Natch so the AME/iProcurement solution I’m working on is a little tougher than first projected…When I was told that the business required what they call “Jump-ball” approvals, i was unfazed.

Disclaimer: Up until this point I had only worked with R12

Much to my chagrin I found out that even though the parallel approvers (or Jump-ball as it’s sometimes called) is available in 11i…It actually doesn’t work (don’t you love it when that happens?). So now the challenge becomes: How do you implement parallel approvals in 11i? well I’ve tried a couple routes..

-Using the standard functionality. So the feature is there in AME (It’s an Approver Group setting called “First Responder Wins”. Unfortunately, through several metalink notes and test cycles..it doesn’t work in 11i. This was fixed in R12 so if you’re on that then you should have no problems..

- Register a role-based approval type and assign it to an approval group? Sounds like an obvious workaround…and in AME alone…it works! Unfortunately for me, iProcurement doesn’t behave so nicely when trying to use it (i.e. the AME test workbench works fine but the iProcurement system doesn’t). If you read metalink note 219946.1, you’ll see that someone actually pulled this off with self service HR. Tightly integrated you say Oracle? not this time..

The challenge is to do it for iProc in 11i..I’m stumped and think we’ll ultimately go with a beefy piece of RICE to take care of the solution…If anyone else out there has had success with this let me know?

One of the more significant acquisitions made by Oracle Corp. amidst their acquisition spree has been PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) leader Agile. This happened in 2007. Agile is a very powerful and flexible (Agile, get it!?!) tool used for a variety of solutions involving the management of company products. This post will lay down the very basics and hopefully in the future I will be able to elaborate further on future posts.

The Agile Solutions - These are the 5 main modules within Agile. There are a couple others but for now I’m going to focus on nailing down the big ones

Agile Product Collaboration (PC) — Management and collaboration of product record information throughout the product lifecycle, across internal organizations and the extended supply chain. The Big kahuna in Agile. detailed management of Items/BOMs and their associated documentation. Popular in complex manufacturing environments. Uses both the Java and web clients

Agile Product Governance & Compliance (PG&C) — Management and tracking of all substances and materials contained by any item or manufacturer part, allowing companies to meet substance restrictions and reporting requirements, design recyclable products, minimize compliance costs, and eliminate noncompliance on future products.  This module is ideal for industries with sensitive and/or dangerous materials handling. Uses the web client only.

Agile Product Portfolio Management (PPM) — Integration of project and product information in the context of overall product development in order to streamline business processes across the product portfolio and lifecycle.  Basically, this is a project management module in Agile. functionality includes project planning, resource management, collaborative notifications etc. Uses web client only

Agile Product Quality Management (PQM) — Management of customer, supplier and product quality issues, tied to the product design via a closed loop corrective action process. This solution closely ties together problems identified by customers with the people on the shop floor responsible for holding high quality standards. Similar to PC in that it is heavily based on workflow-routed objects, only these are all quality related. Uses Java and web clients.

Agile Product Cost Management (PCM) — Management of product costs across the product lifecycle and synchronization of product cost and cost processes with both internal and external participants. You can use PCM to leverage suppliers, co-source with collaborative entities, and design products for cost.

Ok, well thats the basic module overview of what Agile PLM has to offer..in the next post I’ll get knee-deep in some cross-module, “getting started”, sysadmin-type stuff that will save you plenty of time from reading the sleep-inducing user guide. Cheers!

My follow up posts will probably center on new features in R12x. This however, is a special edition/1st post special! 

In my spare time I took on the pet project of installing EBS on a junked desktop my folks had gathering dust in the basement. I had heard of doing this off and on in the past but never had the gumption (or linux skills) to attempt it. This is a great learning experience for the functional consultant who hears phrases like “APPL_TOP” and “database listener” thrown around casually without actually knowing what they mean. If you have spare time and want to wow your friends take up ORACLENERD’s EBS Challenge located here.

The guide is the best most direct method to getting EBS up on a dedicated “server”. If you want to do this on a utilized PC then a VM is the way to go. Use VW Ware or Virtualbox. Oracle VM is a whole different animal as it sits directly on the system (no OS) and requires more skill to setup. Other points to mention for noobs:

- Do go with Oracle Enterprise Linux as the OS. It’ free from eDelivery and setup is a snap. If you’ve played around with any Oracle installation guides you know that Windows installation is much more of a pain in the arse and requires additional configuration specifically for the database tier. Of course this means using the dreaded command prompt (every non-geeks worst nightmare) but a little study-up on Linux.org -perhaps a day or so- and you’ll know all you need to get setup. I went into this with 0 linux experience, Im about as green as they come.

- If you’re like me and scrapped together the minimum hardware requirements (320 GB disk, 2 GB RAM, single core etc.) then be prepared for excruciating lead times for getting this thing off the ground. The staging files take up 50 GB alone! Also, do a memtest on your RAM. I kept having the rapidwiz installer tell me that my 2.5 Gigs of RAM were cool. I would procedd with the installer and the system would blank out and reboot. the reason? Bad RAM. Memtest to be sure that your rig is fully functioning and don’t trust the installer on its RAM readings.

- Please, I cannot stress this enough, use a Download Manager, I had several files get corrupted that blew my install b/c i was too lazy to get one..I use DownLoadThemAll. its really just preference though. In a related note, download and install Oracle unzip utilities. this is the program that (using the command prompt) you should use to extract the zipped files.

-Most issues I came across were with regards to missing packages. If you are missing any, go the oracle public yum and follow the directions. This is a free repository of sorts and once installed can list all the packages available in the RPM manager located in the OS gui. (RPM= package), simply reference the install requirements on My Oracle Support with what’s been installed on your OS. If one of them is unchecked, simply check it off of and install it. Sometimes this stuff is that simple.

-Rapidwiz wil do pre and post install checks. Any error must be resolved. 90% of my errors on these were related to permission grants on the OS. You’ll be creating users/groups and assigning them permissions. Do yourself a favor and let the Linux admin on your next assignment worry about security. By nature its a locked down OS and it should be, but we’re not hosting a Prod environment. In other words, open up everything and let the installer do its thing, unless you’re into sysadmin type stuff, in that case, carry on!

ok whew. All set? Again the EBS challenge series and the rapidwiz install guide (located at OTN) will be your guiding lights in this quest. I was simply pointing out a few details that technical white belts like myself had to figure out the hard way.