1 Noteworthy Enhancements

Oracle Retail Analytics and Planning 26.2.401.0 is a Critical Update.

This guide outlines the information you need to know about new or improved functionality in the Oracle Retail Analytics and Planning applications update and describes any tasks you might need to perform for the update. Each section includes a brief description of the feature, the steps you need to take to enable or begin using the feature, any tips or considerations that you should keep in mind, and the resources available to help you.

Important:

Due to the highly extensible nature of the Retail Analytics and Planning suite of cloud services, scheduled updates to its application features can affect your custom scripts, reports, datasets, and other objects added in the Innovation Workbench and Oracle Analytics Server. The customer is solely responsible for regularly backing up all custom objects created across the suite of Retail Analytics and Planning (RAP) cloud services and ensuring that these custom objects continue to function as intended after each major update. Oracle does not maintain backups of custom objects in a way that enables their individual restoration if they are lost or corrupted. For example, if a custom script is deleted by a user or modified in a way that makes it non-functional, Oracle cannot restore it without rolling back the environment to an earlier point in time (before the changes occurred).

Column Definitions

Analytics and Planning Enhancements

Integration and Interface Updates

This release includes several updates to data integrations and commonly used batch programs in the AIF DATA batch schedule. All customers of RAP applications may be impacted by these changes, so review this content carefully and take action if required.

  • Validation rule ORG_R4 (no alphanumeric characters in location IDs) has been disabled for job DIM_ORG_VALIDATOR_JOB as it is no longer required.
  • A number of new standalone processes have been added with the prefix LOAD_MDU, for example LOAD_MDU_PROD_ATTR_D_ADHOC_PROCESS. These processes are not intended to be executed from POM manually; they are triggered by loading the associated files from the AI Foundation Manage Data Uploads screen.
  • The sales transaction load W_RTL_SLS_TRX_IT_LC_DY_F_JOB has a new dependency added on W_RTL_PRICE_IT_LC_DY_F_JOB in order to perform certain calculations that depend on the loaded price fact data. After upgrade, you may notice the sales job completing later in the schedule than it used to because of this change.

AI Services Enhancements

Ask Oracle Chat Updates

The Ask Oracle chat interface will now default to opening on the left side of the screen. An Expand icon at the top of the chat panel will move the chat into a fullscreen view with a tab added to the bottom navigation area.

User Experience Updates

This release brings updated user interface elements to AI-generated dashboards and application screens, including priority actions and communications panels on the right side of the screen. New and existing AI-generated content may begin including these elements for a common look-and-feel across applications.

AI Foundation Cloud Service Enhancements

Forecasting Data Mass Uploads

Forecast analysts can bring externally prepared adjustments and setup values into AI Foundation Forecasting in bulk. The supported scope includes historical demand adjustments, future forecast overrides, and parameters for new items and stores, so teams can use work prepared outside the application without entering each value individually.

  • Historical inputs include baseline-demand overrides and stockout or outlier flags; future inputs include adjusted baseline, peak, and final forecast values.
  • New-item and new-store uploads can provide forecast start dates and applicable substitution or like-store settings. The release does not imply a new editing screen; the requirement builds on existing data-upload capability.

Forecast Review Error Metrics

In the Forecast Review workspace, analysts review, adjust, and approve forecasts. Forecast error metrics appear in its Approval Information side drawer, giving analysts accuracy context as they decide which product/location forecasts need closer review.

  • The requirement places the metrics at the product/location intersection, rather than calculating a separate value for every week.
  • Analysts can use a low-error result to prioritize routine approval and investigate higher-error forecasts against recent or prior-year sales.

Item Supersession - Many to One Relationship

Discontinued items may continue selling until their inventory runs out while a replacement item begins selling. The replacement item’s forecast reflects the combined demand for the items it replaces.

Similarly, when a desired item is out of stock for an extended period or a shipment from a supplier is delayed, customers may buy alternatives. The main item’s forecast reflects its own demand plus the demand fulfilled by those alternatives.

Data Imports

Data Imports, accessible from the Control and Tactical Center, enables users to upload data for supported LPO, IPO, forecasting, and generic functional areas. One use case is an ad hoc request, such as quickly loading data to test an interface. Data Imports does not replace POM for scheduled data processing, as it is intended for limited data volumes, such as data for a single department.

Users select a functional area, download its CSV template, and upload, preview, and validate records before committing them. Validation errors must be resolved before 'Commit' becomes available. Users can review target, staging, and rejected data where available, and download data for review. The 'Upload Status' panel shows the current upload status and commit history.

For dependent imports, users commit each required group member and select 'Finalize Group' to complete the grouped load. The Upload status panel also shows the dependency group status and finalization history.

Supported areas include seasons, prices, optimization rules, inventory, promotions, and competitor data for LPO; networks, lead times, order multiples, review cycles, and rounding levels for IPO; data exclusions, forecast adjustments, new items, and new stores for forecasting; and shared data such as holidays, attributes, product attributes, and price zone products.

Inventory Planning Optimization (IPO) Cloud Service - Inventory Planning Enhancements

Store-Level Inventory in Manual Allocation

Manual allocation adds destination inventory context beside gross and net demand. Planners can review on-hand, in-transit, on-order, and inbound-allocation quantities for stores and warehouses before changing or approving an allocation.

Clearer Time-Parameter Labels

IPO clarifies the units shown for time-based planning parameters. The change makes it easier for planners to interpret a value consistently when reviewing or adjusting replenishment settings.

Vendor Minimum Order Quantities

IPO will evaluate a supplier/item total order quantity against its minimum order quantity after standard replenishment and destination-level order-multiple rounding. It combines destination quantities for the same supplier, item, and order date; quantities for different supplier/items do not satisfy one another’s minimum.

When the total is below the minimum, configured thresholds can support automatic round-up, a held recommendation for planner review, or round-down.

Consistent Order Multiple Defaulting

An undefined order multiple during replenishment will default to a value of 1. Now the same will happen in manual allocation. The supply chain route and lead time must still be defined to determine source/destination validity.

Enhanced Digital Assistant

The Digital Assistant is now opened in the sidebar, where users can keep the conversation visible while working in IPO. As before, users can ask questions and receive answers grounded in available documentation or request analytical summaries of recommendations. The assistant can dynamically present components such as dropdowns, tables, graphs, and so on. based on the request. Users can open a related dashboard in the workspace to review key metrics, trends, and supporting details.

An expandable Agent Activity panel shows the steps taken to process a request and the status of each step.

Freeze Column in Action Menu

The “Freeze Columns” option in the Actions menu lets users keep a selected column visible while scrolling horizontally through the other columns. This helps users retain key information, such as an item identifier, when reviewing or comparing data across a wide table.

Computer Columns

Using available data fields in a standard grid table, you can set an equation for adding a column that is calculated. The computed result is displayed in a new column in the table.

Lifecycle Pricing Optimization (LPO) Cloud Service Enhancements

Promotion and Markdown Roles

LPO adds separate access roles for Promotion and Markdown operations. Administrators can assign either role independently or give both to users whose responsibilities span the two workflows.

  • New roles: PROMOTION_PRICE_JOB, PROMOTION_PRICE_JOB_PREPROD, MARKDOWN_PRICE_JOB, and MARKDOWN_PRICE_JOB_PREPROD.
  • The assigned roles govern access to the relevant Promotion and Markdown rules and to Manage Recommendations in LPO. Promotion and Markdown runs continue to appear together in Run Overview; however, Promotion and Markdown recommendations and rules can be viewed only by users with the corresponding Promotion or Markdown role, respectively. Users assigned both roles can access both Promotion and Markdown functionality and the rules.
  • Action required: Users who are not assigned an appropriate role will lose access to the applicable LPO and Rules Management screens. Administrators must assign users the appropriate role before they access Promotion or Markdown functionality in LPO and the related rules in Control and Tactical Center.

For more details, see Chapter 4: Users, Roles, and Privileges in the Oracle Retail Lifecycle Pricing Optimization Cloud Service User Guide.

Post-Batch Optimization Run Notifications

LPO already generates a pre-batch optimization run notification when an optimization batch run begins. It now also generates a post-batch optimization run notification when the batch completes, summarizing the runs started automatically by that batch.

  • Separate summaries are provided for Promotion and Markdown runs and for Regular Price runs. Each reports the total number of runs and counts by status: Created, Queued for Creation, Ready for Review, Running, Submitted, Infeasible, and Failed.
  • Users can view the post-batch run optimization in the LPO application and/or receive it by email according to Retail Home notification settings.

Split Text and Concatenate in Computed Columns

In the Manage Recommendation and Run Results tables, users can create text computed columns through View > Computed Columns.

For example, a user can use Split Text to extract only the color from an Item Description. A user can use Concatenate to combine a Color ID and Color Description into one value, such as 9-Gray.

  • Split Text returns a specified part of a source value. For Item Descr “Ribbed Crew Neck Top:brown”, splitPart(BH, ":", 2) returns “brown”. Here, BH is the source column alias.
  • Concatenate joins values into one text result. For example, “concat(F, "-", G)” returns “9-Gray” when F contains Color ID 9 and G contains Color Description Gray.

For more details, see Chapter 5: Manage Recommendation in the Oracle Retail Lifecycle Pricing Optimization Cloud Service User Guide.

Additional Price and Cost Metrics

LPO adds minimum and maximum Ticket, Original, and Regular Prices, as well as Cost and inventory-weighted price, at the Style Color and Price Zone level. These measures help pricing users see price dispersion and cost context when assessing recommendations.

  • Action required: Inv Weighted Price requires INV_PRICE to be populated in the RI table RSE_INV_PR_LC_WK_A.

For more details, see Appendix G: Promotion and Markdown Manage Recommendation in the Oracle Retail Lifecycle Pricing Optimization Cloud Service User Guide.

Enhanced Digital Assistant

The Digital Assistant is now opened in the left sidebar, where users can keep the conversation visible while working in LPO. As before, users can ask questions and receive answers grounded in available documentation or request analytical summaries of recommendations. The assistant can dynamically present components such as dropdowns, tables, graphs, and so on. based on the request. Users can open a dashboard in the workspace to review key metrics, trends, and supporting details.

An expandable Agent Activity panel shows the steps taken to process a request and the status of each step.

For more details, see Chapter 12: Digital Assistant in the Oracle Retail Lifecycle Pricing Optimization Cloud Service User Guide.

Application Preferences for Recommendation Views

LPO adds an Application Preferences page, accessible to users with the admin role through Preferences in the profile menu at the top right of the application. Administrators can choose which Markdown, Promotion, and Regular Price tabs appear in Manage Recommendations, select the prior or updated filter layout, and save or cancel their changes.

For more details, see Chapter 2: Accessing and Navigating LPO in the Oracle Retail Lifecycle Pricing Optimization Cloud Service User Guide.

Freeze Column in Action Menu

The “Freeze Columns” option in the Actions menu lets users keep a selected column visible while scrolling horizontally through the other columns. This helps users retain key information, such as an item identifier, when reviewing or comparing data across a wide table.

Retail Insights Cloud Service Enhancements

Price-Based Sales Reporting

This release of Retail Insights includes new columns in the sales transaction fact for capturing price data for the item/locations on the transaction lines, as well as aggregated price-based sales measures for reporting sales amounts relative to different price points, not just the final selling price. At a base transaction fact level, the actual price values such as Original Price and Last Regular Price will be added to the transaction lines. At an aggregate level, the batch will pre-calculate the product of various quantity values with the price points. For example, the Curr Price Gross Lia Sales Amt metric will multiply the current price by the sum of gross sales and liability units, which represents the total retail value of the sold units for the item/location’s current selling price (without any discounts or promotions applied from the POS). These calculated values will be aggregated to higher levels during the nightly batch so they may be used efficiently in reports at higher levels of merchandise hierarchy. Refer to the Metrics and Attributes Catalog for a complete list of new metrics.

In order to capture this additional data on the sales fact, a new dependency has been established on the price fact load in the nightly batch, such that sales may only be loaded after price data. The sales transaction jobs may run later in the batch cycle after this update due to the added dependency. A new C_ODI_PARAM option RI_SLS_PRICE_IND has been added to enable or disable this functionality, with a default value of N (disabled). You must update this configuration to ‘Y’ to begin populating the new sales columns with price data during nightly batch runs. Due to the complexity of combining price and sales data during the batch run, enabling this feature will increase the overall duration of your batch runs and should be tested in non-production environments before enabling it in production.

Historical data will not be updated for the added columns in fact tables and aggregates. The new columns will support being loaded through the existing sales history load process. A one-time data migration script could also be prepared by an implementation partner and provided to Oracle for execution in your environment.

Item Supplier Attributes

This release of Retail Insights adds several new attributes for Supplier details in the Item dimension. Attributes include supplier differentiators, supplier hierarchies, rounding levels, consignment and concession configurations, and others. Both the existing Merchandising Foundation CS integration and the file-based data loads for supplier-item data have been expanded to support the new fields.

MFCS integration will automatically begin populating the new fields on upgrade. If you are using PRODUCT.csv file to integrate product data, you will need to update your context (CTX) file to add the new columns and then begin populating them with data as needed. The new fields will be stored in the existing W_RTL_IT_SUPPLIER_D table. Refer to the RAP Interfaces Guide for more details on the file changes.

Sales Cost Excluding VAT

This release of Retail Insights includes new metrics that pre-calculate sales cost excluding taxes (VAT). When sales integration is configured to provide sales retail values inclusive of tax amounts, the base sales cost metrics will also include VAT implicitly due to the derived nature of the metrics as Sales Amount minus Sales Profit. The new metrics will additionally subtract Sales Tax and would be usable only when sales amounts start as tax-inclusive. If the sales amounts are already tax-exclusive then do not use these metrics, hide them using the Metric Visibility feature as described in the RAP Administration Guide. Refer to the Metrics and Attributes Catalog for the complete list of metrics added.

Merchandise Hierarchy Attributes

This release of Retail Insights adds Custom Flex Attributes (CFA) to the Item dimension for the department, class, and subclass hierarchy levels. These attributes can be sourced from Merchandising Foundation CS or loaded manually from a file. The interface for this data was added in a prior release, only the reporting attributes are new in this update. If you do not have data for these attributes, it is recommended to use the Metric Visibility feature to hide them by following the steps in the RAP Administration Guide, as a total of 87 attributes has been created for this functionality. Refer to the Metrics and Attributes Catalog for the complete list of attributes added.

Retail Predictive Application Server Cloud Edition Server Enhancements

This section includes RPAS CE workspace, administration, explainability, and Planning Platform configuration enhancements. Planning Platform configuration capabilities are presented here because Solution Designer and Workflow Manager are part of the RPAS CE configuration and administration experience.

Reference-Data Reads for Focused Workbooks

RPAS can read eligible reference positions directly from the Planning Data Store for supported positional calculations. A planner’s workbook can therefore contain the items, stores, or periods being edited while calculations still use like-item, like-store, fixed-reference, or shifted-period data.

  • Reference data remains read-only and does not expand the wizard-selected workbook scope. This reduces the risk that an aggregate edit or spread changes positions loaded only as calculation inputs.
  • The initial requirement covers configured lookup, fixed lookup, and time-shift expressions; it is not a general fallback for any position absent from a workbook.

Persistent Workbook-Wizard Attribute Selections

RPAS remembers the hierarchy attributes a user chooses to display in a workbook wizard. The attributes stay visible when the user moves backward and forward through the wizard and are restored when the same user returns to the same wizard context.

  • Selections are scoped to the user, workbook template, and selection step. One planner’s choices do not change another planner’s wizard or carry automatically into a different template.

Recent Plans in Retail Home

Retail Home adds a role-based Recent Plans tile for RPAS Planning applications such as Assortment Planning and Merchandise Financial Planning. Users can see a workspace name, scenario, and last-opened and last-edited information without first navigating into each application.

  • Selecting a workspace name opens that plan in the Planning application in a new browser tab. The tile is a shortcut; it does not replace the existing planning workflow.

Recovery of User-Deleted Workbooks

RPAS supports recovery of workbooks deleted through supported user-interface actions. Recovery depends on whether the entire plan was deleted or only its workspace: administrators can recover eligible deleted plans or workspaces through Online Administration Tools, while users can recover an eligible deleted workspace from its retained plan in Create Plans.

  • Recover Workspace restores the existing workspace when its plan definition remains available. The recovery threshold is seven days; this enhancement does not change the Health Check schedule or retention configuration.

Solution Designer Enhancements

Solution Designer adds configuration and maintenance capabilities that help system implementers manage solution structures and custom modules more efficiently.

Dynamic Position Maintenance

Solution Designer enables system implementers to configure Dynamic Position Maintenance (DPM) for eligible dimension levels within a selected ruleset. Eligible levels are determined by the DPM settings defined in the base dimension configuration.

Dimensions and Dynamic Roll up

System implementers can manage workbook dimensions and its structure for individual rulesets. They can modify dimension levels and configure dynamic rollups relationships.

Rules Filter for Left-Hand-Side (LHS) Measures

Implementers can filter rules by a selected measure to identify rules in which that measure is used on the left-hand side of an expression.

Dimension-Level Reordering

Implementers can reorder dimension levels by dragging them to a new position in the dimension tree.

Undo and Redo

Solution Designer tracks changes by page, allowing implementers to undo or redo edits in the configuration session.

Copy and Delete Custom Modules

Solution Designer provides actions to copy or delete custom modules, including their associated configuration files.

Streamlined Property Editing

The right-side Properties panel groups component and measure properties and allows implementers to edit them directly, reducing navigation through long tables.

Persistent User Interface Preferences

Solution Designer retains selected user interface preferences across tabs and sessions. For example, table column order and widths, and side-panel widths remain set by the user.

Workflow Manager Enhancements

Measure Display Preference

Workflow Manager adds settings to display measures and measure components by name or label in relevant grids, picklists, and references.

Assortment Planning Cloud Service Enhancements

Options Forecast at Configured Planning Levels

The AI Foundation Options Forecast integration follows the product planning level configured for Assortment Planning. In addition to the standard Sub-Class level, an implementation can use Class or Department while keeping Store Cluster as the location level.

  • Requests to AI Foundation and the results returned to Planning use the same configured product level. Planners continue to run Options Forecast through the existing Assortment Strategy workflow; no new workbook action or service endpoint is required.