Are your Oracle Cloud workflows a source of efficiency or frustration? Many businesses leverage the power of Oracle Cloud, but managing critical processes like document delivery, email communication, and work order management can be complex. Manual processes, missed deadlines, and a lack of visibility can hinder productivity and impact your bottom line.

That’s why we’re thrilled to announce our three-part webinar series: Streamlining Your Oracle Cloud Workflows. This series will equip you with the knowledge and strategies to optimize your Oracle Cloud environment and drive actual business results. Join us as we explore best practices, real-world examples, and actionable insights to transform your workflows.

What You’ll Learn

This series will delve into three critical areas of Oracle Cloud workflow management:

• Optimizing Document Delivery: Learn how to automate and streamline your document delivery processes, ensuring timely and accurate delivery of invoices, statements, and other critical business documents.
• Mastering Email Analytics: Uncover the secrets to email excellence within Oracle Cloud. Gain insights into email deliverability, open rates, and other key metrics to ensure your communications reach their intended recipients and drive engagement.
• Streamlining Work Order Creation: Discover how to simplify and accelerate work order creation, empowering your maintenance teams to focus on proactive maintenance and improve overall efficiency.

Webinar Schedule

Webinar 1: Optimizing Document Delivery from Oracle Cloud

📅 Date: Thursday, March 27th
⏰ Time: 1:00 pm EDT

Managing document delivery from Oracle Cloud can be challenging. Manual data entry, missed deadlines, and unreliable deliveries can impact efficiency and customer satisfaction. This session shares how Equinix, a leading Oracle Cloud user, optimized their document delivery workflows. Discover how they streamlined attachment and extraction, automated email and fax delivery, and gained valuable insights through advanced reporting. Learn how to address document delivery challenges in Oracle Cloud and maximize the value of your business data.

Key Takeaways:

• Understand the challenges of document delivery in the Oracle Cloud environment.
• Learn how to optimize document delivery with automated workflows and streamlined processes.
• Develop strategies for improving document delivery performance and reporting.

Webinar 2: Unlocking Email Analytics for Oracle Cloud: Mastering Email Excellence

📅 Date: Monday, April 14th
⏰ Time: 1:00 pm EDT
🗣️ Hosted By OATUG Analytics & BI SIG

Unleash the true power of Oracle Cloud as a business tool! While emailing critical business documents from Oracle can be a game-changer, undelivered or missing emails can wreak havoc on your company’s success. Imagine an undetected invoice impacting your cash flow. In this session, we dive into the dynamic world of Email Analytics for Oracle Cloud, demystifying the complexities and arming you with strategies to optimize delivery. Discover how detailed insights can transform your approach, ensuring every email counts.

Key Takeaways:

• Decode the Oracle email delivery challenge, where ‘Success’ doesn’t always mean ‘Sent/Received,’ and gain the upper hand in email.
• Unlock secrets to elevate email reliability and efficiency, steering clear of the dreaded recipient’s junk box and ensuring your messages shine through.
• Unveil the impact of advanced delivery reporting and analytics on your company’s bottom line.

Webinar 3: Streamlining Work Order Creation in Oracle Cloud

📅 Date: Thursday, May 15th
⏰ Time: 1:00 pm EDT

For maintenance planners, creating comprehensive work order packets can be a complex and time-consuming process. Disconnected systems, missing critical attachments, and manual data entry can lead to inefficiencies and delays. This session shares the stories of one of the fastest-growing mining companies in the Middle East and an Indo-Pacific member of the Red Cross Society), who streamlined their work order creation and distribution processes. Discover how they improved efficiency and empowered planners to focus on proactive maintenance activities. Learn how they achieved rapid work order generation, improved wrench time, and enhanced safety compliance.

Key Takeaways:

• Understand the challenges of manually generating, assembling, and distributing a work order.
• Learn how to improve efficiency in work order processing.
• Acquire the skills to automate work order processes and enhance overall maintenance performance.

Why Attend?

By attending this webinar series, you will:

• Gain practical insights: Learn from real-world examples and case studies.
• Improve efficiency: Discover strategies to automate and streamline your Oracle Cloud workflows.
• Enhance visibility: Gain greater control and visibility over your critical business processes.
• Drive business results: Optimize your Oracle Cloud environment to improve productivity, reduce costs, and enhance customer satisfaction.

Who Should Attend?

This webinar series is ideal for:

• Oracle Cloud users
• IT professionals
• Business analysts
• Maintenance planners
• Operations managers
• Anyone looking to optimize their Oracle Cloud workflows

Don’t miss this opportunity to transform your Oracle Cloud experience! Register for the Streamlining Your Oracle Cloud Workflows webinar series today!

Maintenance planners and safety administrators know the importance of maintaining comprehensive documentation of maintenance activities. Accurate records are crucial for regulatory compliance, internal audits, and legal purposes. However, keeping track of all the paperwork, notes, and images generated during maintenance activities can be a time-consuming and overwhelming task, especially when technicians are involved.

That’s where AventX comes in. Our software solution offers a range of features designed to make your job easier, including archiving the final work packet with technicians’ notes. This is a great feature for organizations with technicians who write or markup notes and information on the distributed paper work packet and needs to add them to Oracle eAM before completion.

Then, once all the individual technician notes, pictures, and any new material are attached to an open work order, the work order is marked complete, and AventX automatically gathers all the new and existing attachments and creates a final archived work packet. This includes the Oracle eAM Work Order Report, attachments gathered from HEADER, OPERATIONS, ASSETS, and other configurable entity/category combinations in Oracle eAM, and the completed check sheets, checklists, and other documents that need to be included in the work packet for audits, procedural, and operational needs.

How Archiving Completed Work Orders Supports Compliance

Using AventX and an event trigger to archive a work packet not only saves time and reduces errors but also ensures compliance with regulatory requirements, internal audits, and legal purposes. Compliance and safety processes prefer a single, final record of everything, and AventX provides just that. By automatically archiving everything when the work order is marked as Complete, AventX creates a very easy-to-view method for auditors and safety compliance processes to see everything in one place.

AventX can also be used to create and archive the initial work order packet that gets delivered to the technician. Learn more here »

Archiving the final work packet with technicians’ notes is a game-changer for organizations that want to streamline their maintenance processes and maintain accurate records effortlessly. With AventX, you can simplify your compliance efforts and maintain a complete and accurate record of maintenance activities—the initial and completed work packets.

Printing work order packets with all your critical attachments from Oracle eAM can be a time-consuming endeavor that requires lots of clicks and trips to the printer just to create a comprehensive, usable work packet.

Users of AventX already know that the solution can be an invaluable way to quickly get necessary work order information and attachments from Oracle eAM into the hands of technicians so they can complete their assigned maintenance activities.

With a focus on Oracle and AventX, let’s take a quick look at three (3) ways you can print works orders and critical attachments directly from Oracle eAM.

1. Standard Oracle eAM Functionality

STR Software has covered this topic extensively in the past. Even going so far as to write an entire white paper about the challenges.

The long and short of it is that while Oracle is an excellent tool for visualizing all your assets and attachments, it’s not designed for quickly creating a work packet that your technicians can use.

As an attachment organization tool, you can use Oracle’s native short-text and long-text formats. You can also attach files to the database or link files to external resources—these are known as File Attachments and URL Attachments, respectively.

These four (4) attachment types—Short Text, Long Text, File & URL—can also be stored in multiple places (or Entities) in Oracle, including the Asset, Operation, or even the work order itself.

While Oracle allows you to “visualize” or see all these attachments, the pitfall is that Oracle doesn’t make it easy to print them. To create a comprehensive work packet from Oracle using native functionality, you must open the attachments one-by-one, in their native file editor (think Word, Excel, Acrobat, etc.), and print them.

Then, once you have printed them all, you still need to collect them from the printer and collate them into a packet that supports your technicians’ objectives.

The long and short of it is that it’s a real PITA to create a comprehensive, usable work order packet using standard Oracle eAM functionality.

2. Attachment Category Selection + Distribute Work Packets Button (AventX)

The introduction of AventX to your process offers an improved method for printing work order packets. When planners, schedulers, and supervisors need to distribute work order packets, they can search for the work orders required, select the appropriate attachment categories and entities, select the best available printer, then click the ‘Distribute Selected Work Packet(s)’ button.

When selecting categories, AventX will gather the attachments associated with that category—regardless of the file format or location—and print the file using a common paper size (e.g., A4, Letter, etc.) to your selected printer.

AventX also offers multiple additional “Categories” planners can select, such as Maintenance Job Attachments. As well as provides a printer selection drop-down to pick the most convenient or best printer for the job.

This printing method makes it easy for planners and schedulers to quickly print single or batch work orders while ensuring that technicians have the required information to complete their work quickly and safely.

3. Individual Attachment Selection

The final method for printing work orders is the newest feature of the AventX software.

Using this method, planners and schedulers can query for their desired work orders and select the ‘»» AventX ««‘ button to launch a new AventX user interface. (Side note, the button name is customizable to meet your requirements.)

This  AventX UI gives users more flexibility in selecting the attachments they want to distribute in the final work packet. For example, users can choose attachments associated with work orders using Categories and Operations. Furthermore, the UI enables users to select all or individual attachments within a work order or operation.

This method allows for more granular control over the final work packet, reducing the content that technicians receive in the work packet to only mission-critical attachments.

In conclusion, these are three (3) ways to print work order attachments from Oracle eAM when AventX is utilized. Both AventX options provide unique advantages to streamline your workflow.

The ‘Distribute Selected Work Packet(s)’ button is the original AventX method that prints all the attachments associated with the work order using selectable categories from the Oracle eAM user interface.

The individual attachment selection feature is the newest addition to AventX software that gives planners and schedulers more flexibility in selecting attachments.

With either AventX option, planners have control not only of the included attachments but of the print destination, including:

• Basic Options
  • Default Windows Printer – Allows the user to print to the default printer mapped to the user’s workstation.
  • Print To – Allows the user to select any Windows printer mapped to their workstation.
  • Preview – Allows a user to preview the output as a PDF before taking secondary actions.
• Advanced Options
  • AventX Mobile for eAM – Allows technicians to view and interact with the work order on a mobile device, mimicking the look of your existing work order.
  • Archive – Allows the maintenance team to archive a copy to an external location and the work order header for compliance and auditing
  • Email – A user can quickly email the file to a third-party recipient, such as a contractor.

By utilizing these AventX print options, maintenance planners and technicians can improve their work order creation and distribution workflow, making their job quicker and easier. Importantly, they ensure technicians get the correct information at the right time and place.

How does Climbing the Pyramid Help Teams Generate and Print Work Orders?

Well, the short answer is that it likely won’t.

The long answer is…The utility of modern asset maintenance applications grows as your organization moves up the pyramid. Without these forward-thinking tools, companies will be forever stuck in Reactive and Preventative maintenance.

This is shown to be true in the latest (2022) Plant Engineering and Advanced Technology Solutions survey.

The survey reported that the average maintenance facility employs three (3) maintenance strategies for its assets.

Of the assets being managed, 38% are reported to be managed by Preventative Maintenance. An additional 35% are managed by Run-To-Failure or Reactive Maintenance strategies.

In total, 73% of Assets are still managed through the bottom of the Pyramid strategies.

This means only 27% of assets are managed through the strategies in the top half of the pyramid—24% through Condition-based or Predictive techniques and only about 3% with “Other” methods, which for all intents and purposes, we will assume are more advanced or Prescriptive strategies.

The fact of the matter is that regardless of an asset’s maintenance strategy, your EAM package isn’t likely to solve the most significant challenges your maintenance teams face in moving your assets up the pyramid…

Maintenance Challenges: People, Process, and Technology

The Plant Engineering and Advanced Technology Solutions survey breaks down the challenges faced by maintenance teams into three primary (3) categories—People, Process, and Technology.

Based on the survey results, we understand the relative struggle these factors represent in running an efficient maintenance operation.

PEOPLE – Fifty-seven percent (57%) of respondents ranked People (Hiring, Training, Culture) as the most troublesome issue they face in 2022.

EAM platforms can reduce training time by providing easier, cleaner tools, but they can’t resolve hiring or culture deficiencies. Nor will they likely ever try.

PROCESS – Fifty-one (51%) of respondents found Process (planning/scheduling, reporting, improvement) a moderate challenge for their organizations.

Many EAM applications help with scheduling corrective and preventive maintenance, managing inventory, coordinating shutdowns, and ensuring accurate data. Unfortunately, however, they can’t solve all the manual processes that plague maintenance teams—and maintenance planners.

TECHNOLOGY – Technology (buy-in, implementation, analytics), was overwhelmingly ranked as the least problematic by 52% of respondents.

A well-designed, cost-effective EAM platform should solve all technology-related issues. Hence, improving adoption and buy-in; unfortunately, as many maintenance teams know, it’s rarely as easy as one would hope.

In brief, while modern EAM applications can aid in improving the struggles of maintenance teams, they certainly cannot solve them.

These challenges intersect with maintenance strategies in several places, but Process (or process improvement) is effectively where all these challenges converge.

Maintenance teams are striving to move their assets to more advanced maintenance strategies; however, manual processes are keeping teams from focusing on the “bigger picture.”

In fact, a recent article titled, A seven-step journey to prescriptive maintenance, from Plant Engineering, even lists streamlining routine as the #2 Step in moving to Prescriptive Maintenance.

Process, Planners, and Paper: Where Modern EAM Applications Aren’t Helping Your Team

One routine that is consuming maintenance planners’ time is Work Order Packet creation and distribution (printing).

It’s no secret that Maintenance Technicians rely on Work Orders to complete their assigned tasks. And, for various reasons, most maintenance teams rely on printed (i.e., good old-fashioned paper) work orders.

For better or worse, most modern EAM applications are primarily designed to be purely digital. They focus on things like IIoT, automation, scheduling, and even tracking/completing maintenance work from a phone or tablet.

As a result, they aren’t overly concerned with the basic concept of a printed work order. Unfortunately, when it comes to Oracle, Fusion Cloud Maintenance is no exception.

So, when it comes to Work Order creation, Maintenance Planners spend excessive time printing, collating, and stapling (and everything else in between) to create and distribute usable work order packets for their technicians.

Just like Oracle eAM, Oracle Cloud Maintenance’s on-prem predecessor—this work order creation challenge persists.

This process sees planners spending hours and even days each week just creating packets and getting them into the hands that need them.

Challenges of Creating Work Order Packets from Oracle Fusion Cloud Maintenance

Organizations leaping into Oracle Fusion Cloud Maintenance have realized, or will shortly after initial testing, that the application leaves users—primarily planners—lacking functionality when creating work order packets.

Challenge #1: Connecting Oracle Cloud to On-prem Printers

The #1 most significant challenge is integrating a cloud solution with on-prem printers. More specifically, configuring IPP Printing.

IPP printing is risky, overly complex, and time-consuming to set up and maintain.

Inbound network connections must be opened and firewall wall rules established to allow printers to accept jobs from Oracle Cloud. Printers and/or print servers must be configured with SSL certificates that require ongoing management. This can be a substantial security issue, and multiple team members are also required to manage and maintain the integration.

Every time there’s a printer addition or configuration change, Windows admins and network security teams are linked up to complete the work.

Moreover, with IPP Printing, no printer status feedback is provided to the end user or administrator when printing the work order report.

For these reasons, many Oracle Cloud Maintenance clients we see have opted to forego direct printer integration when moving to a SaaS architecture.

However, without direct printer integration, Report Output gets shoved under the Processes View, and users need to hunt down the PDF output just to manually print the files (but more on this in Challenge #2).

Challenge #2: Each Printing Option Presents Unique Challenges

Oracle provides three (3) primary options for printing Work Order Packets. These include printing from Manage Work Orders, the “Print Work Order Wizard” (Print Work Order Details), and Processes (both Ad Hoc and Scheduled). Each option presents unique challenges for users to consider and work through.

#1 Printing from Manage Work Orders = One. Work Order. At. A. Time.

1.  The ONLY destination option is to generate a PDF. So, while it is quick to print an individual Work Order, you cannot print directly to a printer. Fortunately, this option is a direct download that enables users to access the results quickly.
2. Multiple Work Orders cannot be printed at the same time.
3. If Attachments are stored in the Work Order, only PDF Attachments will be included.

#2. Print Work Order Wizard – Parameters offer Control, but No Printer Submission

This method uses the Print Work Order Details found in the Infolet.

1. This option gives users more direct control of what’s created, offering parameters users can select or fill in to refine their print criteria. (See image below)
2. But, the parameter options are limited and don’t include critical, oft-used criteria such as Crew, Work Area, Asset Location, or other variables that may be important to your business.
3. If multiple work orders are desired, they must be in sequential order. Given the lack of parameters, this could mean tens to thousands of WOs might be included in a Process Details Job. (Note: Thousands may sound like a complete fabrication, but one of our customers expressed this precise issue on multiple occasions, which happened more than once.)
4. When including Attachments, the output will attach ONLY PDF files uploaded to the Work Order Header and Operation.
5. Even if IPP Printing is configured, this option does NOT enable users to submit to a printer directly.

#3. Processes (Ad Hoc and Scheduled) – Parameters offer Control, but No Attachments

1. Like the Print Work Order Details option, Processes offer end users more control over parameters. But the parameters are the same (again, Limited).
2. Unlike Work Order Details, however, Processes DO allow users to submit directly to a printer.
3. However, Processes DO NOT include any Attachments—PDF or otherwise.
   1. As a result, you’ll only get the basic Oracle Work Order report output for the range of WOs in the ESS Job. So, users will need to fill in the attachment gaps by manually printing attachments and collating them.

Challenge #3: Printing with Attachments is Nearly Impossible

We’ve briefly identified some of the issues above regarding attachments. Here’s a continuation of those challenges.

1. TEXT Attachments will NOT be included in the output.
2. URL Attachments will be SKIPPED because Oracle does not provide an authentication method to pull URL attachments.
3. In other words, only File Attachments will be included in the output. However…
4. …the attachment will be included only if the file is a PDF File.
   1. Other File Types (like Word, Excel, images, etc.) will be SKIPPED.

Importantly, when File and URL Attachments are SKIPPED, users are provided no alert or notification of such an Error. This can create holes in the work order, ultimately leading to Safety, Compliance, and other challenges for Technicians and the Business.

This lack of automatically printed attachments can leave schedulers and planners stranded, hunting (in Oracle, Networked Folders, SharePoint, etc.), opening, and printing many individual files. Then, expend additional time collecting, collating, and preparing a complete packet to provide a technician.

Summary of the Challenges Printing Work Order Packets from Oracle Cloud Maintenance

If you want to automatically print Work Orders with accompanying attachments from Oracle Cloud Maintenance…

1. To select printers in Oracle Cloud, you’ll need to work with multiple teams to configure IPP printing.
2. Your best bet (using native functionality) is to use Print Work Order Details, which provides users some control over what Work Orders are included in the output (including the ability to include Attachments).
3. Even when Attachments are included, only PDF File Attachments will print, leaving users hunting down and printing the additional attachments.

STR Software released several new versions of AventX in Q3 and Q4 of 2022. Check out the v22.3 and v22.4 highlights below. Contact your Client Services Manager for a complete list of changes for each product or to discuss an upgrade.

Document Delivery Improvements

Create Picklists to Deliver Documents with Ease

AventX for Oracle EBS now offers a framework to create custom address picklists for AventX Interactive Delivery. Custom picklists can be added to make it easier for users to quickly deliver an individual document using the AventX “Magic Button.”

Availability:AventX for Oracle EBS

Force Delivery Device by Recipient Domain

AventX for Oracle EBS now includes logic to split and route submissions with multiple email addresses to different delivery devices (standard email, Email Tracker, DocuSign, etc.) based on the domain.

This feature can be helpful for various reasons, including for users who want to force emails designated to a specific customer (e.g., @domain.com) using the DocuSign device.

Another example would be customers utilizing AventX Email Tracker with copies to an internal email address. Instead of sending all emails through Tracking, internal email recipients can now be forced to a standard email delivery device.

Availability: AventX for Oracle EBS

Document Management Improvements

Three New Actions to Enhance Document Management

• Migrate Files Added in SharePoint Online to Oracle EBS — Files added directly to SharePoint Online can now be automatically migrated to Oracle EBS as URL Attachments. For example, a File attached to a PO folder can be automatically inserted as a URL to a corresponding EBS Record.
• Automatically Create a New Folder in SharePoint Online — AventX A2A can now automatically create folders in SharePoint using data from Oracle EBS. For example, when a new Customer Invoice is created in Oracle EBS, AventX can create a SharePoint Document Library Folder with details using metadata (Fiscal Year, Supplier Name, Supplier ID, Supplier Site, Invoice Number, etc.) for easy user access.
• Convert and Combine Files to PDF — Files moving to or from Oracle EBS, SharePoint, and other locations can be automatically converted to PDF (and combined into a single file) during the process.

These Actions, as well as others, can be linked together in an Action Chain to automate complex and time-consuming manual processes.

For example, when a customer Invoice is created in Oracle, AventX can automatically create a corresponding SharePoint Library Folder. Users can then add multiple files to the new folder that AventX will pick up, combine them into a single PDF (saved to SharePoint), and then insert the single file back into the Oracle EBS Invoice Record as a URL Attachment.

Availability: AventX A2A

Work Order Creation & Printing Improvements

Support for File Extraction from PIMS

AventX now supports the ability to extract files (as URL Attachments) from PIMS, giving organizations another flexible location to store important attachments that need to be included with Work Orders. PIMS, from PIMS HQ, is a SaaS Project Information Management System repository for maintaining project files.

Availability: AventX for Oracle eAM

Attachment Selection UI Now Shows Short Text Attachment Name

When printing with the new “Print by Operation” functionality (first announced in Summer ’22), AventX now provides more detail to the user by displaying the Short Text Attachment Title instead of the generic Internal ID.

Availability: AventX for Oracle eAM

General Improvements

Improved Upgrade Path for 64-bit systems

AventX now has a native upgrade path to help customers migrate from older 32-bit systems to 64-bit AventX Core Linux builds. This enhancement speeds up the process and can help to eliminate downtime associated with upgrading AventX when migrating to newer operating systems.

Availability: AventX Core

Log File Cleanup Improvements

Improved the logic around maintenance and cleanup of certain log directories.

Availability: AventX Core

Since 2008, we have seen many different approaches to managing document attachments in Oracle eAM. Based on these experiences, we’ve documented some of the best techniques and Oracle features for effectively organizing and storing attachments to help build a better experience for planners, schedulers, and technicians.

This information helps organizations launch maintenance improvement projects, create standards, distribute better safety information, and build a process that helps to quickly distribute the best information possible to technicians.

Introduction

Our experience has shown that commonly used documents should be stored in the Oracle Document Catalog via the Web Page attachment type, linking to a web-based document library such as SharePoint on-prem or SharePoint Online, which is quickly becoming the new standard.

This technique combines native Oracle EBS functionality and a commonly used enterprise application (i.e., SharePoint). This approach allows users to quickly select standard documents, and at the same time allows administrators and managers to implement good document version control.

While potentially time consuming to set up (AventX can help!), this approach creates an environment that is very easy to maintain. It allows planners and schedulers the ability to attach important documents to any level of the work order in Oracle eAM—including at the asset, work order, operation levels, as well as other locations. This process ensures consistency, and makes maintaining attachments easier over the long haul, which is incredibly important for safety documentation.

The first step is to build a good document library in something like SharePoint.

Setting Up Your SharePoint Folder Hierarchy

The first step in setting up your SharePoint structure for attachments will likely involve the IT department. It is recommended that a document library be explicitly created for the Maintenance team, where the document library name is something like “Maintenance_Attachments” or “Attachments.”

Based on your organization’s makeup, this “Attachments” folder could be preceded by additional levels of hierarchy, such as Org ID and/or Maintenance Location. The following is an example of how the folder hierarchy can be created.

/ Attachments / Work_Orders / Assets / Asset Number or Asset Group / Activity or Operation / Document

The following screenshot provides a visual example.

This technique allows the most flexibility to administrators to update the document to the latest version without having to upload the document back into Oracle EBS.  

Naming the Files in the Document Library and Adding Document Metadata

It is good to have a strategy for naming the actual files in this directory. Here are a few approaches that seem to work well for many organizations.

1. Do not use spaces, use underscores. If a space is used, SharePoint adds a “%20” in the file name, which makes it difficult to link to as well as to migrate to other document libraries in the future if SharePoint isn’t part of the long-term attachment storage strategy.
2. Consider putting a “prefix” as the first part of the file name. For example, put a “INSP” for an inspection document or “SAFE” for a safety document.  This way the document stands out to the user.
3. Create a “column” in SharePoint called “Document Type” to profile the type of document to improve searching for the document in SharePoint.

Publishing Attachments to the Oracle Document Catalog

It is time to feed Oracle with a few documents now that they are in SharePoint. AventX should be installed at this point to test a small sample and get user feedback. Getting user feedback is essential before going crazy uploading all of the documents into SharePoint.  You do not want to publish to the catalog, load all of the URLs, then all of a sudden, you need to change the folder structure, which will break your links in Oracle.

1. Using Oracle Asset Documents with the Paperclip

Here is an example of uploading a URL attachment to a 15,000 Mile Maintenance Activity for the DTF35000 asset — Assets > Asset Numbers > Documents.

Find the asset and click on the paperclip icon.

2. Using Miscellaneous Document Category

Here is an example of using the same approach but using the Miscellaneous document category approach, a more generic way of storing attachments.

3. Using Maintenance Job Attachments

Another approach is to save the document against the Maintenance Job Attachments so they can be quickly selected when adding it to the work order.

Web Page Attachment Type

With all three options, Oracle eAM gives you the choice to save the document as a File or a Web Page attachment.  Select Web Page as the preferred method for creating a link to the file.

Copy and paste the URL to the SharePoint file. In SharePoint use the technique of right-clicking on the hyperlink, then selecting Copy Shortcut. 

What About Your Existing Attachments? The Challenge of Migration

The strategy outlined above is a powerful, forward-looking approach to creating a scalable and manageable document library. As you read through the steps, a critical question likely came to mind: “This is great for new attachments, but what about the years of critical data we already have stored directly in Oracle?”

For most organizations, the prospect of moving thousands—or even millions—of existing file attachments from the Oracle database to a new repository like SharePoint is a monumental roadblock. A manual migration project would involve:

1. Individually downloading each attachment from every Oracle record.
2. Uploading the file to the correct folder in the new SharePoint library.
3. Copying the new URL for that file.
4. Navigating back to the original Oracle record.
5. Deleting the old file attachment and creating a new “Web Page” type attachment with the correct URL.

This process is not only incredibly time-consuming and resource-intensive, but it’s also fraught with the risk of human error, leading to broken links and lost data. The sheer scale of this task prevents many organizations from ever adopting a more efficient attachment management strategy.

Automate Your Move with AventX A2A

This is precisely the challenge that AventX A2A (Attachment to Attachment) was designed to solve.

AventX A2A is an automated solution that manages the entire migration process for you. It intelligently extracts your existing file attachments (e.g., PDFs, images, text files) from the Oracle database, uploads them to your target repository like SharePoint Online, and seamlessly updates the links within Oracle EBS to the new URL—all without manual intervention.

By automating this migration, AventX A2A enables you to:

• Adopt Best Practices Immediately: Overcome the migration hurdle and implement a modern, efficient document management system now, not years from now.

• Drastically Reduce Labor Costs: Free your IT and maintenance teams from a tedious, low-value manual migration project, allowing them to focus on strategic initiatives.

• Eliminate Data Entry Errors: Ensure every attachment is migrated correctly, preserving the integrity and accessibility of your critical maintenance and safety documentation.

• Improve Oracle Performance: Offloading large binary files (BLOBs) from your database can lead to a leaner, faster, and more responsive Oracle environment.

Don’t let your legacy data hold you back from a better system. With AventX A2A, you can bridge the gap between your current state and your future goals, ensuring all your attachments—past, present, and future—are managed effectively.

Using the Attachments to Build a Work Packet

Once the attachments are organized in Oracle eAM, then users can pick from the document from the catalog to quickly add attachments to the work order or have them appear so they can be distributed with the work packet from the Print Work Order screen.

Distributing the Work Packet with AventX

When the work packet needs to be distributed to mobile, email, printer, archive, SharePoint, or other methods, AventX extends Oracle eAM by allowing the user to pick the attachment categories that need to be distributed with one or more work orders. 

The whitepaper titled “Improving Asset Maintenance, Safety, and Reliability for Oracle eAM” discusses more of the challenges with creating work packets that AventX aims to solve.

For those of you that are looking to reorganize or rethink how you are storing attachments and creating work order packets, feel free to connect with us any time! If you have other thoughts on how to organize your libraries, let us know using the form below.

Figuring out when an assigned work order is “done” can be a tricky problem for a maintenance organization.

Is it when the last bolt is tightened? When the last panel is polished? When the last form is signed? When the asset gets fired up again? Or when the maintenance planner closes the WO for good?

The answer is something each maintenance organization decides for themselves. For maintenance planners, however, simply printing a work order from JD Edwards Capital Asset Management (CAM) can introduce a similar question that has to be answered before work can even start!

Let’s briefly review how Work Order printing works in JD Edwards CAM. First, you log in and go to your preferred form for printing from JD Edwards. You select your Work Order(s), fill out any data needed to process it, and eventually end up on a screen that looks like this:

The status is “D” for done and all is green in the carousel. Your work order is waiting in the printer!

Unfortunately, you stroll over to the printer and find the tray empty. Your Work Order didn’t print. You check the print log, and nothing’s there.

Here’s the Dirty Little Secret: “Done” doesn’t mean “Printed”

To further clarify, let’s look at that printing screen one more time.

The printer we sent our work order to, \\corprts1\devprn1, looks legitimate. Your organization may have one or more printers with a similar name. Here at STR Software, however, that printer does not exist. And, even if your printers are real, you may have seen the same result—a missing print job—due to a simple typo when the printer was added, an IT administrator deciding that a printer name needed a refresh, or even a broken connection (for any number of reasons) to the printer.

Frustrating, Right?

How can that be? The job was done! It should have gone to the printer! That isn’t what “Done” means in JD Edwards.

“Done” means that JDE generated your work order and the resulting document is ready to be downloaded, printed, or viewed.

It does not mean that it made it to your printer. In a fast-moving maintenance organization, this means a misspelled printer name, broken wire, or unregistered printer can lead to confusion, frustration, and precious work-hours lost before actual maintenance work on assets can even begin.

For maintenance planners who are printing to the machine down the hall, this isn’t a big problem. Printing to multiple or remote printers presents a larger issue. For those working to solve it, AventX for JD Edwards might be the answer.

AventX can guarantee that “Done” means your printer has received your work orders. AventX can even pull important attachments, such as safety documents and special permits, from JD Edwards, and guarantee their delivery as part of your Work Order. When problems occur and your printer is unavailable, AventX will update your Submitted Jobs to let you know something went wrong.

The first step to getting work done is getting it started. Be sure to know when that step is actually “Done”!