A Quick Introduction to Oracle Integration

Integration is a fundamental part of your digital business development. It involves connecting on-
premises applications and cloud applications and services. Oracle Integration makes it easy to
connect your applications and automate end-to-end processes such as procure to pay, inquiry to
order, and hire to retire.

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With Oracle Integration, you can:

 Develop integrations to design, monitor, and manage connections between your applications

 Create process applications to automate and manage your business work flows

 Analyze results to gain insight into your business

 Build custom web and mobile applications

Critical business processes, such as those related to human capital management (HCM), customer
experience (CX), and enterprise resource planning (ERP), are frequently slow and inflexible. For
example, a multi-step process such as Lead to Opportunity to Quote to Order can involve four or
more applications and require human exception management at every step of the process. In this
scenario, the lack of integration between departments as well as the delays caused by human-based
problem resolution can result in lost revenue, frustrated customers, and high costs.

Oracle Integration changes all that. It empowers you to:

 Establish connectivity between the many applications and people that are part of the entire
business process life cycle.

 Assemble existing technologies into new business services to better align with the changing
pace of new business demands.
  Deliver new business innovations faster by rapidly connecting diverse applications and key
business roles.

 Gain 360-degree views across your entire business. Easily monitor and analyze every
application, integration, and workflow spanning the business process life cycle.

Connect to Everything

Integration solves the application silo problem. It brings together data and workflows between
disparate software applications for them to function as one.

Integrations deal with live operational data. Data can be processed either in real-time or in batch,
and between two or more applications, events, or application programming interfaces (APIs).

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Deployment Flexibility

With integrations, you can connect to anything without getting bogged down in technical
implementation details.

You can bring data and applications together across on-premise and cloud systems: cloud to cloud,
cloud to on-premises (ground), and on-premises to on-premises (ground to ground).

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Library of Prebuilt Adapters

When you develop an integration from scratch, your first task is to create a connection for each
application that you're going to connect to. The connection defines how you’ll connect to the
application. When you create a connection, your first step is to select an adapter.
An adapter provides the means for Oracle Integration to connect to different applications. If you
have traveled internationally, then you have probably used a power adapter that allowed your
electronic devices to connect safely with a power outlet of a different shape and voltage than what it
was originally built for. Well, Oracle Integration adapters do the same thing for software.

Oracle Integration includes dozens of prebuilt adapters that make it easy for your integrations to
connect to a range of Oracle and third-party applications, including applications that handle your
customer relationships, human resources, supply chain, resource planning, e-commerce, social
media, and databases. Also, the FTP, REST, and SOAP Adapters let you use standard file, web, and
messaging protocols. And all adapters let you connect to applications that are on premises or in the
cloud.

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After you choose an adapter, you provide the information that lets the adapter successfully find and
connect to a particular instance of an application. The information might include the application URL,
the security policy to use, and the credentials for signing in to the application.

Integration Accelerators and Recipes

You don't need to start an integration project from scratch. You can install ready-made integration
accelerators and recipes from the Home page. Accelerators are run-ready business integrations or
technical patterns you can configure and activate. Recipes are starter templates that give you a head
start.

When you install an accelerator or a recipe, you get a package of everything you need to easily
configure and activate your first integration. The installed package includes one or more integrations,
along with all the resources required to run the integration. The dependent resources include the
connections as well as any certificates, lookups, and libraries.
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Embedded File Server

Use File Server to store files or transfer real-time data among applications securely. File Server
provides an embedded Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) server within Oracle Integration, so you
can focus on building integrations without needing to host and maintain a separate SFTP server.

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With File Server, you can:

 Design integrations that process your files that reside in the embedded file server.
  Eliminate the cost and operational expenses associated with hosting and maintaining an
SFTP server by moving your SFTP server to the cloud. If you have an on-premises SFTP server,
then you can move your SFTP files into File Server in Oracle Integration and use the SFTP
adapter to connect.

 Give your vendors or partners access to Oracle Integration to upload and download files with
their SFTP client software. A common protocol for communication with partners is SFTP. File
Server enables partners to send information such as purchase orders, invoices, shipping
information, and so on through SFTP.

Example: Read, Transform, Write

For example, if you have applications that export bulk data to an SFTP server, Oracle Integration can
pick up the file, translate it into the required format, and send it to the target system. For instance, E-
Business Suite generates a zip file with external transactions and uploads it to File Server. An
integration can then read the file, transform it into the format required by the ERP system, and
trigger bulk import of the data.

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Business-to-Business Communications

B2B for Oracle Integration provides support for business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce. You can
communicate with trading partners, and send and receive data in integrations with B2B.
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B2B for Oracle Integration lets you:

 Securely exchange business documents, such as purchase orders or product specifications,

 Securely exchange outside the enterprise with your trading partners.

In B2B e-commerce, an enterprise extends its business processes to reach trading partners, for
example, suppliers, manufacturers, hospitals, and government agencies. B2B e-commerce represents
classic business processes, mature business documents, and industry-tempered messaging services.
It requires a unified business process platform, end-to-end instance tracking, visibility and auditing,
integrated process intelligence, process and service governance, and centralized security.

Automate and Optimize End-to-End Business Processes

Automate and optimize any process in your organization. For example, you can automate core
business processes such as loan origination if you're a bank, shipping and handling if you're a delivery
service, or opportunity to order if you're in retail.

Topics:

 Example 1: Travel Approval Process

 Example 2: Accounts Payable Process

Example 1: Travel Approval Process

Let's look at a sample process that employees use to request corporate travel.

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An employee completes a travel request form and submits it to the manager. The manager reviews
the travel request and takes the appropriate action. Does the manager approve the travel? The
automated process handles three cases:

 Yes. The manager approves the travel. The process automatically sends an email that
instructs the employee to book the travel.

 No. The manager doesn't approve the travel. The process automatically sends an email to
the employee and explains why the travel was denied.

 More Info Required. The manager needs more information before making a decision. The
travel request is returned to the employee, who must provide details about the travel and
then resubmit the request. The manager reviews the travel request again and then takes the
appropriate action.

Example 2: Accounts Payable Process

Let's look at a second use case that automates the process used by the Accounts Payable department
to handle incoming invoices. The goals are to eliminate lost invoices and reduce the chance for
human errors.

Before Automation

Accounts Payable has to deal with a large volume of paper invoices, which can be confusing and time
consuming.

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When an invoice is received, the accounts payable clerk has to figure out which action to take
depending on the type of invoice (purchase order or not).
The accounts payable clerk then has to send emails to the appropriate colleagues for approvals,
handle account coding, validate that all required information has been completed, and at the end,
manually enter the data into Oracle E-Business Suite.

After Automation

With Oracle Integration, you can streamline and automate the accounts payable process, eliminating
lost invoices, reducing the time to process an invoice, and reducing the chance for human error.
Through Integration Insight in Oracle Integration, management also gains visibility into the state of
Accounts Payable.

Here's the streamlined process in Oracle Integration:

1. Scan the invoices or capture PDFs from emails to extract data using Optical Character
Recognition (OCR) with Oracle WebCenter Forms Recognition. The extracted data is stored
in Oracle Content Management along with the original PDF invoices.

2. From Oracle Content Management, the accounts payable clerk triggers the invoice approval
workflow in Oracle Integration.

3. The defined approval process validates the invoice, segregates on invoice type (PO or Non-
PO), and processes the invoice according to its type. A purchase order invoice is pre-
approved whereas a non-purchase order invoice requires approvals.

The workflow in Process in Oracle Integration has a main process and two subprocesses. One
subprocess handles an invoice that's a purchase order; the other handles an invoice that's not a
purchase order. Also, notice that there are defined milestones in the processes. These milestones are
for analysis with Integration Insight.

Main Process for Accounts Payable Automation

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Purchase Order Subprocess

Non-Purchase Order Subprocess

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Get Real-time Visibility with Integration Insight

When the Accounts Payable Director wants to know the state of the department, Integration Insight
provides visibility into invoices that have passed milestones, how many invoices were rejected, how
many invoices were in error, and what's the average time to process each invoice. The Director can
now know the current state of the department and take action accordingly.
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Robotic Process Automation

Robotic process automation (RPA) extends integration and automation to application user interfaces,
bridging some of the gaps in connecting applications as well as in automating human actions. People,
robots, and systems are connected end-to-end. Less manual intervention saves time, reduces errors,
and frees up humans to perform more value-added jobs.

Oracle Integration combines with RPA for:

 Legacy systems that only offer connectivity through the user interface, whether it's a
terminal, character-based interface, web application, or Windows application.

 Systems that don't have an API or for which there are no Oracle Integration adapters.

 On-premises and SaaS applications that have been heavily customized in the user interface
but have not replicated that extension at the API level.

 Rapid automation and integration prototyping. Some organizations want to prototype

Example: Opportunity to Order with Robotic Data Entry

Let's suppose you want to streamline an opportunity-to-order process. For any activity within the
process that doesn't require decision-making, such as data entry, give the work to a robot. Not only is
the robot able to do the work automatically, but you don't need to train your sales employees to sign
in to a legacy system and transact against an old system.

So, how do you handle this case with RPA? In Oracle Integration, create a process that evaluates an
order with a discount. The process automatically routes the approvals to the correct people. The
sales manager needs to determine whether the order can be approved with the requested discount.
It's almost the end of the quarter, so the VP also needs to approve the discount. After all approvals
are in place, the process triggers a robot using RPA to enter the transaction in the backend order
management system.
Integration Insight provides real-time business visibility and analytics by allowing business
milestones and metrics to be defined, aggregated, and visualized.

By defining an Integration Insight model, you can map milestones to key points in a business process
implementation in integration flows or process applications (or both) in Oracle Integration, and
extract metrics to allow business executives to view and analyze business processes in real time using
dashboards.

With real-time data throughout the business process lifecycle, you get a view of the business that
allows you to react quickly to an issue. You have real-time visibility into digital processes for business
owners to innovate smarter, and to highlight stalled transactions and errors.

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Build Web and Mobile Apps in Minutes

With Visual Builder, you can extend your applications to meet your unique needs and build great
web and mobile applications yourself. There's no coding, no setup, and no IT resources required.
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Visual Builder provides all the necessary tools for you to build, publish, and host modern web and
mobile applications:

 Configure and customize Oracle Cloud applications using the same development
environment that Oracle Cloud applications are built on.

 Use cloud-based visual tools to rapidly create and host web and mobile applications with
minimal coding required.

 Use the what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) page designer to drag and drop UI

 Create custom reusable business objects that store data, implement business logic,
and connect to processes.

 Publish your application with the push of a button and make it available to users.

 Easily connect REST APIs to integrate data from other applications into yours. For more
complex needs, developers can extend the functionality of the application using standard
JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

Visual Builder also provides the infrastructure for securing access to your application, data, and the
Oracle Cloud services that your application consumes.

Steps to Build a Mobile App

It's as easy as 1, 2, 3, ...4.

Step Description

1 Connect your data sources

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2 Create your dashboard page

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3 Display backend data

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4 Go live

And just like that, you're done. Your first mobile app built specifically to meet
your needs. You can use the app on both Android and Apple iOS devices. You
can share just within your company or via Google Play and Apple App Stores
if needed.
Step Description

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