Oracle 20B: Release Notes

Supply Chain Management Cloud (& Procurement) Key Themes (20b)

The theme for 20b looks set to offer customers significant enhancements and improvements to usability and workflow of the applications stack that should improve day-to-day user productivity, focused on driving collaboration between the client, suppliers & 3PL’s and inter-app connections with IoT.

Clients should, as always, revisit existing extensions and middleware across their enterprise to explore 20b’s potential in their business processes and to keep updated with their relevant 3P partners news feeds as they explore the 20b offerings into their own product updates. This, of course, is in addition to reviewing all newly enabled or opt-in functionality against today’s and tomorrow’s future-state business processes and finally to ensure they complete stringent core business process regression testing.

A focus on supplier/3PL collaborations, communicative & action based with B2B messaging, OBN connections and inter-app interactions with product, purchasing & sourcing enhancements.
Significant progression starting to develop for IoT Production Cloud now ‘push’ enabled with select SCM apps & now fully synchronized with Manufacturing cloud.
Procurement introduces enhancements to workflows for maintenance & manufacturing cloud work order related purchasing & offers improvements to contracts.
Product Lifecycle Management gets a significant overhaul with a new UI interface, introducing ‘clipboard’ (drag & drop functionality) & workflow/approval improvements.
Supply Chain Planning introduces additional dimensions for segregation for planning purposes, Engineer-to-order statistical demand modelling and ‘constraint’ parameters for manufacturing lead times that inform all planning models where items are used.
In addition there are a number of practical, simple & useful workflow improvements to increase accuracy & efficiency in Inventory, Manufacturing & Procurement applications.

Oracle Recruiting Cloud – Key Themes (20B)

Oracle Recruiting Cloud continues to develop and deliver at pace and the enhancements that are available in 20B continue this theme. The main focus continues to be around delivering tools that enable recruiters to add value to talent acquisition whilst providing candidates a modern hiring experience.

The 20B enhancements are a welcome addition to the product and will enable talent acquisition professionals and candidates to begin to enrich and configure the product to the needs of the organisation whilst retaining best practice.

Key Enhancements

Candidate applications to track more diversity and disability flexfields.
- This is a key area for any recruitment team to be able to report on candidate demographics in order to drive recruitment strategies and hire decisions. Being able to ask relevant questions of candidates allows a better hiring experience tailored to the needs of the candidate, whilst remaining compliant with hiring strategies and legislative demands.
Candidate data disposal.
- In a world where data security is extremely important to both organisations and customers, Oracle Recruiting Cloud ensure that this information is accessible and managed easily in line with your information management policies. Candidate details are masked in key areas of the product whilst administrators can configure the data disposal to meet organisations data protection and GDPR requirements.
Enhanced candidate searching.
- Recruiters and talent acquisition professionals can now use advanced searches to find their target audience
Requisitions and Offer can respect the hiring status of the position
- The system can now be configured to only show recruiters and hiring managers requisitions that are approved for hiring. This means that only positions approved to hire are visible when creating requisitions. This takes the human effort and possibility for error out of the equation and ensures that the hiring teams are promoting requisitions and offers that are factored in the budget and workforce strategy.
Double opt in for candidates
- This feature allows candidates to sign up for functionality (job alerts, communications etc.) without having to give their details up front. However, to ensure that their data is secure and their transactions are their own double opt in uses multi factor authentication to check personal details and confirmation of actions.
Save Draft Applications
- This is key functionality that will really allow candidates to apply on the go. This enhancement will allow candidate to start their application on the commute to work or while out with friends and complete any outstanding attachments or details back at home on a laptop, tablet or other device.
Automatically open job requisitions for posting
- One a requisition is approved this enhancement allows requisitions to be automatically be opened for sourcing and posted to a career site if required. This removes further transactional effort by recruiters and hiring managers to allow value to be added to other stages in the hiring process.

This is just a snapshot of the enhancements planned for the 20B release with many more in the pipeline. If anybody would like further information, release notes or readiness training support documents then please do get in touch.

Oracle Core HR – Key Themes (20B)

Oracle Global HR continues to develop and deliver at pace and the enhancements that are available in 20B continue this theme. The main focus continues to be around delivering tools that enable human resource professionals to add value to the hire to retire journey whilst providing them a modern digital customer experience.

The 20B enhancements are a welcome addition to the product and will enable HR professionals to configure the product to the needs of the organisation whilst retaining best practice and benefitting from even further efficiencies of Oracle Cloud

Key Enhancements

Lookup for Gender field changed from system to user – This is a key enhancement to the product in relation to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion reporting in the UK. In the past the gender field in Oracle HR has been limited to system values of male and female which is not how the world associates themselves in the area of gender. In the 20B release Oracle HR allows employees and candidates in Oracle Recruiting Cloud to classify the gender they identify with. This allows the HR solution to be more in line with the world of HR and embrace Diversity and Inclusion.
Deep link to a checklist task from calendar event – In order to make checklists work easier and to help employees in busy work environments it is now possible to place tasks into an email calendar with a deep link back into the system to complete tasks. This will allow a joined up approach to connect HCM and email to enable efficiencies and save time.
Improved Areas of Responsibility user experience through responsibility templates – Area of responsibility templates allow you to create a simple, less-cluttered responsibility description and scope once, and use it multiple times. Templates can be defined independently from representatives and can also support different scope patterns as an organisation requires. You will now be able to create Areas of Responsibility templates to quickly create and assign responsibilities.
Position Management (Profiles in Position Details) – Profiles help to identify the qualifications and skills required for a position within the organisation. You can now associate profiles with a position on the Position Details, Request a New Position and Position Change pages. This makes it easier to connect Core HR with Talent and Oracle Recruiting Cloud whereby skills and qualifications are captured against the profile on a position.
Send Changes to Employee Photos for Approval – A new approval rule has been delivered in 20B to enable review of changes of employee photos in the system. This feature allows an organisation to check, where needed, that photos are compliant with organisation standards. If a photo is delated and a new one is uploaded the original approval is withdrawn and the new approval takes precedent.

Automatically store checklist task attachments in document of records – This is another feature that saves time and removes duplication out of the hire or retire process. When a candidate or employee provides an attachment to a checklist this can now be identified to save into the correct area of the employee document or records.

https://www.oracle.com/readiness/

About Namos Solutions

Namos Solutions are an award-winning Oracle Platinum, Cloud Excellence Implementer (CEI), and Oracle Modernised Program Expertise certified Partner specialising in the implementation and support of ERP, EPM and HCM business solutions, both in the Cloud and on-premise.

With global experience together with an impeccable track record, our business is built on our passion for delivering successful business transformation. Passion underpins everything we do at Namos – passionate about delivering beyond expectations, earning trust and building long-lasting relationships with our clients.

Although based in central London, we work wherever our clients need us to be. Many leading organisations located all over the world trust and rely on our expertise to deliver industry-leading business solutions. Namos customers can currently be found in the UK, Europe, Middle East, Asia Pacific, North America and Africa. For more information, please email info@namossolutions.com.

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