Oracle Spring ’12 Federal Development Update
I didn’t attend, but there was an Oracle Federal Financial Briefing on 17-Apr in Reston where information was shared about some of the upcoming GTAS enhancements and target patch release dates. Personally, besides focusing on our Fed R12.1.3 stabilization efforts on my current gig, I’m working to get smart on some of the basics associated with GTAS, the upcoming 6-digit USSGL standard and new Federal Accounting/System process changes associated.
As soon as we can get our hands on these new GTAS patches, we need to jump on them to start understanding some of the impacts to our EBS environments in further detail. As the Federal E-Business Suite community, we don’t really have much time to be able digest, test and prepare for these changes. First required reporting cycle for GTAS is after Nov FY13 month-end (Calendar Nov 2012) and the fact that GTAS will only accept Bulk File feeds (i.e. no pencil whipping any numbers like with FACTS today), means we’ve got to be ready with this stuff working. If anyone is looking for more info from Treasury on GTAS, you can find it here.
For R12 Fed Financials Installs who jumped on the CGAC & FV 90000001 patches early (me and my local Denver Federal Financials Shared Service provider!), at least we have that piece behind us. But certainly there is more coming, especially for all the agencies still on 11i.
Here’s the link to the deck I scored:
Oracle Federal Financials Spring ’12 Development Update
If you’ve been following the twitter feed, you know I’m heading to Collaborate ’12 to present two Federal Financials R12 sessions and catch-up on as much news/info as I can there. The FED Sig meeting is on Monday, maybe that will help. Keep watch on the twitter feed for anything I pick up relevant to the Federal EBS community.
If anyone has any comments or knowledge to share that you feel would help spread key info, please don’t hesitate to comment.
–Larry
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Collaborate ’10 Federal Sessions
For those going out to Vegas in a week, it looks like we’ve again got a number of sessions focused on Federal topics and/or involving Federal Customers. Based on a quick search of the OAUG Agenda Builder using the keyword ‘Federal’, here’s what’s on tap:
Sunday 4/18:
11:00 – 11:15 How to Use Oracle’s Federal Administrator Module to Reconcile Debt Balances Transferred to Treasury (Tom Sherman, The Presidio Trust)
1:00 – 3:00 OAUG Federal SIG Meeting (Ed Willey+)
Monday 4/19:
8:00-9:00 Finally Federal! Exploring Projects Release 12.1 (Larry Baugh, Independent)
10:45-11:45 Improved Federal Accounting with Oracle Projects Release 12.1.1+ (Neeraj Garg, Project Partners LLC)
Thursday 4/22:
8:30-9:30 How Business Intelligence Will Reduce Healthcare Costs and Improve Outcomes (Joan Lugo, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services)
12:15 – 1:15 Providing a Robust Data Archive Solution for the Largest Global Healthcare Payer (Jay Joshi, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services)
A bit more detail including session abstracts and room locations is available in the Collaborate Agenda Builder online.
I’m definitely looking forward to the SIG meeting as the focus is on the Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) product being released w/12.1.3, including a live demo. Ed has asked that anyone planning to attend the FedSig to please register at: http://secure.meetingexpectations.com/oaug/Groups/GroupConferenceDescription.aspx?grpGCID=1362 so he can make sure enough space is available.
I’m still putting a bit more content into my presentation and I will post the slides here in a week or so. Unfortunately for me, I probably will just be in Vegas Sunday & Monday as we’re going live on my current project 1-May. I don’t have much free time since I seem to be in the middle of pretty much everything associated with our conversion. But I’m looking forward to catching the CLM presentation, the Monday Oracle Keynote & few other presentations I can drop in on.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Circuit: A new 3-day Oracle User Group event in the Mid-Atlantic Region
The DC Oracle Apps Users Group (EBS, etc.) and the Mid Atlantic Regional Users Group (Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, etc.) are hosting a new 3-day Quest/OAUG event in DC, Nov 18-20. The conference is at the Gaylord National Hotel and Convention Center. Read the info on the conference here.
The organizers are currently looking for presentations and proposals are being accepted through June 18. Presentation proposal info is available at the conference site link. The event is not specific to Federal, although due to its DC home, Ed Willey (Oracle FedSig chair) has worked to get a Federal track at the conference. He is asking for as many Federal-related papers as possible to fill-out the track and also working with Oracle-Federal to get some potential content from them. Exhibit Space and Sponsorships are available for vendors.
I’ll have to check & see if I could make it out there for the conference. Currently, the conference dates correspond with our major go-live on my USAF DEAMS project, so it might be tough, but we’ll see.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )Federal Financials SIG OAUG Collaborate ’09 meeting
The Oracle Federal Financials Special Interest Group (FED SIG) is meeting in Orlando. However the meeting details are not appearing on the Collaborate ’09 schedule, since it seems to be a late addition to the agenda.
Here are the details and agenda:
When: Tuesday, May 5 from 2:00pm – 3:00pm
Where: Peabody, room Bayhill 1 (Mezzanine Level) (THANK YOU! to Susan Logan of Oracle for making arrangements on the room for FED SIG to meet)
This will be an informal meeting. We will use this opportunity for networking and discuss the following Items:
1) Oracle design on CGAC in R12: Oracle provided the web conference to FED SIG last April 1, 2009. Oracle has indicated FED SIG can provide feedback to them on the design until May 15, 2009.
2) Handling of Withholding Tax in Oracle
a)30% for Foreign vendors effective immediately
b) 3% effective 2012 for all vendors who received payments from Fed Agencies for goods and services which are tax reportable.
c)28% if vendor did not match IRS TIN
3) iSupplier: Best practice and Federal rules about modification of the vendors intent as imported on the invoice
4) Other items relevant to Federal Agencies as time permits.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )FedSIG CGAC call with Oracle Development – 1 Apr
FYI:
“The CGAC call for the FedSIG with Mike Barker, Director of Public Sector Development, will be a concall / web conference. Here are the logistics:
Participants should use Internet Explorer for the web conference. Participants should, at their earliest convenience, go to https://conference.oracle.com and click on “New User” to ensure that their system is compatible to the Oracle web conference system. To ensure success, please make sure that your pop-up blockers are turned off. You might need to turn the blocker off, exit Explorer and then start it back up again.
If a user does not have admin rights to accept the downloaded applet to initialize the web conference, they will not be able to view the slides and, if possible, should join other participants in a conference room to view the slides.
Date: Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Time: 1:00 pm ET
Duration: 90 Minutes
Call In: XXXXXXXXX
ID and Passcode: XXXXX
Web Conference ID: XXXXXX
Please encourage all participants to call in about 10 minutes before the start of the call at 1:00 pm ET, so we can start on time.
The intended audience for this call is existing Oracle customers, who are subject to the non disclosure in their Oracle License Service Agreement.”
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )FSIO requests a 2nd R12 presentation/demo from Oracle prior to Certification
On the monthly Oracle Federal Financials Special Interest Group (FEDSIG) call this week (held on November 18), Oracle identified that FSIO has requested a 2nd followup presentation/demo from Oracle prior to certifying R12. Oracle provided an initial R12 demo/presentation in September to FSIO in hopes of attaining a thumbs-up on gaining the R12 certification, so this 2nd request seems to be a bit of a setback in terms of finalizing the certification. Details of the rationale were not disclosed and Oracle is eager to complete the process, however a date has not yet been set for the follow-up presentation.
Hopefully, this will not delay the process significantly as a number of agencies are eagerly awaiting the go-ahead from FSIO. Of course, the irony of the situation is that R12 solves a number of issues (due to SLA and other capabilities) and I’d consider it to be more compliant with FSIO requirements than prior releases
Other news from the call:
-The next Federal Customer Advisory Board (CAB) meeting is scheduled for 12/3 in Reston. This is typically an invite-only event for Federal Financials system owners/executives.
-Next FEDSIG call tentatively scheduled for 12/16.
-The FEDSIG will be extending its time frame for collecting enhancement requests from agencies. See the template at http://fedsig.oaug.org and contact information for forwarding the enhancements.
-AP Patchset O created a number of issues for an agency on the call, suggest testing it well prior to moving into prod.
-A straw poll was taken of how year-end closing processes went. For the most part, it seems agencies are getting through year-end easier with each passing year. Numerous agencies reported needing to develop custom year-end processes.
-2 large agencies have mentioned significant performance considerations with rebuilding summary accounts. Oracle is apparently working on some performance enhancements to the summary account build process so maybe we’ll see that in the future.
-Multiple agencies indicated continuing problems with unaccounted AP invoices (due to failures of the Payables Accounting Process) and mentioned the desire for enhanced focus by Oracle to assist with mitigating these continuing issues in the future (note: due to the changes in R12 SLA, these specific issues should go away and lets hope we don’t have too many new ones)
-A few months ago, Mike Barker (Oracle Federal Development Lead) offered up the possibility of providing a web conference on new R12 capabilities aimed to help agencies comply with CGAC. This is still being considered, however the current highest priority is getting through the FSIO process for R12. The webinar won’t be until after the next R12 demo/presentation with FSIO.
-The FEDSIG chair is researching the preferred time-frame of the OAUG Collaborate ’09 FEDSIG meeting. Options are somewhere between 1 hr & a half-day.
If anyone reading this is unsure on how to join the FEDSIG or is interested in getting on the distribution list for the monthly calls, see http://fedsig.oaug.org.
Oracle Federal Applications 