Oracle Cloud Applications

Fusion

Release 13 Upgrade Planning

Enterprise Operational Policy

February, 2018
 Contents
Upgrade Process Overview 3
What’s New for Upgrade Planning in Release 13? 3
Release Upgrade Window 3
Upgrade Communication 3
New to the Upgrade Process? 4
Familiar with the Upgrade Process? 4
Upgrade Process Phases 4
Phase 1: Familiarize 5
Phase 2: Get Ready 6
How to Schedule Your Upgrade 6
How to Confirm or Reschedule your Upgrade 7
How to Request Assistance 7
Phase 3: Perform Pre-Upgrade Steps 8
Phase 4: Upgrade Non-Production 8
Phase 5: Validate Upgrade for Non-production Environment 9
Phase 6: Upgrade Production 10
Phase 7: Deploy Release 10
FAQs 11
How do I get access to Cloud Customer Connect? 11
What if I don’t respond to the notifications to schedule my upgrade? 11
When is the latest I can change the upgrade schedule? 11
Can I access my environment during the Upgrade timeframe? 11
What update gets applied after an Upgrade? 11
How close to an upgrade can I schedule an environment refresh? 11
Can I skip a release upgrade? 12

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Upgrade Process Overview
This paper applies to Enterprise operational policy holders. Find your Cloud Service operational policy
on the Overview tab on the Service Details page in My Services
Upgrades deliver new features and functionality to your environments. They’re part of the standard
maintenance on your environments, and ensure you have a stable and reliable Applications Cloud
service.
You’re required to upgrade your environment so you can take advantage of the most current features
and functionality and continue to receive support for your services.
This paper documents the Upgrade phases and scheduling process for upgrading from Release 12 to
Release 13.

What’s New for Upgrade Planning in Release 13?

Release 13 brings some great new features and functionality along with some changes about how you
plan your upgrades: Here are some things to keep in mind:
• The deadline for rescheduling your upgrade is strictly enforced. One of the benefits of the
Release 13 architecture is reduced downtime while upgrading. To support this, some upgrade
activities begin well in advance of the upgrade start times. If you need to reschedule your
upgrade, your reschedule request must be made at least 1 week before the scheduled upgrade
date.
• Your Quarterly Update schedule will be confirmed for you as part of your R13 Upgrade
notifications.
Be sure to check Doc ID: 2106785.1 for Upgrade details specific to your product family.

Release Upgrade Window

The Release 13 upgrade program begins April 2018, and runs for approximately 6 months. The
estimated outage time for the upgrade is 24 hours or less, but the actual time can vary depending on the
amount of data in your environment.
To give you time for testing, the upgrades are phased as follows:
• Your non-production environments are upgraded on a Tuesday starting as early as 9am PT.
• Your production environment is upgraded over the weekend you schedule the upgrade, ideally
about 4 to 6 weeks later.
• If your environments are on concurrent maintenance, they can only be upgraded on the weekday
that matches the type of concurrent maintenance you selected. Non-production upgrades are on
Tuesday; production upgrades are on Thursday or Friday depending on your regional
maintenance schedule.
If you have more than 1 non-production environment, you should keep at least 1 non-production
environment on Release 12, and upgrade it after you upgrade your production environment. This way
you’ll always have at least 1 non-production environment at the same release level as your production
environment.

Upgrade Communication

We’ll send key upgrade communications to the contacts in the Applications Services Notifications on the

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Oracle Cloud Portal. Your Service Administrator should ensure that the correct contacts are receiving
notifications.
If you need to add more users to the notifications, see Managing Contacts for Service Notifications in
the Managing and Monitoring Oracle Cloud Guide.

New to the Upgrade Process?

If you’re new to the upgrade process, read through the entire document to get familiar with the process.
Also see Doc ID: 2106785.1 for Upgrade details specific to your product family.

Familiar with the Upgrade Process?

If you’ve previously upgraded your environments, take a look at Phase 1: Familiarize and Phase 2: Get
Ready. You should see what’s changed in Release 13.
Also see Doc ID: 2106785.1 for Upgrade details specific to your product family.

Upgrade Process Phases

There are 7 phases of the Upgrade process: Familiarize, Get Ready, Perform Pre-Upgrade Steps,
Upgrade Non-Production Environment, Validate Upgrade, Upgrade Production, and Deploy Release.
The following figure shows an overview of the Upgrade Planning Process.

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Phase 1: Familiarize
Before scheduling your Upgrade, we recommend you get familiar with the new release. You should
decide if you need to request Concurrent Maintenance or an Environment Refresh. You should also
determine the amount of testing time you’ll need.

Action Details

Read the latest release See Oracle Cloud Release Readiness. For webcasts and community discussions,
information. visit the Cloud Customer Connect Dashboard.

Sign up for Concurrent For more information on Concurrent Maintenance, see Doc ID: 1646394.1.
Maintenance, if required.

Request environment If you have an environment that is live, in-production, we recommend requesting
refresh, if necessary. Environment Refresh to provide a non-production environment that best represents
your production environment. For more information on all aspects of environment
refreshes, see Doc ID: 2015788.1

Determine the time you You should test your key business processes and functionality to see if they work as
need to test. expected after the upgrade. If you need additional time to test the upgrade in your non-
production environment, you can request additional testing time when you confirm or
schedule your upgrade.

Notifications
• About 8 weeks before the upgrade program begins, we’ll send you key information to help guide
you through the upgrade process. This includes important links to information you need to plan
your upgrade.

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Phase 2: Get Ready
The next step is scheduling or confirming your Upgrade. If you don’t confirm the upgrade, it will be
scheduled for you automatically.
During this phase, you should also document any customizations, prepare test plans, review the
upgrade materials, and communicate with your users.

Action Details

Confirm or schedule See these sections in this document for instructions on "How to Schedule Your
upgrade using My Services. Upgrade," "How to Confirm or Reschedule your Upgrade," and "How to Request
Assistance."

Prepare test plans. • Create or reuse existing test plans that validate all business critical processes.

Review upgrade materials. • Attend Customer Connect review sessions and review the latest release
information, documentation, and online resources.

• See Oracle Cloud Applications: Performing Your Upgrade (Doc ID: 2106785.1),
and read the linked product family documents that describe the details for your
upgrade.

• If you have new features, implement them after the upgrade as there’s limited
time for testing between non-production and production upgrades.

• See: New Release Information.

Communicate to users. • Inform your users of any minor changes or enhancements.

Notifications
About 6 weeks before the upgrade program begins, you’ll be invited to schedule or confirm your
upgrade. Once you’ve successfully scheduled and confirmed your upgrade, you’ll receive a final
confirmation notification. If your upgrade was scheduled for you automatically, it will proceed as
scheduled unless you reschedule at least 1 week before the scheduled upgrade date.

How to Schedule Your Upgrade

You need to schedule an upgrade for each environment separately. This means you’ll have to repeat
the process described here for all environments that are being upgraded.
You can confirm or reschedule this date; see How to Confirm or Reschedule your Upgrade in My
Services for details.
To schedule your upgrade:
1. Sign in to My Services for the identity domain (environment) to be upgraded by specifying the data
center on the Oracle Cloud Portal, then clicking My Services. Login as the service administrator
for the identity domain to upgrade.
2. Select Maintenance and Service Requests from the Action menu in the service listing in the
Dashboard page.
3. Choose Release 13 Upgrade. If you don’t see it in the list, choose the dropdown menu, and then
choose Release 13 Upgrade.

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 4. Read and accept the Terms and Conditions, and click Next.
5. Choose from an available upgrade date.
6. Enter your name and contact information. Click Submit Request.

Your request is submitted for approval, and will be processed within 1 business day. You can see the
schedule date approved within 1 business day on the Schedule Maintenance calendar in My Services.

How to Confirm or Reschedule your Upgrade

You can confirm or reschedule your upgrade date up to 1 week before its scheduled date. After the 1-
week deadline has passed, you won’t be able to change the date of the upgrade, and it will proceed as
scheduled.
To confirm or reschedule your upgrade using My Services:
1. Sign in to My Services for the identity domain (environment) to be upgraded by specifying the
data center on the Oracle Cloud Portal, then clicking My Services. Login as the service
administrator for the identity domain to upgrade.
2. Select Maintenance and Service Requests from the Action menu in the service listing in the
Dashboard page.
3. Click the scheduled maintenance you want to confirm or reschedule from the list. Click Edit, then
read and accept the Terms and Conditions.
4. Make any changes you want, following the provided instructions.

How to Request Assistance

If you’re unable to use My Services to confirm or reschedule the upgrade, log a Service Request for
assistance. See My Oracle Support document – Doc ID: 2120276.1 for information on how to log a
Service Request.

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Phase 3: Perform Pre-Upgrade Steps
After you’ve confirmed your upgrade date, you should review and perform the pre-upgrade instructions
documented in the product family documents, review your customizations, preserve any customized
reports, and publish sandboxes.

Action Details

Review and perform pre- See Oracle Cloud Applications: Performing Your Upgrade (Doc ID: 2106785.1) for
upgrade instructions product family documents. Review and perform any pre-upgrade instructions
documented there.

Preserve customized Preserve your customized reports to specific folders. Changes to reports in other
reports folders are overwritten. You have 2 options:

Option 1: Move all customer reports to one of these safe folders:

• Custom folder under Shared Folders if reports should be available to others.

• My Folder if reports won’t be shared.

Option 2: Archive reports on your local machine.

• Upload reports after upgrade. Instructions can be found on MOS in Doc ID:
1581294.1.

Publish sandboxes. Publish your sandboxes to preserve any customizations that you want to save before
the upgrade. Delete those that you aren’t going to publish. Only published sandboxes
are available after the upgrade.

Notifications
About 1 week after you’ve scheduled or confirmed your upgrade in My Services, we’ll send you a
confirmation of your upgrade date.
About 2 weeks before your upgrade is scheduled to begin, we’ll remind you of the scheduled upgrade.
About 1 week before your upgrade begins, we’ll send you an outage notification with the start time and
date of your upgrade.

Phase 4: Upgrade Non-Production

The upgrade for your non-production environments begins. The estimated outage time for the upgrade
is 24 hours or less, but the actual time can vary depending on the amount of data in your environment.
Notifications
When the upgrade is complete, we’ll confirm that the upgrade completed successfully and that the
environment is available again.

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Phase 5: Validate Upgrade for Non-production Environment
After the upgrade completes, you should validate the upgrade to make sure your existing business
flows, reports, integrations, and so on, work as expected.
We recommend that you manage any new Release 13 features separately from the initial testing of the
upgrade so that the focus remains on regression testing. After you roll the new release out to your end
users, you can review the new, available features and identify which new features to enable.

Action Details

Check Upgrade documents, See Oracle Cloud Applications: Performing Your Upgrade (Doc ID: 2106785.1)
and perform any tasks
recommended after
upgrading.

Set a date to decide You should set the date after all your validation testing is completed so you can
whether or not to go with determine if you want to go forward with the upgrade of your production environment
the production environment as scheduled. Make sure that the Go/No Go date gives you enough time to reschedule
upgrade schedule your production upgrade if necessary.

Execute test plans When determining whether you should upgrade your production environment as
scheduled, you should consider the following criteria at a minimum:

• Enable Single Sign-On (SSO) for regression testing, if applicable.

• Give test users access to the upgraded environment.

• Have a plan in place for any required changes in the UI with the new release.

• Have a plan in place for any alternate solutions that are required in the new
release.

• Execute your transactional and non-transactional test plans and evaluate

results.

• Test essential business flows, end to end, and sign off on results.

• Test essential integrations, and sign off on results.

• Test out-of-the-box and customer reports, and sign off on results.

• Sign off on resolutions to any critical issues that are considered showstoppers
for production upgrade due to business impact.

Report issues to Oracle If you find an issue during testing that didn’t exist before the upgrade, file an SR. Use
Support. REL13UPG at the beginning of the Problem Summary and also provide the remaining
upgrade schedule for production or other environments. Oracle Support will use this
information to prioritize upgrade issues and their resolution.

Ensure you have suitable workarounds for any minor issues filed during testing that
aren’t due to be fixed in the production upgrade.

Confirm or reschedule If you need to reschedule, you must do so 1 week before the upgrade date. We can’t
upgrade date for production reschedule your upgrade if the reschedule request is received less than 1 week before
environment the scheduled upgrade. The upgrade will proceed as scheduled.

Publicize the new release Tell your users about any new features that you plan to enable and any other changes
to your user community. that they’ll see after the update. Also, let them know that there’ll be some downtime
while the update is applied to the production environment.

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Phase 6: Upgrade Production
The upgrade for your production environments begins. The estimated outage time for the upgrade is 24
hours or less, but the actual time can vary depending on the amount of data in your environment.
Notifications
When the upgrade is complete, we’ll confirm that the upgrade completed successfully and that the
environment is available again. We’ll also send you an invitation to provide feedback on your
experiences with the upgrade and to make suggestions for improvements to the process.

Phase 7: Deploy Release

After you’ve validated the upgrade, you can deploy it to your users. Here are some steps to take to
deploy your environment. For details, see Oracle Cloud Applications: Performing Your Upgrade (Doc ID:
2106785.1).
• Check Upgrade documents, and perform any tasks recommended after upgrading
• Move post-upgrade customizations to production.
• Validate upgrade for production environment.
• Release environment to users.

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FAQs
How do I get access to Cloud Customer Connect?

Cloud Customer Connect is a forum for Oracle customers to connect and collaborate as a community.
Contact your Oracle Cloud Applications Sales contact to request initial access. Once you’re a member,
you can invite a co-worker to join the community with just a few simple steps:
1. Sign into Cloud Customer Connect.
2. Select the red Invite a co-worker button located in the upper right hand corner of the page.
3. Enter your co-worker’s name and email address.
4. Submit the request.

What if I don’t respond to the notifications to schedule my upgrade?

If you don’t respond, your environments will automatically be scheduled for the upgrade. You can
change the upgrade date using My Services.

When is the latest I can change the upgrade schedule?

You must log all changes to the schedule at least one week prior to the scheduled start date of the
upgrade, after which the schedule is locked for changes. Follow the steps in "How to Confirm or
Reschedule your Upgrade".
The deadline for rescheduling your upgrade is strictly enforced. One of the benefits of the Release 13
architecture is reduced downtime. To support this, some upgrade activities begin well in advance of the
upgrade start times. If you need to reschedule your upgrade, your reschedule request must be made at
least 1 week before the scheduled upgrade date.

Can I access my environment during the Upgrade timeframe?

No, you shouldn’t access your environment during the upgrade timeframe, even though it may appear
your environment is still available. You’ll be notified when your upgrade has completed.

What update gets applied after an Upgrade?

Your update is applied based on your concurrent maintenance and your update schedule applicable at
the time of your upgrade
• If you receive monthly updates, you’ll receive the latest Monthly update after your upgrade
completes.
• If you receive quarterly updates, you’ll receive the latest Quarterly update after you upgrade.

How close to an upgrade can I schedule an environment refresh?

Currently completing an environment refresh (formerly P2T), takes approximately 24 - 48 hours,

depending on the amount of data being migrated. You should schedule the environment refresh so that
it completes at least 72 hours prior to a scheduled upgrade start time. This allows time for pre-upgrade
activities to be performed after the completion of the refresh.
Therefore, as a general rule, schedule an environment refresh to begin outside the “blackout period”
and 5 days prior to or after the upgrade. See the My Oracle Support document – Doc ID: 2015788.1 for
more detailed information.

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Can I skip a release upgrade?

There’s no provision in the Oracle Cloud Enterprise Hosting and Delivery policy for skipping upgrades.
Oracle requires all Cloud Services Customers to keep the software versions of the Oracle Cloud
Services current with the software versions that Oracle designates as generally available (GA). Software
updates will follow the release of every GA release and are required to maintain version currency.
For example, Oracle defines general availability of Oracle Fusion Applications as the latest available
version (R12) and previous version (R11). Prior to the release of a new version (R13), all customers
must be on the latest release version (R12).
Review the My Oracle Support documents for more details:
• Oracle Cloud Applications – Update Policy, Doc ID: 1966109.1
• Oracle Cloud – Concurrent Maintenance, Doc ID: 1646394.1
• Oracle Cloud Applications – Environment Refresh, Doc ID: 2015788.1
• Oracle Cloud Applications – Instructions for How to Fill Out Fusion Cloud Service Requests
(SR), Doc ID: 2120276.1
• Oracle Cloud Applications: Performing Your Upgrade (Doc ID 2106785.1)
• Pre-Upgrade Activity if Customized Predefined Roles (Doc ID 2210187.1
• Oracle Cloud Enterprise Hosting and Delivery Policy

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Oracle Cloud Applications Oracle Corporation, World Headquarters Worldwide Inquiries

Release 13 Upgrade Planning 500 Oracle Parkway Phone: +1.650.506.7000
February 2018 Redwood Shores, CA 94065, USA Fax: +1.650.506.7200

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