Understanding FreeForm
FreeForm is a Reporting, Analysis, and Planning application. FreeForm enables you to create an application with the cubes and dimensions of your choice without being constrained by the cube and dimension limitations imposed by standard applications. With FreeForm, you can model and build your own cubes while preserving the ability to leverage business process functionalities.
FreeForm can be accessed using Oracle Smart View for Office or Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud screens; they support Groovy scripts for custom functions, and business rules for calculations.
You can create applications with multiple cubes or you can create an application with a single cube and then add more cubes later (up to 12 cubes total).
Table 2-1 FreeForm Features at a Glance
What is FreeForm? | What can I create with FreeForm? | What use cases can I solve with multi-cube FreeForm? | What's special about multi-cubeFreeForm? |
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FreeForm is an EPM application with no dimension prerequisites, to create multiple cubes with full flexibility in dimensions based on business use case needs. | Create up to 12 cubes that can use any of the 29 dimensions in any combination for each cube based on use case needs. (26 custom dimensions plus three account, period, and entity dimension types.) |
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Oracle EPM Cloud Platform provides the technology framework guardrails and features to help customers succeed. | Create an application that is all ASO reporting or all Hybrid BSO planning cubes or a combination of ASO and BSO. |
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Gives full control to customers to work with Sales to create a best fit solution that best meets their requirements for reporting or planning |
Note:
The following features are not available in FreeForm because these features require the provided Scenario, Version, Period, and Year dimensions to be present:
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Predictive Planning
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Auto-Predict
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IPM Insights
In FreeForm, the Scenario, Version, Period, and Year dimensions can be defined as custom dimensions.
In addition, the following features are not available in FreeForm:
- Sandboxes
- Approvals
- Task Manager
About Multi-Cube FreeForm Apps
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The maximum number of custom dimensions allowed in a FreeForm app is 26.
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Cubes can share dimensions or have standalone dimensionality.
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All dimensions can be custom; or native account, period, and/or entity dimensions can be inherited by the cubes.
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Cross-cube data maps, Smart Push, and Copy Data support are available for FreeForm app types.
Multi-cube FreeForm apps are constrained by these existing business process assumptions:
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Members must be unique across all the cubes within FreeForm.
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Governors are applicable at the application level and not at the cube level.
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The input outlines must not be enabled to allow duplicate member names.
Videos
Your Goal | Learn How |
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Get an introduction to FreeForm. |
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Create FreeForm apps from on-premises Essbase outline (OTL) files and snapshots. |
Creating FreeForm applications from on-premises Essbase outline files and snapshots |
Create multi-cube FreeForm apps with an Essbase outline |
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Create FreeForm apps with a Hybrid BSO cube |
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Create FreeForm apps with an ASO or reporting cube |
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Create multi-cube FreeForm apps with a BSO or ASO cube |
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Learn how to create FreeForm apps using an Excel template. Using the Excel template, you learn how to define application properties, manage cubes, create dimensions and members, attributes, access permissions, and load data into the FreeForm application. |
Creating Multi-Cube FreeForm Applications with an Excel Template - Part 1 |
Learn how to update FreeForm apps using an Excel template and verifying changes in the web interface. After creating your FreeForm application using an Excel template, learn how you can use the same template to make modifications to dimensions, members, substitution variables, and security. Then, in the Planning web interface, assign Application Management options, review the application properties and definition, and the data you imported. |
Creating Multi-Cube FreeForm Applications with an Excel Template - Part 2 |