Organizations Setup for Siebel eDealer applications

Siebel eAutomotive and Siebel eDealer are two Industry applications used by Car/Automobile manufacturers to achieve the below basic requirements:

Manage the inventory or cars
Manage vehicle details
Manage Sales History/Service History
Manage Contacts
Manage Leads
Manage Customer Activities
Manage the Service Requests

Siebel Auto and eDealer are interdependent applications where the eAuto acts as a parent and eDealer as a child which derives its data from eAuto

In eAuto and eDealer, Organization setup is very important to drive the relation between the OEM(Original Equipment Manufacturers) and Dealers.Under eAutomotive,every dealer is an "Organization" which has the Country as a "Parent Organization"

Dealers would have access to only the eDealer application but not to eAutomotive.Only the Auto assigned contacts/vehicles/sales/service would be visible to the dealer to carry out their required tasks

Siebel Doubts: Series 1

Integration without using IOs??

The doubt is whether its really possible implement a solution without using Siebel Integration Objects or External Integration Objects.The answer is YES,its possible to implement but this requires extensive eScripting to map the data by using the EAI Data Transformation Engine,

Can a same table be used for multiple BCs?

Yes, think of an 1:M extension table wherein its possible to store different data from different BCs by just defining "Type" field.This field needs to be defaulted to the required Data Type and also need to be included in the "Search Specification" for that BC

Unchecking Force Active??

Its always better to "Uncheck" the ForceActive field property if its not being referred by the Integration Objects. Even if the Field is inactive at IO level, it would be still considered while fetching the data,this impacts the performance

UserKey not not found error while performing upsert with EAI Siebel Adapter

There are times the runtime "Deployed Integration Objects" would cause huge problem by referring at the runtime IOs instead of the updated "Repository IOs"
If the runtime IO is not deployed after the full repository then there instances where you would receive the "UserKey" problems even if there is proper data being passed as per the repository IO

Difference b/w SRF and Repository??

Many people have no clear understanding of SRF and the Repository. SRF always refers at the compiled form of the object changes ONLY.Please note its just the changes not the entire object so we still need the entire object on which the changes have been made.Hence,repository has to be moved first then on top of it the SRF is placed to reflect the object changes at the Application level.

What is the use of "Deployed IOs"??

Deployed IOs would be helpful wherein there are slight IO changes which needs to be reflected without replacing the SRF. In such instances the "Deploy IOs" would play important role

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