Preserve Customizations in Oracle Workflow

Best practices in EBS - From Anil Passi

Understanding Customization Preservation Concepts in Oracle

Workflows

In this presentation, you will learn– How Oracle protects/discourages some key business critical Activities/Processes

from being modified– How you can preserve the customizations from patching– Understand the internals of Workflow Preservation Concepts– Different modes of Workflow Upload

Please click to proceed….


Workflow Access/Protection Level ConceptsThe access levels are defined as follows: 0-9: Reserved for Oracle Workflow 10-19: Reserved for Oracle Application Object Library 20-99: Reserved for Oracle E-Business Suite 100-999: Reserved for customer organizations 1000: Public

How does the developer define their Access Level?


Oracle developer locks the object at this access level

Example- How Oracle protects their Objects from Modifications

Via help Menu, developer in Oracle Corp will set Access Level to 20

Developer in Oracle Corp Developer at EBS Customer Site

Access[100] is not between range 0 and 20. Hence Customer Site can not modify this activity

Oracle locks the access at level their level to discourage customers altering critical parts of the flow. To modify such items, you will have to change your access level to lower than 20, so that it fits into the range of 0..20. However altering key parts of the workflow process is not recommended.


Next Scenario- How Oracle protects their Objects from Modifications

Via help Menu, developer in Oracle Corp will set Access Level to 20

Developer in Oracle Corp Developer at EBS Customer Site

Oracle developer unchecks “Lock at this access level”, then Protection becomes 1000

Access[100] is between range 0 and 1000. Hence Customer Site can modify this activity


Example- How Oracle protects their Objects from Modifications

Developer in Oracle Corp[Access Level 20]

Developer at EBS Customer Site Modifies the Workflow at the Access Level 100

20 is not between 100-100 or 100-1000. Hence Oracle’s patch can not modify/remove your customization. CUSTOMIZATION IS PRESERVED

However by checking Allow Modifications to customized obj,Oracle will is able to modify the Customized objects


Oracle delivers workflows via patches which use WFLOAD command to upload their definition to the DatabaseWFLOAD apps/$APPS_PWD 0 Y <UPLOAD_MODE> XX.wft

Different “Upload Modes” applicable to WFLOADUPGRADE – Honours both protection and customization levels of dataUPLOAD - Honours only protection level of data [No respect of Customization Level]FORCE - Force upload regardless of protection or customization level

As a standard practice, Oracle’s upgrade patches mostly run in UPGRADE mode, hence your customizations can protected if best practices for development are followed.

Equivalent to

How Oracle delivers Workflow patches


ThanksAnil Passi

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Preserve Customizations in Oracle Workflow