Siebel Explored

Exception Handling using EAI Queue Business Service

2011-01-01T22:47:00.000-08:00

Hello My Dear Friends, A Very Happy New Year to all of you.

Let's start this new year with post on a Business Service(BS) - EAI XML Queuing Service, I recently got to know about this BS while I was getting one Knowledge Transfer session from my friend cum colleague Rishikesh Bhise. Rishikesh is a Siebel EAI Consultant. He is a very passionate guy for his work.

As the name suggest, this BS is used as a queue to store messages. These message can be temporarily stored or permanently based on requirement. Primarily, this BS is used for logging the message in a transaction with external system. Moreover, you can also use this BS and the table underneath as an Error/Exception Handling System, totally out of box functionality. In the Siebel Application, you can view these queue and error messages at Administration Integration->EAI Queues. The upper list applet will show you the Queue Name and below applet will show you the Queue Messages.

This business service can be very handy for logging error/exceptions. In one of my earlier project, we did not know about this BS and we created a new table and new BS to log the exceptions and errors. Now, after knowing about this BS, I learn one thing how a small piece of information can make a big change in Design. Nobody can do anything in this regard, only experience and reading can help you.

Now, let me tell you how you can use this BS to log exceptions. We have used this BS in a workflow. We have taken out one error exception connector from our Siebel Operation Steps, Subprocess step, Business Service step etc. These exception steps combines to go to one Business Service Step.The properties for this step are as below:
Name: Log Error Message
Business Service Name: EAI XML Queuing Service
Business Service Method: Add Message

The Input Arguments for this step are as below:
Comments: User Error Message Process Property of the Workflow
QueueName: Name of the Queue You want to add the message into.This is the queue name under which all your message will get stored.
ReferenceID: Expression as "GetUserProfile_"+[&Process Instance Id]
ReferenceValue2: Any message, you can get this message by catching the error in the script(Try and Catch blocks)
SiebelMessage: Process Property for Siebel Message, this must be of data type Hierarchy. You can use BS "PRM ANI Utility Service" and method "CreateEmptyPropSet" to create an Blank Property Set. The input for the BS method is Hierarchy Name(this can be a Literal)
Status: Error in Processing

The Output Arguments can be as below:
ActivityId: Row Id of the new Queue Entry
FileName: File name of the Siebel Message XML Created.

There are some blogs which also talks about this Business Service. EAI-Queue-For-Error-Handling

Oracle Siebel CRM Book

2010-08-16T01:42:00.000-07:00

I would like to inform you that recently a book titled "Oracle Siebel CRM 8 Installation and Management" written by Alexander Hansal is published. This book helps Install, configure and manage a robust Customer Relationship Management system using Siebel CRM. This book helps in understanding Siebel Web Architecture and ways to plan and prepare Siebel CRM infrastructure.

Alexander Hansal has worked as an IT professional in small, medium, and global corporations. Since 2001, Alexander works as a technical instructor and consultant for Siebel CRM and Oracle Business Intelligence in Europe. He enjoys teaching, and shares his knowledge and expertise in his classes at Oracle University and in his weblog, http://siebel-essentials.blogspot.com/

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Local Database - For Multiple Users

2010-06-09T03:42:00.000-07:00

We had to show a demo to the Client, our server got some issues and was getting restarted every now and then. We had only one environment set up at that time. We needed something if Server will not be up then how can we show demo to the client. The option was Local Database. We needed something like what we can do with the sample database where multiple users can login into the application using same database.

In our application, we were using Position and Organization based visibility for the Cases. Call Center user creates a record and assign it to an Organization and Position. Then the users who have that position has to work on that case. We needed to show the functionality where multiple users can login into the application.

How we can create multiple users login into Local Database. One of co-author of this blog and my friend Nikhil found something. On behalf of him, I am writing down steps to run some sql commands and multiple users can login into Local databases.

Open the dbisqlc with User ID Siebel and password of the user with whose Id local was extracted.
Then in dbisqlc, Grant permissions for users to use the Siebel application.
Run SQL 'grant connect to SSE_ROLE'.
Run SQL 'grant connect to identified by '.
Run SQL 'grant group to SSE_ROLE'.
Run SQL 'grant membership in group SSE_ROLE to '.

NOTES:

The must already exist in the database and the must be SSE_ROLE.
The and in the grant command must be in UPPERCASE

Now you can grant multiple users the access to the Database.

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Incremental Compile - Popup Visibility Auto All Issue

2010-06-01T07:21:00.000-07:00

I have heard many times that there could be problem with the Incremental Compile Issue of the SRF.
I have also seen some times that there are some inconsistent issues because of Incremental Compile. Today , I saw it having issues with Incremental Compile and it has also been documented on Oracle Support aka metalink.

As we know that on BC level, there are two of the properties like Popup Visibility Auto All and Popup Visibility Type.
Ideally, It should work like if Popup Visibility Auto All is TRUE and the Login User has responsibility to see All Across Organization View, then "Popup Visibility Auto All" will override the Popup Visibility Type value.

For eg. Let's say User ANWALIA(myself) has responsibility to see All Contact Across Organization View. The Contact BusComp has Popup Visibility Auto All as TRUE and Popup Visibility Type as Organization.
Now because I have All Contact Across Organization View, in any popup applet used by Siebel like Associate Applet, Pick Applet etc. I should be able to see all contacts across organizations.

Here is a catch of Incremental Compile, If any buscomp has the above kind of configurations and you lets say recompilation of the Contact Screen is done, hen Popup Visibility Auto All would not work as expected. It will work based on Popup Visibility type.

This can be avoided if you compile the whole project or do a full compile.

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Case sensitive and Insensitive Query

2010-05-18T04:10:00.000-07:00

Siebel earlier used to have one Field Level Property Use Default Senstivity. This property is obsolete now.

To provide Case Insensitive Query on the Fields, Siebel 8.1 version has introduced a CIAI (Case and Accent Insensitive). Accent Insensitive does not work in Siebel 8.1.1.2 vesrion. You can use SoundsLike Operator for the Accent based query.
On the column level, right click at Column.

Siebel will run you through a wizard and create a new column and indexes to support the Case Insensitive Query.

Note: You need to lock the project to run through the wizard.

Calculate Commit Time using Business Hours

2010-05-18T03:53:00.000-07:00

This post is a supplement to one of my previous post Calculate Business Hours

I had one requirement where I need to calculate the Date Time, user has to finish the work.
The time taken should not include the Holidays. It should only consider Working Hours to calculate the time taken.

As I told you in my previous post that the Business Service 'FS Holiday API Service' provides 3 methods:
   1. GetElapsedBusinessTime
   2. GetResponseTime
   3. IsHoliday

GetElapsedBusinessTime: It majorly requires input as the below:

Service Calender Id
Start Time
End Time

As the result it provides you the time spent in between the Start and End Time excluding Holiday and including only working hours.
Note: This method has a bug in Siebel 8.1.1.2 (21215):
Defined our Schedule from Sunday to Thursday, time from 7 AM to 7 PM. The timezone is (GMT+04:00) Abu Dhabi, Muscat. It is observed that whenever there is data like:
Start Time: 4/15/2010 10:31:34
Schedule Time Zone: (GMT+04:00) Abu Dhabi, Muscat
Calender Id: <>
End Time: 4/18/2010 08:31:33
Time Unit: Hours.
And the end time is coming on Sunday. like April 18, 2010, April 25, 2010 or 2 May 2010.
It is failing and crashing the server.

GetResponseTime: It majorly requires input as the below:

Service Calender Id
Start Time
Response Time

As the result it provides you the Date time or Commit Time, for example time till which user has to finish the work excluding Holiday and including only working hours.

IsHoliday:

Calender Id
Date Time

As a result, it gives if that Date Time is lying on Holiday.

Oracle does not provide any OOTB functionality in OBIEE 10.1.3.4.1 (reporting) to cater this requirement. Our OBIEE team has to write a Procedure.

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SoundsLike Operator

2010-05-01T02:29:00.000-07:00

Searching for exact Contacts in Call Centre with First and Last Names is not that much easier as we may think.Different people uses different spelling for their names for example John can be spelled like Joan, Jon, Joanne, Joann.

How to search a contact with similar pronouncing name. This was one of the requirement I came across. One of my friend Jalaj suggested SoundsLike Operator. Siebel provides a SoundsLike Operator which can be used to find the similar pronouncing names.
Let me show you how it works, you need to query in the Applet Field with SoundsLike('John').

In return or clicking on Go, it will give results like in below.

This Operator can also be used to BusComp Prequery event to modify the searchexpr with SoundsLike Operator.

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DVM Import Process Document

2010-04-23T06:18:00.000-07:00

Please find the Data Validation Manager Import Process document.

Localization - Multi-Lingual Application

2010-04-10T06:02:00.000-07:00

I was very much amazed with the application which was set up in multilingual. I never had this kind of experience in my earlier projects. In new project, most of us was never worked in Multilingual application.

We have to work for English and Arabic Languages. We have categorized that there will be following object where we need to work for multilingual applications.

Static List of Values.
Data Validation Manger.
Symbolic Strings.
Alerts in Browser Script.
Error Messages in Server Script.
Email Templates.
Dynamic List of Values.

Testing of the applications in English and Arabic. For the Arabic Applications testing and the label names, we had to call a Translator and we used Google Translator also.

Apart from installing the Application set up in both languages and language packs. Some of the facts are like:-

The Arabic application and English application, both use different Object Managers.
To compile the SRF also.You need to change the language setting of the Server tools.
You also need to set one Language parameter at Object Manager level.
For each static LOV, you need to mention the LOV and Translate Table at Column level.
Use LookupValue in Calculated Field and TheApplication().InvokeMethod("LookupValue", ) for script.
For each language,Validation Messages for DVM
Symbolic Strings for labels on User Interface.
Object Message Category- Error Messages
Administration Communication - Email Templates - Languages.
Choose the right Parent LIC for Hierarchical Picklist Like if the Child is in Arabic then Choose the Parent LIC also as Arabic only(we were careless while doing this and had to face issues)

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Named Method n - Alternative to Scripting

2010-04-10T05:17:00.000-07:00

Named method is a very good alternative to the Scripting if you have custom method to invoke. It can be used both at applet level as well as at BC level. You need to specify a user property Named Method n.

It can be used to do some of following things:-

Set the field values with or without conditional expression,
To invoke OOTB methods.
To invoke Business Service/Workflow.

I have used this user property with On Field Update Set and On Field Update Invoke user properties.I really found them very handy to use. I have to use the customize method because in our project Client was very demanding and was very much focused on usability of buttons to perform actions.

Some of the examples I have used of the above user properties are like:-

User Property	Value
Named Method 1	"DeclineCase", "SET", "Position Name", "IIF([Case Decline Reason]='Incorrect SM', [Parent Position Name], IIF([Case Decline Reason]='Incorrect Entity', '', [Position Name]))"
Named Method 2	"DeclineCase", "INVOKE", "HLS Case", "WriteRecord"
Named Method 3	"DeclineCase", "INVOKESVC", "HLS Case", "Workflow Process Manager", "RunProcess", "ProcessName", "Case Assignment Email Notification"
Named Method 4	"DeclineCase", "INVOKE", "HLS Case", "RefreshBusComp"

For more details, Please refer the bookshelf.

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Using Email Templates for Automatic triggering of Emails

2010-04-06T02:31:00.000-07:00

This is the extended post of my previous posts how to create and use email template on F9, Send Email OOTB functionality. Supplementary to this, I have also posted creating Recipient Group.

In this post, I will tell the rest of the things:-

Creating the New Recipient Source.
Creating the Non-Joined Recipient Group.
Creation of Email template.
Substituting the Fields in the Email text.
Adding HTML templates.
Testing the Outbound Communication Request.
Calling the BS to send the emails.

Let's take a scenario where the Bus Comp is not there listed in the Object for the field Substitutions.

Step1: Query with LOV Type as 'COMM_RECIP_SRC' and Parent LIC as null.
Copy the record and put the Display value and LIC as your Bus Object name.

Step2: Query with the LOV type as 'COMM_RECIP_SRC' and Parent LIC as not null.
Copy the record and put the Display value and LIC as your Child Buscomp which is the Recipient Group BusComp(like Contacts or Employee). Here you may get the unique record error. You may need to update from back end. You can also create Joined Recipient Source.

Step3 and Step4: Creation of Email template

Step5: To add the HTML templates go to Template Items View. There, you need to add the HTML file. In the HTML code, add the fields name inside square brackets for example [Full Name]. Check the Substitute values if you have used substitute fields and message body if you want to add the HTML into message body of the email.

Step6: To Test the Recipient Source, Recipient Group and Email Template, you can create a Outbound Communication Request from Administration-Communication Screen.

Go to Outbound Request Overview View,
Create a new record,
Put the Recipient Group.

The below applets will be based on the Recipient Source and Recipient Group. Like if you Recipient Source is Account, the New button on Recipient Source will be a Associate Applet of Account BC and the Recipient Source will get auto-populated based on the relation of Recipient Source and Recipient Group.

Make sure that Communication Outbound Manager component is up and running and you have selected the Communication Profile at Email template level.

Step7: Now you have created the Recipient Source, Recipient Group and Email templates.
To triggering the email you need to call the 'Outbound Communications Manager' BS and its method CreateRequest. The arguments you need to pass to this method are follows:

PackageNameList: Name of the Email Template
ProcessMode: Remote for Dedicated Client, Local for Web Client
RecipientGroup: Recipient Group Name like Contact
SourceIdList: Row Id of the Recipient Source BC like Account

You can call this Business from any triggering point where you want to send the Email.

The best thing about using the Email templates and CreateRequest of Outbound Communications Manager is the flexibility of changing the Email Body while this is not possible if you are using SendMessage of Outbound Communication Manager.

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Scripting alternative –Data Validation Manager

2010-02-28T00:49:00.000-08:00

Many times, system requires us to put validations; we generally end up with scripting in Pre Events like PreSetFieldValue or PreWriteRecord.

Recently, I worked on Data Validation Manager which is a quite useful tool to do validations in the application itself without changing the srf. With the combination of Run Time Events, I really found DVM competitive to avoid scripting and from maintenance perspective also.

We can use conditional expression to check the validation and invoke a RTE and DVM.
I will run through the End to End process of creating a RTE and DVM Rule. I will also show you validation getting fired in the application.

Let’s take an example, I want to put a validation that a contact record must have an email address or a Mobile Phone number or a Work Phone number.

To work this validation out, I will do the following steps:-

Create a DVM Validation Message.
Create a DVM Rule.
Call Data Validation Manager BS using the Action Set.
In the Business Service Context, Provide the DVM Rule name.
Create a RTE.
Reload the RTE and activate the DVM Rule.
Creating a new Contact Record and test the DVM.

I need to create RTE and DVM. It will be a mandatory check for email address or a Mobile Phone number or a Work Phone number. This RTE will be on PreWriteRecord of Contact BC.

Step1: Go to Administration - Data Validation and Create the DVM Message

Step 2: Create DVM Rule for contact validation.

Step 3 and Step 4: Create an Action Set for RTE
Business Service: Data Validation Manager
Business Service Method: Validate
Business Service Context: "Rule Set Name", "Contact Details", "Enable Log", "Y".

Step 5: Create a Run Time Event on PreWriteRecord on Contact BusComp and Call the Action Set created in Step 3 and 4.

Step 6: Reload Run Time Event and Activate DVM Rule.

Step 7: Create a Contact Record and test DVM.

The Limitation of the DVM is that field should be visible on the UI.

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SetNamedSearch - Cannot be modified through UI

2010-02-20T08:47:00.000-08:00

Have you come across a requirement where after reaching a view. You don't want user to do a new query and get all the records. You only want to show those records which user saw first time on reaching to this view.
Though you want to give him a query option to search in the given records first time.

Yes, this can be achieved using SetNamedSearch BusComp Method.

Let me explain you with the help of a example.
Using a Drilldown, user reached to a All Activities List View where I don't want him to see Confidential Activities. I captured the method Drilldown and the Field name using SWEField property, in the drill down only I put code like

BusComp.SetNamedSearch(searchName, searchSpec)

SetNamedSearch("NotConfidential", "[Confidential] != 'Y'")
GotoView(ViewName, BO instance)

Now even after reaching to the DrillDown View, if user do a null query. He will not be able to see the confidential activities.

It is a search criterion that is not cleared by the ClearToQuery; for example, a predefined query or business component search specification.It can only be modified through script; it cannot be modified through the UI.

You can retrieve this search specification, use GetNamedSearch metho.

Note: that when a new instance of the BusComp is created, the named search specification is cleared.

MVG Set Primary Restricted: Position

2010-02-19T02:05:00.000-08:00

Have you ever seen that you are not able to change the primary in a MVG applet based on position. you are not able to figure it out how this Primary Field becomes editable. The Primary flag is read only.
You checked the No Update Property if it is set. You have checked if any Buscomp Read Only User Property for the primary Record. If still you are not able to find the reason why you are not able to change the Primary.

The reason may be Position Protection mechanism. Position Protection is a mechanism that protects against unauthorized changes within a MVG applet based on Positions. If Position Protection is active then changes can only be done by privileged persons or within certain views.

In Siebel previous version before 7.x, Position Protection mode can be disable but to a limited extent.
In Siebel version 7.x and above, this does not apply. Disabling Position Protection is handled by setting the 'MVG Set Primary Restricted: visibility_mvlink_name' user property to 'FALSE'.

Position Protection is active when:

the view's Property Admin Mode is set to FALSE
the multi-value field's (MVF) business component is set up with Position Team Ownership

The following business component Properties must be set:

Visibility Emp MVField
Visibility MVLink

The MVLink must point to the Position business component.

The Multi Value Field is based on Positions.

NOTE: Position Protection is not active within Siebel VB / eScript, regardless of above settings.

View Links

2010-02-19T00:33:00.000-08:00

We must have seen the Links on the Screen Homepages. But I was never known that these are just links to the View which can have default PDQs. It just works like a Drilldown on a field. I always thought that these are configured at Applet Level and its a SRF Change.

Recently, there was a requirement I came across to configure those links. We can configure those link from Application itself. As we know that PDQs can be Private and Public. Similarly, these links as well can be Private and Public.
Private View Links: Visible only to the Creator.
Public View Links: Visible to everyone using the application.
If User wants to configure these links, they can do so using User Preferences->View Links.These links from User preference can be only Private for that user only.

You can specify the Default Query, which can be configured using Application Administration -> Predefined Queries.
The Public and Private View Links can also be configured from Application Administration -> View Links in the same way as you do in User Preference.
To configure the View Links in Screen Homepages, you should know Screen Name, View Name.
If you want to specify Default Query then a pre-default query will be created by System Admin.
Let me show my customized View Links

There are some BCs which may not have Screen Homapages, you need to add a User Property VlinkScreen:: value as 'Y' in the 'SRF Vlink Screen' Business Component.

Calculating Business Hours

2010-02-06T07:43:00.000-08:00

I had one requirement where I need to calculate the time, user has taken, to complete a certain task.
The task time taken should not include the Holidays. It should only consider Working Hours to calculate the time taken.
First, we need to know where we can feed in the working hours, holidays in Siebel.

Question: Do we have something OOTB?
Answer: Yes, we have got a View based on Shift BC using view Administration Service->Schedules

Question: Where can we put the Holidays?
Answer: Administration Service -> Schedules -> Exception Hours

Question: Do we need a customize BS to calculate the Time difference considering working hours only?
Answer: Yes we have got a OOTB BS 'FS Holiday API Service', that gives output as Elapsed Time using input as Start Time, End Time, Time Unit, Calender Id(Schedule Id)

FS Holiday API Service BS provides 3 methods:

GetElapsedBusinessTime
GetResponseTime
IsHoliday

I simulated this BS using method GetElapsedBusinessTime to calculate the Elapsed Time.

You can provide input argument as below:

Calender Id : Id of the New Schedule
End Time: 02/06/2009 12:54:28
Schedule Time Zone:
Start Time: 04/06/2009 10:54:28
Time Unit: Hours

It will give the Business Hours based on the Service Calender used.

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Global Target List Management

2010-01-25T09:11:00.000-08:00

List Management is a functionality extensively used for Campaign and Surveys.
Apply List and Save List Button which you usually see in Menu Item for the Applet are the two ways to manage Internal Lists.

Siebel provides this feature for entities like Contacts, Accounts, Employee, Positions, Prospects. Let us take an example that I want to do a Email Campaign for Contacts Living in California. I will do a query on state field in All Contact List Applet. Clicking on Save List will give me a popup applet shown below.

I will save the List with a name. List can be seen in the List Management Screen.

The List is ready to be used for campaign. There are many applet where Apply List and Save List buttons are disabled. To enable those button, you may need to configure the User Properties, Link and MVL.
I configured that for Case List Applet
I had created the below things to enable the Save button and work it for me.

A Link between HLS Case and List Mgmt Lists.
A MVL for HLS Case and List Mgmt Lists
MVF for Id fields.
User Property TargetProp.
List Column for Ids
Applet User property as Save Target List Source1.

For details, please read AppsAdmin.pdf, chapter Global Target List Management.

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Configuring Recipient Groups

2010-01-13T13:43:00.000-08:00

Recipient Groups are used to automatically populate 'To' field while we send Emails, Fax and other sort of Outbound Communications in Siebel.

Siebel provides some Predefined Recipient Groups for example

Account Contacts,
Activity Owner,
Campaign Contacts/Prospects,
Employees,
Opportunity Sales Team Members
Quote Sales Rep
Service Request Owner and more

If the predefined recipient groups do not serve all your business needs, you must configure the Siebel application to extend or modify the available recipient groups.

Now, we need to Configuring Recipient Sources Applets and to add Recipient User Properties at BC level.
Steps are given in the Siebel Communications Server Administration Guide bookshelf to configure the Recipient Pick Applet.
You just need to copy applet and configure it for your BusComp Comm Source bus_obj_name List Applet like the figure below.

Add the User Properties to populate the Email Address, with Whom Email Address and which recipient should be coming in the recipient pick applet.

Compile the changed object and press F9 will open a recipient pick applet after choosing it, a send Email box will open with 'To' field populated.

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Configuring Email Templates

2010-01-11T05:38:00.000-08:00

To show you how to configure Email templates, Let's take an example for Object 'HLS Case' which is a part of Case Management.
I will also show you how to Substitute Fields to be used in Email Template.

Steps to Create Email Template

Navigate to the Administration - Communications screen, then the All Templates view.
In the Templates list, click New and complete the fields as appropriate for example Name, Channel type, Status.
In the below Simple template's Pick Available Substitution section, here you can choose the Object like I have chosen HLS Case and in Available Substitution, you can choose the Fields to be used in Email templates. In case the field you want to use is not present, you can put [Object Name.Field Name] for example [HLS Case.Case Num] in the email template. Otherwise, you need to add a BC user property Substitution Field # and put the Value as Name of the Field for that Business Component.

You can also configure some more parameters in Advanced template View. Please see the difference I encircled.

Create Activity is used to create activity as soon as the Email Template is used.
Attach Bookmark is used to attach the active View Link as the Bookmark of the Email.
Recipient Groups for the recipient of the Emails. I will post how to configure that in another post.

In the similar way, you can configure Templates for other channels like Fax Templates, Phone Templates, Paging Template and Wireless Message Templates.

Now, based on the Object you selected while creating the template, the Template will be coming in the Body dropdown list of the Send Email Popup Applet.

You can also configure default Template for Send Email Command(F9).A default template is preselected and populates the message area when the Send Email command is invoked, based on the current (active) applet at the time the command was invoked. To specify that a specific email template is the default for a given applet, specify the template name as the value for the Mail Template applet property for the applet.
In future post, I will discuss about How to Configure Recipient Groups and auto populate of To field in email. It may requires some configuration in Tools.

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Using Email Templates for Send Email F9 Functionality

2010-01-01T04:34:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year 2010 to my Dear Friends, Today I am posting on how we can use Email templates for Send Email F9 functionality.

Siebel Public Sector is primarily using Case Management. Everything roam around that only.
We had a scenario where when a case closes, CSR can send an Email to the Customer for the survey about the services provided. This is very commonly used scenario where after providing a service, customer is asked to fill the survey for the satisfaction level about the services provided to him.

Sending Emails is very common in Siebel Application now a days. It can be done using Outbound Communication Manager Business Service or Send Email or F9 from File Menu.
Here, I did configuration so that as soon as user presses F9, a recipient pick applet gets open.

User can pick the recipient for the email. The email address gets auto-populated into 'To' field. Body field is a dropdown showing email templates assosiated with the Business Object. I selected my configured email template then by default, it populates the Body field with the Text and the Substitution Fields like Case #, Case Description, Case Owner etc.

This has also been OOTB configured in Service Request Business Object. I will discuss the whole steps to configure the same in my next post Configuring-Email-Templates

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Siebel Serialization Rules

2009-12-11T00:57:00.000-08:00

Using Serialization, we can configure serial numbers format. This serial number can be generated from a combination of fields so that the numbers are meaningful to an agency. For example, in the case serial number NY-2B-2, the serial number denotes a geographic territory (NY—New York) and a case category (2B—aggravated assault). The third field (2) uniquely identifies the case.

In different application, many times, we need to generate serial numbers to uniquely identify a record. This is not same as Row Id used in Siebel which are nominal numbers.

It can be used to child object like Evidences and Attachments for example for first record of Evidence, the Serial number generated can be like NY-2B-2-1. Similarly, if someone is creating first record of same parent but for attachment, the serial number will be NY-2B-2-2. The serial number will get generated as soon as you save the record.

How to Configure Serialization Rules in Tools
First, you need to configure a counter table and Business Component(this is to track counter). If anytime you have configured the Sequence Number, I have strong feeling that the logic it follow is the same.
In the following example, you add INS Claims as a new serialization business object. The primary business component for this business object is INS Claims.

Log in to Siebel Tools as an administrator.
Navigate to Object Explorer, then Table and query for the S_CASE_SEQ_CTR table.
Navigate to Table, then Column and query for the CASE_SEQ_NUM column.
Copy the CASE_SEQ_NUM record.
Name the new column record CLAIM_SEQ_NUM and give it a unique user name like, for example, Claim Sequence Number
Navigate to Object Explorer, then Business Component and query for the PUB Counter business component.
Navigate to Business Component, then Field and query for the Case Counter record.
Copy the Case Counter record.
Name the new record Ur Entity Counter and in the Column field, enter CLAIM_SEQ_NUM.

Now, You must also configure the Claims table and business component.

Navigate to Object Explorer, then Table and query for the S_INS_CLAIM table.
Create two new column records called SERIAL_NUM and LOCAL_SEQ_NUM.To get the correct values for these two columns, query the S_CASE table for the same columns.
Navigate to Object Explorer, then Business Component and query for the INS Claims business component.
Navigate to Business Component, then Field and create two new field records called Serial Number and Local Counter. To get the correct values for these two fields, query the HLS Case business component for the same fields.
Navigate to Business Component, then Business Component User Prop and add the following user property records.
- SerializationAutoGenerate and value as 'Y'
- SerializationBO and value as 'INS Claims'
- SerializationBC and value as 'INS Claims'
- SerializationChildBO and value as 'INS Claims'
NOTE: If you add serialization on child business objects and components, you might need to add additional fields. Use the serialization configuration for the HLS Case as a guide
Compile the edited projects and replace the Siebel Repository File (SRF).

Adding a Claim Attribute Type Option
Perform the following procedure to add Claim Counter to the Type drop-down list for attributes in the Serialization Rules view in the Administration - Case screen.

Navigate to the Administration - Data screen, then the List of Values view.
Query for PUB_CASE_RULE_ATTRIBUTE_TYPE.All the options displayed in the Type drop-down list are returned.
Create a new record with Claim Counter as the Display Value.

How to Create Serialization Rules in Client

Go to the Administration - Case screen, then the Serialization Rules view.
In the Serialization Rules list, create a new record and complete the fields as appropriate.
- Name: Name of the rule.
- Business Object: The business object on which the rule is based.
- Business Component: The business component containing the fields on which the rule is based.
Create a new record in below Attribute List Applet.
- Sequence: Sequence number for the Serial Number.The 1st sequence number Attribute will be on the LHS of the Serial Number.
- Type: Possible values include various types of counters, constants, parent serial numbers, and fields.
- Business Component: Business component selected in the Serialization Rules list.
- Field Name: Select Field name for Type as Field.
- Constant Value: Specify a value of constant for Type as Constant.
Repeat Step 3 until you define all the attributes required for the serial number.

The last attribute in the sequence is generally a counter value so that each serial number is unique.

Note: For More Information, Please read Siebel Public Sector pdf available in bookshelf.The example is also given in that pdf.

Siebel Activity Template and Activity Plan

2009-12-09T04:30:00.000-08:00

Many scenarios where we need to perform certain tasks to complete the process. In Siebel, for task, we have got activities.
So, for any such process, we always need to perform those tasks.
In Siebel, It provides a feature called Activity Templates and Activity Plans.

What is Activity Template and Activity Plan?
Activity Template is a template which you can use to create a set of Activities.
Activity Plan: When you add the Template with the Entity like Accounts, Contacts, Cases. It becomes Activity Plan. It is like a master Activity which you need to add to the entity so that the Activities will also get created with the Entity.

How to create Activity Templates

Go to Administration-Data, then Activity Template View.
In the Activity Templates list, create a new record, and Fill the values in the fields
- Name: Fill the Name of the Template
- Type: Where you would be using this Template, select the values from Dropdown
- Sales Stage and Sales method: Select the Value in case you are going to use Template on change of Sales Stage or on invoking of Sales Method
- Public: No Logic Associated, You might choose to use it in conjunction with workflows and search specifications
- Auto Trigger:For type Opportunity, activity plan automatically generated for opportunities with this sales stage
Drilldown on Activity Template Name and Go to the Activity Template Details View tab

In the Activity Templates Details list, create a new record, and complete the necessary fields
- Type: Activity Type
- Duration: Time needed to complete the activity
- Employees: User names of the people who are to perform the activity
- Lock Assignment: If true, Assignment can still be changed manually
- Display In:To display the activity in the Calendar screen, the Activity screen,or in both.

Create a new activity template detail record for each activity associated with the activity template

Creating Activity Plan Now, as per the Type, you had selected while creating Activity Template record, the Activity Template can be seen in the dropdown when you create a Activity Plan under any Entity like Account, Contact etc. As soon as you save the record, the Activities associated with that Template will get created.
This Activity Plan creation under entity can be done manually as well as system also can do that after some configuration/scripting.

Siebel Campaign Management Part-2

2009-12-08T23:27:00.000-08:00

Continuing from Part-1...

Before Using Campaign management, one should have a clear understanding of the elements used. One must also know the difference among them.

Campaign, Offers and Treatment
Typically each campaign has a single offer, but you can associate multiple treatments with that offer.
Offers can be reused in many campaigns, but the campaign is a one-time instance of the offer presented to a customer at a certain point in time.
A treatment is a channel-specific instance of an offer.You create a treatment for every channel, such as email or direct mail, through which you want to deliver the offer.

A campaign is the initiative in which you convey a marketing message to one or more groups of people. Typically, campaigns deliver a promotional offer to retain current customers or to acquire new customers across channels of communication. For example, you may launch a phone campaign that invites contacts to sign up for a special promotion or deliver a direct mail campaign that provides a sample of a new product and a coupon offer to existing customers.

The goal of a marketing campaign is to create an opportunity that ultimately results in a sale, brand recognition, or some other type of response. Marketers use both direct and indirect campaigns to achieve these objectives.

Direct campaigns target individuals using multichannel approaches such as email and telephone. Contacts for the campaign are derived by applying segmentation criteria against a database of customer information and generating a list or by purchasing or renting a list of prospects.Multiple campaigns can use the same segment criteria.

Indirect campaigns target indeterminate groups of people whose general characteristics you may know, but whose exact composition you do not know. Examples of indirect campaigns are those that use television, radio, print ads, or other forms of media for delivery of the message. An indirect campaign is associated with a marketing program’s stage rather than with a specific segment or list.

Response Management
Siebel Campaigns use Response Management. Whenever prospects or contacts respond to an offer through any channel (by inbound email, the Web, a call center, or sales representative), their responses may be captured in detail using the Responses screen. Using Response views, you can determine which contacts to pursue as opportunities.

List Management
Siebel Campaigns use List Management to create and manage lists of contacts and prospects within your applications for use in marketing campaigns. A list is defined as a grouping of contact or prospect records in the Siebel database.
Difference between contact and Prospects
Contacts are customers already in the Siebel database. Prospects are potential customers that have yet to be screened, qualified, and promoted to contacts. By using this distinction, List Management can eliminate prospects that do not qualify for promotion to contacts.

Using Programs
A program is a multistep dialogue in which you can set up a series of communications to your customers and prospects. In the Programs screen, you can use the graphical drag-and-drop Program Flow view or the Program Explorer view to design and execute multistage, triggered, and recurring marketing programs using new or existing campaigns, lists, and segments.
You can establish multiple stages for a marketing program. Each stage can have multiple campaigns, lists, segments, and segment trees. Subsequent stages can be based on a customer response or any other event. For example, a visit by a sales person to a premium customer may trigger a follow-up email to that customer for the selected product.

Note: This document only provides a high level overview of Siebel Campaign Management.It has been summarized from Oracle Siebel Documentation.

Siebel Campaign Management Part-1

2009-12-08T21:35:00.000-08:00

A campaign is a marketing tool that is used to target and motivate specific segments of your customer base to achieve a specific result. Campaigns can be stand-alone or part of a multistage program.

Elements in Stand-Alone Campaigns and Multistage Campaigns

Offer:An offer is a single proposition or message that you want to present to your current and potential customers as part of a campaign.

Treatment:A treatment is a channel-specific instance of an offer. A treatment can include details such as the HTML content, literature, delivery parameters, a call guide,and other details.

Segment:A segment defines a target set of customers or prospects. A campaign can target one or more segments.

Source code:A source code is composed of multiple codes that represent information about thecustomer, and the offer sent to the customer. You use source codes to track the customers’ responses and gauge the reaction to a campaign and its offers.

Vendor:A vendor is a company that you retain to help you with a campaign, such as a printing house, a fulfillment house, and a telemarketer.

Programs:A program is a container for organizing, designing, and executing multistage,triggered, and recurring marketing programs using new or existing campaigns, lists,and segments.

Stage:A stage is a group of campaigns that happen during a certain phase of a program.It can also contain responses and leads.

Responses: Response handling is essential in triggering follow-up stages. Whenever prospects or contacts respond to an offer treatment through any channel (by inbound email,the Web, a call center, or sales representative, and so on), their responses may be captured in detail. You can use this data to determine which contacts to pursue as opportunities.

Waves:Waves are a method of phasing the delivery of a campaign or stage over time, or for phasing the delivery of treatments over time or across vendors.

to be continued in Campaign Management Part-2

Note: This document only provides a high level overview of Siebel Campaign Management.It has been summarized from Oracle Siebel Documentation.

Siebel Public Sector

2009-12-07T22:53:00.000-08:00

Siebel Public Sector provides two set of application.
One to be used by Officers working for Govt Agencies:

To Create and manage the case
To Create Contacts, Accounts, Incidents
To Create Benefit Plans

Another One(self service) can be used by Citizens:

To know the status of their cases
To access any published information by Govt
To Search the required info into FAQs

Siebel Public Sector can be used for multiple agencies:
Municipal corporations,
Social services,
Tax and revenue management,
Public health,
Immigration agencies, and
Investigative agencies

Siebel Public Sector provides the below feature Out of box:
Location Tracking: It provides a standardized Location Tracking Mechanism for various addresses like malls, hotels, office parks, and campuses. Users can also specify an area that does not have address information—for example, a street intersection or the north end of a lake. You can associate latitude and longitude pairs or Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) values witha single location.

Serialization Rules: It also provides Serialization Rules which can be used to give a Serial Number by default to a case using some of the case related values like Territory, Category for example: For example, in the case serial number NY-2B-2, the serial number denotes a geographic territory (NY—New York) and a case category (2B—aggravated assault). The third field (2) uniquely identifies the case.

Approval Templates: It also provides a feature for setting up Approval Templates. for example for a particular type of case, you want that it should pass through a set of Approval from some Employees of the Organization.Similarly for Activity Templates as well.

Assignment of Cases and Ownership
Cases by default get assigned to the employee who created the case. Case assignment can be done manually or It can be done automatically(may need configuration) using Siebel Assignment Manager based on the different filed values like Geographic Location, category of case, availability of the user.Multiple employee can also be assigned to a case.

Case Activity Plans
Case Activity Plans can be set up. Just for an overview, An activity plan is a set of tasks (activities in Oracle’s Siebel data model) that users must complete to finish processing the case. Analyst can create Activity Plans.

Adobe Forms Integration
This provides you to map Siebel data with the Adobe Forms. This can be outbound and Inbound. For example in case of
Outbound: To automatically populate forms, such as citizenship and immigration applications with Siebel data.
Inbound: To automatically populate Siebel data from benefits forms,such as applications for unemployment insurance.
Now, you need to select or create an integration object, generate a schema, and map the XML schema to the form.

Assessment templates: If your organization mandates specific assessment criteria, you must set up assessment templates with attributes. When creating a new Case Assessment template,set the Type value to HLS Case.

For more information, Please see Siebel Case Management

Note: This document only provides a high level overview of Siebel Public Sector.It has been summarized from Oracle Siebel Documentation.

Siebel Case Management

2009-12-06T21:16:00.000-08:00

Recently, I am working on a project based on Siebel Public Sector.

Siebel Public Sector is mainly focused on the Case Management. It provides a 360° view for Case Management.

Definition of Case
Case is something which can be logged to Govt/Govt Managed agencies to track any kind of interaction. That interaction can be for seeking information, complaint, sharing information, suggestion, to apply for Passport and Taxation.
I would say its Citizen oriented Approach.

Case Management needs to perform some activities, Approvals, validations, Assignments, Benefit Plans, Assessment based on the data collected from different sources.Case Management can be drilldown and the information can be sub-divided into multiple entities. Case Management comprises of Detail Views like:

Accounts	Approvers	Activities
Benefits Plan	Assessments	Activity Plans
Change of Circumstances	Attachments	Assets
Evidence	Contacts	Leads
Notes	Calender	Incidents
Related Cases	Service Requests	Addresses
Households	Groups	Group Suspects
Partners	Projects	Proposals
Presentations	literature Distribution	Vehicles
Claims	Diseases	Audit Trails
Verification Plans	QA Plans

Using Case Management, we can set up multiple kinds of cases of different Government departments/agencies like
Municipal corporations,
Social services,
Tax and revenue management,
Public health,
Immigration agencies, and
Investigative agencies

Apart from above these, there are few button present on Case Management View.
1. Regenerate All- Used to regenerate serial numbers for the cases.
2. Submit- Used to submit the case for Approval by creating inbox item.
3. Recall- Recall the submitted case.
4. Screening- Used to Apply New Govt Policy Rules and Screen the citizens.
5. Eligibility- Used to Apply New Govt Policy Rules and check the eligibility.
6. Change of circumstances- If any Change in case, modify Benefit Plans.

Note: This document only provides a high level overview of Siebel Case Management. It has been summarized from Oracle Siebel Documentation.

VBscript vs escript

2009-10-08T23:20:00.000-07:00

Recently, I have to write a BS in escript which was
originally written in VB Script. Since Siebel provides a utility to convert the
VB Script to escript but that utility has so many limitations.

Siebel provided utility does only syntactically changes in the
code which is quite helpful when you have huge lines of code to convert. But analyzing
the code is helpful because there can be things which you can do using config,
workflows or BRP.

Limitations of the utility:

Utility does not modify things for the explicit conversions
like Str, CInt, Int if used. Utility does

The differences between Siebel escript and VB Script are as
follows:

	VB Script	escript
Dates	· Uses inbuilt function to convert Date to String and vice versa. For E.g. DateValue, Str, Format · It also uses DateDiff function to calculate the difference of Days	We need to do scripting for conversion between Date to String and vice versa. Also to find the difference of the days you can use a calculated field or script for finding difference between the Dates.
Function Return Values	Function name = value	Function name = return(value)
Error Hander	Always executed	Only executed if error. eScript has finally block to destroy objects.
True/False	Integer	Boolean
Parameters	All by ref.	Only Complex Object by ref.
Modulus	To get the reminder, use ‘mod’	%
Integer Division	Use back slash ‘\’ for integer division	For every division, use forward slash ‘/’
Script Structure	Function MyFunction() As String On Error GoTo ErrorHandler //comments //variable declarations //Program statements are here ErrorHandler: //ErrorHandler label and all following code is here //Object destroys from (just the) error handler are moved here End Function	function MyFunction() { //comments //variable declarations try { //Normal code goes here } catch (e) { //Error code goes here } finally { //Object destroys go here } }

In escript for
explicit conversion, we can use functions like ToInteger(), ToString().

Using HTML and Javascript in SmartScripts

2009-10-05T22:38:00.000-07:00

It is possible to enhance the SmartScript UI through the use of several HTML tags that can be defined in either the Questions or within the TemplateFile.
In order to enhance the font styles displayed within the QuestionText, you can define HTML tags within the Question text property in the Question Translation Applet. In the example displayed the tags can be used to display Text in Italic. Other HTML tags can be used to enhance this further, such as displaying text in bold, underlined etc.

It is also possible to display a hyperlink within the QuestionText property to link to a web page. This can be achieved through using the HTML tag. Note that the type specified for the question was Information, this is to enable the hyperlink on the URL to be displayed. If Information type is not used, then the QuestionText is displayed in BOLD and the hyper link is not displayed, although it is still possible to select the text and open the web page.

HTML tags can also be used to display graphics within the QuestionText property using the tag. The graphic is displayed in the text of the Question displayed when invoking the SmartScript.

You can also use javascript in a little different way.
In one of the requirement, we need to show a image besides the question.
As soon as user click the image we need to show the table specifying the details.
The below code give you an idea how we used that.

<img src="images/icon_req.gif" border="0" space="0" hspace="0">My Question<html>
<body>
<img src="images/hlp.gif" height = 20 width = 20 onclick="var p=window.createPopup();
var pbody=p.document.body;
pbody.style.border='solid black 1px';
pbody.innerHTML='<table border = 1><tr><td>Color</td><td>Text</td><td>Text</td></tr><tr><td bgcolor = Yellow>        </td><td><50%</td><td>Text</td></tr><tr><td bgcolor = Green>        </td><td>>=50%</td><td>>= 75%</td></tr><tr><td bgcolor = Yellow>        </td><td>>=50%</td><td>>=50% & <75%</td></tr><tr><td bgcolor = red>        </td><td>>=50%</td><td><50%</td></tr></table>';
p.show(450,250,200,200,document.body);">
</img>
</body>
</html>

The only limitation is that if the question is required then when it will pp up the nmessage for required question ,the siebel will show the javascript text as well.
To overcome this, we have to remove this question as required and at Question Leave event of the last question of this page or Question Enter event of the next page fist question, we can check the value if its null, we can RaiseErrorText inthe script that This question is required. Please give the answer.

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Export Data using dbisql.exe

2009-09-30T09:52:00.000-07:00

Recently I found that there is one more way apart from using #getuid.out
which I post in my previous blog 'Query Result to file using dbisqlc'

select name from SYSUSERAUTH
where name not in ('SYS','DBA','PUBLIC','SIEBEL','DBO','dbo','SSE_ROLE') >#getuid.out

The other way to export the date into other file format is using output command.

After you execute your query.
You need to execute command having syntax

output to filename

output format can be in excel.

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Will Oracle discontinue Haleys Rules with Siebel?

2009-09-30T04:35:00.000-07:00

I got a newsletter this morning...

This letter is to provide you with product news related to the acquisition of Haley by Oracle. After completing a thorough review of our combined product lines, Oracle has decided to discontinue Haley Expert Rules (also known as Siebel Business Rules Designer) and Haley Business Rules Engine. As a substitute, Oracle offers Oracle Policy Modeling and Oracle Policy Automation for licensing by its customers for a license fee. Oracle believes both Oracle products provide a more comprehensive solution for its customers. As a Siebel customer, you are being notified of this change because Haley Expert Rules and Haley Business Rules Engine are embedded in the Siebel CRM 8.x product.

Along with this news, we want to reiterate our commitment to customer satisfaction and our intention to communicate with you regularly during the integration of our companies. For many Siebel customers, there will be no impact to their applications and this notification will serve as an informational update on Oracle's product direction only.

If you are a current Oracle support customer, Premier Support of Oracle's Siebel Application Releases for CRM 8.0x and CRM 8.1.1 will continue for as long as January 2012 and December 2013 respectively.

If your upcoming plans in October include Oracle OpenWorld, below are two sessions dedicated to Oracle Policy Automation that you may be interested in:

* Natural Language Policy Automation: Empower Business Users to Manage Policy Complexity
Session: S311983
Thursday, October 15, 9:00-10:00, Westin Market Street Hotel, Metropolitan I
Speaker: Davin Fifield

* Integrate Oracle Policy Automation with Siebel in Less than 30 Minutes
Session: S310573
Thursday, October 15, 15:00-16:00, Westin Market Street Hotel, Metropolitan I
Speaker: Philip Whitwell

Click and Move Optimization

2009-09-27T03:35:00.000-07:00

This blog comes as result of the thought when I have to click several times on About View to see which Screen, which BO, which BCs and which Applets have been used so that i can customize my siebel application by modify in whatever object I need to do changes.

We read about optimizations process, CPU optimizations, memory optimization....etc,etc
I heard abt website optimizations, this can be a part of that.

The earlier scenario is like Menu bar->Help->About view
In siebel v7.8 application,there is a menu bar on top(File, View, Help....)
a toolbar having some icons like Site Map, Dashboard, Quick Print, Ihelp.....
As I mentioned above About View is needed very frequently to see the objects on the page.We have to go thru 4 steps....
1. Move the mouse to Help on Menu bar
2. Click on the Help
3. Move the mouse to About View Sub menu
4. Click on it to open a new window which shows the objects name.

What I did is I made a button on the toolbar(Icon can be used by specifying the image property in SWT, web template file).
What I have to do is to add a Toolbar in the Application Object.

See Application Object is having a hidden Object Application Toolbar in Object Explorer Window, if you want to see this then you have to change the Clientviewmode from web to All in tools.cfg file.

Go into view menu of tools and select all under application.
Before that you also need to create your own toolbar, which is also a hidden object, create a new toolbar and toolbar item with command About View(SWE), type will be link.

Compile the Application, Toolbar objects.
You also need to modify CCFrameViewBar.swt file which is in webtemplate folder.
not remembering the exact tags...you can make similar as given in the file already
just change the Toolbar item name
(PS: you add these these tags at right place not inside any SWE:IF condition which i carelessly did)

Just Reopen ur application, You will find a new button on toolbar :-)

Now the scenario becomes...
1.Move the mouse on About View Button
2.Click the button to open about view window.

50% optimization....

The whole purpose of writing this blog is how we can save small small time from these like these and make a better application for all.

Business Service Context

2009-09-23T22:51:00.000-07:00

Input Argument to Action Set of Runtime Event

I thought to write an article how to use the input argument while we invoke Runtime Event Action Set. We invoke Runtime Event to generally call a Business Service/Workflow.

When you specify the Business Service and its method there at Event. There is one more field called Business Service Context. This Business Service Context can be used to set the input Argument of the Business Service Method.

Let's say I want to invoke a workflow from that business service so my:

Business Service ## "Workflow Process Manager"

Method ## "Run Process"

Business Service Context ## "ProcessName", "WorkflowNameHere", "OtherProperty", "Value"

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Siebel Certification Exam Questions

2009-09-23T01:02:00.001-07:00

Sample Questions
View answers below

Sample questions are provided solely to familiarize candidates with the multiple-choice format and writing style of questions that will be found on the exam. Sample questions may not cover the full spectrum of difficulty that is covered by the exam questions. Success on the sample questions does not predict success on the exam.

1. In order to change the fonts used by your Siebel application, what file(s) should you modify? Select one answer.
A.Siebel.exe file
B.Siebel template files
C.Cascading style sheets
D.SQL scripts to change the data model

2. Which Link property must be populated for a MVG with a M:M relationship, but is not populated for a MVG with a 1:M relationship?
A.Inter Table
B.Destination Field
C.Child Business Component
D.Parent Business Component

3. You have enabled the Workflow Management component group on the server through the Siebel user interface, but you are unable to run workflows using Workflow policies. Which step might have you forgotten to execute? (Choose two.)
A.restarting the Siebel Server service
B.running a Generate Triggers batch job
C.enabling the Generate Triggers component
D.setting the Workflow Policy properties in Tools
E.specifying the triggering event in the detail applet for the workflow step branch following the Start Step

4. Which three are true about a task in Siebel task UI? (Choose three.)
A.It implements process automation.
B.It must be invoked by a run-time event.
C.It consists of a sequenced set of views.
D.It does not support conditional processing.
E.It does not support transactional processing.
F.It is designed for novice users performing complex tasks.

5. Business rules consist, in part, of concepts. Which two are examples of concepts? (Choose two.)
A.Field
B.Entity
C.Value
D.Object

6. Which describes the role of Assignment Objects for Assignment Manager?
A.to identify the people that will be assigned to records
B.to describe when a record should be assigned to candidates
C.to identify the types of data to assign using Assignment Manager
D.to evaluate all people for a matching skill in order to assign records

7. Which statement is true regarding making changes to assignment rules?
A.To make changes you must first deactivate the rule.
B.If you make changes to a released assignment rule, you must release the rule again.
C.Changes to a released assignment rule take affect automatically when the record is saved.
D.Once an assignment rule is released it cannot be changed, it must be revised before it can be edited.

8. Which two statements concerning interface tables are true? (Choose two.)
A.An interface table can populate only one base table.
B.An interface table may populate more than one base table.
C.A base table may be populated by more than one interface table.
D.A base table is always populated by one and only one interface table.

9. When should you use implicit primaries through Enterprise Integration Manager?
A.any time you have more than one child record in the dataset
B.when you need to have multiple primaries associated with a record
C.when the external system defines which child record should be the primary
D.when the external system does not define which child record should be the primary

10. Your Accounts.ifb file appears as follows:
[Siebel Interface Manager]
USER NAME = "SADMIN"
PASSWORD = "SADMIN"
PROCESS = Import Accounts
[Import Accounts]
TYPE = Import
BATCH = 100
TABLE = EIM_ACCOUNT

After running the import, you find that the IF_ROW_STAT for all of your accounts is PARTIALLY IMPORTED, yet you can see the accounts in the Accounts Administration view.
What is the most likely cause of this?

A.Not all of the required flags were set.
B.The EIM job generated an internal error.
C.Some of the required flags were set incorrectly.
D.Not all of the base tables that EIM_ACCOUNT maps to were populated.
E.EIM_ACCOUNT did not contain required information for the S_ACCOUNT base table.

Answers

1. C
2. A
3. AB
4. ACF
5. BC
6. C
7. B
8. BC
9. D
10.D

These question are also available on Oracle website.

Spelling Check in Siebel

2009-09-22T05:22:00.001-07:00

Hello friends,
We can have spelling check in Siebel as well.

We need to have a field for which we need spelling check and a button which will invoke spelling check for the same field. It can also be customized as menu item button.

We need to create “Check Spelling Field” user property for the applet where the Check Spelling button and the field to be checked are located.

The process of configuring spelling check is following.

1. Create a button control on the applet with Method Invoked property as ShowPopup. If the spelling check is for non required field, you need to specify the field name.
2. Define control user properties for the button created at step 1.
Mode Edit
Popup Spell Checker Popup Applet
Popup Dimensions 560 X 350

3. Add the button to the Web Layout of the applet.
4. Add the Spell Check business component ‘Spell Checker Applet VBC’ to a business object applet’s view is based on.
5. If the field to be spell checked is required you need to create a Applet User Property ‘Check Spelling Field’ with value as ‘FieldName’ (name of the field to be spell checked)

Apart from a button on the applet as created in step 1, you can also create a menu item button with Command as Command ‘Check Spelling’

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UserID/Password Invalid Siebel 8.0

2009-09-22T04:34:00.000-07:00

An issue was reported with logging to dedicated client on Siebel 8.0. The reported behavior is error we had to face while connecting to Dedicated Client in Siebel 8.0version
User cannot access database using dedicated web client with following message
"User ID or Password is invalid".
Although we can connect to the database through dbisqlc.exe

Using the same userID or password you can connect to database.

To fix this issues, try the following things
1. Navigate to Siebel 8.0\webclient\bin and rename the diccache.dat file if file exists.
2. Delete all the files *.spf.
3. Try changing the SRf who are using to connect to dedicated client.

Query Result to file using dbisqlc

2009-09-22T03:29:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends,

Most of us know that the Siebel has given us utility to query in the local database using dbisqlc.exe exist in Client/BIN folder or Tools/Bin folder.

To connect to Server, we generally use Toad or SQL Developer which provides us option to save the output in excel file.

The database siebel uses for Local is into Sybase. In the utility dbisqlc.exe , we dont have any option to save the result in any file. In Sybase, we have an operator '>' which can be used to direct output to a file.

For example the below query,

select name from SYSUSERAUTH
where name not in ('SYS','DBA','PUBLIC','SIEBEL','DBO','dbo','SSE_ROLE') >#getuid.out.

The output of this query will store login id in getuid file at the any of the following paths:
..\Tools\LOCAL\getuid
..\Client\LOCAL\getuid

Open the file & you can see your login id.

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I-Help Export Crash Issue

2009-09-22T03:20:00.000-07:00

The Issue reported was Export Ihelp Item is failing after addition of 25th Question.
25th and 26th are having large text, I made them short, it allowed me to add one more question and again it failed.

It seems a Product Defect; Export Ihelp is failing if the XML file size exceeds 50 KB.

Alternatives:
1. We need to find some more leverage by shorting the caption size and removing the Questions from Ihelp which are self explanatory so that we can use Export Ihelp functionality to migrate.
2. Side by Side, we can work with Siebel, if they could tell us some possible way to migrate a more than 50 KB ihelp xml file from one environment to another.
3. We can create an Ihelp Item up to a level where Export Ihelp will work. Then Import that into other Environment and then manually adding questions to that environment.

I found a workaround to take export of Ihelp Item.

1. Actually the problem is only with the Export Method used in Applet Menu Item.
2. Siebel is able to generate the xml file and stored in it temp folder of local (on server also it will save the xml file in temp folder).The name of the file created we can get using the Siebel log files.It will have extension as .temp.
3. When it is trying to use export method at step 1. This export method is failing which causes the Object Manage to crash.

I have taken the xml from the temp folder for the Ihelp Item which has got list of the all questions although the size is more than 50 KB.
And I am also able to import this xml and the questions are coming properly.

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Capture Drilldown based on Field

2009-09-22T02:52:00.000-07:00

Recently, I come across arequirement where We need to set perform some operation before a user drilldown on field in a List Applet.

Vanilla provides a method Drilldown at applet level which can be captured.
There is no way specified in bookshelf whcih can determine that on which field drilldown has occured.

The problem here is if there are more than one drilldown list column in applet, click on any of them will triger the operatio we need to do.
We have thought to use Application Pre Navigate event but the Drilldown view could also be accessible from normal navigation. The operation ill get performed that tiem also. There will be an overhead code at Application level.

The WOrkaround to the problem is to use the SWEField property passed to the Applet PreInvoke propertyset gives the Id specific to the drilldown field . This value has a specific format which changes from list column to list column and record to record.

For example, in “INS Claims List Applet”:

Claim Number field’s first record on applet will have SWEField value “s_1_2_33_0” while the second will have “s_1_2_33_1” and so on
Assign To field’s first record on applet will have SWEField value “s_1_2_93_0” while the second will have “s_1_2_93_1”.

We can find Control Id for a list column and use the same for condition check as below.

function Applet_PreInvokeMethod (name, inputPropSet)
{
if(name == "Drilldown")
{
//Get SWEField property value
var SWEFieldParts = inputPropSet.GetProperty("SWEField");

// Find last occurrence of “_”
var sLastIndex = SWEFieldParts.lastIndexOf("_");

// Get the Control Id of a list column
var sControlId = SWEFieldParts.substring("0", sLastIndex);

if (sControlId == "s_1_2_33")
{
// Business logic

return ("CancelOperation");
}
}
return ("ContinueOperation");
}

Sharing is the Power

Unified Messaging Service

2009-09-21T01:56:00.000-07:00

Unified Messaging Service is a way to provide the messages to the user as per their interaction with the Application.
This Business service provides an alternative to Browser Script confirm message with more than two buttons on the pop up applet.
Based on the responses,clicking of the button, user can choose to divert the flow of the execution to Business service or cancel the operation.

Go to Admin Order Management Screen -> Message Type
You can easily create a Message type, specifying the Text messages you want to show in the pop up messages. The Active mode is used for Pop up applets. Passive mode is for a applet on the view where the message will all the time.

There is a Detailed View called Responses where you can create the Responses Name(which will be caption on the pop up Applet). The Type of the response and the Business Service and applet you want to invoke after the user click on that response.
Log and Suppress flag are used in case you want to suppress the duplicate messages.

Payload View is used if you want to add any field value in the Message Text. Vanilla only provides some order management related field such as Party Id, Order Id etc.

If you want to specify Bitmap, then you can use the Admin-Document Literature view to add the bitmap image. That will be shown as a record in the Admin Order Managemenet Message Type Bitmap Pick Applet.

On Siebel metalink metalink3.oracle.com, they have provided one wrapper BS which can be used to invoke the Message Type. You only need to pass the Message Type, Business Component and a unique ID which will be the Message Id (it can be Process Instance Id in case of Workflows).
Wrapper BS also provide a way to add any field value to the Payload Property Set.

For more details refer Order Management pdf of Siebel Bookshelf.
Feel free to ask any question on the same.

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