1. Using Procurement
  2. Taxonomies

Taxonomies

A taxonomy is defined as a method for categorizing and classifying a set of data or objects.

Use Oracle Spend Classification to set up as many as five taxonomies for the purposes of reclassifying your spend data. You can define a taxonomy to have up to 9 levels. Use these levels in your analytics to have high-level and detailed reports as required. The available taxonomies are Purchasing Taxonomy, UNSPSC Taxonomy, Custom Taxonomy 1, Custom Taxonomy 2, and Custom Taxonomy 3. You can load a taxonomy that suits your requirements into any of the available taxonomy definitions. For example, if you’ve set up purchasing categories for use in requisitions and purchase orders, you can use the purchasing taxonomy to store the purchasing categories. This may be a copy or based on spend analysis requirements. You can also use the scheduled process Import Purchasing Categories into Spend Classification to extract the purchasing categories from Oracle Fusion Cloud Procurement into Spend Classification.

Note: The UNSPSC Taxonomy can be used to store the categories needed by your organizations that are based on the UNSPSC category definitions. Since the complete UNSPSC taxonomy is very large due to its comprehensive nature, most organizations that consider using the UNSPSC definitions opt to implement a dramatically reduced version of the category set. For this reason, and because organizations rarely use the full definition, Spend Classification doesn’t provide a predefined version of the UNSPSC taxonomy.

As the spend analysis requirements for an organization evolve, this may result in the need for the spend taxonomy to be adjusted. Here's how you update taxonomies using Spend Classification:

  1. Add new categories to the existing taxonomy.

  2. Delete categories from the existing taxonomy.

  3. Modify existing category code description in existing taxonomy.

  4. Switch over to an entirely new taxonomy (by using a spare taxonomy definition.)

When changes are made to a taxonomy definition, equivalent modifications will need to be made to the training data set. If new categories are introduced, new sample spend records for that category will need to be added to the training data so that an updated version of the Knowledge Base can be created. Where a category is removed, then the training data for that category can also be removed from the training data set.

Modify a Taxonomy

You can revise an active taxonomy by adding new categories, modifying existing category names, or deleting categories in the taxonomy.

To create or edit categories:

  1. In the Configuration page, on the Taxonomies tab, click menu for a taxonomy and select Download Categories.

  2. Open the downloaded template in a spreadsheet editor to make modifications.

    When populating the template for the first time, note that the first column Taxonomy is meant for the taxonomy code. For example, for Custom taxonomy 1, you enter ORA_POI_CUSTOM1 in the Taxonomy column. These are the codes for all the taxonomies:

    • Custom taxonomy 1 - ORA_POI_CUSTOM1
    • Custom taxonomy 2 - ORA_POI_CUSTOM2
    • Custom taxonomy 3 - ORA_POI_CUSTOM3
    • Purchasing taxonomy - ORA_POI_PURCHASING
    • UNSPSC taxonomy - ORA_POI_UNSPSC
    Tip: You can rename any of these taxonomies. To change the name of a taxonomy, edit the meaning of the taxonomy in the ORA_POI_TAXONOMY_TYPES and ORA_POI_POST_RULE_ACTIONS lookups. For guidance on how to edit the meaning of the taxonomy in a lookup, see this FAQ.
  3. Add new categories or edit categories by changing category names at any level. Follow these guidelines to modify or extend the taxonomy:
    • When editing the categories, use the same separator as configured for the category name and the description values.
    • If you change the parent node of a category name, you must change all the instances of that category name. For example, you have three categories Office.Furniture, Office.Supplies, and Office.Keys. You change Office to Administration in one of the categories. Search for all instances of Office at the same level of the category name and change them to Administration. The new category names will be Administration.Furniture, Administration.Supplies, and Administration.Keys.
    • You can change the name of the leaf node of any category without impacting other categories.
    Important: When editing the categories, use the same separator as configured for the category name and the description values.
  4. After making the required changes, delete all the rows in which you haven’t made any changes.

  5. Save and close the file.

    Note: When you save a file in languages other than English, set the encoding to UTF-8. If you don’t see the Encoding option, in the Save As dialog, click Tools > Web Options. In the Encoding tab under Save this document as, select Unicode (UTF-8).

  6. Click menu and select Upload Categories.

  7. In the Upload Categories dialog box, select the file that you updated, and click Upload.

    The updated categories are now available for classification.

Edit Properties of Taxonomies

You can edit the properties of a taxonomy only when there are no categories associated with the taxonomy. To edit properties of a taxonomy:

  1. In the Configuration page, on the Taxonomies tab, click menu for the relevant taxonomy and select Edit Properties.

  2. In the Edit Properties dialog box, you can do these activities:

    1. Enter the number of levels for the category.

    2. Enter a character for the Category Name Separator like "-", "~", "."Enter a character for the Category Description Separator like "-", "~", ".".

  3. Click Update.

    You can now add categories using the new name and description separators.

Delete Categories

To delete categories:

  1. In the Configuration page, on the Taxonomies tab, click menu for a taxonomy and select Delete Categories.

  2. Click Delete in the confirmation dialog box.

    All the categories in the taxonomy are deleted.