Featured Articles:
SAP integration App is now live on Oracle’s marketplace
We have developed a slick way of integrating SAP with any Oracle EPM application including the ability to integrate with SAP S4 Hana public cloud. We have developed an easy process, using the Oracle tools that come with EPM, where our clients provide the SAP login details and we do the rest.
August’s EPM Update
Kickstart a digital transformation with EPM
Ed Graham, founder, and director at GK shares why his past experience can help a client implement a successful finance system and why an EPM is the best way to kick start their digital transformation.
Explore Our Method
Mark Wright, Director of Planning at GK shares his experience of working in finance transformation and offers insights on what to expect when working with us.
WARNING - Groovy Rule Validation Required Now
At a Glance:
Essbase 21.7 Upgrade: New Cloud EPM environments use Essbase 21.7; existing environments may face compatibility issues—upgrade recommended.
XBRL Integration: Narrative Reporting can now seamlessly transmit report packages to third-party XBRL providers, maintaining all tagging.
Mandatory Groovy Update (Nov 2025): Stricter validation rules require all Groovy scripts to be validated and updated to avoid failures.
New Essbase version
Starting with the 25.09 update, new Cloud EPM environments are created with Essbase version 21.7.xxx. Over time, Oracle will migrate all Cloud EPM environments to use this Essbase version. Until then, existing environments will continue to be on Essbase version 11.1.2.4.516.xxx.
If you have environments on Essbase version 21.7.xxx along with environments on Essbase version 11.1.2.4.516.xxx, you will face compatibility issues with migration and cloning of environments. To resolve compatibility issues, you should request Oracle to upgrade the environments on Essbase version 11.1.2.4.516.xxx to version 21.7.xxx.
Business Benefit: Upgrading the Essbase version will resolve compatibility issues if you have a mix of environments on different Essbase versions.
GK’s View: Oracle’s revelation that all new Cloud EPM environments are created with Essbase version 21.7.xxx raises serious support issues as they state that you will have compatibility issues between old and new versions. Please reach out if you need immediate support, under contract or not.
In the long term we expect the new version will provide significant benefits and new features for the Cloud EPM platform as it is a 10 year upgrade.
XBRL Integration
Narrative Reporting is now configured to seamlessly pass Report Package contents to your third-party XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) service provider. Key reporting properties pass through a URL allowing the XBRL service to extract the Report Package content and load it into the XBRL service. The Report Package content can be refreshed iteratively without loss of any XBRL tagging performed within the XBRL service provider.
Oracle’s Business Benefit: Integration of Narrative Reporting with your XBRL service provider ensures seamless transmission of your report content with your XBRL tagging provider
GK’s View: XBLR tagging of financial accounts is a legal requirement in many jurisdictions and Narrative Reporting provides a seamless transmission with your XBLR Provider. We recommend using Ez-XBRL© as a provider.
WARNING – Mandatory Groovy Update Scheduled for November Release
A future version of the Groovy engine, which is planned for the 25.11 update (November 2025), has stricter validation rules that may cause previously valid rules to fail validation.
ALL Groovy scripts need to be validated, and errors remediated before this date. Please reach out if you need immediate support, under contract or not.
Oracle has provided a Groovy Script Validator that validates Groovy business rule scripts to ensure that they will pass the stricter Groovy rule guidelines enforced by the future version of the Groovy engine.
Oracle’s Business Benefit: Providing a Groovy script validation utility helps you find any potential issues so you can resolve them before the stricter Groovy rule guidelines take effect.
GK’s view: Oracle is updating all EPM databases with a newer version of Essbase which requires a newer version of Java – this mandates a new version of Groovy. We expect that the new version of Essbase will provide significant benefits and new features to the EPM platform.
Read More:
GK X NEO Energy
GK Integrator app
G-Cloud 14
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