Oracle Fusion - tools available by role to customize/extend your Fusion Cloud Application

The following is a list of activities that are commonly part of customizing or extending an Oracle fusion application and provides confirmation if this is possible for an Oracle Fusion deployment. Tools usage depends upon which object you want to modify and in which application like HCM, CRM etc.

You will notice column in below table "MDS?" What is it?  MDS is Oracle MetaData Services, Metadata is data about data or application, it is where your customizations or extensions code is stored, in simple term “it’s a separate bucket of changes which is safe from the upgrade”. MDS delivers the common customization infrastructure that various tools listed in below table use to provide a way to customers to customize application metadata to meet the unique business need.

In this approach base application source metadata code (delivered) is separate from customized metadata code (which is in MDS) but at run time they merge together to show you unified user experience. It is important that the Functional resource and Developer understand the tools they have to perform the specific customization or extension in Oracle Fusion Application. I am not a developer, but after researching more, I realize the importance of knowing it.

Customization/Extension	Tool	Type of User	MDS?	Where to Find Information
View Pages
Add, move, and delete components on a page.	Oracle Composer	Business Analyst	Yes	Section 3.2, "Editing a Page in Oracle Composer"
Add fields, buttons, links, to a standard page (CRM)	CRM Application Composer	Business Analyst	Yes	Section 4.3, "Editing a Page in CRM Application Composer"
Customize properties on UI components on a standard page	Oracle Composer	Business Analyst	Yes	Section 3.3, "Editing Component Properties in Oracle Composer"
Customize properties on UI components on a standard page (CRM)	CRM Application Composer	Business Analyst	Yes	Section 4.2, "Editing Objects"
Make UI components on a page personalizable	Oracle Composer	Business Analyst	Yes	Section 17.3, "Configuring End User Personalization for Components"
Customize the UI Shell template	JDeveloper	Developer	Yes	Section 11.9, "Editing the UI Shell Template"
Customize the UI Shell template (CRM)	Oracle Composer	Business Analyst	Yes	Section 3.4, "Editing the UI Shell Template Used by All Pages"
Define resource bundles	JDeveloper	Developer	Yes	Section 11.10, "Customizing or Adding Resource Bundles"
Make a custom page personalizable (custom pages created in CRM Application Composer are customizable by default)	JDeveloper	JDeveloper	Yes	Section 17.2, "Allowing Pages to be Personalized by End Users in Oracle Composer"
Customize onscreen hoover help text	Oracle Composer	Business Analyst	Yes	Section 18.3, "Customizing or Adding Bubble Embedded Help"
Customize onscreen help text	JDeveloper	Developer	Yes	Section 18.4, "Customizing or Adding Static Instructions, In-field Notes, and Terminology Definitions"
Change the look and feel of the entire application	JDeveloper	Developer	No	You can choose the skin you want Oracle Fusion Applications to use. For more information, see "Chapter 17 Implementing Skinning" of the Oracle Fusion Applications Developer's Guide.
Translate custom text	JDeveloper	Developer	Yes	Chapter 16, "Translating Custom Text"
Business Objects
Customize business objects	JDeveloper	Developer	Yes	Section 11.2, "Editing Existing Business Components"
Customize business objects (CRM)	CRM Application Composer	Business Analyst	Yes	Section 4.2, "Editing Objects"
Add an attribute to a business object using flexfields (not CRM)	Setup and Maintenance work area	Business Analyst	No	Chapter 5, "Using Flexfields for Custom Attributes"
Create business objects	JDeveloper	Developer	Yes	Section 11.5, "Creating Custom Business Components"
Create business object (CRM)	CRM Application Composer	Business Analyst	Yes	Section 4.4, "Creating Custom Objects"
Add business object page to Navigator menu	Setup and Maintenance work area	Business Analyst	No	Chapter 6, "Customizing the Navigator Menu"
Add custom business object work area pages to Navigator menu (CRM)	CRM Application Composer	Business Analyst	No	Section 4.4, "Creating Custom Objects"
Add validation to an object	JDeveloper	Developer	Yes	Section 11.5, "Creating Custom Business Components"
Add validation to an object (CRM)	CRM Application Composer	Business Analyst	Yes	Section 4.2, "Editing Objects"
Customize saved search for a custom object (CRM)	CRM Application Composer	Business Analyst	Yes	Section 4.5, "Creating and Editing Search Objects"
Create search for an object	JDeveloper	Developer	Yes	Section 11.8, "Customizing or Creating a Custom Search Object"
Create saved search for a custom object (CRM)	CRM Application Composer	Business Analyst	Yes	Section 4.5, "Creating and Editing Search Objects"
Customize task flows for an object	JDeveloper	Developer	Yes	Section 11.3, "Editing Task Flows"
Create task flows for an object	JDeveloper	Developer	Yes	Section 11.6, "Creating Custom Task Flows"
Customize object workflows for an object (CRM)	CRM Application Composer	Business Analyst	Yes	Section 4.2, "Editing Objects"
Create object workflows for an object (CRM)	CRM Application Composer	Business Analyst	Yes	Section 4.4, "Creating Custom Objects"
Business Processes
Create BPMN process in a BPM project	Business Process Composer	Business Analyst	Yes	Section 7.2, "Creating an Oracle BPM Project"
Create BPMN approval process in a BPM project (CRM)	CRM Application Composer	Business Analyst	Yes	Section 7.2, "Creating an Oracle BPM Project"
Customize custom BPM projects	Business Process Composer	Business Analyst	Yes	Section 7.3, "Customizing BPMN Processes"
Customize custom BPM projects (CRM)	CRM Application Composer	Business Analyst	Yes	Section 7.3, "Customizing BPMN Processes"
Customize BPM project templates	Oracle BPM Studio	Developer	Yes	Chapter 13, "Customizing and Extending Oracle BPM Project Templates"
Customize BPEL process or Mediator component, or add additional SOA components	JDeveloper	Developer	Yes	Section 12.4, "Extending or Customizing Custom SOA Composites"
Customize task routing rules, business rules, DVM and, composite properties	Oracle BPM Worklist, Oracle SOA Composer and Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Applications Control	Developer	Yes	Section 12.2, "Customizing SOA Composites"
Reports
Create report layout	Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher	Business Analyst	No	Section 8.2.2, "Customizing Layouts"
Customize report layouts	Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher	Business Analyst	No	Section 8.2.2, "Customizing Layouts"
Customize style templates	Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher	Business Analyst	No	Section 8.2.2, "Customizing Layouts"
Create a report	Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher	Business Analyst	No	Section 8.2.4, "Creating Custom Reports"
Translate a report	Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher	Business Analyst	No	Section 8.2.5, "Adding Translations"
Create report subject area (CRM)	CRM Application Composer	Business Analyst	No	Section 4.4, "Creating Custom Objects"
Enterprise Scheduler Jobs
Create Jobs	JDeveloper	Developer	No	Chapter 14, "Customizing and Extending Oracle Enterprise Scheduler Jobs"
Security
Adding data security to custom object	Setup and Maintenance work area	Developer	No	Section 15.4, "Defining Data Security Policies on Custom Business Objects" and Section 15.5, "Enforcing Data Security in the Data Model Project"
Adding function security to custom object	JDeveloper	Developer	No	Section 15.6, "Defining Function Security Policies for the User Interface Project"
Adding security to custom object (CRM)	CRM Application Composer	Business Analyst	No	Section 9.2, "Defining Security Policies for Custom Business Objects"
Enabling end users to set instance level security	CRM Application Composer	Business Analyst	No	Section 9.3, "Enabling End User Instance-Level Security Customization"