Introduction

In a typical ERP Implementation for a large Multinational Firm it is a very common need to have multilingual reports. Say for example Employee Basic Details Report which holds information like an individual’s First Name, Last Name, Department, Employee Number etc and for the ease of use the need could be to have the flexibility to generate the same report in multiple languages like English, French, Spanish, Chinese.

These multilingual report generation till sometime back were considered to be a complex activity and required multiple RTF layout designs each specific for one language.

So there used to be multiple RTFs. But Oracle Fusion Applications gives the flexibility to have a single template which can get incorporated with multiple language translated files (xlf) which enables us to create reports in multiple languages from a single base one.

Fig 1. Illustrating Traditional Method of generating Multilingual Reports

Fig 2. Illustrating Current Method of Creating Multilingual Reports 

So by now we must have understood the concept. Let us now try this out with a worked example

Worked Example

So for this example we would need to create a BIP Data Model.

We will create a very simple SQL for this example and for this we would login to the application with appropriate login credentials.

Next, we would use the Navigator icon and click on the Report and Analytics link under 'Tools'. Next, click on the Category and try to create a Data Model

We will use the below simple query:

We have named the Data Set as EmpData and Data Source as ApplicationDB_HCM. Also we have used a bind variable which is the employee number.

We will go to the Data Tab and pass on a Person Number and check the data values :

Next, we will click on the ‘Save as Sample Data’ button so that we have some sample data (this is a prerequisite for creating BIP Report)

We would now press the ok button and save the Data Model.

Next we would create a Report using the same Data Model. We will choose the New icon and select Report from the drop down list.

Now we need to choose the Data Model we just created (EmpData.xdm) and a RTF layout which we created. Select the Layout first, by clicking on the Upload button

Once you click a new popup will appear and you would need to populate the following values:

Click on the upload button and then we can point to the Data Model to be used for the report.

Now we will save the Report and try to view the Report output.

So now we have created the Report and able to view the output in Base language (English)

Let us now try to generate the report in another language too. For this example, we would try to create the same report in Spanish Language too. A new page will appear. For this, we first need to click on the Edit Report option and check for the Layout properties.

We need to click on the 'Properties' link.

Once we click on the same we could see the following screen:

Couple of important points to note here are

1. There is a RTF Template which is associated with the report and it has the English Locale as the default value

2. The Base Template in the Translation section says English ( this means that the default language in which the report will be displayed is English)

3. And last but not the least as of now there has been no additional Language translation files associated with this report

Now we need to extract the current translation files by clicking on the “Extract Translation” button and a file would be downloaded into your local system

The contents of the file looks as:

In the above file you could notice that there is an attribute named Source language holding the value ‘en’ and a Target Language which has the value ‘en-US', this is because this is the base translation file where no translation has been applied yet.

So as it is self-explanatory from the above screen-shot we could observe that the source and target values are the same.

We need to change the target values so that they correspond to the same words/phrases of the translated language. This could be done via some third party tools which are able to generate xlf files if we provide the base files but in this case we would make the changes using Google Translate. The translated file post making all changes would look as:

We will save the new file as Spanish.xlf and upload to the translation section.

Click on OK

Now we have done all requisite setups.

Next we need to view the report in Spanish Language. For this we would have to login to the application and choose the language as Spanish (on the login screen as shown)

Next, we navigate to the Report and view the output:

And we do see the Report in Spanish Language as expected.

Kudos! Great isn’t it.

So this is how we may create multilingual reports in Oracle Fusion Applications thereby ensuring we still have the same graphic/images/logo and other common features which could be part of the RTF layout with different language translation files (xlf) which could display the reports in different languages.

With this we have come to an end of another interesting topic and I hope you all would try to use this cool feature and develop reports in multiple languages (even the ones you aren’t aware of).

Cool isn’t it. Good Luck!

Bye and have a nice day!!

Ashish Harbhajanka

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