Oracle is continuously working to improve the features and functionality of its Cloud Apps software. The last updates offered a range of updates in Billing, Cost, Planning, Resource, Program, and Grant management. This particular Quarterly Release builds on the enhancements delivered in 24C. It introduces several new/enhanced features to support Oracle Cloud Project Management customers better.

In Project Management Common

Service Excellence Continuing Investments Driven by Customer Ideas

Project Attachment Management from the My Projects Page: Attachments can be added and deleted to projects quickly from the Attachments column on the My Projects Page.  This change was driven by Idea 653320.

Search, Display, and Default Dates Using the User’s Preferred Time Zone: Dates are displayed and defaulted using the preferred time zone in various project management user interfaces (based upon Idea 704234). This functionality can be leveraged in the following areas:

• Search for and display the Import Date on the Manage Expenditure Batches page
• Search for and display the Creation date on the Manage Project Costs page
• Default of the project start date when creating a project in the Project Financial Management Work area
• Display of the project status change on the Manage Financial Project Settings page
• Default of the requested start date when creating a resource request
• Default of the start date when adding a resource on the Manage Project Resources page

Grants Management: Based upon Idea 773823, users can now export and download details of projects associated with an award to MS Excel.

In Billing and Revenue Management

Oracle has significantly improved in this area over the past several Quarterly releases.

Project Contract Prepayment Billing (Created based upon Customer Submitted Idea): Users can now request prepayment from a customer for a project contract. The prepayment can be applied in total or as a portion as a negative line on a standard project contract invoice containing the actual charges, thus billing the net amount due. The prepayment request billing event can track applied and unapplied balances of prepayments. Billing Specialists can see and manage project contract prepayments more easily, quickly, and holistically. 

This significant enhancement drastically streamlines the end-to-end business process for prepayments from Project Contracts to Receivables with prepayment invoices and standard invoices with prepayments applied. The solution also enhances the advanced payments for businesses and tracks the accounting entries for prepayment activity in receivables.

Display Dates in Contracts According to Time Zone Setup: When creating a contract from the Create Contract UI or a contract template, the start date is based upon the system date based upon the time zone setting for the legal entity of the contract. However, you can now override the default date format upon contract creation.

Manage Contract Requests: Users can now create, approve, assign, and manage the entire lifecycle of a contract request. Individuals in your organization who don’t have the required permissions to author contracts can now raise a contract request by providing details about the contract, such as:

• Type of Contract
• Party
• Dates
• Any Necessary Documents

Requests can be auto-approved or routed to the approver based on the approval setup as defined by your administrator.  Upon approval, a request is automatically assigned to the appropriate resource organization or resource for review.  The Requestor and Assignee can collaborate on the request through messages and send emails from the request’s Interactions tab. In addition to supporting multiple Contract Request Types, the solution also supports the following User Personas:

• Requestor—User who requests a contract.
• Owner—The User on whose behalf the requester creates a contract. The default is for the requester and owner to be the same.
• Approver—The Individual who approves the request, typically the requester’s manager, as per the contract request approval workflow setup
• Assignee —User from the contract or legal department responsible for reviewing the request and creating the contract
• Administrator—A person who performs the essential setups such as creating contract request types and setting up approval workflow

In Planning, Scheduling and Forecasting

Change Order Generation from Project Issue: Generative AI can be leveraged to create a Change Order from a project issue. For issues that need a Change Order, the project manager can now effortlessly create one using the information available. With the ability to extract and create detailed budget impacts automatically, the business process from when an issue is raised to making a Change Order and finally updating the project budget to reflect the new amounts can be performed with minimal manual effort.

These enhancements deliver quick issue resolution using change management, which mitigates project risks and safeguards profitability.  Generative AI reduces administrative tasks in the change management process, enabling the reallocation of resources to strategic risks.

Expanded Access for Managing Change Orders: Access can now be extended to allow Project Managers and Administrators to manage project change orders. Change Orders can now be initiated, assessed, and implemented directly from the Project Financial Management work area rather than the Project Management and My Work areas as previously delivered. Access to Change Orders can now be delivered via REST, which leverages data security policies.  For example, the Change Orders REST API can be leveraged to build dashboards, allowing business analysts to view Change Orders across all projects.

This functionality supports enhanced project outcomes with expanded access to change orders, improves project administrators’ efficiency by eliminating time spent navigating between work areas, and reduces costs and overheads in integration solutions by eliminating the need for complex security configurations.

Project Status Changes and Comments Retrieval Using a REST API (Customer Submitted Idea): By leveraging the Project Status Changes REST API, seamless integrations to third-party systems containing Project Status Changes and Comments can now be built.

Service Excellence Continuing Investments for Planning, Scheduling, and Forecasting: Several Change Order User Experience Enhancements were introduced via Idea 653320. Changes include:

• Search by Change Order Number from the Manage Change Orders page
• Add suggested Change Participants via a list from previous project entries
• Filter Change Orders to support the identification of Change Orders ready to move to the next stage.

In Program Management and Reporting

Project Program Status Summary Generation: Report writing time can be reduced by leveraging AI-powered summaries for project programs. Generative AI automatically drafts summaries highlighting key achievements, insights, and recommendations. Program managers can then easily edit and finalize the summaries, saving valuable time.  Comprehensive program status summaries can now be effortlessly generated by adding the Program Executive Update catalog item to an existing or new report template.  The system will automatically refresh data for the new report and produce a detailed summary with a single click.

The summary will highlight key program metrics, identify at-risk projects, and offer actionable recommendations.  With this automation, program managers can spend more time on strategic initiatives and less on report writing.

Service Excellence Continuing Investments for Program Management and Reporting: Enhanced Flexibility for KPI Summarization and Closed Project Data has been delivered to optimize summarization process efficiency while ensuring comprehensive data is included for Closed Projects. Users can now select via new parameters whether KPI Values are to be generated or if Closed Projects are to be included in the Update Project Performance Data process.

In Resource Management

Enhancements for Maintaining Resource Requests (Customer Submitted Idea): Several enhancements have been delivered across the resource management business process to increase efficiency and productivity for maintaining resources and managing resource requests. Enhancements include:

• The Maintain Project Enterprise Labor Resources process has been extended. It now supports updating the resource pool, project role, calendar, or rates based on the selected maintenance condition.
• Use location and position as additional selection criteria to assign resources to pools when maintaining project enterprise resources automatically.
• Workflow notifications can be leveraged to conveniently access project resource requests when new resource requests are submitted. This notification provides a link on the request name to access the project resource request and where the resource manager might take appropriate action. The number is now available as an advanced search attribute for project resources in Manage Project Resource Requests, Manage Project Resource Assignments, and Manage Project Resource pages.
• When duplicating project resource requests, the duplication copies all descriptive flexfield values to the new request.

These enhancements deliver a more efficient solution that reduces the time needed to maintain resources. It also improves the resource manager’s efficiency in managing their daily tasks.

In Conclusion

As you can see, Oracle Cloud PPM is receiving several improvements with the 24D Quarterly Update. A majority came from customers. What do these updates mean for your project-centric organization? Contact your Project Partners consultant today.

To read the release notes from Oracle, click here.