Addressing Oracle EPM Cloud Patch Validation Challenges with Continuous Test Automation
Published: 2021-09-16 13:29:58


Oracle EPM Cloud Apps are ever-evolving. The improvements are not just fundamental software changes but the number and frequency of enhancements. These enhancements can be a graphical user interface (GUI) related, features, performance, or functional improvements. However, due to frequent EPM Cloud patching, enterprises are facing major challenges in testing their EPM cloud apps.

In this article, we’ll discuss Oracle EPM Cloud Patching Challenges and how continuous test automation can help in addressing these challenges.

<B>Oracle EPM Cloud Patching Process</B>

Understanding the patching process of Oracle EPM Cloud Apps is very important as it helps enterprises to know about upcoming fixes or enhancements and the associated need for regression testing. Since EPM is an enterprise-grade software in which tons of transactions take place daily, you simply cannot trust patching without regression testing. In fact, testing ensures that patching has not introduced any new bugs or negatively impacted system performance, user experience, or business process.

<B>Three types of patches exist in the Oracle EPM Cloud:</B>

Monthly Patches – The monthly patches are rolled out majorly for bug fixing and providing enhancements to Oracle EPM Cloud Apps. Irrespective of the business process (EPBCS, FCCS, PCMCS, etc.), the monthly patches are scheduled as follows:

Test instances are patched on the 1st Friday of the month
Production instances are patched on the 3rd Friday of the month.
Thus, we can infer that Oracle offers 2 week time for regression testing.

<B>Weekly Patches </B>– In <a href="https://www.opkey.com/Oracle-EBS-Automation"> Oracle EPM Cloud </a>, weekly patches can be deployed in two situations:

If EPM Cloud development team gets the service request which has been filed in the first week after the environment is updated in the monthly cycle and identifies a non-regression issue.
More than ten environments are impacted by the reported issue.
One-Off Patches – These patches are only deployed to an environment to resolve a regression issue that has been confirmed by the EPM Cloud development team within the first week after an environment is updated in the monthly cycle.

<B>Why does regression testing require to ensure defect-free patching?</B>

Regression testing of Oracle EPM Cloud is critical. The deployment of a specific patch can have an unanticipated consequence on applications/business processes. It is recommended that you should validate critical reports, key workflow approvals, and critical integrations with other applications in the Test instance before the promotion of the patch to the Production environment to ensure business continuity.

<B>Test Automation – Your pathway to digital success</B>

Although the manual testing approach is still prevalent, it cannot be considered viable in the Oracle EPM cloud due to frequent patch releases and short testing windows. Moreover, it can prove to be a costly proposition in a long run and can lead to business disruptions due to manual inaccuracies and limited test coverage. Enterprises need to bring in highly dynamic continuous test automation to keep pace with Oracle EPM Cloud patch release.  

Automating a pre-built regression script on a monthly cadence will help enterprises by preventing unfortunate events like patch being promoted to Production to cause a delay or slowdown in the execution of EPBCS/PCMCS Calculations and is well worth the effort.

Furthermore, continuous automation testing helps in increasing the overall software efficiency with faster feedback, accelerated results, lower costs, greater efficiency, and broader coverage. In fact, continuous test automation accelerates release, patch, and upgrade test cycles across the breadth of Oracle EPM Cloud Applications and beyond.

We recommend “OpKey”, an autonomous test automation tool for Oracle EPM Cloud Patch Validation.

OpKey provides Change Impact Advisories highlighting functional and technical changes in your Oracle Cloud application after the update

OpKey’s real-time Change Impact Analysis report specifies changes and risks in impacted test scripts across your configured modules and business processes. Also provides you the updated Plugin for handling Technical challenges same weekend of the update
OpKey takes away your key user’s test maintenance effort by One-Click Autonomous Self-Healing Tests for all the impacted test libraries. OpKey’s Self-Configuring engine generates multiple relevant data combinations across different configured set-ups and across different modules

Provides 100% Compliance and auditable Security Role Validation Report providing Change Impact across Function/Data Security policies in minutes