Key Redwood updates focus on enhancing the user experience with a modern, intuitive interface, streamlining workflows, and improving data accessibility and analytics.
Expanded Redwood Pages and Features:
Several HCM pages, including Jobs, Locations, and Departments, have been fully transitioned to Redwood by default. These pages now support advanced filtering for extensible flexfields (EFF) and descriptive flexfields (DFF), improving data management and retrieval.
The Document Type and Document Records pages feature an upgraded rich text editor with enhanced formatting options, replacing simpler input widgets (e.g., radio buttons) with List of Values (LoVs) for streamlined configuration.
- Saved Search Functionality: Users can now save, edit, delete, and share searches on Redwood pages like Jobs and Departments. Administrators with the HRC_MANAGE_SYSTEM_SEARCHES_PRIV privilege can set system-wide default searches, enhancing collaboration and efficiency.
- AI Integration:
- A new AI Agent Task Type has been introduced for guided journeys, exclusive to Redwood pages. This allows employees to interact directly with an AI platform (e.g., asking about promotion policies), boosting productivity with real-time, context-aware responses. This feature requires enabling the ORA_PER_AGENT_TASK_TYPE_GUIDED_JOURNEYS_ENABLED profile option.
- Generative AI capabilities enable managers and HR specialists to create and customize onboarding journeys and tasks quickly, ensuring consistency and reducing manual effort.
- Workforce Structure Enhancements:
Legal employer associations for Jobs and Departments are now more flexible, using EFF contexts like “Legal Employers That Use This Job.” This refines filtering beyond business unit mappings and supports bulk updates via HCM Data Loader (HDL), all optimized within the Redwood UI.
- User Experience Improvements:
- Redwood pages in 25A emphasize fewer clicks, faster performance, and a mobile-responsive design. For example, the Jobs page now filters “Active Positions” by Effective Start Date, ensuring accurate, context-relevant data.
- The transition to Redwood is mandatory for new HCM implementations starting with 25A, with Oracle phasing out support for responsive UI pages over time (e.g., full self-service functions move to Redwood by 25C).
- Enabling and Configuring Redwood
- Profile Options: Many Redwood features are activated by default in 25A, such as ORA_PER_DOCUMENT_TYPES_REDWOOD_ENABLED. To revert to classic pages, administrators must disable these options in the Setup and Maintenance work area (e.g., set to “No” at the Site level). However, Oracle strongly encourages adopting Redwood for its superior functionality.
- Prerequisites: The ORA_HCM_VBCS_PWA_ENABLED profile option must be enabled to use Redwood pages fully. For AI features, additional privileges like HRC_ACCESS_AI_AGENT_CHAT_PRIV may need to be added to custom roles.
- Transition Support: Oracle provides a Personalization Helper Tool to migrate existing personalizations from responsive UI to Redwood, though some manual adjustments may be required for unsupported customizations.
- Strategic Implications
The 25A release accelerates Oracle’s push toward Redwood as the standard UI for HCM, aligning with its broader goal of unifying the Fusion Cloud experience. For organizations, this means:
- Improved employee and manager self-service experiences with intuitive navigation and AI-driven tools.
- A need to update training materials and prepare for regression testing, as Redwood’s new tech stack differs significantly from the prior UI.
- Opportunities to leverage Oracle’s latest innovations, like AI agents and advanced analytics, which are Redwood-exclusive.
EnchantApps Oracle Cloud experts can help you with your 25A Upgrade and testing. We are here to ensure that Oracle Cloud quarterly updates do not impact your business processes. Contact us for more details.