Manage Project Business Objects Using the Oracle Visual Builder Add-in for Excel

The Oracle Visual Builder Add-in for Excel integrates Microsoft Excel spreadsheets with REST services to retrieve, analyze, and edit business data in Excel. You can download data to an Excel spreadsheet, manipulate it (online or offline), and upload the changes back to the service. The service validates the changes and reports the success or error responses back to you in Excel.

To build layouts, the add-in reads the service description directly from the target instance (or optionally, from a local metadata file). You can create different layouts within each worksheet. The type of layout you choose depends on the structure of the data that’s being downloaded. For example, if you are working with a REST API to bulk update projects, you can use a table layout. Conversely, if you are working with a REST API to update budgets, you can use a form-over-table layout, where the form shows the budget header details and the table shows the line level details. You can create one type of layout per worksheet, and where services contain parent-child objects, layouts can optionally be linked together.

You can also use the add-in to invoke custom actions within a REST API, for example, perform a project cost adjustment or release a Project Billing invoice.

For example, you can use this tool to:

• Update project attributes such as dates, statuses, organizations, and descriptive flexfields for a group of projects.
• Update task attributes such as dates, cross-charging statuses, capitalizable and billable statuses, task manager, and descriptive flexfields for a group of tasks across projects.
• Update resource assignment attributes and periodic details such as planning dates, unplanned flag, planning amounts, quantity, and raw costs of a financial project plan or financial plans (budgets and forecasts).

Prerequisite to Update Descriptive Flexfields

• The root layout is allowed to be Table layout instead of Form-over-Table layout. Also, global segments are always editable, irrespective of enabling the context segment.

Tips and Considerations

• Always ensure that you are using the latest version of the Oracle Visual Builder Add-in for Excel.
• After invoking custom actions, you must refresh the layout manually by downloading the data.
• After making any configuration changes in the Layout designer, click Redraw Layout for the layout changes to take effect.
• If descriptive flexfield segments are defined for a business object, and the REST API for this business object supports descriptive flexfields, then follow these steps to expose these segments in a layout:
  • In the Layout Designer, under Columns, click the Manage Columns icon.
  • Enable the Context Prompt attribute under Available Fields to view the descriptive flexfield segments.
• When context-sensitive descriptive flexfield segments are defined, the add-in displays segments from all contexts and disables them for entry. Click the Context Prompt column to view and select from the available contexts. Based on the selected context, the relevant context-sensitive columns are then enabled for editing.
• You can view the status of an upload request in the Status pane. In case of failures, appropriate error messages are displayed. Change the row selection in the layout to view row-specific messages.
• By default, the add-in sends each REST request in batch mode, with a default batch size of 25.

Resources

• Download the latest Oracle Visual Builder Add-in for Excel from the Oracle Visual Builder Add-in for Excel Downloads page.
• See the tutorial Create an Integrated Excel Workbook to Manage Data from a REST Service for the steps to use the Visual Builder Add-in for Excel.
• See the Using the Oracle Visual Builder Add-in for Excel guide.
• See Perform Batch Actions topic in the REST API for Oracle Project Portfolio Management Cloud guide.