With the first calendar quarter of 2026 in the books, Oracle is ready to resume the monthly update schedule for EPM applications. Since we haven’t had a normal update schedule for a few months, the EDM development team has a backlog of updates that will finally be automatically pushed this month. The descriptions of the features are on Oracle’s site and you can find that link at the bottom if you haven’t seen it already.
Spotlight Features:
In the EDM list of spotlight features from Oracle we see the following:
- A generative AI assistant is now available within Universal application registration to quickly create and configure properties for node types based on sample data files.
- Hierarchy viewpoints can now be optionally visualized in an organization chart format rather than the standard tree format used by default.
- Global connections can now be defined to Microsoft Azure Blob Storage in order to share data with external applications and processes from a centralized storage location in a Microsoft Azure cloud environment.
Gen AI Assistant:
This sounds like a very cool feature to help speed up the development process. My take is that EDM build phases can sometimes be a little tedious with all of the clicks needed to wire things up correctly, so this is a good first start to try and streamline that process. This is obviously a first iteration, so I’m excited for the future when you can just point EDM to an FCC or Planning application and have the AI assistant read the dimensionality and then you can choose which dimensions to set up in EDM. On top of that, just imagine you can say to an AI assistant, “I have this ERP system here’s a file with my segments. Here’s the URL for my EPM application. Build two EDM apps for the metadata management and create a mapping viewpoint to manage the data integration maps as well.”
Viewpoints in Tree format:
I have seen this functionality and I am used to seeing things in the default visualization so that makes more sense to my brain. I’ll have to play around with the tree view to see how useful it will be for me.
Azure Blob Storage connection:
Azure Blob Storage connection is a great addition. This especially makes sense as more and more organizations are seeing the benefit of using EDM for non-financial domains. At a prior employer, we were mastering employee roles that were fed into Azure Blob Storage which eventually fed HR systems. The ability to send an extract direct to Azure Blob Storage will streamline that process and make some of the automations created using EPM Automate and WinSCP unnecessary. It will streamline the integrations which is a win in my book.
Other Updates:
New Validations for FCC applications:
There are some new validations that will be added to FCC applications for the Account dimension. These will be enabled by default on new EDM FCC applications, but need to be manually enabled on existing applications. These will replace some custom validations that customers have created. It’s great to see that some of the features that customers have asked for in the Cloud Customer Connect Idea Lab coming into reality.
Address verification:
When importing addresses, customers with Oracle’s address verification service can ensure that good addresses are loaded into EDM from the beginning. Data cleanliness is very important when mastering Customer or Supplier dimensions, so this is a great addition to the product.
OAuth2 Authentication for Oracle cloud ERP and Financials connections
OAuth token based authentication is preferred for most IT shops since it doesn’t require maintaining a password. This is great news that token authentication is being implemented more and more across the Oracle stack.
Of course, these are just my opinions. If you have a different perspective, I’d love to hear it. Sharing knowledge is one of my core values and as the saying goes, a rising tide raises all boats.
References:
Oracle EPM April 2026 What’s New: https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/readiness/epm/2026/epm-apr26/26apr-epm-wn-f44078.htm