1. Service Administrator Action List
  2. Pre-Provisioning

2 Pre-Provisioning

Pre-provisioning is the period after contracts are signed, but before receiving your environments, where some key activities can occur related to your upcoming implementation. For Retail Analytics and Planning cloud service implementations, your Customer Success Manager (CSM) will be your main point of contact for these activities.

Activate Your Service into a Cloud Account

You will receive an activation e-mail from Oracle in the initial stages of provisioning — often immediately after your subscription order is booked. You need to activate your cloud service into a cloud account to begin the provisioning activities for your Oracle Retail service(s). Promptly complete the activations steps to better enable on-time environment delivery.

On activation of your cloud account, you have access to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console and the Identity and Access Management (OCI IAM) and your default Identity Domain is created. An identity domain is a container for managing users and roles, federating and provisioning of users, secure application integration through Oracle Single Sign-On (SSO) configuration, and OAuth administration. It represents a user population in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and its associated configurations and security settings (such as MFA).

Your default identity domain with be of the Oracle Apps type. Each identity domain type is associated with a different set of features and object limits.

Oracle Retail Best Practice for Tenancy, Applications, and Identity Domains

Oracle Retail recommends that all retail applications use the same OCI IAM Domain. All retail application environments must reside within the same OCI IAM domain for Single Sign-On (SSO) to function across production and non-production environments.

If the customer requires separating the identity management for production and non-production environments, the tenancies, domains, and application environments must be organized such that all production (prod) applications are in the same identity domain and all non-production (stage, dev, and so on) applications are in the same identity domain.

For Oracle Retail enterprise integration, the server-to-server security credentials required to flow among the Oracle Retail Applications (for example, Merchandise Foundation Cloud Service to Planning), the applications must reside in the same tenancy.

Note:

Activation for OCI IAM does NOT impact billing or the subscription service period - those details are connected to the subsequent environment delivery of the Analytics and Planning cloud services.

Activating into a New Oracle Cloud Account

To start the setup, you'll click the Activate link provided in the e-mail received. Then the following steps are required:

  1. Provide the desired name for the Oracle Cloud Account

    A best practice is to use a name which will encompass the scope of services to be managed in the account, such as a combination of your company name and "retail". For example, mystoresretail. After activation, you can adjust the displayed name for the cloud account.

  2. Provide your e-mail address as the customer administrator who receives the activation e-mail.

    The e-mail address must match the initial e-mail. If you would like a different contact to be used as the administrator, this can be managed after activation in coordination with your CSM.

  3. The activation success message will display and you will receive a new welcome e-mail with access credentials.

An Oracle Cloud Account is not the same as your My Oracle Support account. The Oracle Cloud Account exists within the OCI console and includes your identity domain(s) for managing user access and security.

Activate into an Existing Oracle Cloud Account

Activate your Retail cloud service within the Account Management section of your existing Oracle Cloud Account.

  1. Log in to your existing Oracle Cloud Account.

    Clicking the Activate link brings you to the login page.

  2. Within the Dashboard, click on the Account Management menu and then select the Activate tab.

    Available services to activate will be listed; you may need to select Show: Pending Activations.

  3. Click the Cloud Service Account Setup button to complete setup. This setup enables you to select the current Oracle Cloud Account as the destination for the cloud service activation.

If you have any issues with the above, see the Frequently Asked Questions chapter.

Prepare Project Team

During this time, you will also be putting together your project plan for the deployment and go-live phases of your implementation. It is important to consider the following during this planning phase to prepare your project team for the Analytics and Planning implementation:

  • OCI Identity & Access Management - As noted above, you will be using OCI IAM UI for user management for your Analytics and Planning cloud services. During the pre-provisioning timeframe, familiarize yourself with this solution and its features.

  • Project Team Training - Consider the training that the members of your team will need in order to make your implementation successful. This includes both your employees and your systems integration partner. Suggested training topics to consider include:

    • Oracle Analytics Server (OAS)

    • Retail Insights functional documentation

    • AI Foundation Cloud Services functional documentation

    • Retail Learning Subscriptions (RLS)

    • RPAS Configuration Tools/Starter Kit including Starter Kit VMs

    • RPAS Application/Dashboard Configuration

    • Retail Predictive Application Server Cloud Edition documentation

    • RPAS Integrations (on-premise and other Retail SaaS), for example, with the Planning Data Schema (PDS)

    • Functional Business Process Changes (current state, future state)

  • Security Configurations - During this phase, you should designate a portion of your team to becoming familiar with OCI IAM and the enterprise roles, duties, and privileges that will be part of the Retail Analytics and Planning cloud services you are implementing. For more details on the application-specific roles and configurations, please refer to:

    • The following documents are available in the associated Documentation Library for the applications on Oracle Help Center:

      • Retail Insights Cloud Services Security Guide

      • Retail Insights Cloud Services Implementation Guide

      • Retail AI Foundation Cloud Services Security Guide

      • Retail AI Foundation Cloud Services Implementation Guide

      • Retail Analytics and Planning Implementation Guide

      • Merchandise Financial Planning Implementation Guide

      • Inventory Planning Optimization Implementation Guide

      • Assortment Planning Implementation Guide

      • Oracle Retail Application Server Cloud Edition Security Guide

      • Oracle Retail Application Server Cloud Edition Administration Guide

    • For more information on OCI IAM, see Managing Users, User Accounts, and Roles

  • Data Conversion Preparations - During this period you can start planning for the eventual data conversion by cleaning up your legacy data - purging outdated items or transactions, ensuring standardization of data, and so on. It will be important to have adequate resources available to extract, transform, and load your legacy data from on-premise or 3rd-party systems into the Oracle Cloud, which can be a time-consuming process depending on the quality and quantity of data involved.

  • Extensibility Configuration Options - Your team can start reviewing the Generally Available configuration in your Planning & Optimization or solution to determine how the custom extensions can be used to cater to individual business processes. Work with your systems integrator to identify those you are unsure about or need to be considered in the program planning. For details on the GA configuration for each of the Planning & Optimization cloud services, see the user guide for each cloud service. Extensibility options are detailed in the implementation guide for your cloud service.

  • System Options Configuration - Start reviewing the system options available in all the Retail Analytics and Planning solutions to determine how these should be configured. Work with your systems integrator to identify those you are unsure about or need to be considered in the program planning. For details on the system options for each of the cloud services, see the implementation guide for each cloud service.

  • Integration Planning - Start reviewing the available existing integrations available as part of the Retail Analytics and Planning cloud services to support internal Oracle integrations, as well as any integrations you may need to external solutions. This will also help you identify whether you require any custom integrations beyond the base cloud-to-cloud integrations provided by Oracle.

    • RI/RSP Implementation Go-Live Checklist - This document highlights all major project milestones and activities with a focus on data conversion and cloud cutover processes in order to get you to a successful go-live for an Insights and AI Foundation Cloud Services project. It can be found on My Oracle Support under Doc ID 2539848.1.

    • Administration Guides - Each cloud service has an administration guide that outlines system administration, user administration, Online Administration Tools, batches, and integrations that enable you to handle all administration-related activities.

    • Interface Guides - This document details the common data interfaces for Retail Analytics and Planning solutions along with the file specifications and will be referenced often throughout the project as it specifies required and optional interfaces by application. It can be found on My Oracle Support under Doc ID 2539848.1.

    • Operations Guides - Each cloud service has an operations guide that details standalone batches and integration programs. Note that all implementations leverage Retail Insights as an integration platform, even those not using Retail Insights itself.

    • Retail Reference Library - This tool is free to all Oracle Retail customers and can be downloaded from My Oracle Support under Doc ID 2058843.2. It is also available online from the Welcome page in your Retail Home environment. This tool is composed of multiple parts, but the most critical to become familiar with are the Retail Reference Models (business process flows) and the Retail Reference Architecture (integration diagrams, payloads, and so on).