Oracle Cloud EPM August 2026 Update – Important Actions and Considerations

Oracle Cloud EPM August 2026 Update – Important Actions and Considerations

Introduction

 

Oracle Cloud EPM continues to evolve with security improvements, governance enhancements, Groovy validation updates, metadata handling changes, and upcoming permission model adjustments. Organizations using Planning, FCCS, EDMCS, PCMCS, EPCM, FreeForm, Tax Reporting, and Account Reconciliation should carefully review the latest Important Actions and Considerations to avoid operational disruptions.

This article provides a detailed enterprise-level explanation of the key updates announced for the Oracle Cloud EPM August 2026 release cycle.

 

Applications Impacted

The updates impact multiple Oracle Cloud EPM products including:

• Account Reconciliation
• Enterprise Data Management
• Financial Consolidation and Close
• Planning
• Profitability and Cost Management
• Enterprise Profitability and Cost Management
• FreeForm
• Tax Reporting
• Narrative Reporting

 

1. Application Diagnostics Menu Renamed to Application Monitoring

What is Changing?

Starting with the August 2026 (26.08) update, Oracle is renaming the:

Application Diagnostics

to:

Application Monitoring

under:

Global Navigator → Monitor

 

Applications Affected

• Enterprise Profitability and Cost Management
• FreeForm
• Planning

 

Why This Matters

This is primarily a UI terminology update intended to better align the feature with Oracle’s monitoring and observability standards.

While functionality remains largely unchanged, administrators, support teams, and documentation owners should update relevant documents

 

2. Generative AI Features Require Cloud EPM 26.04 or Later

What is Changing?

Beginning July 2026, Oracle will only support Generative AI capabilities for environments running:

• Release 26.04 or later

Any environment not upgraded to at least 26.04 by the end of July 2026 will lose access to Generative AI functionality.

 

Applications Affected

• Enterprise Data Management
• Enterprise Profitability and Cost Management
• Financial Consolidation and Close
• FreeForm
• Narrative Reporting
• Planning
• Tax Reporting

 

Why This Matters

Organizations increasingly rely on AI-powered capabilities for:

• Narrative generation
• Smart insights
• Predictive analysis
• AI-assisted rule creation
• Automated explanations

Failure to upgrade environments before the enforcement timeline may result in:

• Loss of AI functionality
• Business process interruptions
• Reduced user productivity
• AI feature incompatibility

 

Recommended Enterprise Actions

Immediate Actions

• Identify all lower-version environments
• Review upgrade timelines
• Validate AI-dependent business processes
• Coordinate with Oracle maintenance windows

Governance Recommendations

• Maintain non-production validation environments
• Perform regression testing before upgrade
• Validate custom integrations after update

 

3. Warning for Unclosed Grids Created Through Groovy

What is Changing?

Starting August 2026 (26.08), Oracle will validate whether grids created in Groovy scripts are properly closed.

If grids are not closed:

• Validation warnings will appear
• Rule execution may complete with warnings
• Job console will indicate that grids were not closed

 

Why This Matters

Unclosed grids can lead to:

• Memory leaks
• Resource consumption issues
• Performance degradation
• Long-running rules
• Unexpected application behavior

This update encourages better Groovy coding standards and resource management.

 

Incorrect Example

DataGrid grid = operation.application.getCube("Plan1")

    .loadGrid(builder.build(), false)

 

// Missing grid.close()

Correct Example

DataGrid grid = operation.application.getCube("Plan1")

    .loadGrid(builder.build(), false)

 

try {

    // Process grid

}

finally {

    grid.close()

}

 

Enterprise Recommendation

Perform a review of:

• Existing Groovy rules
• Shared rule libraries
• Custom frameworks
• Groovy utility classes

Specifically search for:

• loadGrid()
• DataGridDefinitionBuilder
• FlexibleDataGridDefinitionBuilder

Ensure every grid is properly closed.

 

4. Upcoming Restriction on Using IP Addresses in Connection URLs

What is Changing?

Oracle now prevents users from:

• Creating new connections using IP addresses
• Modifying existing connections containing IP-based URLs

Only hostname-based URLs will be supported.

 

Example

Previously Allowed

http://192.168.1.10:8080/api

Recommended Format

https://integration.company.com/api

 

Why Oracle is Enforcing This

This change improves:

• Security
• Certificate validation
• DNS-based governance
• Infrastructure abstraction
• Enterprise compliance standards

 

Enterprise Impact

This may affect:

• REST integrations
• Data Management connections
• Integration Agent connections
• External API integrations
• Custom middleware

 

Recommended Actions

Audit Existing Connections

Review:

• Data Integration connections
• REST endpoints
• ERP integrations
• Middleware configurations

Replace IPs with:

• DNS names
• Load balancer hostnames
• API gateway URLs

 

5. Removal of Proxy User Entry in Data Integration Pipelines

What is Changing?

Oracle now defaults the Proxy User field to the currently logged-in user.

Users can no longer manually specify another username.

 

Previous Behavior

Previously users could:

• Enter another username
• Provide password credentials
• Execute pipeline jobs as another user

 

Why This Change Matters

This update improves:

• Security
• Auditability
• Identity traceability
• Compliance enforcement

 

Applications Affected

• Account Reconciliation
• Enterprise Profitability and Cost Management
• Financial Consolidation and Close
• FreeForm
• Profitability and Cost Management
• Tax Reporting

 

Enterprise Recommendation

Organizations using shared operational accounts should:

• Review execution models
• Reassess access strategies
• Validate scheduled pipeline execution
• Update operational procedures

 

6. Upcoming Permission Changes for Forms, Dashboards, and Library Folders

What is Changing?

In a future update:

Users with the Power User role will require:

• Write access to folders

before they can create:

• Forms
• Dashboards
• Subfolders

 

Current Behavior

Currently, Power Users can create artifacts with only:

• Read access to folders

 

Why This Matters

This introduces stricter governance and folder-level security.

Organizations using collaborative development models may experience:

• Creation failures
• Access issues
• Deployment delays

 

Recommended Enterprise Actions

Review Folder Security

Audit:

• Planning folders
• Dashboard folders
• Library structures
• Shared folders

Validate Power User Access

Ensure appropriate:

• Write permissions
• Role mappings
• Migration workflows

 

7. Remove Slash Symbol (/) from Folder Names

What is Changing?

Folders containing the slash symbol (/) may cause:

• Backup failures
• Missing artifacts in snapshots
• Daily backup issues

Oracle recommends removing or replacing slash characters.

 

Example Problematic Folder Names

Finance/Reports

Actual/Budget

Input/Forms

 

Recommended Naming Standards

Use:

Finance_Reports

Finance-Reports

Finance Reports

 

Enterprise Recommendation

Perform a full audit of:

• Artifact folders
• Dashboard folders
• Report folders
• Shared libraries

Implement standardized naming conventions.

 

8. Unicode Whitespace Handling in Member and Alias Names

What is Changing?

Oracle now trims trailing Unicode whitespace characters automatically during metadata validation.

This includes:

• Non-breaking spaces
• Invisible Unicode characters
• Trailing whitespace characters

 

Why This Matters

Previously:

• EPM Cloud accepted these values
• Essbase rejected or ignored them
• Cube refresh inconsistencies occurred

This caused:

• Silent failures
• Duplicate member issues
• Metadata synchronization problems

 

Example Scenario

The following members may previously appear unique:

Revenue

Revenue<invisible_unicode_space>

After trimming:

Both become:

Revenue

resulting in duplicate validation errors.

 

Recommended Enterprise Actions

Review Metadata Files

Audit:

• Dimension builds
• Metadata imports
• Alias tables
• EDM exports

Validate Uniqueness

Ensure sibling members remain unique after trimming.

 

9. Snapshot Import Failures with Reserved Words or Duplicate Names

What is Changing?

Snapshot imports may now fail if metadata contains:

• Essbase reserved keywords
• Duplicate names after whitespace normalization

 

Example Reserved Words

COUNT

SUM

AVG

 

Why This Matters

Previously some invalid metadata passed through earlier stages.

Oracle now enforces stricter metadata integrity checks.

 

Enterprise Recommendations

Review Metadata Standards

Avoid:

• Reserved keywords
• Trailing spaces
• Non-unique aliases

Validate Archived Snapshots

Older snapshots may fail during re-import.

Organizations should:

• Review archived backups
• Test snapshot restoration
• Validate DR procedures

 

10. Calculation Manager Errors and Considerations Enforcement

What is Changing?

Oracle plans to enforce the execution of:

Errors & Considerations

checks before:

• Rule deployment
• Validation
• Rule execution

 

Important Clarification

Rules will still:

• Deploy
• Execute

However:

• Oracle Support will require all Errors to be resolved
• Considerations must be justified before support review

 

Why This Matters

This promotes:

• Better rule quality
• Improved performance
• Coding best practices
• Reduced production issues

 

 

Enterprise Recommendations

Establish Governance Standards

Create standards for:

• Rule development
• Performance optimization
• Validation reviews
• Code review approvals

Periodically Review Rules

Audit:

• Business Rules
• Groovy rules
• Templates
• Calculation scripts

 

 

11. ASO Grid Behavior Changes for Groovy and REST APIs

What is Changing?

Oracle is updating suppression behavior for ASO grids created through:

• Groovy
• REST APIs

The behavior will align with:

• Form Designer runtime grids

 

Previous Logic

ASO grids used:

suppressMissingBlocks

for MDX NON EMPTY suppression.

 

New Logic

Oracle will now use:

suppressMissingRows

for MDX NON EMPTY behavior.

The following will be ignored:

suppressMissingBlocks

for ASO grids.

 

Why This Matters

This may impact:

• Grid behavior
• Data retrieval
• Performance
• Row suppression results

 

Enterprise Recommendations

Review Existing Integrations

Audit:

• Groovy-based exports
• REST API integrations
• Data extraction utilities
• Reporting frameworks

Validate Performance

Test:

• Grid execution time
• Returned row counts
• Suppression accuracy

 

Example Review Area

builder.setSuppressMissingRows(true)

builder.setSuppressMissingBlocks(false)

Behavior may change after the update.

 

Final Recommendations for Oracle EPM Administrators

Organizations should proactively prepare for these updates by implementing structured governance and validation processes.

Recommended Action Checklist

Area	Recommended Action
Groovy Rules	Review and close all grids properly
Metadata	Validate member uniqueness and reserved words
Connections	Replace IP-based URLs with hostnames
Security	Review folder permissions and Power User access
Snapshots	Validate backup and restore procedures
AI Features	Upgrade all environments to 26.04 or later
Integrations	Review ASO suppression logic in APIs and Groovy
Folder Naming	Remove slash symbols from folder names

 

Conclusion

The Oracle Cloud EPM August 2026 update introduces several important operational, governance, security, and metadata-related enhancements.

While many of these changes are designed to improve platform reliability and enterprise governance, organizations should begin reviewing their environments immediately to avoid:

• Upgrade disruptions
• Backup failures
• Metadata issues
• Integration problems
• Security-related access issues

Early validation, proactive governance, and proper regression testing will help ensure a smooth transition to the upcoming Oracle Cloud EPM releases.

 

Happy days on the Cloud!