Fusion HCM Enterprise Structure Configurator

One of features of Fusion HCM is the wide vaiety of 'wizard' processes which help guide you through transactions.  Some of these wizards are available during the functional setup process, one of the key processes being the Enterprise Structure Configurator (ESC).

ESC guides you through the process of defining your enterprise, legal entities, business units and reference data sets and allows you to prototype different designs.  It does this by storing the data in a different schema to the mainline database.

At the end of the process a report is generated - the inappropriately named "Technical Summary Report".  We use this report to validate the design with the customer.  Once agreed, there is a final 'load' process in which ESC loads the prototype design into the mainline database tables. 

The process really streamlines the setup and saves a lot of manual, repetitve work.

But, (there's always a 'but') having worked on implementations, we've learned that there are a few 'gotchas' in this process.

First, if the load process fails (for whatever reason), there is no rollback.  This means that you now have incomplete setup and that you may have to complete the load manually.

Secondly, if you can restart the load process, it will most likely continue to fail.  So, you are back to square one.

The solution is to get it right first time!   If your ESC prototype setup is 100% correct, the load will work.  This information is brought to you courtesy of my colleague Richard who really has been using ESC 'in anger' - and he's been very angry sometimes!

This article is based on Version 5 and we do understand that Oracle are developing some enhancements (fixes to you an me) in this area.  Please hurry up, Richard can't take much more!