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 Store Inventory Operations Cloud Services 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 email from Oracle in the initial stages of provisioning, often immediately following your subscription order being booked. You will need to activate your cloud service into a cloud account in order to begin the provisioning activities for your Oracle Retail services. Promptly completing the activations steps will better enable on-time environment delivery.

On activation of your cloud account, you will have access to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console and the Identity and Access Management (OCI IAM) and your default identity domain will be 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 will 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 of your cloud service into a cloud account does NOT impact billing or the subscription service period. Those details are connected to the subsequent environment delivery of the cloud services.

Activating into a New Oracle Cloud Account

To start the setup, click the Activate link provided in the email 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 email address as the customer administrator who receives the activation email.

   The email address must match the initial email. 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 email 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.

Activating 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 Cloud Service Account Setup to complete setup. This setup will enable 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 Frequently Asked Questions.

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 SIOCS implementation:

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

  https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Identity/home.htm

• Security Configurations - During this phase, you should designate a portion of your team to become familiar with OCI IAM application roles and the SIOCS application roles and permissions. You can also start designing the roles that you will need for your users, and what permissions will be assigned to your custom roles. For more information on OCI IAM and application role assignments on, see the following documents:

  • Managing Users

  • The Oracle Retail Enterprise Inventory Cloud Service Security Guide on Oracle Help Center.

• 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 as well as your systems integration partner. Suggested training topics to consider include:

  • Application Configuration

  • SOCS Mobile application/deployment to mobile devices

  • Functional User Training

• System and Store Admin Configuration - Start reviewing the System and Store Administration Configuration available in SIOCS 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, see the Configuration chapter of the Oracle Retail Enterprise Inventory Cloud Service Administration Guide.

• Integration Planning - Start reviewing the available existing integrations as part of the SIOCS 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. Key documents to review include:

  • Oracle Retail Store Inventory Operations Cloud Services Implementation Guide

  • Oracle Retail Enterprise Inventory Cloud Service Administration Guide

• Oracle Retail Reference Model - This tool is free to all Oracle Retail customers and can be downloaded from My Oracle Support under Document 2058843.2. 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).