CS*Rapid is a unique and innovative solution for delivering real-time operational reports and application extensions for Oracle E-Business Suite. CS*Rapid is fully integrated with Oracle E-Business Suite with a familiar look and feel and with no licensing costs, no additional hardware or software required. Your operational reporting requirements can go from concept to the users’ menu in minutes. This paper introduces you to CS*Rapid and how it can help you satisfy many of your operational reporting requirements within Oracle E-Business Suite.

1. Real-Time Operational Reporting
for Oracle E-Business Suite
A CaoSys White Paper
June 2016

2. Real-Time Operational Reporting Oracle E-Business Suite
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Abstract
The word “Report” can mean many things but put simply it is the
delivery of some data or information in an accessible format.
In the context of enterprise applications such as Oracle E-Business
Suite, the word “Report” can be categorised depending on the types
of people who will be using the report…
External Facing Reports
These might take the form of a Purchase Order that is sent to a
supplier or an Invoice that is sent to a customer.
There could be many external facing reports but the types of “users”
so to speak for this type of report is limited and in general the users
really just accept whatever they are given; once an external report is
defined then unless there is a specific need to change the format
(such as updating graphics/logos…etc) then these types of reports
tend to be relatively static. Suppliers and Customers for example
would rarely (if ever) send your organization enhancement requests
for the reports they receive or for new reports.
Management Information (MI) Reports
These tend to summarise data with lots of impressive looking
dashboards with charts and graphs and all sorts of wonderful looking
graphics. These type of reports are commonly used by upper
management who need to take a quick view of the business but only
at summary level.
MI Reports will likely have quite a lot of users; how many will depend
on the size of the organization. Most levels of management within an
organization will likely want to see some sort of summary level/MI
information to help them perform their duties and make better more
informed business decisions.
Operational Reports
Next we have what we refer to as Operational Reports; an
Operational Report typically presents information related to “current”
activity of a particular business activity so Operational Reporting can
be said to support an organizations day-to-day activities.
Depending on the size of your organization, there could be hundreds
or even thousands of users utilising Operational Reports every day.
Operational Reporting
supports an organizations
day-to-day activities.
Suppliers and Customers
for example would rarely
(if ever) send you
enhancement requests for
the reports they receive
or for new reports.

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Most Widely Used Reports
All types of report are important and essential to all organizations but
the type of report that is the most widely used most often is the
Operational Reports; these are the reports that your enterprise
application end-users within the business will be using on a day-to-
day basis.
Since Operational Reports typically have the most users and since
they are used most often then it is very likely that most organizations
will have more unsatisfied requirements for Operational Reports than
any other type of report. The need for new and modified Operational
Reports is an on-going, ever-lasting aspect of using large scale
enterprise applications. As end-user experience matures with a given
role and application, they find (or think of) new ways of improving
their own efficiency and this is often by way to gaining access to their
operational data in more meaningful, user friendly and efficient ways.
It stands to reason that since there will likely be more requirements
for Operational Report to meet than any other type of report then it is
common for Operational Reports to be the most neglected in terms of
what is requested versus what is actually delivered; much of what an
end-user asks for in terms of enhancements or new reports goes into
the “nice-to-have” inbox and we all know nice-to-have’s tend to come
bottom of the priority list yet it is these simple, day-to-day reporting
enhancements that can deliver enormous value to the business,
especially when in the context of hundreds or even thousands of
users.
This paper introduces you to CS*Rapid and how it can help you satisfy
many of your operational reporting requirements.
Operational Reports are
typically the most
requested type of
reporting enhancement
for large scale enterprise
applications.
Operational Reporting
requirements are often
the most neglected type
of enhancement in large
scale enterprise
applications

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Introducing CS*Rapid
CS*Rapid is a unique and innovative solution for delivering real-time
operational reports and application extensions for Oracle E-Business
Suite. No programming skills are needed and reporting solutions can
be created and delivered to the end-user with astonishing speed.
A deep-dive into all the features and functionality of CS*Rapid is well
beyond the scope of this paper so the best way to demonstrate
CS*Rapid in a “rapid” way is to work through a simple example
requirement, from the description of the requirements through to the
creation of the solution to the deployment to the end-user.
Operational Reporting Requirement
For this example, we will look at what is involved in creating a new
operational reporting solution and how it can be deployed to the end-
user’s menu.
Here is our requirement…
A new operational report is required by the Security Administration
team that will help them review stale/dormant EBS user accounts.
The report should include username along with how many months it
has seen since the user last logged into the system, this will be used to
help the administration team determine which users should be
considered for end-dating during the quarterly user review process.
The new report should automatically display all users that are
currently active that have logged in at least once but not logged into
the system for at least 60 days and show the following information...
 User name and user description
 Date the user last logged in and months since last logon
 The user “start” and “end” dates should also be included
The report should highlight the last logon date in yellow if not logged
in for at least 6 months and red if the user has not logged in for at
least 1 year.
The report should sort the data by the date last logged in, so the user
who hasn't been used the longest is displayed first. In addition to
providing an on-screen interactive report, the report should include a
hardcopy printed style report along with the ability to export the
results for use in Excel. The user should also be able to create point in
time snapshots of the data so that the data can re-read at a later date
if needed.
CS*Rapid is a component
of CS*Applications, a suite
of GRC and productivity
solutions from CaoSys.

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Build the Solution with the CS*Rapid Designer
The creation of this operational reporting solution is very simple and
will only take a few minutes to create, test and deploy.
The first step is to log into Oracle EBS and choose the CS*Rapid
Designer responsibility and open the CS*Rapid Designer menu
option…
With the CS*Rapid Designer open, we can begin to define our solution
as follows…
Field Value
Name STALE_USERS
Title CS*Rapid: Stale Users
Style Tabular
Position Top/Left
Data Source
SELECT u.user_name
, u.description
, u.last_logon_date
, ROUND(MONTHS_BETWEEN(SYSDATE,u.last_logon_date),1) months
, u.start_date
, u.end_date
FROM fnd_user u
WHERE u.last_logon_date < SYSDATE - 60
AND (u.end_date IS NULL OR u.end_date > SYSDATE)

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Now the solution can be compiled, so we hit the Compile button; the
solution definition is validated, the internal meta-data created and
our first draft of the solution is complete already…
We can now perform the first test of our reporting solution; simply
press the Test button and we are presented with a fully interactive
on-screen report that delivers real-time data…
Once the report is open, issue a query using standard Oracle EBS
functionality (i.e. CTRL + F11) and real-time data is shown…
The data source for a
solution can be almost
any valid SQL SELECT
statement. You can also
specify just a table or view
name and CS*Rapid will
generate the SQL for you.
The data source can also
be inherited from another
solution.

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So far, this should have taken us no more than a couple of minutes.
Clearly we aren’t finished yet so let’s now go ahead and make the
required changes to our solution so that it delivers against the
requirements.
Adding Additional Functionality
Our online interactive operational report is up and running but now
we now need to add the following capabilities…
 Hardcopy style simple text formatting output – suitable for
printing
 The ability to export data to Excel
 The ability to create point in time snapshots of the data
Navigate to the CS*Export region and enable exporting…
Navigate to the CS*Report region and enable the report and set the
attributes as follows…
Finally, navigate to the Special region and enable Snapshot…

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Ensure you have saved all the changes and perform the final Compile.
Now you are read to test the final solution.
Fine Tuning Our Reporting Solution
Thus far our reporting solution includes the required data and the
additional functionality but we need to fine-tune it so that is matches
the requirements.
The first thing we want to do is force the report to automatically show
data on entry, do this by setting the Auto Master flag in the Special
region…
Also modify the overall look of the report items by shrinking the font
slightly and displaying alternate records in a different color to make
reading the data on the report a little easier; to do this navigate to the
Special region and modify the Additional Visual Features as follows…

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To change the Alternate Record Style, click the ellipsis and choose a
record style of Pale Green…
Next, we need to modify the labels and widths of the report items;
press the Items button to view the definition of each report item that
was derived from the driving SQL and modify the labels and widths as
follows…
Be sure to enter 1 into the Order field for the LAST_LOGON_DATE
item, this will instruct the report to sort the data by this value.
Now we need to apply some conditional formatting to highlight users
based on how long it has been since they last logged in; do this by
navigating to the Conditional Formatting region and defining a
conditional format for the LAST_LOGON_DATE item as follows…
Compile and test the solution directly from the Designer...

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Testing Our Operational Report
Before we deploy our solution to our end-users, we should test all
aspects of our operational report to ensure that it looks like it should
and that it is performing as expected
Filtering Data
Open the new report…
Put the report in query mode by pressing F11 and enter some search
criteria to filter the data; for example, to report on all users whose
User Name begins with A who have logged in during the last 12
months…
Press CTRL+F11…
The CS*Rapid Runtime
Engine reads the solution
metadata and renders the
new report dynamically.
The solution is fully
integrated into Oracle E-
Business Suite with a
native look and feel.

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All matching user records are displayed.
Hardcopy Printed Style Report
Now choose the Quick Submit option from the Reports menu to run a
hardcopy printed style report…
A concurrent request will now be invoked to run the hardcopy printed
style report…
View the output…

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Exporting to Excel
Now choose the CS*Export option from the Tools menu to export the
data to Excel (depending on configuration you may see more than one
CS*Export option)…
A concurrent request will now be invoked to export the data to
Excel…
Here is the output in Excel…
Creating Snapshots of the Data
Find a subset of the data within the report, for example, here we are
finding all users who have not logged in for more than 60 months…

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So now we have a report showing all active users who have not
logged in for at least 5 years; let’s assume we want to save this data
so we can compare it later to ensure that the security administration
have taken appropriate action of these stale users, we could of course
generate the hardcopy output or we could export to Excel but we can
also take a snapshot of this data and re-load it later using the
Snapshot functionality. Simply choose Take Snapshot from the Tools
menu…
Enter a name and a description for the Snapshot and click OK…
When you want to load the snapshot choose Load Snapshot from the
Tools menus…

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You will be given a list of available snapshots, select the one just
created…
You will be asked if you would like to clear the data already in the
report; choose Yes and the data will be loaded…
Now re-query the report and the snapshot data will be shown…

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Deploying the Solution
With our new operational reporting solution complete, we are now
ready to deploy it to the end-user’s menu.
CS*Rapid solutions can be deployed in a number of ways…
 Since all CS*Rapid solutions are given their own unique Oracle
EBS function, you can simply add the new Function the
required menu
 You can use an advanced feature called Application Builder
(beyond the scope of this paper)
 You can use the Direct Deployment feature that is built into
the Designer
Perhaps the fastest and easiest method for simple solutions is using
the Direct Deployment functionality.
Within the Designer, press the Deploy button and you will be
presented with the Deploy window…
Find the responsibility (on the left) to which the new solution should
be added and then drill down into the associated menu structure (on
the right) to find and select the menu where the new solution should
be accessed from, enter a Menu Prompt and press Add to Menu...

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In this example, we selected the System Administrator responsibility
and selected the Security > User sub-menu.
The new operational report is now deployed and your work is done.
Here we can see the new menu option in action within the System
Administrator responsibility...

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This solution was created and deployed in less than 5 minutes and did
not require any programming skills other than perhaps a little
knowledge of SQL.
As you can see, CS*Rapid is very simple to use and requirements can
be satisfied very quickly.
For more information about CS*Rapid and all of our other solutions
please visit us online at www.caosys.com.

18. Real-Time Operational Reporting for Oracle E-Business Suite
June 2016
Author: Craig O'Neill
Email: info@CaoSys.com
Website: www.CaoSys.com
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