Planning 11.1.2.1 patch –Maintenance Mode utility

I just noticed a planning patch in Oracle support and thought I would share as I know the ability to change the maintenance mode in planning through a utility has been asked for so many times over the years on the planning forum, well it looks like Oracle have taken note of all the requests and finally come up with a utility to do this.

The patch details are - Release 11.1.2.1.101 Patch Set Exception (PSE): 13801144

Defect Number – 13798468

Details

A new utility is provided to set users’ log on level, which corresponds to Planning’s “Application Maintenance Mode” functionality by which administrators can grant and withdraw access to applications. 

If users are logged on to the application and administrators withdraw their access, users are forced off the system.

From the directory, enter this command at the Command Prompt, one space, and the parameters, each separated by a comma:

On Windows: MaintenanceMode.cmd
On UNIX: MaintenanceMode.sh

Options:
•    /A=app - Application name (required)
•    /U=user - Name of the administrator executing the utility (required)
•    /P=password - The administrator’s password (required)
•    /LL=loginLevel

[ALL_USERS|ADMINISTRATORS|OWNER] - Specify which users the utility affects (required):

o ALL_USERS - All users can log on or continue working with the application.

o ADMINISTRATORS - Only other administrators can log on. Other users are forced off and prevented from logging on until the parameter is reset to ALL_USERS.

o OWNER - Only the application owner can log on. All other users are prevented from logging on. If they are currently logged on, they are forced off the system until the option is reset to All_USERS or ADMINISTRATORS. Only the application owner can restrict other administrators from using the application.

•    /DEBUG=[true|false] - Specify whether to run the utility in debug mode. The default is false. (optional)
•    /HELP=Y - View the utility syntax online (optional)

For example, type:
MaintenanceMode.cmd /A=app1,/U=admin,/P=password,/LL=ADMINISTRATORS

I thought I would also install the patch and test it out so here are the steps to get up and running with it on windows.

The prerequisite to installing this patch is that you need to have patched planning to 11.1.2.1.101 – Patch 12666861

Please make sure you have carried out all your backup procedures before applying any patches.

If you have not yet applied patch 11.1.2.1.101 then download it from Oracle Support.

Also download the patch 13801144 which contains the new Maintenance Mode utility.

Stop all the EPM related services.

Extract the patches to /EPMSystem11R1/OPatch

OPatch is initiated from command line and the format for windows is

opatch.bat apply \EPMSystem11R1\Opatch\ -oh \EPMSystem11R1 -jre    \jdk160_21

Open a command prompt, change directory to the OPatch directory and run the above command (update to match the environment and

For example
E:
cd E:\Oracle\Middleware\EPMSystem11R1\OPatch
opatch.bat apply E:\Oracle\Middleware\EPMSystem11R1\OPatch\12666861 -oh E:\Oracle\Middleware\EPMSystem11R1 -jre E:\Oracle\Middleware\jdk160_21

Repeat for the utility patch e.g.

opatch.bat apply E:\Oracle\Middleware\EPMSystem11R1\OPatch\13801144 -oh E:\Oracle\Middleware\EPMSystem11R1 -jre E:\Oracle\Middleware\jdk160_21

To view which EPM patches have been applied on the server through OPatch you can use the following command.

opatch.bat lsinventory -oh   -jdk \jdk160_21

Next delete the temp directory on the planning server for the deployed planning web application - /user_projects/domains/EPMSystem/servers//tmp

e.g. E:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\domains\EPMSystem\servers\Planning0\tmp

This is so when the planning web application is started the ear file in the patch will be deployed and a new tmp directory created

The second patch will have deployed a file called MaintenanceMode.cmd.template to /EPMSystem11R1/products/Planning/bin   

Copy this file to /user_projects//Planning/planning1 and rename it to MaintenanceMode.cmd then edit the file

needs to be updated to the folder where the file has just been copied to.

Save and you are ready to go so start up the EPM services.

It is worth noting that the first patch that was applied updated a few CDFs so they will need to be refreshed by logging into each planning application and choosing
Administration > Application > Refresh Database > Update custom defined functions

Anyway let’s test the utility.

If you just run the Maintenance Mode utility without any parameters it will display the syntax required

The application is currently set just to be used by the Owner.

So let us change that to all users using the utility.

The change has been reflected in planning

How about changing it to Administrators while users are logged in.

Unfortunately nothing has changed there and it is not the nicest log out message but at least it does log the user out, if the user tries to log in the application again the standard application is in maintenance mode message is displayed.

I am sure this utility will be welcomed by many and it can easily be added into automated planning refresh scripts.