1. Service Administrator Action List
  2. Post Provisioning

4 Post Provisioning

In the first few days after your initial provisioning, it is recommended that you do each of the following tasks, as they are applicable for your implementation. This will help ensure that any configuration or access issues are resolved earlier in your program to avoid delays. For each of the URLs below, the Region Name and Customer Subnamespace portion of the URL should be replaced with the one specific for your implementation, which will be the same as your cloud service URLs.

Data Conversion

The data conversion tool is an application that will be deployed in your non-production environments to assist you in converting your legacy application data into the Merchandising cloud services - primarily Merchandising and Pricing. Details on how to use the data conversion application can be found in the Merchandising Data Conversion Guide. Validate you are able to log into this tool successfully and that you are able to see the links in the task list.

URL:

https://rex.retail.<Region Name>.ocs.oraclecloud.com/<Customer Subnamespace>/DataConversion/faces/Home

Process Orchestration and Monitoring

The Merchandising Cloud Services have their own batch scheduler that will be used. The user interface for this scheduler is called Process Orchestration and Monitoring (POM). POM will allow you to schedule, track and manage nightly and intraday batch jobs.

As part of your implementation, you will need to evaluate which batches should be run for your business, based on the features in the product you intend to use. However, the first step will be to validate that you can connect to scheduler successfully. To do this, login using your same OCI IAM user ID. Use the URL information below to create the links for your environments. Refer to the Process Orchestration and Monitoring User Guide for more details on using this tool.

URL: https://home.retail<Region Name>.ocs.oraclecloud.com/<Customer Subnamespace>/POMJetUI/

During this period, you'll also be receiving a batch schedule diagram from the Oracle Cloud Operations team, which includes all the Merchandising batch processes. You'll be asked to indicate which batches should be enabled in your environments and return the updated diagram. The Oracle team will review the information that you provide and validate that all dependent batches have been accounted for. Any updates will be passed back to you for a final review and then the Oracle Cloud Operations team will enable the appropriate batches in your environment.

Note:

You can change your initial configuration later on as well, but this initial setup is intended to account for the majority of the processes you will need as you start your deployment.

BI Publisher

BI Publisher is available as part of your Merchandising cloud service subscription. It allows you access to create custom reports directly against the Merchandising database. Reports created in BI Publisher can be scheduled, exported into a spreadsheet or other document, or can be configured to run as a custom report in a dashboard or contextual pane in one of the Merchandising cloud services. For more information on using BI Publisher to create custom reports, see the Merchandising Customization and Extensions Guide. See also the Oracle documentation on BI Publisher.

URL: https://<hostname>/<tenantname>/xmlpserver

Data Viewer

As part of provisioning, only the service administrator group/role will have access to the Data Viewer. This will allow you to directly access the Merchandising database in read/write mode (for non-production environments) or read only (in production). To validate that you can connect with this capability, log into Merchandising as the administrator. Then do the following:

  1. Click the Tasks link (Tasks Icon) in the main menu.

  2. Select Application Administrator > Data Viewer. This should open a new browser tab for Oracle APEX (Application Express).

  3. Select the appropriate workspace.

Once in this workspace, you can create additional users that will have access to the workspace for query or read/write access.

Note:

The users you are creating in Data Viewer should already exist in OCI IAM. If you have not yet created users in OCI IAM, you can add them to Data Viewer at another time. Refer to the Merchandising Administration Guide for additional details. See also the Oracle documentation on Application Express.

Configure and Test Data Access Schema

The Data Access Schema (DAS) is a way for certain tables in the Merchandising Foundation production database to be replicated to an on-premise or hosted environment to provide you with more direct access to your production data in order to build extensions, integration, custom reporting, and so on. The DAS uses Oracle GoldenGate, which is a comprehensive software package for real-time data integration and replication in heterogeneous IT environments. If you plan to implement replication from Merchandising, you will also need to acquire database capacity and a Golden Gate license for the target.

After your Merchandising environments have been provisioned, then you will need to log an SR to complete the GoldenGate installation on the source (SaaS) side. As part of this activity, you will be asked to provide the target connection details for configuration on the source side, as well.

Then, once you have installed and configured your target environment, you can configure which of the tables available for replication you want replicated to your target database. The list of tables that are available to be replicated are found in the DAS data model, which can be downloaded from My Oracle Support by accessing note Doc ID 2200398.1. For details on configuring your target environment and adding tables to DAS, see the My Oracle Support notes for Doc ID 2835323.1 and Doc ID 2283998.1.

Web Services

ReST service URLs for the Merchandising cloud services can be found in the Operations Guides for each serviceFoot 1, along with details on how they are used. It will require you to configure your hostname into the URL to call the service, like that used for accessing the Merchandising applications:

For SOAP services, there are two URLs - one if you are calling the service via Retail Service Backbone (RSB) which is a component of the Oracle Retail Integration Cloud Service (RICS), and one if you are calling directly via Merchandising. The URLs for each of those options and how to configure them can be found in Operations Guide - Volume 2.

Retail Home

Oracle Retail Home is a role-based, web portal for the retail enterprise and a user's launch pad to data and supporting solutions most relevant to their role: buyer, planner, inventory analyst, promotional manager, to name just a few. If you purchased Oracle Retail Insights as part of your Oracle Retail subscription, it comes populated with thousands of pre-integrated metrics. But even without Retail Insights, it can be used as a launch point for your users for your Merchandising cloud services, as well as other Oracle Retail or legacy applications. For more details on how to configure and use this portal for your business, see the Oracle Retail Home Administration Guide and the Oracle Retail Home Security Guide.

URL: https://home.retail.<Region Name>.ocs.oraclecloud.com/<Customer Subnamespace>/retailhome


Footnote Legend

Footnote 1:

For Merchandising and Sales Audit, Operations Guide Volume 2, is where the details on ReST services are found.