What is the Upgrade Assistant Spreadsheet

Oracle Applications provides a Microsoft Excel format spreadsheet, which can aid you in planning and tracking upgrade tasks. Using the Upgrade Assistance spreadsheet you can easily display pre and post upgrade tasks by category (e.g., pre-upgrade Category 2), by product family (e.g., Financials Product Family) and for the release you are upgrading from (e.g., Release 10.7). You can then record the time taken for each task performed, who performed the task and any supplementary notes. The spreadsheet is generated directly from the Upgrading Oracle Applications manual and is available on the Documentation CD included with the media pack.

The Upgrade Assistant Spreadsheet aggregates time for each category and displays the cumulative time. This number indicates total effort time not the wall clock time to execute as most steps within a category can be run in parallel. If a particular category is taking too long, then try to enlist more human resources so that more steps can be run concurrently. Look for individual steps that take a long time (rate determining steps) and focus resources on ways to reduce the time. As of Release 11i.6, there are two enhancements related to identifying steps that do not need to be performed. The Upgrade Management Script (TUMS) will report for your specific configuration and set of licensed products those steps, which you do not need to do. In this manner about 30% of the steps can be eliminated. In addition, to aid in planning the Upgrade Assistant Spreadsheet will include the ability for you to flag those steps identified as not needing to be run.