Earlier this year when working with EPM Cloud, I noticed that I couldn’t open up multiple instances of EPM Cloud at the same time without issue. This would either be multiple instances within the same domain (Test and Production, for example), or different instances completely (PBCS & FCCS, for example). Whenever I tried to open up two simultaneous instances, they would both merge into a single instance (Test would convert to Production or vice versa), one screen would go to an error, or the browser would just get confused. Opening multiple instances at the same time has both its pros and cons, but as a developer I find that this makes my work life so much more efficient, especially when checking migrations.

Over time, I noticed that this functionality became better. I don’t know if this is due to efforts on Oracle’s side, Mozilla Firefox (the recommended browser for Windows PC’s), or both, but there is so much more you can do today. However, let me pause and explain the different ways that one might attempt to open simultaneous instances of EPM Cloud on a single computer:

1. Open up the EPM Cloud instances within multiple tabs of the same browser
2. Open up the EPM Cloud instances within separate browser windows
3. Open up the EPM Cloud instances within separate browser windows using private browsing

Option #1 is definitely not recommended and does not offer any kind of workable result, from my experience. I get this awesome message when attempting to connect to a different instance in a second tab of the same Firefox window:

Option #2 is workable. You take do many things within the application and the browser windows seem to work independently without issue. However, if you log out of one of the Firefox windows, all instances seem to log out.

Option #3 is by far my favorite. I’ve encountered no issues with this option so far. But what is private browsing? Here is the overview of this feature, in Firefox’s words:

How I do this is first open one EPM Cloud instance in a normal Firefox window, then open all successive instances in separate “private browsing” Firefox windows (note that tabs are not an option here – private browsing must occur within new windows for this to work properly). Alternatively, you could start with a private browsing Firefox window and then open all new EPM Cloud instances in separate private browsing windows.

To open a private browsing window, you can right-click Firefox from your task bar and choose “New private window”.

You can also open the Firefox menu (three-line icon) in the upper right-hand corner of the browser and select “New Private Window”.

As you can see below, I have a normal Firefox window opened with Test EPBCS and a private browsing window (indicated by the purple icon in the upper right-hand part of the screen) opened with Prod EPBCS.

In case you’re curious about which version of Firefox I’m on, I always try to stay on the latest. Here is the version I tested this with: