Jan 2022 Oracle Cloud EPM Update - new EPM Automate SkipUpdate command
I want to point out a new EPM Automate command that's being released in the January 2022 updates. SkipUpdate. What this does is it allows you to skip a monthly update. Before, you had to open an SR to skip an update. Now (or soon), you'll be able to do this yourself, which is awesome. Here's how it works.
The command has three parameters: add, remove, and list.
Add means you want to add an update to skip. So you would say epmautomate skipUpdate add version=22.04 to skip the April 2022 release. You can also optionally add a comment.
Delete means you want to clear ALL previous adds you have submitted. So if you had a typo or whatever, you can clear them all and start over.
List is exactly what is says: list the active skip requests. You would want to do this before the delete. The list also shows the user that did the request, date/time, and any comment.
There are a few things to remember. First, each environment MUST update at least quarterly. So you can't lock in the code as of now and use that forever. And when an update is applied, all features/changes/etc. that have occurred since the last update get applied. There is no skipping of features, etc.
Second, the setting is by environment. You may be thinking that you could let the test environments do the normal monthly update and focus just on the production environments. But then there's a problem. The snapshots only migrate between environments if they are the same version or one version apart, but not two. You could find yourself where test is two versions ahead and now no longer to accept a snapshot from production.
If the environment is on the current release then weekly and emergency patches will be applied. But if the environment has a one off patch (like applied by development to fix an issue only for your company) then the next update cannot be skipped.
The release notes have a link to a powershell and Linux scripts to run this command. You can also run it manually, with a DOS batch file, or however you run EPM Automate.
This command will be great to ensure that updates do not happen during quarter ends. Some environments are not calendar fiscal year based, so this would be a huge help for them since the Oracle updates favor a calendar fiscal.
Here's the link to the EPM Automate help for this new command: skipUpdate.
https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/enterprise-performance-management-common/cepma/epm_auto_skip_update.html