Oracle has unveiled the planned developments for the May 2026 update of its Oracle EPM Cloud platform. Following a major wave of announcements the previous month, this new release focuses more on operational enhancements, process automation and the integration of artificial intelligence-related capabilities.
Updates will be deployed to test environments from 1 May 2026, followed by production environments from 15 May 2026.
A new environment backup feature
Oracle is introducing a new mechanism called Environment Backup. Unlike traditional snapshots, this backup is performed at the physical environment level and includes both data and artefacts.
This enhancement could provide greater flexibility during restores and simplify certain EPM Cloud environment administration operations.
In addition, Oracle is also adding:
- a new
restoreEnvironmentcommand in EPM Automate; - support for Environment Backup backups in REST APIs;
- compatibility with environment cloning operations.
Artificial intelligence continues to be integrated into Oracle EPM
The May 2026 Oracle EPM update extends Generative AI capabilities to several new Oracle cloud environments, including the OC4, OC19, OC29 and OC42 regions.
Oracle is also continuing to develop intelligent assistants integrated into its EPM solutions.
Narrative Reporting Assistant
The new assistant dedicated to narrative reporting enables users to:
- search for artefacts through a conversational interface;
- query reports;
- generate automated summaries;
- refresh data sources;
- run bursting processes.
However, this capability remains reserved for customers who also have a Fusion Cloud subscription.
PCM Interrogation Assistant
Oracle is also announcing an assistant designed to create AI agents capable of interacting with EPM applications. These agents can automate certain tasks, retrieve data or trigger actions in applications.
Enhancements for pipelines and automation
Several optimisations concern processing pipelines.
Users will now be able to:
- restart a pipeline directly from the step that failed;
- add wait times between different tasks to improve the management of sequential processes.
These enhancements are intended to reduce operational disruptions and improve the efficiency of automated processing.
Support for Essbase rules in cloud applications
Among the most notable announcements is the addition of support for Essbase Load Rules in cloud applications.
Until now, companies migrating from on-premise environments had to manually recreate these rules through Data Integration. Oracle will now enable them to be migrated directly to the cloud, which should simplify EPM modernisation projects.
Mandatory Groovy engine update
As previously announced by Oracle, the May 2026 release includes a mandatory update to the Groovy engine.
This new version introduces stricter validation rules. Organisations using custom scripts will therefore need to verify the compatibility of their developments before moving to production.
Smart View and Narrative Reporting also updated
Oracle is also releasing new versions of the following extensions:
- EPM Books for Smart View;
- Narrative Reporting for Smart View.
The vendor recommends that users update promptly in order to benefit from the latest fixes and improvements.
Oracle announces the deprecation of certain Workforce rules
Lastly, Oracle confirms that several older Workforce rules will be progressively phased out by the end of 2026.
Customers using applications created before December 2024 are invited to migrate to the “2.0” versions of the relevant rules in order to continue benefiting from future platform developments.
With this update, Oracle EPM continues to enhance its platform around automation, cloud environment resilience and the gradual integration of artificial intelligence into financial planning and reporting processes.
source: Paul Lewis, Oracle EPM expert / consultant
