Siebel Essentials - 4

Wow! we are into year 2010 and was good to see that I have 14 posts in the last year. One of my resolutions for this year is to post more regularly . Let me list the resolutions for this year.
-Blog more regularly
-Less TV more books.Ok I hesitated before writing this but would be a hard one.
-Learn swimming
Ok that's a pretty short list , let me see if I keep up to my few resolutions. Getting back to basics in Siebel

There was a requirement to display My Teams view on home page. When queried on supportweb it was listed as Product enhancements. Spent sometime to see if I can find a workaround in tools.There is a visibility over ride property for applets on View Web Template Items. Changed this to Manager and that seems to work . When Sales rep logs in they see My View but when a Manager logs in they see My Team's view on the homepage. So far so good but if it did break some thing will update here for the same. L8r

Inbound Web service

Integration has always been fun and good that my exposure to integration has improved considerably in the last year. In my current project I had to create couple of inbound web services and was successful in finding a scriptless solution. Here is how I configured it,

1 .Create a workflow process with first step of EAI Integration Object Hierarchy to XML Hier Bus Service .Define a process property of type Integration Object and In (for In/Out)

2. Then use EAI Dispatch web service look up method to parse the XML .

For the EAI Dispatch service to process the XML define the xpath for the xml elements on Administration-Integration -> EAI Dispatch Service view.

The Key point in the workflow process , which I figured after a while, create a process property of type in and data type Integration Object. This would make sure that incoming message is received as Siebel Message and then process XML.

I'm planning to change the configuration I posted for Outbound webservice before with Integration-data-map and then EAI dispatch service. I bet that would be scriptless too and would perform better..Later.

Visibility for pick applet

Hi
Just configured something tricky today.Had to configure an account pick applet to show only My account. As always wanted to find a scriptless solution for this too and was successful. There is a set of class defined in the Siebel Security guide as well as on how to configure. Followed the instruction in the bookshelf to create a pick applet based on a special class and defined a applet user property and that's it I could see only My accounts on the pick applet.

I wish this was on the config apps bookshelf but later when I read through the configuration understood why Siebel has documented it in Security guide.Probably need to skim through the book to learn few more tricks on access control..Later...

Siebel Essentials 3

iHelp..This is one of the interesting and powerful feature in Siebel from BA perspective.Basically it's an excellent guide for new users to get accustomed to Siebel screens and views . BA can give step by step instructions to users to navigate to various screens and enter data. These instructions can be hyperlinked for navigation and you can highlight some critical fields on a view . iHelp items would change based on the active screen.

Its based on workflow but an admin or BA can easily configure after skimming through few pages in the bookshelf .. It's a good tool from BA perspective to streamline the users to Business process flow. Check the bookshelf Appsadmin.pdf on how to configure..It's easy , and should not take more than couple of hours to configure it... I'd say Task based UI is an extension of iHelp except that's it more powerful and requires configuration to almost all the objects in Siebel Tools.


Later...

Siebel Essentials - 2

Here are few new things for configuration that I did recently.

Users needed to sort one of the applets list column.Was trying to find options to avoid scripting. But no luck this time.Wrote a script on applet_load event to display all the records after sorting the column. If someone finds a scriptless solution for the same please post your comments here.

Also found something new to enable shuttle list applet for MVG field...Was trying to add shuttle applet for MVG field and it was always showing up as pop up list applet.Checked on EnableAutoShuttle property value and it was set to true.

Did some research and found from supportweb that the parent list applet should have Update set to true to enable mvg shuttle applet..Changed the update property on the parent list applet and it worked!!

I understand above configurations are basics but it's at least something new for me. To be continued..

Siebel Essentials One

Configuring views in a screen will be one of the few areas in the Siebel where you could leverage Out-of –the-box feature to meet Business needs. There are different types of level and views you can configure under a screen. So it’s better to understand the levels and their use before trying to configure them. But as always it’s better to refer to the bookshelf if you are configuring screens and views for the first time. There are four levels to configure views in Siebel screens

First Level - Screen Tabs

Second Level - Aggregate Category and Aggregate Views – This will be displayed as links below the screen tabs
Aggregate Category & Parent category is null - Helps to access group of views
Aggregate views & Parent category is null – links to single views
Aggregate view & Parent category is not null – Links will be displayed as drop down on the view. The parent category is the aggregate category here.. For example this will display My Contacts, My Team Contacts in the drop down

Third Level – Detail Category or Detail view

Detail Category – Parent is an aggregate category. This will display as tab under the second level .This links to group of view
Detail View - Parent is an aggregate category This will as a link to single view at third level

Fourth Level - Parent is the detail category. This will display as link under the third level detail category

If you understand the above concepts well you can configure views for a screen probably few minutes. Also make sure you add the views to appropriate responsibilities and check the display on page property to display under the screen.

Cancel Query in Siebel

Long running queries are annoying and especially on a web based application like Siebel it's highly possible. Most of the time user would think of more criterias to include with their current query when it's executing .They wish they have a second chance to refine the query.Fortunately there is a way you can do this in Siebel. This varies slightly depending on the version.

CancelQueryTimeout = Time in Secs ..If you set this parameter to -1 it means that this feature is disabled.

Before 8.0
You set this parameter in [SWE] section of the config file

After 8.0
You set this parameter on the appropriate component .Note this is an advanced component parameter..

Later.

Default instance for Dedicated client

Hi,
Quick Siebel tip for the day.When you log into dedicated client it's always default to Local.To set this to server change the following parameter in the appropriate config file.

DataSource = Serverdatasrc.

I'm planning to try out EAI XSL service and data mapping this week.Will update the blog for the same.
Later..

Pre-defaulting User Preferences

Going forward I have planned to write up something I learned new in Siebel. Today's catch in Siebel.


Today there was a request about how to default the user preferences values in Siebel.Well I found that there are two ways to do it.But the following changes will overwrite all the previous user preferences.

1.All the user preferences can be set on the Administrator's login and then SPF files on the server can be copied and named appropriately for other users.
2. Or predefault field property on the User Preferences BC can be set to populate the field with appropriate values. Also, this requires deleting the previous User preferences files.So when the user logs in Siebel application will create new spf files bases on the predefault values.

Also saw some basic things a developer must know to start on Siebel integration.Here is the mapping between Siebel definitions and Variable Definitions

Type in Siebel -> XML Element
Property Sets in Siebel - > XML Attribute
Value in Siebel - > Value in XML.

Well that's it for the day..Later.

Close Local DB Connection

Found something new in the configuration file that would close your database file connection automatically after you close the Siebel Tools or Client.

Parameter:AutoStopDB

Set this parameter in tools.cfg to TRUE to close the database connection automatically after you exit the tools.Well that was easy right!!

Later..

Secret of Success

Well it's been a long time since I blogged. Just wanted to get my head off of work and post some Siebel techie thoughts :-).Probably in future it might be mandatory to have a blog to get a job. It has been quite a while since I started working on Siebel. I never thought I would land in Siebel world when I was back in school. For that matter I never knew Siebel at first place. My dream was to get a SAP job and tried hard for that once I graduted.But all my efforts were in vain. Then I read an article on successful career and it had this line in bold, ALL PROFESSIONALS ARE NOT SUCCESSFUL ONLY PROFESSIONALS GOOD AT WHAT THEY ARE DOING ARE SUCCESSFUL. So what you want to be in your life should not be just your ambition but also your passion!! This changed lots of things in my career plans. Guess what, I got a job next month!!!! May be this thought was influencing my job interviews.

Just to keep track of my knowledge progress in Siebel, I decided to post something related to Siebel in my blogs at least weekly this would hone my Siebel skill and probably be a knowledge base for others :-) . Here we go, Siebel thought for the day ( I hear the opening bell!!!).To make it easier to navigate I will categorize the Siebel tips

Refresh an applet:
I have seen lot of scripts written to refresh the applet once the record is created. This can be easily done with an OOTB
Business Service :SIS OM PMT Service and
Method: Refresh Business Component

This can be invoked from script or Workflow process.

That’s it for now. Probably this is my last post for the year, wishing you guys all a HAPPY NEW YEAR. I hope I keep up to my resolution(s).Later…

Letz get it started in here!!

Finally Thursday is here and I have quite a few things to check off my list before I go to India for a short vacation.

We are three weeks away from the election and everyone will be looking up to the next President in the tanked economy. I’m eager too but I would be much happier if I get to vote. I don’t think I can vote in India either since I don’t have an ID card.

Well all pages in the news paper have something related to economy. I don’t complain but this is the only thing you hear when you tune to any channel or skim through any page in the news paper..One good news is oil price has plummeted and the big shots in oil industry are meeting next week to talk about this. What might they conclude, let’s reduce the oil supply to increase the price and put an end to one good news that media would report in the crumbling economy. I wish oil was not a commodity at first place.

All ramblings aside, I’m planning to go for the SOA suite training soon. Well this should be good, always I wanted to learn integration in Java and I hope that SOA will be a good start to head in that direction.

More in the next, till then good bye