Narrative Reporting: How to Create a Report Package

Introduction

Once your data is loaded, your metadata is aligned, and your financial reports are built, the final step in the Oracle Narrative Reporting workflow is assembling everything into a report package. A report package is the structured, collaborative document that ties your reports, commentary, and supporting exhibits into a single, governed deliverable, complete with defined authors, review cycles, and sign-off. It is what turns a folder of individual reports into an audit-ready board book, 10-Q, management commentary, or regulatory filing.

This guide walks through the current process end to end: understanding the building blocks, creating the package structure with the wizard, adding and authoring content, working with variables and Smart View, previewing and validating, moving through the review and sign-off phases, and publishing the final output. It reflects how Narrative Reporting works in the Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM releases current as of 2026. If you are coming from an older version, note that several steps and terms below have changed since Narrative Reporting was first released as Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud Service (EPRCS).

What a Report Package Is Made Of

Before creating anything, it helps to know the components you will be assembling, because each one behaves differently in the workflow and in the final output.

A report package is built from doclets. A doclet is an individual, separately owned piece of the report that can be assigned to an author. Splitting a report into doclets is what makes collaboration possible: one person can own the MD&A narrative while another owns the balance sheet, and each works independently. There are four doclet types, and choosing the right one matters:

• Doclets hold the primary content and are merged into the final published report. Their file type matches the report package type, so a Word-based package contains Word doclets, a PowerPoint-based package contains PowerPoint doclets, and so on. Doclets participate fully in the author, review, and sign-off phases.
• Supplemental doclets are supporting or source files (Excel workbooks, PDFs, text files, ZIPs, and similar) that travel with the package but are not merged into the published report and are not available for commenting in review or sign-off. Use them for backup and reference material.
• Reference doclets are containers for reusable content, such as named ranges and ad hoc grids in Excel, that authors then embed into their own doclets. The reference doclet itself is not published, but the content embedded from it is. Reference doclets participate in the author phase only.
• Report reference doclets embed a Report (Oracle's management reporting object) into the package. This is the primary way live, formatted financial statements and charts flow into a report package, and their data can be refreshed against the source.

Doclets can be organized into sections, which group related content, for example placing all of the financial statements together, for easier navigation, filtering, and consistent formatting.

Finally, a report package moves through up to three optional development phases, each of which you can enable or skip:

• The Author phase, where assigned authors create and revise content in their doclets.
• The Review phase, where reviewers comment on draft versions across one or more review cycles.
• The Sign Off phase, where designated signers give final electronic approval and the content is locked against modification.

Before You Begin

A report package assembles content that already exists, so a little preparation prevents most of the friction later. Confirm the following before you start:

• The financial Reports you intend to embed have been built in the Reports environment and return the numbers you expect against their data source (for example an FCCS, Planning, or Essbase connection).
• Oracle Smart View for Office is installed with the Narrative Reporting extension, since most authoring of Word and Excel doclets happens there.
• You have the appropriate application role and access to a public library folder, because report packages cannot be saved to personal folders.
• You know who your owners, authors, reviewers, and signers will be, and you have a sense of the reporting-period labels the narrative will reference.

Step 1: Create the Report Package Structure

Creating a report package is driven by a wizard. You launch it from one of two places: the Home page (click the create icon in the Welcome Panel, then select Report Package) or the Library (click the create icon, then select Report Package). You cannot start one from the Recent folder.

The wizard walks you through the structure:

1. Properties. Enter a name (up to 80 characters) and an optional description (up to 260 characters), and choose the report type: Word, PowerPoint, or PDF. This choice is important because it determines the doclet types the package will accept and the format of the merged output.
2. Style. For a Word or PowerPoint package, upload a style sample file that defines the fonts, headings, and formatting the merged report will inherit. For a PDF package, configure headers, footers, and margins instead.
3. Location. Select an existing public folder in the library to store the package.
4. Process (development phases). Turn on the Author, Review, and Sign Off phases you need, and set milestone start and end dates for each. You can add multiple review cycles here.
5. Assign users. Give people their responsibilities: Owners can modify the structure, run the phases, and manage users; Reviewers provide feedback; Signers give the final approval and are required when the Sign Off phase is enabled; and Viewers get read-only access.
6. Options. Set locale, thousands and decimal separators, unit of measurement, an optional shared-folder link, and doclet version-history limits.
7. Finish. Complete the wizard, and the new package opens in the Report Center.

Step 2: Add and Organize Content in the Report Center

The Report Center is the command center for the package. From here you build out the document tree by adding doclets, and you switch among the package's views and phases using the report package panel, which also gives you access to Properties, Variables, and the Preview.

Add your primary content as doclets, either by uploading local Word, PowerPoint, or Excel files or by adding a Report through a report reference doclet. Group related doclets into sections to keep a long package navigable. Add reference doclets for any Excel content, such as named ranges or ad hoc grids, that multiple authors will embed, and add supplemental doclets for the backup and source files that should ride along without being published.

Content in a report package is governed by a check-out / check-in model. To edit a doclet you check it out, which locks it to you; you make your changes; then you upload and check it back in so the update is committed and visible to everyone else. Skipping the check-in is one of the most common reasons a change appears to be missing, so it is worth building the habit early.

Step 3: Author Content with Smart View

Most of the real authoring happens in Smart View for Office, which connects Word, PowerPoint, and Excel directly to the report package. Open the package in Smart View, check out the doclet you own, and edit it in its native application. From Excel reference doclets you can embed named ranges and grids into your Word or PowerPoint doclets so that formatted tables flow through consistently, and you can build the supporting calculations that feed your narrative.

For report reference doclets, the underlying numbers are refreshed by refreshing the embedded Report. When you refresh, Narrative Reporting prompts you for the Report's point of view (POV) and any report prompts, retrieves the data from the source, and stores the refreshed snapshot in the package. This is the mechanism that lets you roll a package forward from one period to the next, or produce the same statement for a different entity: you change the Report's POV and refresh, and the new data flows in. When you are done editing, upload and check the doclet back in.

Step 4: Work with Variables

Variables are how you keep a report package consistent and easy to roll forward, and they are frequently misunderstood, so it is worth being precise about what they do. Narrative Reporting supports a few kinds:

• Static variables hold a value you type in, such as a reporting-period label or a set figure, and let you reuse it throughout the package. If you define a static variable for the current period as "Q2 FY2026" and reference it across your doclets, you update it in exactly one place when the period rolls forward, and every reference updates with it.
• Reference variables pull a specific value from a source, typically an Excel cell in a reference doclet or text in another doclet, and drop it into your narrative. This is how you get a revenue figure, a percentage, or even a directional word to appear inline in a sentence and stay in sync with the underlying data. Reference variables are created in Smart View: you select the source cell, open the Variables panel, choose Create New Variable, select Reference Variable, capture the current selection as the reference value, and check the doclet back in to commit it. The source can be driven by Excel formulas, for example ='Summary Income Statement'!B4 to surface a value or =IF(B8<0,"below","above") to produce a directional word.
• Shared variables (available in Narrative Reporting web from release 25.03 onward, and created by Power Users) hold common values that several report packages in the same reporting period can all consume.

A clarification worth internalizing: variables do not, by themselves, let a reader change their point of view and re-query different data inside the finished package. Static and reference variables substitute text and stored values, the labels and inline figures in your narrative. The actual data in the statements changes when the embedded Reports are refreshed against their POV, as described in Step 3. Keeping this distinction straight is the difference between a package that rolls forward cleanly and one that shows last quarter's numbers under this quarter's heading.

If a reference variable has not been checked in, it will show as Not Committed in Smart View and as #Missing in the Narrative Reporting web interface, which is your cue to go back and check the doclet in.

Step 5: Preview, Validate, and Iterate

With content and variables in place, generate a preview of the package. Previewing merges the doclets into a single draft instance so you can see the assembled report the way a reviewer eventually will, with variable substitution applied and doclet formatting resolved against the package style.

This first preview is where you catch the issues that are invisible while you work on doclets one at a time: a variable showing as #Missing because a doclet was never checked in, a table whose formatting fights the package style sample, an embedded report that needs a refresh, or a section ordered incorrectly. The fix loop is consistent: check out the offending doclet, correct it in Smart View or the web, check it back in, and regenerate the preview. Expect to run this loop a few times on a new package; it is normal, and it is far cheaper to resolve here than after the package is in review.

Step 6: Route Through Review and Sign Off

Once the package previews cleanly, move it through the phases you enabled. In the Review phase, reviewers open the assembled draft and attach comments to specific passages, and authors revise across the review cycles you defined. Because comments are anchored to content, the review is far more auditable than emailing a document around. Supplemental and reference doclets are not part of review, only the doclets that will actually be published.

In the Sign Off phase, your designated signers give final electronic approval. Once signed off, the content is secured against further modification, which is what makes a report package suitable for filings and board-level deliverables where a locked, attested version matters.

Step 7: Publish

Publishing produces the final, merged deliverable. You can publish the whole package, a section, or an individual doclet, and choose the output format: the package's native format (Word or PowerPoint) or PDF. The published file can be saved locally or back into the library. Keep in mind that supporting content, reference doclets and supplemental doclets, is not published on its own; reference-doclet content appears only where authors embedded it into published doclets, and supplemental doclets stay behind as source material.

Bringing It Together

A report package rewards a little discipline. Break the report into doclets along ownership lines, use report reference doclets to pull in live statements and refresh them by POV, use static and reference variables so labels and inline figures update from a single source, and lean on the preview loop to catch problems before the package reaches reviewers. Do that, and what used to be a stressful, error-prone assembly at the end of the close becomes a repeatable, governed process you can roll forward period after period.

If your team is standing up Narrative Reporting or trying to make an existing report-package process more reliable, the CloudADDIE team works with Oracle EPM Cloud reporting day in and day out and is happy to help.