Over the past week, I've had many conversations with customers who've approached me with concerns about the future of nVision. Because I used to be responsible for nVision, and have strong relationships with the people responsible for GL, Reporting and Analytics, and XML Publsher, I wanted to take the time to discuss what is, and isn't going to happen.

Is nVision going away?
The answer is a definitive "NO". The financial reporting functionality available to you with nVision is not going away in Fusion. I recognize that many customers are receiving conflicting messages from Oracle with respect ot the future of nVision, so I wanted to make it succinct and clear up front. Read on to understand what's going and not going to happen (and why the messaging from Oracle has been confusing on this).

nVision in your current PeopleSoft releases
First of all, Oracle is going to continue to release and support nVision in your PeopleTools-based applications as it currently exists. As new maintenance releases come out, nVision will continue to be shipped, supported, and maintained.

Yeah, but isn't XML Publisher coming out in these Tools 8.48?
Although XML publisher will be added to PeopleTools 8.48, it is not intended to be a replacement for nVision (or other PeopleSoft delivered reporting tools , such as Crystal or SQR for that matter). The goal is to put some of the Fusion middleware in PeopleSoft customer hands prior to releasing applications on Fusion, and to solve some of the production reporting issues that are hard to solve with Crystal and SQR (such as automatically adjusting reports to chartfield configuration changes).

Although the application development teams will be delivering some reports in XML publisher in the (applications) release 9 timeframe, they will continue to deliver and support the versions of those reports that you currently receive in Crystal or SQR. There are no plans to develop delivered nVision reports in XML publisher for release 9.

Okay, then what about Fusion?
Although it will probably have a different name and different technical underpinnings, Oracle is currently working on financial reporting capabilities in Fusion that they consider to be a descendent of nVision.

Fusion represents a major technology shift for all PeopleSoft products, and the development teams are designing and scoping the release from a feature-by-feature perspective instead of a product name by product name perspective. Will there be a tool named "nVision" in Fusion? probably not, just as you probaby won't see a scripting language called "PeopleCode". That doesn't mean that the features those products represent won't be present in Fusion.

I've talked with the GL development team about their design approach for building the next generation of Financial Reporting. The GL team is using nVision as the standard by which financial reporting in Fusion is measured, and they are in the process of conducting working sessions with PeopleSoft customers to ensure that they clearly understand customer requirements. These requirements will be used to collaborate with the Server Tech group to scope and design the features you need.

Although the low-level design details still have to be flushed out, you should expect Oracle to deliver a financial reporting tool in Fusion with the following capabilities:

• It utilizes Excel in much the same way that nVision does.
• It is integrated with the Fusion applications in much the same way that nVision is (i.e. it understands ledgers, trees, calendars, and Setid Indirection).
• It supports drilldown and automatic inclusion of supporting details (nPlosion) in much the same way that nVision does.
• It empowers business users to configure and run their own reports in much the same way they can in nVision.
• It runs on a server better than nVision does.
• It is easier to deploy in an organization than nVision is.

Labels: Fusion, nVision