Demystifying Oracle Cloud Apps Patching

Overview

Every quarter, according to your Quarterly Update cadence as specified in the Oracle
Applications Cloud console, Oracle provides software and hardware updates for your
environments to: 

  • Introduce new features/ functions 

  • Address reported issues

  • Provide infrastructure updates 


Scenarios

1. Prior to Go-Live

​If your business is not live and not in production, consider requesting the Concurrent Maintenance option to keep your production and non-production environments at the same update level. The benefit of keeping your environments at the same update level during your initial implementation using concurrent maintenance are: 

  • Updates are applied to all environments at the same time

  • Setup and extensibility can be easily migrated from a non-production environment to your production environment

  • ​Fulfilment of environment refresh requests is easier to schedule and fulfil because the source and target environments are at the same update level. (A prerequisite for environment refresh request is that source and target environments are at the same update level) 


2. After Go-Live

If your business is live on Oracle Cloud, updates are applied to your environments on a predefined schedule:

  • Non-production environments – 1st “Friday” of your month

  • Production environments – 3rd “Friday” of your month

​This gives 2 weeks’ time to test the updates and identify and report any issues before the updates are applied to your production environment.
 

Quarterly Updates

There are four feature/ function updates for each calendar year. Oracle sends a notification to let you know which month within the Quarterly Update period you’ll receive your update.

Note: Quarterly Updates are mandatory. You can’t skip or reschedule them.

Quarterly updates may include:

  • New and enhanced features/ functions

  • National Language Support (NLS) updates for all installed language packs

  • Fixes for reported issues with Oracle Cloud Applications

  • Fixes for reported issues with Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence (OTBI). The middleware updates are sometimes referred to as P4FA updates


Mandatory or Optional Mandatory
Delivery Schedule
  • Non-production environments: First Friday of your Quarterly Update month
  • Production environments: Third Friday of your Quarterly Update month
Planned Outage Time Your outage start time is based on your maintenance region as given below:
  • Americas – Friday 21:00 CST/CDT
  • Europe – Friday 21:00 BST/GMT
  • Middle East – Thursday 21:00 GST
  • Asia Pacific – Saturday 00:00 AEST/AEDT
Readiness Material and Documentation You'll receive advance notice of Readiness material, which describes the new features/functions in upcoming updates. This material is published on the Oracle Cloud Readiness site at least 30 days prior to update availability. This Readiness material along with the documentation will help you prepare for the features/functions introduced with each Quarterly Update

 

Opt-In Quarterly Updates

Oracle Cloud Applications delivers new functionality/ features every quarter.  Some features are delivered Enabled meaning they are immediately available to the end-users. Other features are delivered Disabled meaning you have to take action to make them available. Features delivered Disabled can be activated for end-users by stepping through the following instructions:
 

Opt-In Expiration

Occasionally, features delivered Disabled via Opt-In may be Enabled automatically in a future update. This is known as an Opt-In Expiration. After the Opt-In Expiration, the originally delivered Disabled features are automatically enabled in your Oracle Cloud application instance.

 

Feature Summary

Feature Type Description Bifurcation
Features Delivered Enabled (Ready for Use by End Users) Reports plus Small Scale UI or Process-Based new features will have minimal user impact after an update. Therefore, customer acceptance testing should focus on the Larger Scale UI or Process-Based* new features
  • Report: New or modified, Oracle-delivered, ready to run reports
  • UI or Process-Based: Small Scale: These UI or process-based features typically comprise minor field, validation, or program changes. Therefore, the potential impact to users is minimal
  • UI or Process-Based: Larger Scale: These UI or process-based features have more complex designs. Therefore, the potential impact to users is higher
Features Delivered Disabled (Action is Needed BEFORE Use by End Users) Not disruptive as action is required to make these features ready to use. As you selectively choose to leverage, you set your test and roll out timing Action is needed BEFORE these features can be used by END USERS. These features are delivered disabled and you choose if and when to enable them. E.g.
  • new or expanded BI subject areas need to first be incorporated into reports,
  • Integration is required to utilize new web services, or c) features must be assigned to user roles before they can be accessed

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