Siebel is generating offensive ROW_ID's in production

This is an original Siebel service request posted in Oracle support. It has been a laughing stock for many many years and now it has been archived on the Oracle support.

Customer found a row_id created in their production environment which got offensive words in the row_id such as, "1-190F**K". So, they would like to know whether Siebel have any internal validation to avoid offensive words in ROW_ID generation.

How to calculate age from date of birth using calculated fields?

Hi Readers,

This is a new series, where I will show you how things are done in Siebel and how the same thing can be done in Salesforce. Will leave the decision upto you to tell me which one is easier and which one is better.

Step 1: Create first calculated field to output date in YYYYMMDD Field Type: DTYPE_NUMBER

ToChar(Today(),’YYYY’) + ToChar(Today(),’MM’) + ToChar(Today(), ‘DD’)

Step 2: Create second calculated field to convert birth date field in YYYYMMDD  : Field Type: DTYPE_NUMBER

ToChar([Date Of Birth], ‘YYYY’) + ToChar([Date Of Birth], ‘MM’) + ToChar([Date Of Birth], ‘DD’) 

Step 3 : Create another field to use the fields created above as : Field Type: DTYPE_TEXT

The Under Age flag : IIf(([Step1] – [Step2]) < “180000”, “Y”, “N”)

We are doing these three steps mainly because :

1. Siebel does not have good list of functions supported in calculated fields. 
2. Siebel does not have data type conversion in calculated fields. 

Lets don't refer to invoke service method due to its own complication and performance issues it can cause.

In Salesforce if you have to do this activity, you just need one formula field with following calculation.

IF( NOT( ISBLANK( Birthdate ) ) ,
  IF( DATE( 2000 , MONTH( Birthdate ) , DAY( Birthdate ) ) <= DATE( 2000 , MONTH( TODAY() ) , DAY( TODAY() ) ),
     YEAR (Today()) - YEAR ( Birthdate ),
     YEAR (Today()) - YEAR ( Birthdate ) -1 ),
  null)

Learn more about list of functions available in Siebel here: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/B40099_02/books/ToolsDevRef/ToolsDevRef_Operators8.html

and Full list of salesforce functions are here: https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=customize_functions.htm&type=5

State of Siebel in 2020?

Hello Readers,

It has been a while since I have posted on this blog. I have moved on from Siebel the second time. Still see some of my friends working in Siebel and keep getting furious.

Just wondering what are my readers are doing in 2020? Please take some time out and let us know the actual state of Siebel this year.


Live results





Many things have happened since I last posted.
Siebel unleashed vanished :(

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No more posts on Impossible Siebel :(

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No more posts on Siebel Mantra :(

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And such a once a wonderful blogging community just vanished.

I have stopped reading siebelhub.com,  hope it is doing great. I hope you all are doing great. Would love to read your comments and connect.

 -Jim

JQuery UI Controls for Siebel Open UI

Have been following Siebel blogs to find out latest innovations in Siebel Open UI? Wonder what else you could do with Open ui and jquery? Voice Recognition and Google Map Integration is not enough want to add more controls but don't know where to start? Well, answers is your local :)

Siebel has packaged all the Jquery UI examples into the client installation directory, all these examples comes with sample Jquery code, they gets copied along with Open UI installation. These codes are not Siebel formated code however can be directly placed into custom PM PR layers with minimum changes. Open UI is utilizes many of these controls thus you find that many of the js and css already initialised.

Example includes HTML5 Animations, Custom controls like sliders, Dialogs and draggable controls as well as JQuery based validations.

I highly recommend to have a look at all the examples before starting with any new design.




Some of my favourites are Dialog boxes with field level validations for email id and password:




Hope it helps. Feel free to share your experience in implementing these controls in Siebel.

Does HeartBleed effects Siebel?

Does HeartBleed effects Siebel?

Heartbleed and Siebel?

Heartbleed is an OpenSSL implementation vulnerability which was discovered earlier this month and has global impact. It was discovered by OpenSSL, who in turn credits Riku, Antti and Matti at Codenomicon and Neel Mehta of Google Security.

By exploiting this flaw users could steal the private keys and can do all sorts of nasty stuff like man in the middle or forging attacks which seems to be possible only in theory.

It was the worst nightmare for the system engineers and many are still in process to determine the impact to their machines and patching them. According to the list all major web service provider (amazon to google ) were impacted.

As a Siebel customer how does it impacts you? Do you need to worry about your customer's or partner's accounts? 

Answer is a Yes!

Although this problem only impacts the Open SSL implementation on Linux environments, Oracle has still not certified Siebel CRM product as safe from the bug.
Read oracle link for HeartBleed certification:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/opensslheartbleedcve-2014-0160-2188454.html

Do you need to worry, even if Siebel is not interfaced with any other system?

Probably Yes, with stolen private key (which are usually common for most of the systems in an organisation) hackers can hack other systems. Try to answer these questions for your implementation then plan your strategy:

1. Is siebel available to customers online? 
2. Does siebel use SSL?
3. Have you implemented Siebel on Windows or Linux? OOB Windows is safe from Heartbleed.
4. Does your implementation communicates with other systems over SSL? for integrating any banking transactions? 
5. Any third party client used to integrate with SSL? Putty or etc?

How to be safe?

• Upgrade the Open SSL version : https://access.redhat.com/site/solutions/781793
• Change your security certificates and keys.
• Ask your users to change passwords.
• Subscribe to security updates from Oracle : http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/alerts-086861.html

For those who are unware of the bug refer:

Hope it helps.

What does Google says about Siebel?

In recent weeks we have been reading many new articles across the web talking about Siebel's future. Initially it started with a community poll, and then couple of guest posts flared the discussion over blog-sphere, there were surveys  and conclusions done by well known authors: @lex and BruceDaley

 After some months Adam Honig warned consultants that Siebel is dead end there are many cloud services which are proving an alternative to enterprise installed Siebel application and recommended to switchover to other technologies. Bruce Daley however opposed the viewpoint, he was supported by Richard which pointed out few good things about Siebel. Both however could not completely ruled out the facts regarding the continuing loss of oracle business due to the cloud CRM systems. I recommend to read the discussion on this link.and link
 
Earlier during the year on other extreme @lex technical trainer from oracle recommended to learn Siebel technology even if it is the last day, It felt a bit of an emotional post. Everyone in Siebel developer community had same feelings.

Nothing actually changed my mind except the post from sugar crm sales team, they published and article showcasing selection of sugar crm as replacement of biggest Siebel call center implementation in IBM. Collectively all these forced me to do my own research.

I am not a veteran Siebel researcher like Bruce and don't have any data from the customers world wide. So I started with Google. Found couple of videos and interviews from Siebel product management found that everyone is defending Siebel(links to come).

Then I turned over to Google trends, and found a very interesting facts, In this post I am just sharing my understanding over these graphs. The first comparison I performed was of Siebel & Salesforce in which you can easily see that Salesforce is gaining the momentum and Siebel losing it.

Next Graph shows comparisons of all the leading customer relationship management applications.

They show easily that interest in Siebel is declining and Saleforce is becoming popular, this is also displayed in siebel/salesforce job search and interviews.

Next graphs shows the similarity of Siebel graph with the downfall of s60 over iOS and Android

Next I turned on to another Google tool : Google Adwords which tells how much other advertisers are bidding to rank their ads on google search terms.

One could easily see Siebel search terms have lower cost, and Salesforce is significantly higher than Siebel!

I appreciate the efforts of everyone who is promoting year 2014 as great year for Siebel, but stats doesn't seems to agree. I am strong believer of keeping the spirit and momentum high, but this had to be shared. 


-Jim

Google Analytics with Siebel

I have seen couple of questions regarding use of Google Analytics with Siebel CRM, but no one seems to answer completely. This article is created to answer those questions.

When it comes to web analytics there is no parallel to Google Analytics, I am not selling Google Analytics, but people who have already used GA before can understand the need of powerful web analytics tools and how Google Analytics fills the gap.

This article will give you steps to create Google Analytics account and to embed the tracking code in Siebel.

Google Analytics can be used with Siebel CRM applications for both internal like Siebel Financial Services and external customer facing applications like eService or eSales. Only requirements from Google to use tracking are:

• User must be able to reach the ga.js/analytics.js JavaScript file at http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js or https://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js.
• Intranet Application must be accessible through a fully qualified domain name such as http://intranet.example.com, application need not to be internet hosted application to use google analytics.

If your application can satisfy these requirements then you can create GA code and embed it to the Siebel Application.Once it is setup one can report on user behaviour demographic and many more metrics in GA.

I have used GA's Universal Analytics(newer version of GA) and created custom dimensions to store Active View Name, Application Name and Login User on Google.

Additionally I created events to capture the user interaction application. You can create event to business specific needs like: product configurator or service request creation or tasks.

How to embed Google Analytics tracker in Siebel Open UI?

Add the following code in postload.js file under the public directory, this code will be executed always when ever view is refreshed in Open UI. Code shown in bold is added after creation of dimension shown above.

(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
  (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
  m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
  })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');
  ga('create', 'YOUR_CODE', 'yoursitename');
  ga('send', 'pageview');
ga('set', 'dimension2', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("Login Name"));
ga('set', 'dimension1', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("ActiveViewName"));
ga('set', 'dimension3', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("ApplicationName"));
ga('send', 'event', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("ActiveViewName"), 'click', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("Login Name"));

How to embed Google Analytics with Siebel HI? 

Add following code to the  swecommon.js for high interactive applications, this js is also executed allways after page refresh in HI applications. 

(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
  (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
  m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
  })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');
  ga('create', 'YOURCODE', 'yoursitename');
  ga('send', 'pageview');
ga('set', 'dimension2', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("Login Name"));
ga('set', 'dimension1', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("ActiveViewName"));
ga('set', 'dimension3', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("ApplicationName"));
ga('send', 'event', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("ActiveViewName"), 'click', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("Login Name"));

Caution : Do not track customer information such as user details using custom dimesions and metrics as it is against the google analytics policy and could be against the organisation policy as well.

After all this is done you would be able to see the analytics information in your google account.

Now you can do full fledged analytics on your user interactions. My favorite is real time analytics, which one is your favorite??

Happy Analytics :)