Oracle Alerts – FAQ for Beginners

1. What are Oracle Alerts?

Answer

Oracle Alerts are used to monitor unusual or critical activity within a designated database. The flexibility of ALERTS allows a database administrator the ability to monitor activities from tablespace sizing to activities associated with particular applications (i.e. AP, GL, FA). Alerts can be created to monitor a process in the database and to notify a specific individual of the status of the process.

 

 

2. What types of Oracle Alerts are there?

Answer

There are 2 types of alerts: Event Alerts and Periodic Alerts

a) EVENT ALERTS are triggered when an event or change is made to a table in the database.

b) PERIODIC ALERTS are activated on a scheduled basis to monitor database activities or changes.

 

3. What types of actions can be generated when an Alert is triggered?

Answer

When an alert is triggered or the event is true, the alert can Email, send or print a message. Alerts also have the ability to execute a SQL script to perform an action. Using Response Processing, Oracle Alerts can solicit a response from a specific individual and perform an action based on the response that it receives.

 

 

4. Can I build an Alert to run with my custom applications or tables?

Answer

Event or Periodic Alerts can work with any custom application, as long as the application is properly registered within the Oracle Applications package.

 

5. Which Email packages work with Alerts?

Answer

Oracle Alert is designed to work with Oracle Office, Oracle Interoffice, UNIX Sendmail, and VMS Mail.

 

 

6. Can Alerts be triggered by other Tools?

(i.e. other than Oracle Forms and concurrent programs)

Answer

Oracle Alerts can only be triggered from an application that has been registered in Oracle Applications. Alerts cannot be triggered via SQL updates or deletes to an Alert activated trigger.

 

 

7. What is Response Processing?

Answer

Response processing is a component of Alerts which allows the recipients of an alert to reply with a message and have the applications take some action based on the response. Response Processing only works with Oracle Mail products.

 

 

8. Do I need Oracle Applications to use Alerts?

Answer

Yes. Oracle Applications is required to create and run Alerts.

Oracle User Management – Password Reset Functionality

How can users request a password reset?

 

From the applications login page, accessing link Forgot your password.

How does the Forgot your Password functionality work?

 

a. A user access the apps lo gin page.

b. Select TIP Forgot your password? link.

c. A web page asks for the user name

d. A new web page says:

Your request for a new password is being processed.

An email has been sent to the email address on file. Contact the system administrator if you do not receive your password within the next few hours.

 

e. A workflow process is started. UMXUPWD is the item type

f. Requester receives an workflow e-mail which subject is ‘Password reset requires approval.’ Its message internal name is MSG_APPROVE_PASSWORDRESET.

g. The requester needs to respond the notification via e-mail. This means the notification look and feel should display links to Approve or Reject. This notification has set a timeout, the user should respond to the notification before that timeout. Otherwise, the reset password is terminated, not resetting the password.

The notification has a message like this:

The notification also has links to respond Approving or Rejecting the password reset request.

 

h. The workflow java mailer receives, reads and process the response.

i. The User management workflow process changes the password to a automatically generated password and sends back an e-mail notification informing the new password.

j. The users can now use the new password to access the EBS.

k. The EBS requires the user to set his password again.

 

 How to implement the Forgot Password Reset Functionality?In order to enable this functionality please perform this setup:

a. Set ‘Local Login Mask’ profile option at site level to include the Forgot Password

URL in the login page. For the Login page to display this link the profile option

should include value FORGOT_PASSWORD_URL = 08. All the options you can set for the

login page are:

• USERNAME_HINT = 01

• PASSWORD_HINT = 02

• CANCEL_BUTTON = 04

• FORGOT_PASSWORD_URL = 08

• REGISTER_URL = 16

• LANGUAGE_IMAGES = 32

• SARBANES_OXLEY_TEXT = 64

Example, set the Local Login Mask to 40 to display the Forgot Password link and the

language images in the login page (08 + 32). Bounce the apache server to pick up the changes.

Other important things to consider are:

Workflow Java Mailer must be configured and running for both OUTBOUND and INBOUND functionalities.

The user requesting the password reset needs to have notification preference set to a value that allows workflow to send him notifications.

What is the workflow process that resets the user application password?

 

Reset Password, internal item type is UMXUPWD. This process enables the ability for re-setting application passwords