Release Notes for the following areas are included in this article:
- Platform
- Consolidation
- Account Reconciliation
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FluenceXL Reporting
- To download the latest FluenceXL Add-in for creating and designing reports, use the following link: FluenceXL Add-in.
- Disclosure Management
Special Notes:
- In order to use the Acquisition Balance Sheet or Disposal Balance Sheet input apps, the Conversion Dataview must now be tagged with #Conversion. In order to use the Disposal Balance Sheet input app, a Disposal movement must be created and tagged with with #Disposal.
- The Movement Classification rules have been extended to Journal Entries. If invalid Account and Movement combinations are selected when creating a JE, the interface will highlight the invalid Movement Classification and provide a warning message. The Movement member "Closing" is valid for all Accounts, even if it is not explicitly set in the Movement Classification editor. If not posting to the movement member "Closing", then you will need to add the appropriate Movement Classifications using the Maintenance Editor.
For more information about any of these features, please contact your Customer Success Manager or Fluence Customer Support.
Platform Enhancements
Open versus Closed Period Enforcement
The optional feature flags ImportOnlyOnOpenPeriodsConsol and WritebackOnOpenPeriodsOnly have been removed in this release. Open versus Closed Period Enforcement is now the standard behavior and helps prevent data from being mistakenly loaded to closed periods by:
- Preventing File Import and Data Transfer workflow tasks from loading data to the data model if any of the records contain a closed period.
- Preventing Journals from being posted to Closed Periods.
- Preventing writing to closed periods when data is input via FluenceXL writeback reports.
- Preventing writing to closed periods when data is input via Fluence XML Forms.
What's New Pop-up
A new pop-up window has been added to inform users of new product updates available in the latest release. Click on the megaphone icon in the header bar of the portal to discover “What's New” in 2311.1.
Automated Imports
An Automated Import workflow task has been added to enable automated imports of data. Data can be loaded from an external FTP, Azure File Storage or Azure Blob Storage location defined through a secure connection string.
Support for Azure Synapse Analytics pipelines has also been added to the Application Integration workflow task.
Hierarchy Synchronization
A new option for Hierarchy Synchronization has been added. This option will compare an incoming Hierarchy Sync file with the current contents in a hierarchy and perform the required inserts, updates and renames to synchronize the Fluence hierarchy structure with the file provided.
Metadata Audit Trail
The Metadata Audit Trail user interface has been enhanced to track changes to Mapping definitions and tables. This log can be used for troubleshooting or audit purposes.
In addition, the following usability enhancements have been added:
- Paging virtualization has been added to the user interface to optimize performance.
- Sorting and filtering are now available by clicking on the appropriate column headers.
Journal Entries
Movement Classification
The Movement Classification rules have been extended to Journal Entries. If invalid Account and Movement combinations are selected when creating a JE, the interface will highlight the invalid Movement Classification and provide a warning message.
Note: The Movement member "Closing" is valid for all Accounts, even if it is not explicitly set in the Movement Classification editor.
Open versus Closed Period Enforcement
Users will only be able to post to Open Periods as specified in the Configure Open Periods editor. Users can prepare journal entries for Closed Periods but posting will not be allowed unless the period is opened.
Posting Journals to Multiple Entities
The ability to post a journal to multiple entities has been added. This can be useful in cases where you need to post the same JE to many entities or many elimination entities. Instead of creating multiple JEs, you can leverage the ability to post to multiple members in a single journal.
To enable this option, the Multi check box in the Journal Configuration must be selected.
To create a JE with multiple entities, manually type in the member names using a comma delimited format.
When the JE is posted, the same JE will be posted for each entity. If the posting of a single entity fails, then the entire post will fail.
Note: This feature is not limited to the Entity dimension, thought this is the most commonly used case. The system can be configured to post to multiple members in any dimension that appears in the JE Header.
Journals Usability Enhancements
The following enhancements have been added to improve usability:
- The Account caption has been added to the Details pane of the JE. Captions for members in other dimensions can be viewed by hovering over the member name.
- Journals can be queried by the unique Journal Entry ID (JE ID).
- The number format (thousand separator and decimal character) now aligns with the regional settings of the browser.
Workflow
Workflow Assignment Table
Workflow task assignments can now be easily managed using a visual table interface. This helps an Administrator assign several tasks quickly. The Workflow Assignment Table icon is located beside the Task Toolbox icon in the Workflow Editor.
Generate FluenceXL Reports
The Generate FluenceXL Report workflow task has been enhanced to work with Foreach tasks. By placing the Generate FluenceXL Report within a Foreach task and using special naming conventions, the report can be generated for multiple entities (or cost centers, geographies, etc.) and published to an Azure File Storage folder for integration with Fluence Disclosure Management. The reports can also be published to Fluence Explorer or an FTPS location.
Workflow Usability Enhancements
The following enhancements have been added to improve usability:
- In the Workflow Editor, failed tasks now include a red error indicator that links to the Process Log.
- An improved, more intuitive button control has been added to Restart an instance of a Bursting Workflow.
General Platform Enhancements
Several enhancements in various Platform areas have been added to this release, including:
- The ability to duplicate existing Data Import Definitions. This enables a user to easily and quickly copy an existing definition and modify only the fields that need to be changed.
- Export and Import is available for Roles. Note: Import will only append new roles to mitigate overwriting existing roles.
- Export and Import is available for Role Authorizations. Note: Import will import authorizations to all roles except the Admin role.
- When creating a Staging Table the default size for strings has been reduced from 1024 to 256. This aligns with the naming conventions of Fluence member names.
- The Disabled option in the Add User and Edit User panes, has been updated to only disable the user from the current tenant, instead of all tenants.
Consolidation Enhancements
Additional Web Administration Forms
Additional Web Administration forms have been added, replacing most Excel based administration forms within Fluence Consolidation. A tile-based interface has been added to organize navigation to the forms. Several enhancements have been made to the administration forms to improve user experience and performance.
Updated Manage Ownership form
The Manage Ownership input form has been converted to a web input form. This allows for easier switching between entity structures for ownership input with the use of the side pane entity selector. The Ownership Percentages displayed for input are now driven off of the Ownership Percentage list.
Deferred Tax Calculation
A Deferred Tax Calculation is now available. This feature allows you to define any calculation that multiplies a source account by a rate that can be defined by country. The Deferred Tax Calculation process allows you to use tags to define which items will drive the calculation sources or targets to simplify the maintenance of your Fluence consolidation.
New Tax administration forms and a Tax Rate input form have been provided.
Entity Specific Foreign Exchange rates
Fluence now supports Entity specific foreign exchange rates. A new "Entity Rates" input template has been provided. Entity Specific Rates will override Global Rates and Override Rates will override Entity Specific Rates.
Account Netting Updates
Account Netting rules have been enhanced with an improved rule creation interface. Netting now supports netting for Cash accounts as well as the ability to define if the netting should only be calculated on leaf entities.
Allocation based on Year to Date or Periodic amounts
Allocations have been updated to support calculations based on Year to Date or Periodic amounts.
A new parameter IsPeriodic has been added to Allocation Details. This parameter determines if the Allocation will use data from the YTD (Amount) or Periodic measure.
- If set to True for either Source or Driver, the Allocation will use data from the periodic measure instead of the YTD (amount) measure.
- If set to True for the Offset or Target, Data will be stored in the Periodic Measure instead of the YTD (amount) measure.
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If set to False or Blank for Source, Target, Offset or Driver, the YTD (Amount) measure will be used.
Note: Data should only be stored in the Periodic measure if the Scenario that is being allocated on is a periodic scenario (Input_Periodic = TRUE)
New Out of Box Workflow Calculation Processes
New "out of box" Workflow Processes are now provided to run the various Consolidation calculations.
Consolidation Calculations on Closed Periods
All Consolidation calculations have been updated to prevent users from running the calculations on any closed period and scenario combinations.
Business Acquisition
The Business Acquisition Data input template has been updated to support users inputting data in non-local currency into the Conversion Dataview - simplifying the Conversion process.
Business Disposal
A new Disposal Balance Sheet input template has been provided. This input template is similar to the Acquisition Balance Sheet input template, but will input to the Disposal Movement.
Note: To use this template, a Disposal movement member must exist with the tag #Disposal
Account Reconciliation Enhancements
Additional Filter Logic
The Match Rule Details and Match Group Dataset Filters forms have been enhanced, allowing users to create logical expressions using OR and parentheses to reduce the number of rules and provide ordering priority within a rule. The logic is referencing each filter by its identifier and can use AND, OR, and parenthesis.
FluenceXL Reporting Enhancements
Drillthrough to Import Details
New options have been added to allow users to drill through to import details from within a FluenceXL Report. To leverage this feature, the Extended Drillback checkbox should be enabled for the model. You can set this in the Model Manager.
To enable this feature for a specific report, in Workbook Options > Connections, set the Fluence option Drillthrough type to Drillback.
This setting will allow users to drillback to the import details if they are being tracked.
Axis Tuple Editor
You can now switch to “Tuple” mode on Rows or Columns, this allows you to define a disjoint list of members across each hierarchy.
Disclosure Management Enhancements
Fluence Disclosure Management Releases
Fluence Disclosure Management will now be released on an aligned schedule with the rest of the Fluence platform and applications to better support on-going integration.
Accessibility
Disclosure Management is now compliant with the most important requirements for users with disabilities, as proscribed by the WCAG 2 accessibility standards (level AA). This includes skip links for keyboard navigation, selectable font sizes, alternate text to interface with third party screen readers, and more.
Microsoft PowerPoint as a Data Source
Microsoft PowerPoint presentations are now supported as a data source. The user can select any slide from a presentation, and it will be inserted and linked as a refreshable object into a Word or other PPT document.
Document Templates
A new Document Template property adds the ability to create multiple output copies from a single document by associating each output copy to a specific data source as found in a selected data source folder. This is available for Word and PowerPoint documents.
Document Bursting and Distribution
Document Bursting and distribution is now supported, for Word, PowerPoint or PDF formats. The user defines a list of recipients who should receive one or more selected documents as email attachments. Distribution utilizes a document template with replaceable values based on the bursting target. It also tracks and logs status of the distribution run.
Automatic Document Check-in/Check-out
The document check-out/check-in process has been improved so that documents are automatically checked out when opened for edit and automatically checked-in when closed by the user. The current behavior of manual check-in is still supported but will only apply to documents which are manually checked out using the check-out button.
Document Export
The Export Document screen has been streamlined with additional options and task information to guide the user. A short description of each selection is provided at the bottom of the screen.
Shared Language Dictionary
The shared language dictionary used for text translations now supports Excel formula references, with improvements to word case and duplicate string handling.
Application Audit Log
The application audit log now tracks user login and tenant access information.
For more information about any of these features, please contact your Customer Success Manager or Fluence Customer Support.