Extract from HFM / FCCS (Ad-hoc)

Connect PlaidCloud to Oracle FCCS (Financial Consolidation and Close, part of Oracle EPM Cloud) so a finance user can pull a data slice themselves instead of filing a ticket with the HFM team. You build a point of view (POV) in the step form, hit Run, and the result lands automatically as a table. It feels like a live query — under the hood it’s an asynchronous request → poll → fetch against FCCS’s data-export job. This guide covers the connection, building a POV, running it, caching, governing the result with row-level security, and turning it into a scheduled recurring load.

Note

Keep the Entity selection bounded — an un-scoped extract can lock the FCCS application for a long time while the export job runs. Scope every point of view to the entities you actually need.

Prerequisites

You need, in Oracle EPM Cloud:

• Your EPM Cloud pod/service URL, for example https://planning-test-yourdomain.epm.us2.oraclecloud.com.
• Your identity domain (for a classic pod). PlaidCloud composes the login as identitydomain.username.
• A dedicated service account — username and password — with read access to the FCCS applications and the point-of-view slices your self-serve users will pull.
• The application name(s) users will read from.

Note

The connection authenticates with HTTP Basic auth against a classic EPM Cloud pod. OCI / Gen 2 pods that require an OAuth bearer token are out of scope for this connector.

Create the Connection

1. Open Tools > Connections and click New Connection.

2. Choose REST - HFM/FCCS from the menu.

3. Fill in the fields:

   Field	Value
   Name	A friendly name, e.g. FCCS Prod.
   EPM Cloud URL	Your pod/service URL, e.g. https://planning-test-yourdomain.epm.us2.oraclecloud.com.
   Identity Domain	Your EPM Cloud identity domain. Leave blank only if your username already includes the domain.
   Username	The service account username.
   Password	The service account password.
   Default Application	Optional. An FCCS application to prefill in the step’s POV picker.

4. Click Create.

PlaidCloud logs in as identitydomain.username (or the username as-is when Identity Domain is blank or the username already contains a dot).

Build a Point of View

1. Add an HFM/FCCS: Read Data (Ad-hoc) step to a workflow (it’s under Oracle EPM (HFM/FCCS) in the step menu).

2. Under Source and Target, set HFM/FCCS Connection, Environment, Application, and a Target Table.

3. Under Point of View, build the slice from the FCCS dimensions: Scenario, Year, Period, Entity, Account, Custom1–Custom4, ICP, View, Value.

   • Scenario, Year, and Period are required.
   • Entity must be a bounded slice — the form rejects an empty selection, “all”, or a selection wider than 500 members. Keep it scoped so the export doesn’t lock the application.
   • Leave any other dimension unset to apply no filter on that axis.

Note

On supported FCCS pods, member lists auto-populate from live metadata discovery once you pick a connection and an application — the picker offers real members, and re-discovers whenever the connection or application changes. On older pods that don’t expose the metadata endpoint, the picker falls back to manual entry: type member names by hand. A saved POV always round-trips either way.

Run It

1. Run the step (see Running one step in a workflow).

2. A progress status (“polling HFM job…”) shows while the export job runs in FCCS.

3. When it finishes, the result table lands automatically — the table is created from the returned grid’s columns, so there’s no schema to define up front.

Caching

Request the same POV again and PlaidCloud serves the already-landed table instantly, instead of re-submitting the export to FCCS. A run is keyed by application, target table, point of view, and an as-of tag (default latest); a repeat that resolves to an already-landed slice reports that the table was left in place rather than re-written. Change the as-of tag when you want to force a fresh extract of the same POV.

Govern With Row-Level Security

The landed table’s entity axis is normalized to a column named exactly Entity, so the table is row-level-security-ready — an administrator can govern it with Row Access so self-serve users only see the entities they’re entitled to.

Caution

This is governed under admin control, not automatic. Because the extract runs under the connection’s service account, PlaidCloud will not let the step declare its own security — an administrator (Architect) has to set it up.

An administrator follows the standard Row Access workflow:

1. Publish the landed table for reporting.

2. Declare the Entity column as a governing attribute (default deny).

3. Approve the first governed write.

4. Reconcile so grants take effect.

Until an administrator does this, the table is not filtered. See Managing Security Groups and Assignments.

Schedule a Recurring Load

To promote an ad-hoc slice into a nightly refresh, enable Bound target on the step:

1. In the step’s Bound Target group, check Bound target (scheduled recurring load).

2. Optionally set Key Columns — the comma-separated columns that form the merge key (for example Entity, Account). Leave it empty to use the POV dimension columns present in the landed grid as the merge key.

3. Place the step in a scheduled workflow.

With Bound target on, the target becomes a persistent table: each run merges into it with a keyset upsert instead of overwriting, and the schema grows additively when a later grid brings new columns (a new column raises a warning, never a failure). So a scheduled run accumulates rather than wiping — a recurring load, not a destructive reload.

Related

• HFM/FCCS: Read Data (Ad-hoc) — step field reference.
• HFM / FCCS Connector — connection field reference.
• Managing Security Groups and Assignments — how Row Access governs the landed table.
• Create and Manage a Connection