Why Siebel and Why not a portal???

Am sure you might have thought of this or your friend who is working as a web developer posed this question to you!!!

So,what is the difference in using the Siebel application and a website like www.vodafone.com ???
As you all know,Siebel is a CRM:Customer Relationship Management Application,so when you say Customer Relation,there comes lot of information about the customer which needs to be tracked and linked with his past history,contacts,billing information,customer activities,complaints etc etc etc.....

What are the options to capture all this information ??
         1.build a new website based on Javascripts/html??
         2.use an excel sheet ???? not a bad option as long as there are only 100 records :P
         3.use some readily available software??

lets go with option1 considering that the requirements are for a telecom company
Here everything starts from scratch,literally everything from scratch.....So you need to hire some web developers,business analysts and a program manager.
Lets go one by one
         1.You need to develop a screen to display the Customer information
         2.You need to develop a screen to store the Customer contact information
         3.need to develop a screen for Customer Customer Address information
         4.need to develop a screen for capturing the customer activities
         5.need to develop a screen for capturing the customer complaints
         6.need to develop a screen for capturing the customer billing information
         7.Need to integrate with an external application to get the payment information
         8.Need to integrate with an external application to pass the customer information in realtime with high performance
         9.Need to integrate with another application to provide the list of Customer           complaints

Just imagine building a webportal by meeting all the above requirements(these are just few examples).It would be nightmare for the developers and the users. why for users ??? because achieving a superportal with a superfast access and superfast interfaces is not a simple job.Achieving all these requirements would consume lot of time and manpower but doable.

So whats the best possible solution? -Here comes the readily available CRM packaged applications
There are plenty of softwares available in market competing each other.Few such examples are :

1. Siebel CRM
2. Salesforce CRM
3. ZOHO CRM
4. SAP CRM
5. Sugar CRM
6. MS Dynamics CRM

Siebel is the industry leader but its firefighting with the newcomers like Salesforce and Shugar CRM.Salesforce has been aggressively pursuing the clients to use their innovative revenue model: Pay-As- You use.

Lets not get into the comparison here,lets come back to the topic "Why Siebel and Why not a portal ??
We have seen the requirements which are normally part of any CRM implementation. Looking at the complexity of implementation using a web development methodology, customers starting thinking of Out of the Box application softwares. Here "Out of the box" means its almost ready to use.And Siebel provides the various Industry oriented applications which directly fit into customers requirement thus resulting in reduced implementation time and lesser cost.

Siebel Requirements Sample

There is a requirement from the customers wherein the expectation is to implement few complex calculations based on some defined formula and they also have a requirement which states that the formula should be open for changes at any time without SRF replacement ???

How will you do this ?? ..First answer which comes to mind is -Calculated Field. But calculated fields are defined at the BC level and any formula change requires SRF replacement. So what next ??

What are the other options???

Run Time Events ?
Run Time Business Service?
Smart Script?

Solution:

Runtime Events is a good option for ever changing equations.The equations can be changed without going for SRF replacement,only the object Manager needs to be bounced in order to activate the changes.

Please refer to the bookshelf for more details on the Runtime Events.


Continued .....

Siebel OpenUI in Simple Terms

• Siebel Open UI is the hot point of discussion in Siebel
• Siebel Open UI is going to change the way we are using Siebel
• At the moment we can access Siebel only through Internet Explorer and based on the ActiveX Framework.
• At the moment Pre 8.1.1.9 release we can not see access all the fields from a Mobile Device by using Siebel Wireless Applications.
• Siebel Wireless Application supports very limited fields to access from Mobile Device
• Siebel OpenUI is going to change all the above scenarios and make the Siebel Application access very flexible from Browser and Mobile Device
• Siebel OpenUI will overcome the Internet Explorer Dependency and make Siebel Accessible from All the browsers.
• OpenUI will make the Siebel Application look like another web portal

Difference b/w Worklfow Process Manager and Worklfow Process Batch Manager

Worklfow Process Manager and Batch manager are the two important components responsible for the execution of any workflow process.
The only difference between these two is,one is used for normal worklfow process and the other used for the Batch process.

But,you may ask, what is the difference,how does they work ? Can I use a Batch Manager to run a normal worklfow process manager or can I use a Worklflow Process Manager to run a Batch process?

Yes,Its not possible to run a Batch Process by using normal Workflow Process Manager Component.
The reason is,there is an inbulit looping mechanism for the Batch ProcessManager and there is no Looping mechanism  built for the Worklfow Procees Manager hence it would not pick all the records.

Workflow Debugging in Production

Its always recommended that, you should be very careful while working on Production Application. Any small change may have greater impact on the business and there would be possibility of revenue loss to the business/customeur.Hence those who are actively supporting the production application should take precaution to not make any changes, unless and untill your sure about the impact on other components or functionality.

Ok,but what should I do, If I have to monitor a workflow to debug a functional issue which has been major block ??
Here is the step by step procedure to monitor/debug a workflow...

1.Login as SADMIN(usually only Admin would have access to sadmin)
2.Go to Administration-Business Process
3.click on Workflow Deployment
4.Click on "Active Workflows"
5.Qwery for the Workflow you would like to monitor
6.Scroll right and set the Monotring Level to "3-Debug" or "4-Detail"(Better to go for 4-Detail,as it would give more details )
7.After completing the above steps ,Go to Workflow Instance Monitor in the Top Menu bar.
8.Qwery for the Worklfow and check Process Instances.
9.Carry out the Test which calls the worklfow(by using Business or team logins)
9.Drill Down on the Process instances to observe step by step execution of workflow.