Using Email Templates for Automatic triggering of Emails

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:-

1. Creating the New Recipient Source.
2. Creating the Non-Joined Recipient Group.
3. Creation of Email template.
4. Substituting the Fields in the Email text.
5. Adding HTML templates.
6. Testing the Outbound Communication Request.
7. 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.

Sharing is the power.

Configuring Recipient Groups

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.

Sharing is the Power.

Configuring Email Templates

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

1. Navigate to the Administration - Communications screen, then the All Templates view.
2. In the Templates list, click New and complete the fields as appropriate for example Name, Channel type, Status.
3. 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.

1. 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.

Sharing is the Power

Using Email Templates for Send Email F9 Functionality

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

Sharing is the Power.