the test environment before requesting that the environment be reverted.
  • Be aware that any changes made exclusively in 25.11 will be lost when reverting to 25.10.

What if our business processes do not use Essbase (for example, Cloud EDM, Narrative Reporting, or Account Reconciliation)?

Although business processes such as Cloud EDM, Narrative Reporting, and Account Reconciliation do not use Essbase, their versions remain synchronized with the other Cloud EPM business processes. They follow the same update schedule as the Essbase-dependent processes (Planning, FreeForm, Financial Consolidation and Close, Tax Reporting, Enterprise Profitability and Cost Management, and Profitability and Cost Management).

The deployment decisions for these business processes will follow the same process as outlined in this document for rest of the EPM business processes.

What should we do if we are waiting for features planned for 25.12?

If you are awaiting features planned for 25.12, reach out to the respective Product Managers to discuss whether a customer-specific patch can be applied to your 25.11 or 25.10 environment.

What should we do if we require bug fixes while on 25.10 or 25.11?

  • Submit a service request to obtain customer-specific patches for your current update (25.10 or 25.11).
  • If the issues you are experiencing on 25.11 are related to Essbase and 25.10 worked well for your application, you may want to consider reverting to 25.10 and request a version without Essbase 21c. See Requesting a Rollback of Production or Test Environments to a Previous Update in the Operations Guide for instructions.

Can we keep certain production business processes on 25.10 while upgrading others to 25.11?

Oracle does not recommend this approach.

  • Running different business processes on different monthly updates can break cross-application connections and process flows, which are not supported across different versions.
  • You may operate business processes independently (as separate silos) on different updates, as long as there are no Cloud EPM processes or integrations connecting the environments.

We are developing new Cloud EPM business processes in our test environment on 25.11. What steps should we take as we prepare for go-live?

You may continue developing and testing business processes on 25.11 in the test environment.

We are making changes in our test environment on 25.11 while our production environment is on 25.10. What is the recommended approach?

You have two options:

We used the skip update option for a monthly update which Oracle is not applying (for example, 25.11 or 25.12). Will the skip update be effective for that month? When Oracle resumes applying updates, will the next monthly update be automatically applied? How can we skip future updates (for example, 25.02)?

If you set a skip update for a monthly update that Oracle is not applying, no action is required on your part. For example, if you are on the 25.08 update and have skipped 25.09, 25.10, and 25.11, no further action is needed.

The skipUpdate EPM Automate command allows you to skip updates only for up to 3 months from the current update. If you wish to skip updates further in the future, you need to create a service request for Oracle to process the skip update for you. For example, if you are on the 25.08 update and want to skip updates 26.01, 26.02, and 26.03, you must submit a service request to Oracle.

Can we downgrade the Essbase version to a version earlier than 21c?

No, Oracle cannot downgrade just the Essbase version because it is a part of the technology stack. You can, however, revert your environment to 25.10. See Requesting a Rollback of Production or Test Environments to a Previous Update in the Operations Guide for instructions.

Note:

Any changes made exclusively in 25.11 will be lost when reverting to 25.10.

Does this advisory apply to NetSuite customers also?

Yes, this advisory applies to all customers using any Cloud EPM business processes, including NetSuite customers using the NetSuite version of Cloud EPM.

Are all the 25.11 features documented?

Yes, the Oracle Cloud Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) help center contains comprehensive documentation, including all new features introduced in the 25.11 update.