Data Masking Removes Payroll Run Results

Data masking protects personally identifiable information in non-production environments by obscuring selected data and removing data from specified tables. You can run it during an environment refresh or as a standalone job, including after a Production-to-Test (P2T) refresh.

Starting with update 26C, data masking removes data from 26 additional payroll tables, reducing the payroll data retained in non-production environments. These tables contain payroll run results, result values, balances, prepayments, and costing data.

Payroll run results copied from production are no longer available in the non-production environment after data masking runs. The affected tables are emptied; their contents are not replaced with masked values. Testing, reporting, extracts, and downstream processes that depend on the removed data are therefore affected.

This change applies whether data masking runs during an environment refresh or as a standalone job.

Business Benefit: Sensitive payroll run results are removed after data masking.

Steps to enable and configure

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Tips and considerations

  • Review your P2T refresh procedures, especially if you routinely or automatically run data masking after a refresh. Copied payroll run results will be removed when masking runs.
  • Before running data masking, assess whether the resulting environment will support your planned payroll testing, reporting, and integration scenarios.
  • This change applies whether masking runs during an environment refresh or as a standalone job. Masking rules cannot be customized to retain the affected payroll data.
  • Data masking is irreversible. If you subsequently require the original data in the non-production environment, you must perform another environment refresh without data masking.
  • Review “Payroll Tables Truncated During Data Masking” in Appendix A of the Data Masking service document for the complete list of affected tables.

Key resources

MOS article: Oracle Applications Cloud - Data Masking Standalone Service Entitlement (KB4325).