Configuring Descriptive flexfields in Oracle fusion cloud HCM

 Hello Curious Minds!

In today's post let's discuss about what are flexfields in cloud applications and how can we configure descriptive flexflieds.

It is defined as additional available fields associated with business objects and placed on the application pages to contain additional data. simply to say they help in capturing additional data on the same database tables.

for example, say we can have a job type to capture the type of job while defining job or have a travel required or not for given job. Some might want to capture Blood group type while hiring an employee, have a rating set up while terminating an employee.

let's see few examples here.

we will have a descriptive flexfiled to capture blood group type of an employee as an example.

First thing to analyze is where we want to capture these details - We can have it while hiring an employee and also to update to the existing employees

Next thing to decide is in which section - we can have this under personal details -legislative details section.

Now as we know where and which place we need to capture the blood group type, let's start the configuration

Always make sure to do the changes in a sand box choosing appropriate tools to achieve the goal.

First we will create a lookup to store different types of blood groups. for this navigate to Setup and maintenance--> Workforce Deployment--> Application Extensions--> Manage Application core standard Lookups

On the search results click create 

Add a look type name, meaning and description and choose the module as 'Application Common' and click save

Now you can add the lookup codes and save and close

As we know the personal information comes under workforce Information, we need to navigate to Setup and Maintenance--> Workforce deployment--> workforce Information --> manage person descriptive flexfiled.

Note: Similar to above for each type of transaction page say termination, job, position, we will have Manage descriptive flexfield.

As we had decided to add the blood group filed in legislative info section, we will choose the same under person descriptive flexfiled. You can see that for different sections under personal information we have different links to choose from

we will click on edit

We will add our flexfiled under Global segments so that it will be available in all the placeses

Provide the name of your choice 

under validation section click on create value set

We give the description and choose the accurate module; here we choose Personal Information as that is where we want our blood group type to be visible.

Under Definition we give the criteria similar to SQL. These are the details from the first configuration which we did i.e. standard lookups.

In the from clause, we set the table Name 'FND_LOOKUPS'

Under value column type we can set the column name from which we want the values to be displayed. here we choose 'meaning'. set the ID column name to 'LOOKUP_CODE' and in the where clause we can set the lookup type 'FND_LOOKUPS.LOOKUP_TYPE='SD_BLOOD_TYPE' and click save and close

You can set the default values if required and then set the display features

click save and close and again save and close

click on deploy flexfield  to deploy the changes and here you can see if there are any errors

Now the changes are done. let's start a new session to verify our flexfields.

First lest check if its available for existing employees.

Navigate to my clients groups--> Person Management

Choose any existing person

and click on the orange 3 dots next to person name. choose person. Go to Person Information tab

Under legislative info section click on edit and correct

click on view more details

Here is your new field with all the values

Let us verify for new hire

Go to my client groups--> new person--> hire an employee

In personal Information page, under Legislative Information we can click on additional information

we got our flexfiled popped up with the default value that we had set and all the other values in dropdown list

I hope this demo was useful. if you have any question or need any help then do comment below.

Thank you