EPM Cloud Updates Release Update

Oracle EPM Cloud 26.04 (April 2026) Update Summary

Oracle EPM Cloud monthly updates are back. The 26.04 release (April 2026) is the first monthly patch since Oracle paused updates in late 2025 after identifying application-specific issues with the Essbase 21.7.x version shipped in the 25.11 update. With 26.04, Oracle resumes its regular cadence — and this release packs a cumulative set of enhancements spanning nearly five months (25.12 through 26.03) for non-Essbase business processes, alongside targeted Essbase 21c fixes.

Deployment timeline: Test environments April 3, 2026 | Production environments April 17, 2026.

Why the Pause Happened

Starting with the 25.11 update, Oracle identified sporadic performance and data-accuracy issues in EPM business processes that rely on Essbase (Financial Consolidation and Close, FreeForm, Planning, Profitability and Cost Management, and Tax Reporting). As a precaution, Oracle halted monthly updates for all production environments through 25.12, 26.01, 26.02, and 26.03. The 26.04 patch marks the official resumption, with Essbase 21c fixes at its core.

Essbase Fixes and Enhancements

The primary focus of 26.04 is resolving the Essbase 21c issues that triggered the pause. Key Essbase improvements include:

  • Support for @QUERYBOTTOMUP and @NONEMPTYTUPLE MDX functions
  • A new essbaseBlockAnalysisReport enhancement that calculates the percentage of data cells with values close to zero, helping administrators identify performance-impacting blocks
  • Snapshot import validation improvements — note that imports will fail when metadata contains Essbase reserved words (e.g., “COUNT”) or non-unique sibling names after whitespace normalization, so metadata remediation may be required before importing

Infrastructure and Administration

Environment migration now supports migrating environments to different SKUs, regions, cloud accounts, or IAM domains while maintaining the existing URL — previously impossible without losing access credentials.

Gen AI regional availability has expanded: all regions in the OC1 realm now have Gen AI capabilities available. Important: beginning July 2026, only environments running 26.04 or later will retain access to GenAI features.

EPM Automate for Windows has a new default installation path (Program Files\Oracle\EPM Automate). Runtime data, logs, and password files now save within this directory, which may affect existing scripts that reference the old default location.

New REST APIs for Agentic AI

Three new REST APIs designed for agentic AI interactions with EPM Cloud have been introduced:

  • Get Application Summary — returns AI-focused summaries of EPM applications
  • Export Data — delivers JSON data grids for programmatic dataset exports
  • Export Form Data — returns JSON grids containing form-slice data

These APIs enable programmatic AI-driven interactions with EPM Cloud, aligning with Oracle’s broader AI strategy.

Planning and Data Entry

Upper-level data entry in FreeForm is now supported. Users can enter data directly at parent members in FreeForm grids (BSO cubes), enabling top-down planning approaches without workarounds.

Customizable integration roles allow Service Administrators to customize the “Integration – Create” and “Integration – Run” roles, providing more granular permission management for data mapping and execution tasks.

Groovy and Automation

Enhanced data copying — Groovy rules now support copying relational data, Essbase data, comments, attachments, and supporting details, automating processes that previously required manual effort.

Task Manager pipeline customization — Run Pipeline automation tasks now support custom variables for more flexible workflow designs.

Mandatory Groovy engine update coming in 26.05 — Stricter validation rules arrive in May 2026. Oracle recommends reviewing and correcting Groovy scripts now to prevent failures after the next update.

Narrative Reporting

  • AutoTextSummary Criteria Manager — Criteria definitions can replace direct parameters in AutoTextSummary functions, enabling reusable configurations within individual reports
  • Analytics image integration — Oracle Analytics Cloud dashboards can now be embedded directly into Narrative Reports
  • Multiple ML property files — Support for multiple machine learning property files provides customization flexibility for GenAI implementations
  • Updated Smart View extension for Narrative Reporting

Account Reconciliation and Transaction Matching

New options to customize and filter data when managing adjustment and support attributes in transaction matching. Enhanced filtering for journal column data within transaction matching processes streamlines reconciliation workflows and improves data precision.

The IDCS audit enhancement adds a groupAssignmentAuditReport command and associated REST API to retrieve audit information for specified date ranges.

Predictive Cash Forecasting

ERP integration with Oracle Cloud ERP is now generally available (previously beta-only). Data flows seamlessly for Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, and Cash Management, with drill-through to analytical views. Prediction definitions now require a minimum of two input drivers to ensure better prediction results.

Reporting Enhancements

New LeftTrim and RightTrim functions enable delimiter-based text trimming in Reports, improving flexibility over character-count-based methods.

Opt-Out Process

If you need to skip the 26.04 update, note that you cannot self-initiate a skip for this release. Instead, submit a Service Request (SR) following the documentation at Requesting to Skip Automatic Updates for Environments.

What to Do Now

  1. Review your Groovy scripts — The 26.05 update (May 2026) will enforce stricter validation. Use the time between 26.04 and 26.05 to audit and fix any scripts that may not comply.
  2. Check EPM Automate scripts — If you have automation scripts referencing the old default installation path on Windows, update them to the new Program Files\Oracle\EPM Automate location.
  3. Plan your GenAI upgrade path — Environments must be on 26.04 or later by July 2026 to retain GenAI access.
  4. Test on your test environment first — The 26.04 update lands on test environments on April 3. Use the two-week window before the April 17 production rollout to validate your configurations.

This is a significant release that catches up on months of accumulated enhancements. Take advantage of the test window to get familiar with the changes before they hit production.