GeeKs Blogging @ dotCOM » Critique

Siebel – Merge Records – Checklist

Nitin Jain — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 05:42:10 +0000

I call this Part III, and concluding part of a series of my posts on the Merge Records functionality in Siebel CRM. You may want to take a look at the previous 2 parts below:
Siebel – Merge Records functionality
Siebel – Automating Merging Records by script – II

Though this looks like a very interesting and useful utility from the face of it, it can be dangerous too.

If you decide to go ahead with this functionality for 2 records, I doubt if there is a way you can recover both the records once again. This is the most dangerous aspect that I see with the automation concept we discussed in Part II of the Merge Records series of posts.

I also came across a few more issues with the Merge Records functionality. I am penning them down here.

Bookshelf says, when the two records are merged, only the top level, or at most top 2 level records are merged. This is particularly important concept if we consider the case of merging the Account records, for example. We could have contacts and their activities associated with these two Account Records. As per the Bookshelf, only the Account and Contact records should have merged. However, from the face of it, it seems, the Activities records also merge practically.

When we merge two records, Duplicate records are created on the MVG based fields. For eg. merging Person A record with Person B record, would create two records under the Language MVG even if both the original contacts had the same value for Language. The only suggested solution is to remove the duplicate records through scripts (Baad solution proposed, I must say!).

Single value fields are not updated after the Merge Records process. Merge Record process updates the child records by means of Links and Joins based on the Foreign Key fields. Siebel recommends the use of “Data Quality” Siebel OOB functionality. It is available under the head, Administration – Data Quality.

Position records are not merged when mergin Contact records. How could Siebel miss out on such important stuff.

And many more….

The more I explored about it, the more interested I got in the complete MergeRecord functionality. Try running a simple search on Metalink with the Search String, “Merge Records”. I am sure you would become interested, too.

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Customer Relationship Management – not just fancy software

Nitin Jain — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:04:08 +0000

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a very wide domain in itself. I always like to see Customer Relationship as a concept (of which Software is one part) rather than the Software Solution itself.

I am sure I have better relationships with my local Grocer than the fancy stores and supermarkets all over the place. Refer to the KMart, Coles, Fanklin’s, Reliance Fresh, or the Birla Group’s more.. supermarkets, none of them knows me better than my local guy who has been selling me spices, flour, paddy, and my other daily needs for so many years now.

He refers to me by my name whenever I visit, knows all about my family, my background, how much time I have been in that area, and what all have I actively participated in during the time.

He would be eager to inform me of new product launches in the past week, freebies, special promotionary schemes, and what not to help me out. I am not surprised when he passes on the benefits of some special scheme that the shopkeepers are entitled for. He has been doing it for years now, and I have begun to think of it as right of my way.

I doubt if any of the bigwigs will ever come close to that. The best I can even expect, if it ever comes true, is to receive personalized emails or letters with my name and address, informing me of some special scheme they are running in their store, or if some special loyalty offer comes my way.

As they say, “you can only compare comparables!!”. From my point of view, the two are absolutely no match. The point I am trying to make is that there is still a long way to go for the Customer Relationship Management softwares to go. Lots to learn from the simple everyday practices of bartering, buying and selling, that we have been watching since so long.

However, I must add that CRM Sofwares have come a long way from where they started off long back. I shudder at the thought, when I think of the first CRM softwares, when Customer Relationship was introduced as a concept initially. CRM systems then, were more of Sales Force Automation softwares than the ones intended to build a Customer Relationship. We have definitely come a loong way, with an extra ‘o’!

Most prominent among these is Siebel CRM, the undisputed market leader at the moment, owing to many of its qualities, and capabilities. Here, at GeeksBlogging@dotCOM, we will be introducing it to you, and also the many of its advanced capabilities which translate it into such a success. We would definitely like to complement the series with the other successful, and not so successful CRM solutions available, for all of us to compare and provide our Architecting perspective on the same.

Hey, it’s my perspective, I ain’t passing judgements on what’s right, and what’s not!

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Siebel – EAI Queue – a Critique’

Nitin Jain — Mon, 04 May 2009 13:38:40 +0000

I had introduced the Siebel EAI Queue and its usage in my last articles. Though Siebel EAI Queue is a very good Siebel feature, there are some serious shortcomings as well. An architect would, thus, need to critically evaluate all the pros and cons before deciding to implement the OOB EAI Queue or a custom solution in a Siebel EAI project.

First let’s look at all the areas where Siebel EAI Queues stand strong.

1) No customisation needed
This is an OOB fucntionality. So, no custom coding is necessary. The vanilla BS can directly be called from the WF to help operate the EAI Queues. Custom code comes with its own sets of problems – dedicated human resources, architecting, implementing, testing, debugging, performance, scalability, expandability, robustness.

2) Reduced Implementation time
Implementation time is zero for Logging module. The only effort is to call the vanilla BS at all the places where we want to log messages.

3) Almost no debugging needed.
It is a Siebel OOB functionality. So, I can be sure there are no code glitches and resulting mishaps. If something doesn’t work as it says in the Bookshelf, either my usage is faulty, or it is a Siebel Product Defect

4) Lesser Team size as no concentrated effort on this module of the project.
Why have dedicated human resources working on the Logging and Error Handling mechanism?

5) Robustness
Extremely robust. It works with the file system. So, I don’t think there is a limit on as to how big a file can be stored here. The BS should ideally not fail unless some Siebel Server component itself is down.

6) Performance
Best performance you can ever get I guess. Mother knows best! If Siebel has designed and developed this, I guess, this is as good as it gets.

Do drop in some comments in case you feel I have not done justice to the positives part, and that there are points that I have missed out on. I will update the post accordingly.

But then, as with everything else on Earth, nothing is perfect. I am looking at a very simple requirement – I need to point out as to which message is an Inbound message, and which one, and Outbound. How do I implement it with the EAI Queue architecture?

Think, think, think…

The best I can think of is to extend the corresponding table for the EAI Queue, and the corresponding Business Components. I can also expose them on the UI for better handling. Question – After extending the Siebel objects, how do I use them. How do I populate this new flag called “Inbound Message” for eg, to TRUE or FALSE? The Logging of messages is being done through the vanilla BS. There is no code exposed. Now, if I have to populate this new column, I may be able to do it by scripting the vanilla BS – “EAI XML Queuing Service” after some work with the BS analysing Inputs and Outputs. Maybe, better still, just use a Siebel Operation step after the vanilla BS to update all the custom columns. But then, double query on the same record of the same BC, it’s a performance issue.

This is only one example when I could need to extend the objects with many different custom columns.

Let’s start playing! I want to link the Inbound and the Outbound messages. In a sense, there was an Outbound response to an Inbound request to Siebel. We should map which Inbound maps to which Outbound. Else, we may just be drowned in a deluge of messages. More custom columns, Siebel Links, MVLs, etc. as a solution to this. Maybe with some effort, it’s feasible.

I want to store many different types of files and many different types of messages – as in Erroneous Messages, Error Messages, Log Messages. More extensions.

Generally, all projects have a retry mechanism for all the erronous messages. I have seen SAP Business Services being integrated directly with Siebel EAI Queues. But, for custom queues, customization is the answer I guess.

With time, lots of useful and non useful data gets cluttered up in the Queue. A custom cleaning-up and archiving mechanism is thus inevitable.

Single most important issue I personally see with the vanilla EAI Queue approach is the fact that it interacts with the Siebel Filesystem and not the Siebel Database! The messages are stored in form of files in the Siebel Filesystem, eventually with the large number of Siebel messages coming in, the valuable hard disk space will be cluttered quickly. The Siebel FS size will increase. If there is a Siebel project I am working on, I would not mind having a slightly bigger database. But, unnecassary increase in the Siebel Filesystem is the last thing in the world that I would recommend. Don’t even get me started on the many of the file handling issues with many different flavours of UNIX in the market. I once ran into an implementation wherein I had to change the complete architecture from File based to DB based because the OS as a limitation could only accept at max 256 open file handles! Ridiculous as it may seem, it entailed many sleepless nights on my part to get everything up and woring within a week without any glitches – just can’t forget those!

All in all, my point of view is that, though you may use this implementation as an immediate quick fix, or a nice to have feature, Siebel EAI Queues feature fares horrendously on the Scalability and Expandability front.

If you are willing to play around with Siebel vanilla objects and extend them to suit you requirement no end, this may just be the solution for you. However, please do a deep insight and analysis of your requirements and other available options (basically custom, I guess) to get over this. It is more of an Analysts’ point of view to go with either of the two approaches.

Let me see if I can rope in somebody to explain in detail a nice custom Logging, Error Handling, Retry and clean-up / archiving mechanism.

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