Ability to access scanned AP Invoice Image from OTBI

Craig Alderson

Organization Name

Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

Description

We intend to use OTBI for both financial managements staff as well as key budget holders across a number of NHS organisations across the UK. A key requirement is the ability to link directly from an AP Analysis dashboard to the scanned AP Invoice image held against the invoice.

Whilst the recent release of Oracle Cloud has meant you can create an action link to navigate back to the AP Invoice Workbench and then drill in to the scanned invoice the navigation can appear quite clunky. Also if the data is downloaded from the dashboard/report in to excel the action link is lost.

It would be really useful if there was an additional field within OTBI, in the AP Transactions Subject Area named Invoice URL. Upon selecting the item this opens the invoice image directly in a new browser window.

Use Case and Business Need

By providing this level of access means key decision makers can have direct access to all of the information needed within an invoice image without needing to contact financial management staff to provide the details. It would reduce the burden on central finance staff and provide greater transparency for the report consumers.

Although a BI Publisher report has been designed to provide this level of data this cannot be embedded in an OTBI dashboard which needs to be the single point of entry for budget holders. Having this field would improve the OTBI tool across a number of ERP Cloud organisations.

Original Idea Number: cf5a5e1038

Becky Alvarez

Moved from Finacials Forum

Craig Alderson

Can you please add Financials back to this or confirm how I can do this. This is in relation to OTBI for Cloud Financials, not a custom OBIEE solution.

Becky Alvarez

Financials is not able to dictate the subject areas that are shown under the OBI catalog.  OBIEE for Financial Applications has to add the subject area in order for you to be able to see it and include it on a report.  Now the only solution we currently have is covered under MOS note  How to Download Invoice Images from IPM-UCM in Bulk - Doc ID 2159307.1 and that is just to extract the invoice attachments but not as and OBI report.

Craig Alderson

Hi Becky,

 

Many thanks for the quick response. Whilst I completely agree with your comment that it would be the Oracle OBIEE Financial Applications team that would deliver the change, as a user of ERP Cloud with the Financials Offering this isn't something I really need (or should need) to know. For a customer of ERP Cloud I am aware we have opted to include OTBI as a reporting tool, without prior knowledge of Oracle reporting tools I don't think a customer would draw a direct correlation that OBIEE is essentially the same catalog as OTBI. Again I'm not sure this is something as a customer we need to know as we have purchased a pre-configured cloud offering.

My concern is that even though it relates to OTBI/OBIEE the drive to make the change would come from a Financials audience who understand the business impact not necessarily an OBIEE report developer. The inclusion of a link to a scanned invoice would improve workflows and transparency for Financial Services/ Financial Management and Budget Holders but these cloud customer connect users may not look in the OBIEE ideas lab and may only look in Financials.

My understanding of ideas is they need traction from other customers to be considered/implemented as an enhancement request. I believe by not having this idea in the lab that would benefit most from the change, is severely hindering my chance of the idea being rated/implemented.  

Can you please consider this view and re-add the Financials tag.

Thanks

Craig

Becky Alvarez

This is one of the pitfalls of "complete" transparency of having the ERs in a public forum is even though where an ER should be placed isn't something you need to know, the fact is that the right development team needs to be aware of the ERs so that they can be made aware of and potentially plan for.  If this was logged as an SR and support had logged this into the bug database, this would be logged as a reporting ER so just be aware that at some time this idea will have to be moved to this forum.  I will move it back at your request but until it is moved to this forum, it will not be anything other than an idea in the Financials forum that won't be reviewed by the proper development team because the Financials development teams reviewing the financials forum will not be working on reporting so this idea may accumulate votes but will be buried under other financial ideas/ERs that are directly related to Financial development planning and so I cannot say what affect this will have on the movement of your request.

I am just being totally honest with you in the spirit of transparency and also noting this so it is documented why it was moved back to the Financials Forum and not sitting the correct forum for evaluation by the proper development team.

Marie-Sophie Morabito

We need this as well in our use case, when we have invoices not matched to a PO.
We need buyers to check invoice to confirme if it's really an invoice without PO or if supplier forgot to increment invoice with PO Number.

Becky Alvarez

Craig,

You do realize this has now been sitting in the Financials Idea lab accumulating votes but has never been seen by the development team who would actually assess if and when this should be moved into product.  By still remaining in the Financials Idea Lab and NOT being in the Reporting Idea Lab, the Reporting team has no clue that this idea exists.  Just reminding you of my comment below that, until this is moved, you will not get any traction on this idea with the reporting developers.

Craig Alderson

Hi Becky,

Thanks for your update.

As previously mentioned, as a customer of oracle i shouldn't be expected to dictate which oracle team review my idea. Can you make sure the OTBI team are aware of this and review as I believe this now has enough votes to be considered for future releases? For me reporting on financials is a grey area that oracle need to address.

If the idea was in a technical forum it might not get the audience of financials users that have a demand for this, as the beneficiary of the development are financials users. Now it appears you are suggesting that although it now has the demand then a reporting team won't even consider this because it's in the wrong forum. As a customer this isn't really great service. Can you do whatever is necessary to ensure this idea is reviewed by the right team.

Craig

Ranganath M-Oracle

Hi,

Even though this requirement is for viewing attachments for Payables invoices, the capability to do so will have to come from the OTBI team. Transferring to the OTBI Idea lab for their review.

Thank you

Ranganath

Jennifer Tavino

We need this functionality as well. We are looking to rollout Dashboard Reporting for users to review open invoices received without POs indicated on the invoice and we are looking to rollout Dashboard Reporting to our cost center leaders for Budgeting review. Having links to invoice images will help them identify if invoices are miscoded to their POs more efficiently.

Thank you, Jenn