Ahmed Jassat Oracle Customer Day Presentation at Monte Casino
- 1. Turning challenges into Opportunities to improve Oracle Ebus R12.1.3 , Customer Success story • Oracle Ebus Products Implemented • Human Resources • Payroll • Finance • Performance Management • Moved from an critical account to customer reference Ahmed Jassat APPS DBA +27 76 44 11 873
- 2. • Who am I ? Ahmed Jassat has over 14 years of experience in working as an Oracle APPS DBA; he has done numerous implementations in the financial services, mining, manufacturing, information technology and healthcare sectors. He works as being Pro-active is improving customer experience in the Oracle Ebus suite. Ahmed is a member of the Oracle customer advisory board and has presented at the SAOUG 2011 , 2012 & 2013. He has mentored and trained clients around South Africa. Ahmed’s white papers have been recognized globally and he has been interviewed by Oracle Media network, Oracle Customer success and Oracle Advanced customer services. He is passionate on being PRO-Active and resolving issues before they occur Winner Best Speaker SAOUG 2012
- 4. • • • • • • • • Challenges I faced !!! No dedicated testing team No user acceptance / quality assurance team I had to support the application for any issues Performance ? Impact of functionality finance vs HR DBA testing Don’t know what changes are going in Clones
- 5. • Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact
- 7. Get Proactive and Maximize the Value of Your Oracle Investment Prevent Resolve Latest
- 10. Cloning … Backup done to tape Sent to Bryansto n 3 Hours to restore 3 Hours from Tape to restore from Tape
- 13. IDEA was born !!! • Create a exact copy of Production daily using dataGuard as an engine
- 14. Daily Clone with DataGuard
- 19. Benefits of daily copy / clone No additional costs Backups can be tested No requirements of tapes No requirements for assistance of Linux admin No requirements for restores No human interaction , only to check logs No functional support or super users on production Time saved from 24 working hours to 20 minutes for clones DR available immediately DataGuard environment is read only which means it can be used for reporting Production Servers are up and running 24 X 7 X 365 Clones to DEV, UAT, Training and dba environments takes 1 hour as clones on local servers Users and support team can test anything at anytime Copy of production available 7 days a week. Backup of production can be verified by dataguard. Rman backups can be run from the DataGuard instance. No need to purchase expensive software for cloning. Daily copy of production which functional support team can use Assistance with OWC with Oracle as scripts and updates can be tested with production data immediately We noticed a reduction in TARS as support team could test solutions from metalink Patches can be tested immediately using Production data No more P1 SRs Super users can test changes to the system Demos can be given to Directors using latest data Training can be given with data from Production Disaster recovery environment is available immediately Changes can be made on TEST system and user acceptance testing can take place easy Emergency changes can be tested No additional money was spent on this solution
- 20. Steps we used to reduce Work load
- 21. Gather Schema Stats 3 hours to run
- 22. Patch to apply
- 23. And Now !! Gather Schema stats completes in minutes with Auto option
- 24. Oracle Support Process for HR Oracle Support Process for HR User picks up problem Oracle requires information User contacts DBA Both work on collecting files DBA uploades file to Metalink and this process can take place a number of times
- 25. New Process by using Patch 14051237 Oracle Support and Medscheme Support can work with each other without the need of a APPS DBA Saving a lot of steps and time Functional Support User can do traces without the need of an APPS DBA
- 26. • Environment Health Script • : Ahmed Jassat Oracle E-Business DBA ICT Infrastructure / Operations
- 27. Patch Wizard
- 28. Output
- 29. Has the patch been applied ??
- 30. Easy way to check if patches are applied
- 31. Easy way to check if patches are applied
- 32. Easy to check Technology Components
- 33. What is the file version ???
- 34. Tools to assist
- 37. Issues faced with the above process {Electronic tax file} 1. Payroll Users had to e-mail the apps dbas for files 2. Payroll users had to have the apps dbas available if running payroll afterhours 3. Auditing risk as the apps dba have access to these files 4. Too many steps involved to retrieve .mf file from server, 5 steps 5. If payroll is rerun the apps dba needs to extract the files again 6. Payroll User dependent on APPS DBA 7. Overtime for both APPS DBA and Payroll User 8. APPS DBA needs to be available all the time 9. Miscommunication causes issues between Payroll and APPS DBA 10.Customers is not happy with the above process
- 39. New process benefits 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. Saves on resources No more required to e-mail APPS DBA Complies with Auditing No more storing the files on PCs for APPS DBA No more storing the files on PCs for HR USER Adds feature to Oracle ebus Saves costs on overtime for APPS DBA Saves costs on overtime for HR user Saves costs no need to purchasing a FTP tool Customer will be happy I have spoken to HR users & APPS DBAs … all of them want this feature 12. Oracle ZA clients want this feature 13. Users will be kept working in the application 14. Single point of failure
- 40. file will be e-mailed to you
- 41. We have also added • Current – Electronic Tax files • Added …Extext files {payment files}
- 42. Old GDF Process Finance User runs GDF on EBus Issue in Finance Apps DBA then emails output APPS dba asked to apply GDF Finace User asks APPS dba for GDF ouput
- 43. Issues with the above process 6 Steps to resolve single issue • APPS DBA needs to be available all the time for finance user • Too many steps • Too many e-mails • If there was a communication issue the process had to be started again • Standby for finance User • Standby for APPS DBA • Two client resources to resolve finance issue •
- 44. Ahmed Jassat has worked on SR 36128961691 : Pro-active - Generic Data fix improvement for 2 months convincing Oracle development on the need for a improvement
- 47. New GDF Process after the patch Issue in Finance APPS dba asked to apply GDF Finance User runs GDF on Ebus without the need of apps dba
- 48. • • • • • • • • Benefits are No Need for APPS DBA Finance User can work independently From 6 steps to 3 steps No more overtime for finance user No more overtime for apps dba No more e-mails Huge improvement for Oracle Ebus All South African Customers benefit
- 49. • Old Payslip Generation Process Payroll could only be run at night…… due to the high CPU usage and ran for 3 hours (180 minutes) Issues where •Payroll could only be run after hours •Payroll ran for extremely long time •A lot of testing and hours spend due to payroll running along time •Overtime for payroll admin •APPS DBA needed to be available all the time •If a issue is pickuped, payroll could not be run after hours which means time is wasted •Planning … Planning … Planning
- 50. • Looking at Oracle Tuning advisor, I had a Idea & decided to logged an SR explaining to Oracle this needs to be tuned
- 51. • Worked on SR 3-5675377601 : 14057355 Proactive : tuning the payslips sql for 5 months begging Oracle for a fix
- 52. • Oracle development agreed with the help of Paddy Toner – Oracle HRMS support and delivered the following patch
- 53. • Uses less CPU
- 54. • Completes in 20 minutes Minutes 300 250 200 150 Minutes 100 50 0 Old RUN After tuning working with HR development
- 55. • After the patch is applied • Payroll can be run anytime during the day as it uses less CPU and completes in ….20 minutes
- 57. • • • • • • • • • Benefits are Payroll can be run anytime No more working at night for payroll admin No more working at night for apps dba No more overtime for payroll admin No more overtime for apps dba Payroll issues can be fixed during the day and run again during the day Huge improvement for Oracle Ebus Huge improvement for payroll All South African Customers benefit
- 58. Taking Part in the Early Adopter program • • • • • • • Taken Part in the HR Tax early adopter program Trained Payroll & HR staff Trained Management Discussed tax setup with Oracle development Moved from re-active to pro-active No Oracle issues on tax this year verses last year Improved the Oracle Products reputation
- 59. What helped me !! Oracle Community
- 60. Innovations on Project • • • • • • • • • • • • • Daily copy / clone instance / Support environment Self Extraction of Payment files & Tax files Link to development Assisted with the South African Payroll User Group Improved GDF for finance Team Support Staff can do system checks { patches , file versions, RDA } Improved Payroll Improved HR tracing Constant performance Tuning , improved Performance management , finance reports & Custom reports Taken part in Oracle early adopter program Taken part in Oracle Pro-active program { workflow & concurrent Analyzer} Improved Product Value onsite Customer reference program
- 61. Benefits of daily Clone • Wayne Wright { SYSADMIN} Benefits of having the TST environment are: No developers have access to production (Benefits of this are: no “accidental” data changes, proper segregation of duty, any change a developer does has to be tested as they cannot just do it via the back end, they have no access to do any change in PROD) Data is available the next day to do problem solving on PO’s Workflows can be checked the next day to get a solution, no more waiting for a refresh. If you break the workflow, the next day the environment is refreshed so you can try another solution. Post production checking can be done on TST, this is especially nice as if you have a targeted user group, you can reset there passwords can check, this allows for faster checking of the post implementation. • Phil Louw { Workflow Consultant } From a developer point of view: It is great to have a accurate and dependable environment where one can debug critical production issues with up to date data without the risk of impacting on production processes. It is also good to be able to test the deployment of patches and custom developments to a near production environment before they are moved over to the live system. The risk of faulty deployments is greatly reduced.
- 62. Benefits • Juan Ferera { Oracle Developer } The most crucial aspect of our TST environment for me is that we have access to the latest data. It is very difficult to recreate problem scenarios otherwise. It is almost more of a benefit for me that the instance is refreshed daily, seeing that changes can be re-done and tested if unsure, on a fresh environment. This is the closest instance we have of Production, and therefore the closest reflection of how changes will behave in PROD. • Christine Abrahams { Payroll Department } We as Payroll benefit from having TST which is a daily clone of PROD for the following reasons : Able to do corrections on errors received on PROD Different scenarios can be done on TST with package structuring or other changes required by staff Quick fixes on reports and testing (using latest data) SR Resolution as we do our testing on TST and not PROD for scripts received or other data requirements Use TST as a general ‘playground’ for any change you want to implement on PROD to check all results first.
- 63. • Thank You !!! “Take challenges / issues and turn then into opportunities! " Ahmed Jassat +27 76 44 11 873 Ahmedj@rdc.co.za