Article written by Matt Harris on the Viewpoint blog.

The Oracle Global Customer Support leadership team recently recognized CDP Senior Consultant Elizabeth May as a My Oracle Support Community Most Valued Contributor (MVC) for 2019.

According to the announcement, "the MVC designation is the most prestigious form of recognition attainable within My Oracle Support Communities (MOSC), as it reflects the impact that your knowledge, engagement, and collaboration have had on users of this global space. Your willingness to share your expertise and be an Oracle technology ambassador within MOSC has provided us valuable insights on how customers use our technologies and have enriched your peers’ experiences and helped them maximize the benefits of their trusted, secure, and comprehensive Oracle technologies."

The MVC award is a prestigious recognition awarded annually in the My Oracle Support Community to customer users who demonstrate an exceeding commitment to the ongoing success of their peers. These users go above and beyond to provide recognized correct and helpful responses to online requests for assistance, and they regularly, willingly, and selflessly share their hard-earned expertise and knowledge of Oracle products for the benefit and betterment of the wider community.

The Critical Patch Update for April 2017 was released on April 18th, 2017. Oracle strongly recommends applying the patches as soon as possible.

If you are new to this process, please review Oracle's Security Fixing Policies and the Critical Patch Update Advisory. After reviewing these resources, if you are unable to determine if you require a software update, or how to apply it, please contact Oracle Support.

The Critical Patch Update Advisory is the starting point for relevant information. It includes the list of products affected, pointers to obtain the patches, a summary of the security vulnerabilities for each product suite, and links to other important documents. Supported products that are not listed in the "Affected Products and Components" section of the advisory do not require new patches to be applied.

Also, it is essential to review the Critical Patch Update supporting documentation referenced in the Advisory before applying patches, as this is where you can find important pertinent information.

Critical Patch Update Advisories are available at the following location:

Oracle Technology Network: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/alerts-086861.html

As the new year approaches, we wanted to inform you of a couple of items that warrant your attention.

First, as these are the early days in regards to the Affordable Care Act, one of our astute Spectrum clients noticed an issue in Spectrum that came too late to make a product change. This is connected to the 1095C forms and the need to print and collate those with the W2's. Unfortunately, Spectrum does not have the option to print W2's and 1095C's utilizing the same sort order so it made it difficult to collate a large number of employee W2's and 1095C's. To provide a solution, two of our consultants created custom reports that now sort the 1095C in either SSN or Name Alpha order to mirror the options for W2 printing.

• 1095-C Sorted by Employee Social Security Number
• 1095-C Sorted by Employee Alpha

Please download the custom reports to have them available when you reach this point in your 1095C processing. Instructions for adding these reports to your Spectrum installation are included on the download page.

HardDollar Release 14 brings lots of new features, including period-driven resource employment, batch forecasting and Primavera P6 integration enhancements:

• New Branding and User Interface
• Period-Driven Resource Employment
• Allows users to use a period based approach to determine the hours/quantities of a resource employment
• Batch Forecasting
• Forecast multiple items at one time in more of a spreadsheet-type format
• P6 Integration Enhancements
• Define Percent Complete from the P6 schedule
• Create CBS Items from P6 WBS items
• Control default Activity Duration Type of Activities created in P6 from HD
• Display Progress of P6 Integration
• Cost Allocation Modifications
• Suspend a cost item that contains a cost allocation distribution
• Award quote to a cost item that contains a cost allocation distribution

Release 15.1 is the latest release of Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management solution. This release delivers significant advances in functionality and will help companies deliver more projects on schedule and within scope, while reducing overall costs. With Primavera P6 Enterprise PPM Release 15.1:

• Create maximum business value from innovation and business investments
• Govern project and program compliance and regulatory requirements
• Extend enterprise PPM to all business processes, enterprise systems, project participants, and portfolio stakeholders
• Gain situational awareness across all project elements – resources, budgets, facilities, supply chain and risk – for maximum value

New Release Numbering

The last version of EPPM was release 8.4. Release 15.1 is not the current version, and it represents a change in the numbering system so that year of release is represented in the release number.