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.

Troubleshooting EIM

Well there are few ways to import data into Siebel but my favorite is EIM since its much faster than the others.Also it's much interesting when it involves loading data in millions and billions.But probably not an interesting area for most of the Siebel developers out there because it does not involve lot of design and customization but leveraging OOB functionalities to import data. I had been working more actively in EIM these days and identified the following steps to run and troubleshoot EIM jobs.


> To create the import script use the EIM reports in tools (Client from 8.1) and identify the required columns and foreign keys to be imported.
>Look at the foreign key column mapping to populate all the UK columns required to resolve the FK during EIM. Also, this will help us identify the various base tables required to populate UK columns in EIM tables.
>Better keep number of rows less than 5000 rows in a batch .Siebel recommends < 20k
> Run the EIM job for few records at first ,in numbers less than 100 with sql flags,error flags and task flags set to 8
>Check the IF_ROW_STAT for all the records imported in the EIM table
>Check the if_row_stat_num for all the records imported .If the row status number is not zero look for the status number in log file to get more info on the error against all the base tables.
> Check the temporary columns row_id for the base tables and check if the foreign key columns are correctly populated.

If I find more in addition to this will post it later..