11.2 Enabling Redwood Capabilities and Their Impact on Existing Configurations

The published objective is Enable the Redwood capabilities and understand their implications on existing configurations. Exam questions focus less on screen layouts and more on how a feature is switched on and what it changes or disables in a working implementation.

How Redwood features are switched on

Oracle publishes, for each update, which features use Redwood and what the customer must do. The usual categories are:

Many Redwood pages are controlled by profile options set on Manage Administrator Profile Values. Site level switches them on for everyone. User level supports a pilot. Oracle also marks features that become mandatory in a later update (Auto Enabled In or No Longer Optional From), so check the readiness lists every quarter.

Redwood capabilities that touch this exam

Implications for existing configurations

1. Touchless Expenses

Touchless changes how Expenses works more than any other Redwood feature:

• Readiness check per business unit. The Corporate Options for Expense Report tab of Manage Expenses System Options reports whether a business unit is ready. If not, a downloadable report lists what to change.
• Irreversible. Once enabled for a business unit, it can't be disabled.
• Unsupported options must be disabled first: split allocations, manual application of cash advances, and advanced mileage options (eligibility rules and add-on rates). Bring existing reports that use them to a paid status first.
• Report-level features disappear: expense reports are created automatically, so report-level receipt attachment and report-level spend authorizations no longer apply.
• Delegation: the delegate and the delegator must both be Touchless users.
• Setup clean-up: consolidate granular expense types, for example Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner into Meals, so the agent maps receipts reliably.
• Overdue reminders follow Enable Corporate Card Transaction Age Limit, or 21 days by default.

2. Redwood Supplier Portal invoices and payments (26D)

• Enablement:
  • Enable the Redwood Supplier Portal home page (Procurement opt-in).
  • Set ORA_AP_INVOICES_PAYMENTS_SUPPLIER_PORTAL_REDWOOD_ENABLED to Yes at site level.
  • Enable the separate Payables Search profile and indexing.
  • New environments have the Payables Redwood and search profiles on by default.
• What carries over: Payables rules, validations, PO matching, approvals, tax, payment processing and supplier security. Your invoice configuration still applies.
• What changes:
  • Suppliers lose the classic View Invoices, View Payments, Create Invoice and Create Invoice without PO pages.
  • Saved searches aren't available and aren't carried forward.
  • Search returns a rolling 12 months of indexed data. Older invoices remain in Payables.
  • Don't enable it in this update where Web Application Firewall is enabled.
  • Test in non-production and prepare supplier communications first.

3. Supplier bank account validation

• Validation through J.P. Morgan's account validation service is a paid subscription. It needs a promotion code and the Bank Account Validation Service option in Manage Embedded Banking Configurations.
• It works only in the Redwood supplier registration and profile experience. Classic registration isn't supported.
• Results are Verified, Failed or Inconclusive. They are informational only: they don't stop payments, and only approvers see them.
• Only US bank accounts are validated, at any bank.
• Notification templates: the result appears on the Redwood approval notification, built with Oracle Analytics Publisher. If you had personalized the RTF template, download the latest template and redo your changes.

4. Agents for classic Expenses users

You don't have to adopt Touchless to start using AI. From 26C, classic Expenses users can email receipts to the Expenses Agent and answer its follow-up questions by email. To set it up:

1. Set Enable Electronic Receipts Processing to Yes.
2. Set Enable Expense Completion Using Email for Classic Expenses to Yes for the business unit.
3. Optionally pilot with EXM_AGENTIC_EMAIL_PROCESSING = Y at user level before switching it on at site level.

5. What doesn't change

• Doc IO replacing the IDR recognition engine is a technology upgrade only. Email endpoints, invoice submission, processing configuration and earlier adaptive training stay as they are (section 5.1).
• New pages sit on top of existing setup. For the Supplier Portal pages, Oracle states that Payables business rules, validations, PO matching, approvals, tax calculation, payment processing and supplier security are preserved.

An adoption checklist

1. Review the update's Redwood and AI feature list and its customer-action category.
2. Enable in non-production first, using user-level profiles for pilots.
3. Run any readiness reports, and disable unsupported options, such as for Touchless.
4. Re-apply personalizations and notification template changes on the new templates.
5. Communicate to employees and suppliers what disappears, such as saved searches or classic pages.
6. Track features scheduled to become mandatory.