Adobe Flash Player EOL and On-Premises EPM 11.1.2.x.

If you are already live on Oracle EPM / Hyperion 11.2.x (you brave soul!) or in the Oracle EPM SaaS cloud, this post isn't for you.

EPM 11.1.2.3.500 through 11.1.2.4.x both have dependencies upon Adobe Flash Player on the end-user side for Hyperion Calculation Manager and Hyperion Planning.  Hyperion Financial Close / Account Rec in 11.1.2.3 also uses Flash.

Adobe announced earlier that End Of Life for Flash Player is December 31, 2020.  Not far away now!

So let's review the scenarios for on-premises EPM:

• For Hyperion Planning 11.1.2.4, patch 31365862 – 11.1.2.4.010 takes care of this.
• For Hyperion Calculation Manager 11.1.2.4, patch 28557058 – 11.1.2.4.014 takes care of this.
• For 11.1.2.3 and older, there is no solution other than upgrading or moving to the cloud.
• For 11.2.0.0 and higher, the solution is already baked into the base release and there is no need to patch.

What does it mean if you don't patch before the deadline, or you're on an older release and can't patch at all?

Adobe has stated very clearly that the ability to download Flash Player will be removed once the support deadline of Dec 31, 2020 has passed.  Neither the latest version nor older versions will be available to download.  Furthermore, no new security patches will be issued.

I haven't seen this in writing, but expect Firefox to quickly flag the Flash Player extension as vulnerable in January 2021.  I wouldn't be surprised at all if the extension gets disabled without the option to re-enable it.

Adobe has further stated that a Flash Player installer downloaded from any 3rd party site will be considered "Unauthorized".

If you're on 11.1.2.4 and haven't applied the patches I mentioned above, my recommendation would be to patch and regression test now before you enter a fiscal 2020 4th Quarter change freeze.

There's an added benefit if you're working directly on a server for testing purposes. Flash Player often isn't installed on MS Windows Server 2012 and is hard to get.  The latest download page on Adobe's website flags your browser as coming from Windows 8 and shows a Knowledge Base article instead of letting you download the installer.  If you need to get into the Calculation Manager Rules or Variable designers, the browser wants to invoke Flash Player and the page hangs.  This exact issue hit me yesterday, which led me down the road of investigating these patches.

(A quick reminder to carefully read the patch READMEs for the 2 patches I listed.  Planning 11.1.2.4.010 contains a new optional application property, some files need to be copied over to the Financial Reporting server, and the CalcMgr patch needs to be installed on multiple machines in a typical distributed environment)