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Siebel Admin Mode Flag – II – Issue Log

Madhvi Arora — Mon, 17 May 2010 04:19:54 +0000

In the last post I described about Admin Mode Flag. However, the Admin mode flag is not always the Best way to go forward. It also comes with lots of perils of its own.

We faced certain problems on setting Admin Mode Flag which are:
1) Product Configurator does not work properly in Admin Mode. It throws error on loading as “Cannot load active Business Component”. So we had to remove the option of customizing products in Admin View
2) Since BC User properties do not work in Admin Mode, if you have invoked any method using Named Method, it will not work. You will need to invoke method through some other way in Admin view.
3) When we navigate from a Admin View to non-admin view in the same screen (if both non admin and admin views under same screen), BC User properties will be ignored even in non-admin view as we have navigated from admin view. So, this effects the functionality implemented for Non Admin view.
4) Related to same point above, if you are navigating from Admin View to non-admin view in the same screen, visibility settings will be ignored and all records will be visible under Non Admin view.

Please share your comments if you have faced any other problems in Admin View. Looking forward to a healthy discussion around this.

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Siebel – Admin Mode Flag

Madhvi Arora — Sun, 02 May 2010 07:51:19 +0000

In my last project,we had a requirement of Admin Views, so the admin users if required can change the data from frontend and not going to backend and running update queries.

Admin Views are those views in which all the records are visible to the person who has access to this view irrespective of the position of the person.

Admin views can be created by setting “Admin Mode flag” on the view to “Y”.

Following affects take palce on setting the Admin Mode Flag:
1.Visibility rules are disabled.
2.The user properties in the BC are ignored.
This means that the user properties such as “Field Read Only Field”, “BC Read Only field” get disable for the view on which this flag is set to true.
3.If the view is in Admin mode, then the following restrictions for the business components used by the applets of the view are ignored: no insert, no merge, and no update. However, if these restrictions are set at the applet level rather than the business component level, or if a field has a Read Only value of TRUE, the Admin mode does not affect them.

Vanilla examles of Admin View are: Account Administration View and the Opportunity Administration view.

But due to disabling of these user properties, we faced some practical problems. I will discuss these in my next post. Stay tuned !

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Siebel – SIS OM PMT Service

Madhvi Arora — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 07:26:37 +0000

There are lots of vanilla business services available in Siebel which can be used to configure any process and this helps in avoiding scripting.

One of these services I came across is “SIS OM PMT Service”.

People who have worked on Order Mangement module must be aware of this service.

This service is extensively used in Order Management Process. Both its methods as well as its user properties are utilized in Order Creation Process.

But this service can be used in other modules as well.

It has various methods which can be used are:

Get Profile Attribute

Invoke BC Method

Refresh Business Component

Set Profile Attribute

In this post, I will discuss method “Refresh Business Component” of this service.

As clear from its name, it is used to refresh the Business Component.

In most of scenarios if we update some field or insert new record, UI is not refreshed with that data. We explicitly need to fire blank query either in our script or on UI to refresh UI. Instead of doing this we can use this Method to do so.

The required input arguments to this service are:

Business Object Name—> The name of the BO in which this data needs to be refreshed

Business Component Name—>The name of the BC where refresh is required.

This can be used in both script as well as workflow.

I will discuss the example of workflow:

WF_01

This is a sample workflow which is used to update account status.

The detail description is as follows:

Query For Record: Siebel Operation Step with operation Query is used. Here row_id has been passed in Object Id.

Record Found: Decision Box is used to check the record which needs to be updated exists in system or not .Here check is made with the help of Process Property “Siebel Operation Object Id”. If record is present, then Siebel Operation Object Id will not be null.

Update Account Status : Siebel Operation Step with operation Update is used. Here row_id has been passed in Object Id.

Refresh Record: This step uses BS “SIS OM PMT Service” with method “Refresh Business Component”.

Since here I am updating Account Status in Account Screen, the values of input arguments are:

Input Argument Type Value

Business Object Name Literal Account

Business Component Name Literal Account

Try this it will work.

Please share your valuable comments.

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Siebel – Why Upgrade? – Part II

Nitin Jain — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:03:20 +0000

This is a continuation of the post, “Siebel – Why Upgrade? – Part I”.

Here are some more..

3) Talk about Performance and Efficiency. Though I agree that the new software generally runs with a higher efficiency with most of the old bugs closed, the higher performance almost always comes at a cost of higher Hardware Configuration as well.

The new softwares are, however, seen to be efficient to handle larger volumes of data, or to churn out decisions on the basis of the humongous data store. Maybe, the old system didn’t support it in the first place to make it possible, forget about efficiency!

4) With each higher version, I have personally noted that Siebel Data Model becomes more and more complex. This in turn means more and more universally agreed standards now form a part of the Siebel CRM Installation. This helps a Customer become more aware of the global standards that he may introduce in his organization, if not already there, or to align his Business Process accordingly.

Another fall-out of this, is higher Regulatory Compliance. Now, how many times have I heard Customers going in for implementation of packaged Applications owing to requirements to map to the local Regulatory Requirements?!

Ask yourself the following questions whenever you are pondering over a Software Upgrade:
1) Do I really need an upgrade?
2) What is it in my business that my current implementation is not able to solve?
3) What are the clear Business benefits that the new system brings to the table? Are they relevant to me?
4) If I must upgrade, is my existing IT Infrastructure upto the demands of the new version Installation?
5) How much time do I have before my IT Support for my current version runs out?

Plan ahead, to be ahead.

Feel free to add, or suggest. I am leaving the ground open. Cheers!

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Siebel – Why Upgrade? – Part I

Nitin Jain — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:13:39 +0000

Hi all,

I am back to Siebel Technical Stuff after a long time. I recently worked as a part of a Siebel Upgrade Project for one of my clients.

Siebel Upgrade is a version update methodology supported by Oracle. The Customer can easily upgrade from an older version of Siebel to a higher version.

There is generally a very wide range of reasons as to why people may decide to upgrade. These may range from the obvious, to the obscure, and to truly blasphemous to some CRM Consultants. But, I guess this is one very important aspect which keeps the IT Industry rolling!!

Well, amongst many others, following are some of the popular reasons for which Organizations may decide to upgrade their existing Siebel, or other IT Software Installations.

1) This particular customer of ours very serious about the system running as smoothly as possible. Following this methodology, he banks on a lot of support from Microsoft and Oracle to avoid any issues in Production going forward. The issue is, Microsoft is phasing out support for Windows Server 2003 soon. To make matters worse, Siebel 7.5 is not certified to run on MS Windows Server 2008, the next logical step.

Solution: Upgrade to nearest higher version of Siebel which is supported on the new MS OS. The one you are using is on fire right now.

2) Generally, there is a whole lot of new functionality that Oracle introduces with each new version of Siebel CRM. The customers may want to make use of some of these new functionalities. The Business Benefit may imply a case strong enough to justify the extra cost of moving up to the new version.

Who knows, a Customer may just be able to eliminate a buggy Custom Module altogether by making use of some new functionality provided OOB in a higher version!

Wait for the remaining part of the post. What do you think could be the other reasons?

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Siebel – Case Insensitivity (CIAI) Wizard

Nitin Jain — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 02:54:52 +0000

CIAI stands for Case Insensitive and Accent Insensitive in Siebel. This can be called the first post on GeeksBlogging@dotCOM on Siebel 8 New Features.

I had discussed about some traditional methods of controlling Case Sensitivity in Siebel queries. However, in version 8.0, Siebel has introduced a new feature of the CIAI Wizard which goes a step further in controlling this functionality. This has been carried forward in Siebel 8.1 albeit with some minor modifications.

This is about making searches on individual columns in a Siebel Database Case Independent. Following are the simple steps to configure it for a Siebel Technical Developer:
1) Navigate to Siebel Tools and select the correct Siebel Repository. This could be important in case you have multiple active Siebel Repositories in the System.
2) In Siebel Tools, Navigate to ‘Table’ and then ‘Column’ Object Type after expanding Table in the Object Explorer.
3) Select and highlight the columns on which you wish to run the CIAI Wizard (the ones you wish to make Case Insensitive).
4) Right-click and select ‘Case Insensitivity’ from the Pop Up menu. The CIAI Wizard starts at this time.
5) Review the Configuration Settings and the Export Listing Export Directory. Take this step seriously. It could be handy in Debug operations.
6) Complete the wizard using the ‘Next’ and ‘Finish’ buttons. The Wizard will configure the columns in the Siebel Repository to support CIAI Queries.

Siebel now reroutes the queries on the selected columns to the new columns created in Step (2) above.

Important: After this process is complete, you need to apply and activate the tables, and compile into the Siebel SRF for the changes to take effect.

Upgrade: It is important for the upgrade process to complete, in case you are upgrading to Siebel 8.x from previous versions, before running the CIAI Wizard.

Good News: It is possible to revert the changes done by the CIAI Wizard in case you feel you have messed up something.

In principle, the CIAI Wizard does the following changes in the Database:
1) Set the Default Sensitivity Property for the particular columns to “DB Case & Accent” in the Siebel Database.
2) For each eligible Base column, creates a new CIAI Column with the Base column value converted to UPPERCASE.
3) Deletes old indexes, and recreates them with the Case Insensitivity as defined, referring to the new CIAI columns defined in Step (2).
4) Sets flags and performs other configuration operations in the repository to support CIAI queries

Warning:
The changes once made by using the CIAI Wizard may be undone. However, there is a flaw in the documentation. The columns that were created on the Base Table by the CIAI Wizard need to be manually Inactivated before trying to revert the CIAI Changes.

The documentation says that the CIAI Wizard inactivates the column automatically. However, in practice that is not the case! Do add in case you have had any weird experience using the CIAI.

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Siebel – Symbolic Strings – Usage

Nitin Jain — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 05:59:24 +0000

Symbolic Strings appear directly in Siebel Tools’ Object Explorer, an independent object. It has a child object of Symbolic String Locale, where you may define the individual translations for all the different languages in use in your project.

In case it is not visible directly, navigate to View -> Options -> Object Explorer tab, and enable the Symbolic Strings object if not already visible.

Now, you are ready to go!
Navigate to Symbolic Strings. You would note that most of the Symbolic Strings would appear with the prefix ‘SBL_’.

Do a NewRecord. Notice that the string ‘X_’ appears by default for the custom string. Don’t try to change it, even if you do, you would not be able to save it!
Edit the value, to something say, “X_DUMMY_STRING”. Fill out all the other relevant columns. It is generally preferred to keep all the custom Symbolic Strings in a separate project to enable easy check-in and check-out. Save the record.

Navigate to the Symbolic String Locale child object, in the Object Explorer. Do a new record, and enter values as per the requirement. Beware that the Language Name takes up the 3 character representation of the language, eg, ENU, SVE, etc.

Now for some under the hood details for the ones interested.
Symbolic Strings data is stored in the table, S_SYM_STR. Local data is stored in the table, S_SYM_STR_INTL. The various objects like the Applet Captions store Foreign Key references to the table S_SYM_STR to refer these Symbolic Strings.

The Symbolic Strings need to be compiled into the Siebel SRF. Be careful here as at times, developers have reported that mere compilation of the Symbolic Strings didn’t work in their case, and they had to compile the individual objects, like the applets too, into the Siebel SRF to make it work.

If a value is present in the String Override field of the particular control, it will take precedence over the Symbolic String referred. This is another point to be noted in their usage.

It is a generally recommended practice to always create a new project for the custom Symbolic Strings. For modifications, check-out and check-in the entire custom project, and not the individual objects. Strange behaviours have been reported if this is not followed. One typical problem is that you would only be able to work on the language of your local tools, multi language behaviour will be lost.

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Siebel – Left, Right and from the Middle

Nitin Jain — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 09:04:28 +0000

Extracting a sub string from a lengthy string in Siebel. What is the best solution you can think up for this typical problem? I know, I know, you and you colleagues have done this thousands of times before. But, have you ever successfully done it without using a single line of scripting?!!

Now, it becomes interesting!

Not that I am saying, it’s entirely possible only by configuration. At the very least I don’t know how it’s possible that way.

Let’s assume a test string:
var strng = “abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890″;

Requirement : Take the first 5 characters from the above string in another substring
Solution 1:
var sub_strng = strng.substr( 0,5 );

Output:
abcde

Solution 2 : Using Left() function.
Take it in a Calculated field. Use the expression,
Left( strng, 5 )

Output:
abcde
I have noticed that at times, this does not work within eScript. Should work with VB and in Calculated Expressions.

Requirement : Take the last 5 characters from the above string in another substring
Solution 1:
var sub_strng = strng.substr( (strng.length – 5),5 );

Output:
67890

Solution 2 : Using Right() function.
Take it in a Calculated field. Use the expression,
Right( strng,5 )

Output:
67890
I have noticed that at times, this does not work within eScript. Should work with VB and in Calculated Expressions.

Requirement : Take the middle 5 characters from the above string in another substring (assume ‘cdefg’)
Solution 1:
var sub_strng = strng.substr( 2,5 );

Output:
cdefg

Solution 2 : Using Mid() function.
Take it in a Calculated field. Use the expression,
Mid( strng,2,5 )

Output:
cdefg
I have noticed that at times, this does not work within eScript. Should work with VB and in Calculated Expressions.

Using Calculated Expressions where these are very commonly required, does save scripting at times.

Trust me, this really works!!

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Siebel – Symbolic Strings

Nitin Jain — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 05:13:06 +0000

Consider this a brief introductory tutorial on Symbolic Strings in Siebel. Symbolic Strings are from amongst the most commonly used entities in Siebel, especially in Siebel Multi lingual deployments.

They can greatly reduce the job of initializing, deploying, tracking, modifying all the plethora of error/warning messages that you may generally come across in a typical Siebel CRM application.

The Symbolic Strings centralize all the English and non-english language messages at one place in Siebel, where you to manage. You always have the option of doing this independently at all the individual places in Applets, Business Components and the like, but, it is really not recommended.

Symbolic Strings are defined and managed from within Siebel Tools. This Siebel feature was introduced for the first time with Siebel 7.7 (there was a big bunch of innovations that came with this Siebel version for the first time), and has persisted since. So, it could be one serious consideration if you are looking to upgrade from an older Siebel version.

But be careful. Some of the data is not converted to Symbolic Strings automatically during upgrade. This includes, Seed Data, Error Messages, LOVs, lots of non translable attributes, etc. These continue to use the Local based string values.

Migrating to Symbolic Strings in case of upgrade, using the Siebel Conversion and Consolidation process, though could be useful in many ways, is a different topic in itself.

Some of the typical scenarios where Symbolic Strings may be applicable are:
1) Displaying the same string at a number of places in Applets
Assume you have multiple Applets based on the same BC (Sales, Manager, Admin, External) exposing some of the common fields. Why to declare them repeatedly each time (though Siebel still allows you to do that!)? You can just go in to create a Symbolic String. Refer this Symbolic String in the value. Use of the String Override function should be reduced as much as possible!

2) Displaying the same string differently in multiple languages in the application
Either define the different caption for different languages by using the locale option corresponding to the control, else, better still, go in for Symbolic Strings!

Some of the typical advantages of using Siebel Symbolic Strings in your application are:
1) Avoiding redundancy and duplicacy, of course!
2) A centralized place for declaring and updating these user messages.
3) In the process, reducing maintenance, and enhancing value.
4) Reduced development time cycle (the obvious buzzword, TAT!!), and costs.

Do note that some of the other kinds of strings, like LOVs, PDQs, etc. are not covered as a part of the Symbolic Strings functionality. These are defined and used differently in Siebel system.

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Siebel – Autosave Opportunity data – Sample Code

Renuka Ankam — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 02:37:55 +0000

This is a follow up post on my previous post, Siebel – Autosave Opportunity data – The concept where I introduced the concept and analysis of the following problem statement:
“System should have capability to automatically save opportunity (RFPs) data in Draft state after a certain interval.”

Following is the sample code for solving the above problem statement.

Applet Browser Scripts:-

Event: – Applet_PreInvokeMethod

Language: – eScript

function Applet_PreInvokeMethod (name, inputPropSet)

{

if(name == ‘NewRecord’)

{

var timemsg = setTimeout(“alert(‘Please Fill up all the field value. Otherwise Autosave of the current record will be done!’)”,15000);

theApplication().SetProfileAttr(“AutoSaveNew”,”Y”);

}

return (“ContinueOperation”);

}

Event: – Applet_Load

function Applet_Load ()

{

//var aOppty = this.BusComp();

//var oAccount = aOppty.GetFieldValue(“Account”);

//var oCurrCd = aOppty.GetFieldValue(“Currency Code”);

//var oName = aOppty.GetFieldValue(“Name”);

//var oPrRevDt = aOppty.GetFieldValue(“Primary Revenue Close Date”);

If (theApplication().GetProfileAttr(“AutoSaveLoad”)<>”Y”)

{

var timemsg = setTimeout(“alert(‘Please Fill up all the field value.Otherwise Autosave of the current record will be done!’)”,15000);

theApplication().SetProfileAttr(“AutoSaveLoad”,”Y”);

}

———————————————————————————————

Bus Comp. Server Script:

Event: – BusComp_SetFieldValue

Language: – VBScript

function BusComp_PreWriteRecord ()
{

var aOppty = this.BusComp();

var oAccount = aOppty.GetFieldValue(“Account”);

var oCurrCd = aOppty.GetFieldValue(“Currency Code”);

var oName = aOppty.GetFieldValue(“Name”);

var oPrRevDt = aOppty.GetFieldValue(“Primary Revenue Close Date”);

this.ActivateField(“Account”)

this.ActivateField(“Currency Code”)

this.ActivateField(“Name”)

this.ActivateField(“Primary Revenue Close Date”)

//These below mentioned ones are the required fields being predefaulted by certain values

If ((this.GetFieldValue(“Account “) <> “”) And (this.GetFieldValue(“Currency Code”) <> “”) And (this.GetFieldValue(“Name”) <> “”) And (this.GetFieldValue(“Primary Revenue Close Date”) <> “”) And (TheApplication.GetProfileAttr(“AutoSaveNew “) = “Y” Or TheApplication.GetProfileAttr(“AutoSaveLoad “) = “Y” ))Then

this.Setfieldvalue( “Account “, oAccount);

this.Setfieldvalue (“Currency Code”, oCurrCd);

this.Setfieldvalue (“Name”, oName);

this.Setfieldvalue (“Primary Revenue Close Date”, oPrRevDt);

TheApplication().SetProfileAttr (” AutoSaveLoad “,”N” );

TheApplication().SetProfileAttr (” AutoSaveNew “,”N”)

this.WriteRecord

}

I hope this has been a nice post.

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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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Siebel – Fetch Active view properties – III

Nitin Jain — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 02:59:53 +0000

I will discuss a practical example, and the corresponding Inputs as a usage example for the “FINS Data Transfer Utilities”. If you have not already done so, I would suggest going through the previous posts for a better understanding:
Siebel – Fetch Active view properties
Siebel – Fetch Active view properties – II

I will share a practical usage example for the above vanilla BS here.
Launch your Siebel Client. Navigate to the screen,
Administration – Business Services -> Scripts
Press ‘New’. I chose the name, “04 Nitin Test” for my Test BS.

Write a small piece of code in the method, “Service_PreInvokeMethod”, and the language as eScript.

Sample code is as follows:

function Service_PreInvokeMethod (MethodName, Inputs, Outputs)
{

var Input_ps = TheApplication().NewPropertySet();
var Output_ps = TheApplication().NewPropertySet();

var bs_FINS = TheApplication().GetService(“FINS Data Transfer Utilities”);
bs_FINS.InvokeMethod(“GetActiveViewProp”, Input_ps, Output_ps);

TheApplication().RaiseErrorText(Output_ps.GetProperty(“”) );

return (CancelOperation);
}

You can replace the with the desired parameter one by one, to see the corresponding output. As a sample, I got the following outputs in my Siebel setup:

Output Argument Value

BusinessObject Business Service

IsAdminMode N

Screen

ThreadApplet Business Service Test List Applet

View Business Service Test View

ViewModeCode 4

There are two strange observations in the table above.
1) The Output Argument, “Screen” returns NULL. Now, I am obviously within a screen, which has a name. Why is it NULL?

2) It has returned the ViewMode “4″.

A simple Lookup in Siebel Tools F1 help lists the following ViewModes of a view:
SalesRepView (0)
ManagerView (1)
PersonalView (2)
AllView (3)
OrganizationView (5)
GroupView (7)
CatalogView (8)
SubOrganizationView (9)

Notice carefully, 4 is not in the list!

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Siebel – Fetch Active view properties – II

Nitin Jain — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 03:03:27 +0000

We discussed about fetching the values from the active view in my post yesterday.

However, I also felt that it was a very crude way of doing it. We can only get the information we need, by writing a small script for it. Moreover, the information was very limited.

I also came across an alternative method to get the details from the Active View. Try searching for the Business Service, “FINS Data Transfer Utilities” in your Siebel Tools. It has a method, “GetActiveViewProp”, which can help us achieve our objectives. Moreover, it supports our point of view of Scriptless Solutions!

Usage:
The BS, “FINS Data Transfer Utilities” does not take in any Input Arguments for the method, “GetActiveViewProp”. We can, thus, directly call this BS in Scripts or Workflows as the requirement may be.

There are a number of outputs, however, that return the corresponding data for the logged in user.
BusinessObject
This would return the Business Object of the view active at the time of invoking this Business Service.

IsAdminMode
This would determine if the current view works in Admin Mode. Admin Mode gives you extra priviledges on a particular view.
The Admin Mode is defined by the “Admin Mode Flag” on the property corresponding to the View in the Siebel Tools Object Explorer.

Screen
The name of the screen that the current view is a part of.

ThreadApplet
Name of the Thread Applet in the current focus.

View
The name of the active view.

ViewModeCode
This is returned in the form of a Code (a number). This defines the View Mode of the current view in focus.

I feel this post is getting too long. I’ll post a follow-up post with a practical example.

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Siebel – Fetch Active view properties

Nitin Jain — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 08:10:39 +0000

Hi,

Working on a typical requirement recently, I came across a need to fetch the properties from the user’s active view. This was an attempt to recognize the user, and the details about the Siebel view/screen he was in.

On research we can see that there are a number of Application level methods which we have at our disposal.

We see that we can get the active Business Object name using the format:
TheApplication().ActiveBusObject();

Also, the active view name may be fetched using:
TheApplication().ActiveViewName();

The Login Id of the user logged in may be fetched using:
TheApplication().LoginId();

The Name of Logged in user (the one that is typed into the Login box) may be fetched using:
TheApplication().LoginName();

The Position ID may be fetched using:
TheApplication().PositionId();

The position name of the user logged in may be fetched using:
TheApplication().PositionName();

.. and maybe some more, in case I missed out on any.

However, this is very limited information (though may be sufficient for some requirements). More so, if we notice, the information is mostly User oriented rather than being Siebel session oriented.

We will explore further if there is a way to get more detailed information of the current view. Even simple topics turn into series of posts. There is so much to explore and share in Siebel..!!

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Siebel – Automating Merge Records by script – II

Nitin Jain — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 06:02:08 +0000

I call this Part II, as I have already introduced the Merge Records Siebel functionality, and discussed its usage in his post. One of the interesting discussions we had was how such a data could possibly be inserted into the Siebel system, since Siebel has so many mechanisms to prevent Data Corruption. We had also zeroed in on EIM and EAI as the basic culprits which could possibly insert inconsistent data into the Siebel Database.

When such a thing happens on sucha large scale, or when we know the exact pattern whereby we can detect these duplicate records in the system, we may look at options to automate the process of Merging Records. How nice would it be if we could just somehow put it all up in a workflow or script which would achieve the above objective.

Exploring further on the topic, I came to realize that there is an undocumented BC method which we may fire to achieve the objective above. Try looking at the script below:

var Target_Id = “Dummy-001″;
var Source_Id = “Dummy-002″;
var bo_Contact = TheApplication().GetBusObject(“Contact”);
var bc_Contact = bo_Contact.GetBusComp(“Contact”);

bc_Contact.InvokeMethod(“SetAdminMode”, “TRUE”);
bc_Contact.SetViewMode(All);
bc_Contact.ClearToQuery();
bc_Contact.SetSearchSpec(“Id”, Source_Id + ” OR ” + Target_Id );
bc_Contact.ExecuteQuery(ForwardBackward);

if (bc_Contact.FirstRecord())
{
while (bc_Contact.GetFieldValue(“Id”) != Target_Id)
{
bc_Contact.NextRecord()
}
bc_Contact.InvokeMethod(“MergeRecords”, Source_Id);
}

If you notice carefully, we have invoked the method, “MergeRecords” on the Contact BC. The Contact BC has the class, “CSSBCContactSIS” which definitely, thus, supports this method. My guess would be that this method would be supported for all the BCs, where the vanilla Edit -> Merge Records functionality is enabled for the corresponding views. I haven’t actually gone further than this.

If somebody has had any other experience with Merge Records, please do share!

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Siebel – Merge Records Functionality

Nitin Jain — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:40:21 +0000

How many times have we realized that there are multiple records exisiting in our database with nearly the same values? The next though with a bolt of lightning is, how the hell were two records with similar data entered into the system, with all the fundamentals of Primary Keys and User Keys.

Well, the answer could be that though none of the User Keys were violated, data was common in the other fields except the User Key fields. For example, we may end up having two Contact records in our system, which we realize actually point to the same CONTACT. So much so for blasphemously expensive CRM Systems!

Before you actually pounce onto the Sales Rep, hey, the contact himself could have given two different mobile numbers to two different Sales Reps, couldn’t he? And, we can’t obviously forget the scenarios where loads and loads of low quality data is imported via our famous EIM / EAI processes into our poor Siebel system, which then has to bear the brunt of everything. Continuous Business scenario changes themselves mandating some of the changes in our Data Organization is another issue.

In any case, the problem is evident. Let’s try to work at solutions.
Siebel provides an OOB vanilla functionality called “Merge Records…” to handle such scenarios. Following is the process you can use:
1) Select the two records in the appropriate Siebel view, for eg. You may use CTRL to select 2 records.

Remember here that the record you select 2nd will become the target record. This will be the record that remains after the Merge Process. The record selected first will vanish. This may look up the corresponding record Row Ids to verify it on your own.

2) From the Application menu, choose, Edit -> Merge Records.

Do note that the Merge Records functionality is not available for all the views. The menu item Merge Records will be greyed out for the views where the functionality is not supported.

3) Click OK in the confirmation applet that appears.

The Merge process will now be performed, and the record selected first in the process will vanish. Also, you will notice that the data from the original record now appears in the left-over record. In other words, the data from first record has been MERGED into the second record! Also, the associated entities such as corresponding Opportunities, Activities, etc. will also be merged into the new record. This is the part which is most interesting.

I understand if some of you feel this is something very trivial. Personally, I found it very interesting. Will post a couple of more posts on this topic soon.

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Siebel – FINS Teller UI Navigation

Nitin Jain — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 02:55:04 +0000

Siebel is POWERFUL! Now, need I even say that? And, in all its beauty and glory is the vanilla functionality. I keep coming across something new and novel everyday, and wondering, what percentage of 1% of Siebel do I now understand?!!

Here is another such Business Service that I came across the other day, “FINS Teller UI Navigation”. It has the following methods (my uncalled personal analysis is mentioned herewith):

1) CallBusSvc
This takes in only one Method Argument, “Method Argument”.
After trying to work out as to what this one could possibly mean, I promptly noticed the comments by the kind developer, “A general purpose business service wrapper to be called from Command objects”. After this, I guess we can give it a pass!

2) GotoView
A very powerful method as I see it. It automatically forces a particular view on the User. I see it very useful from security point of view, in redirecting the user to a specific view, in case he dares enter the forbidden territory. Mind you, Siebel’s in-built Access Control mechanism and other security armour makes this seem almost trivial. This could also be a big help when designing help, to automatically navigate the user to a specific Siebel View.

It takes in the following two Input Arguments:
BusObj, and,
ViewName (mandatory)

3) RefreshCurrentApplet
This is a very powerful method provided, and I guess, the most important one. It takes in the following Input Arguments:
Refresh All!!

It will refresh the current context of the Applet. We have already covered this method in detail previously. Click here.

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Siebel Server Verification – EVT Tool

Nitin Jain — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:37:32 +0000

Verifying the health of our Siebel Server Environment is the primary concern of any sane Project Manager to have spent such large sums of money in setting it up in the first place. We have already introduced a couple of very useful tools to analyse performance and other bottlenecks in the past. Here, I will try to cover one of the prominent tools used extensively in the process.

It is called the Siebel EVT Tool, or the Environment Verification Tool in Siebel. It helps Siebel Administrators verify the configuration, of Siebel Business Environment. Errors and Potential problems in a Siebel Implementation can readily be found out through this tool.

It can be used for verifying, Database Servers, Siebel Servers, Siebel Gateway Servers and/or Siebel Web Servers. It, at times, interacts directly with the Operating System, and it is run usually from the Command Line.

EVT Tool is driven by a vanilla “ent.ini” file (NEVER use this file directly). Multiple parameters can be specified against multiple checks, in this controlling evt.ini file.

We can possibly bifurcate and divide these checks on the basis of parameters like, the Operating System in use, or the Database in use.

Upon installation, the EVT Tool appears as an Executable, .EXE file under the Siebel Root Directory, and can be run directly from the Command Line. There are many Command Line options available, to suit the working of the tool as per our requirement.

The Outputs from the EVT Tool may be taken in any of the following formats:
Text
TextFile
HTML
HTMLFile

The Siebel EVT Tool is a very useful, versatile tool, that can be really handy at times. It can generally churn out extremely useful information which can go a long way in Server Performance Analysis.

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Siebel Server Architecture – an Introduction

Nitin Jain — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 03:05:40 +0000

You may call this an introductory tutorial. Siebel as we all know, is quite a complex maze of many different objects and components working together to provide a successful CRM implementation. This topic is very trivial. Yet, I have noticed many professionals with multi-year experience discussing basic Siebel Architecture questions with me.

I am trying to outline a general architecture in a simple environment. Some of the most common jargon that you would come across when thinking in this direction are:

Siebel File System:

This refers to the actual hard disk space that is configured at the time of setting up of Siebel Servers. Siebel writes a lot of files on its own, for eg. the Log Files. Siebel Servers will use Siebel File system to store data and the physical files used by Siebel Thin Clients and the Enterprise Servers.

Siebel Database Server:

All data at the end of the day, has to be stored in a Database. In case of Siebel, the backend database may be IBM DB2, Oracle DB, etc. This database may be set up on the same server box as the Siebel Server, however, it is strongly recommended to set it up separately on a separate machine in the Network.

We create a lot of records when working with any CRM system. These may be Account Data, Contacts data, List of Products, etc. All this data is saved in the Siebel Database. All Siebel tables, indexes, seed data, etc. are saved in this Database.

Siebel Application Server:

This is the actual Siebel Application Server which performs the tasks. A Siebel Server Installation is implied to mean a Siebel Application Server Installation.

Siebel Enterprise Server:

This is a logical grouping of the Siebel Application Servers discussed above. An Enterprise Server may have just one Siebel server, but, generally in Production environment, it contains, multiple Siebel Application Servers in the grouping. Lots of components, and their groups are defined at this level in the hierarchy, and control most of the Siebel Server environment.

Siebel Gateway Server:

It generally contains the Siebel Name Server, which is from amongst one of the most important components in Siebel System. This is a logical server which has the grouping of single/multiple Siebel Enterprise Servers. The Gateway Server provides a consistent backing of the Siebel Enterprise Server configuration data. It has the Siebel Connectivity information, and controls connectivity via the Siebel Connection Broker, also called SCBroker.

Siebel Web Server:

This is the Web Server which will receive all requests and forward it to the Siebel Servers, just like in a typical Web Access scenario. This could be IIS on Windows, or Apache, or anything similar.

Siebel Clients:

These are of many types, all with different characteristics – Sample, Dedicated, Thin, Mobile. These are the different clients which access the Siebel Application. I will not dwelve into the details of each one of them here.

The type of client most commontly used is the Siebel Thin Client. In this case, the user accessing the Siebel Application, need not install any component on his local machine. He can just type in the URL of the Siebel Application in his Web Browser, and Siebel Login page pops up. The user may login with his valid credentials, and continue with his processes within the Application.

Siebel does install a few add on components for the Web Browser on its own. However, if the user has Admin rights on the machine, most of this stuff will be automated. In case the user is not the Administrator of the machine, some of the components may not install properly, leading to a hampered navigation in the Application.

The above is a simple outline, which can vary greatly with each environment, its requirements and limitations. Especially, when it comes to clustered, failover, high availability systems, and all, things begin to get complicated.

I will try to cover each one of these in more detail in further posts.

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Nitin Jain — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 02:42:23 +0000

In the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) space, Siebel CRM is the undisputed Market Leader, at least that is the impression I have! And not only just so. Dig a little deep into Siebel CRM and you would realize how wide and vast Siebel CRM is, in terms of both the number of functionalities it covers, and the amount of detail in each one of these functionalities that it covers. I am more and more convinced that it is not just one software, but, and entire CRM suite stack built for the purpose.

It is not like Siebel is the only CRM software in the market today, just that it is the one most popular. Originally conceived, and spearheaded by Tom Siebel, the revolutionary (if I may call him), it has now been bought out by ORACLE, the behemoth who owns such a big part of our infrastructure today (no offences intended!).

Some of the others that come to my mind straight away are:

Oracle CRM (from ORACLE Corp’s own stable)
SAP CRM
ACT! by SAGE Systems
.. are all On Premise solutions ..

Salesforce.COM
Oracle CRM OnDemand
Sugar Express
.. are all On Demand / Hosted solutions ..

Sugar CRM Professional / Enterprise
Compiere
vTiger
.. fall in the Open Source Solutions space ..

I doubt if Sugar has a competition in the Open Source solutions space, which has caught the fancy of so many CTOs off late.

Despite so many options and heated competition in the space, Siebel has maintained its position and the space.
Some of the most popularly used areas are the ones that we can broadly outline in line with Siebel CRM. These are the areas that the Contractors and other Siebel CRM Professionals would generally popularize themselves as. These are:
Siebel Configuration Expert
Siebel Server Administration Expert
Siebel Enterprise Applications Integration (EAI) Expert
Siebel Enterprise Integration Manager (EIM) Expert
Siebel Reports Expert

Over and above, we have some specialized areas and corresponding Expert Professionals with experience in them, who complement and/or form a part of above areas. These are really specialized modules, which makes finding true talent quite difficult at times of sourcing. These are something like
Siebel eConfigurator Expert
Siebel ePricer Expert
Siebel Advisor Expert
Siebel Web Services expert
Siebel UCM Expert
Siebel ICM Expert, etc.

CRM being a concept in itself, be prepared to meet lots of functional experts in the area as well. From my point of view, I see expertise in this area as the most neglected part at the time of sourcing, however, personally I believe this is the most important part. A sound fundamental is important to the long term success and viability of any process. A sound Architecture must come before a flawless Implementation for the ultimate success of a Project. Functional Expertise is most popular in the Business Analysis areas of
Siebel Order Management
Siebel Sales
Siebel eCommunications (Telecom)
Siebel ePharma
Siebel Public Sector, and many more..

I can understand if it is beginning to get complicated and jumbled up for the first timers. Seasoned professionals would be comfortable with the hidden meanings of the terms, “etc” and “many more” above. As I always say, it’s not about right or wrong, it is my perspectives, and I am free to write about them!

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Input Argument	Type	Value
Business Object Name	Literal	Account
Business Component Name	Literal	Account

Output Argument	Value
BusinessObject	Business Service
IsAdminMode	N
Screen
ThreadApplet	Business Service Test List Applet
View	Business Service Test View
ViewModeCode	4