Introduction
Earlier this month, a new version of mobile cloud service (MCS) was released, MCSV2.0 (16.2.3) offers many new features and capabilities such as Location based services. For the full list of new capabilities,please check Oracle MCS V2.0 release notes here.
One of the new features MCS V2.0 offers, is a set of pre-packaged applications that allows you to mobilise on-premise Oracle E-business suite (SSHR) and JD Edwards (Field Service). These mobile applications are available to all MCS customers who are on MCS V2.0 and will serve as a jump start kit for your mobile solution, fully utilising MCS as an MbaaS connecting to the backend on-premise application (Ebs or JDE). For more details on MCS Mobile Solution offering, check the following Blog post by Srikant Subramanian.
In this series of blog posts, I’ll go through several topics detailing the best practices on how to setup, use and customise Ebs SSHR packaged mobile solution.
Main Article
E-business Suite Self-Service HR (SSHR)
During my journey with Oracle, I would say that mobilising Ebs Self-Service HR (SSHR) is the number one concern for all Ebs customers. The ability for employees to submit HR related processes, and for managers to be able to respond and approve pending worklist items using a mobile device, will defiantly set a new milestone on how enterprises do business.
MCS SSHR packaged application offers several capabilities for both employees and managers. The functionalities will be released in a phased approach, a subset of these functionalities are available today, and the rest will be available in upcoming releases.
Employees SSHR
The first thing a user sees after starting the SSHR mobile app is the login screen, notice that it has a bottom ‘Dev Mode‘ bar with two options:
- Mock Data from MCS: in this mode, the mobile app connects to MCS, however MCS uses mock data stored at MCS and doesn’t actually connect to Ebs.
- Simulate Offline: in this mode, the mobile app doesn’t connect to MCS, and uses mock data bundled within the application itself, this is handy in case you want to demo the application and experience its capabilities without setting up the entire echo system for the solution.
To test the application in offline mode without connecting to MCS and EBS, make sure to turn on ‘Simulate Offline‘ mode and then login with the user ‘BPALMER‘ with an empty password.
In production systems, ‘Dev Mode‘ should be disabled so it won’t show on screens.
In a following blog entry I'll show you how to disable the 'Dev Mode' bar
After logging-in, you will be directed to the employee main dashboard, notice that in this current version of the app (V1) TimeCards, Vacation Balance, Personal/Medical Leave of Absence, Out of Office Message are implemented, in next scheduled releases Tax Forms & W2 will be implemented.
Below are screenshots for all the services available for as part of the Employee SSHR, they are self explanatory so I will not comment on them.
Time Card
Vacation Balance
Personal/Medical Leave of Absence
Out of office Message
Managers SSHR
Because the logged in user (BPALMER) is granted the ‘Manager’ role, he has access to the ‘Manager SSHR’ screen, that is why you can see these navigation ellipses below the user name, to navigate to the Manager SSHR screen, simply drag the screen to the left. Currently in V1.0, only the ‘Approval Worklist’ is implemented.
Approval Worklist
Architecture
MCS Ebs SSHR packaged mobile app is designed and certified with Ebs R11, it utilises Oracle Integration Cloud Service (ICS) and ICS on-premise DB agent to expose Ebs PL/SQL APIs to REST APIs that can be consumed by MCS. The Ebs SSHR is a hybrid mobile application built using Oracle JET and cordova, it supports both iOS and Android devices.
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