How to create cookies from server side?

Yes, you read it correctly, you can create cookies in the browser from the server side, and get your browser script to access them. This is enabled via Web Engine HTTP TXN business service.

Siebel Cookies

var oBS = TheApplication().GetService("Web Engine HTTP TXN");

var Inputs = TheApplication().NewPropertySet();
var Outputs = TheApplication().NewPropertySet();

var psCookie = TheApplication().NewPropertySet();
psCookie.SetType("Cookie");
psCookie.SetValue("Value of Cookie");
psCookie.SetProperty "Path", "/";
Inputs.AddChild(psCookie);

oBS.InvokeMethod("SetResponseCookies", Inputs, Outputs);

Keep in mind that this method can be called from any other event in Siebel except application start(Application_Start) event due to product limitation .

Not just that one can use this service to get IP address of the client which is used to access Siebel. I will highly recommend to go through all the methods of Web Engine HTTP TXN business service in your free time.

How to find the siebel log files using command line?

While working on Siebel projects you must have come across numerous occasions where you need to find specific log with specific error or any one user name or any one xml value which is causing trouble.

Usually this type of task involve tedious task of opening all the log files during the time duration one by one. 

Siebel Admin [Cheat Sheet]

I see many Siebel consultants(including me) searching web everytime to get correct syntax for Siebel server manager commands.

Although the syntax is so simple we still somehow manage to forget it :) I have created this cheat sheet from list of commands which I use day in day out. List contains command to increase log levels, shutdown startup components, creating components, starting server manager.

Feel free to download and print one for your desk.Download Here

Hopefully no more searching for commands to increase log level of siebel components :) cheers!

How to force shutdown siebel server < 2ms

This is in continuation to my earlier post on How to shutdown Siebel server in less than 5 secs. 

And is suggested by a reader of this blog, who seems to be even more impatient than me(in a good way), and had automated the step to query Siebel server and step to use task kill command to bring down Siebel server as mentioned on my earlier post.

Final batch file looks something like : 

FOR /F "tokens=3" %%A IN ('sc queryex siebel_service_name  ^| findstr "PID"') DO (SET pid=%%A)
IF "!pid!" NEQ "0" (

taskkill /pid %pid% /f 

)

taskkill /im siebmtshmw.exe /f

taskkill /im siebmtsh.exe /f

taskkill /im siebsess.exe /f

taskkill /im siebprocmw.exe /f

taskkill /im siebproc.exe /f

Once executed with admin privileges, it brings down Siebel server at very instant. I have tested this, and it works beautifully.

Memory Release

Why this is faster than usual way? 

Usual way of bringing down service does memory cleanup and waits for long running processes to complete, gives some time to gracefully complete the tasks I think it copies the log files around as well.

However this batch file just pulls the trigger and knock down the server in one shot. There is a risk of data corruption, use it at your own risk!

If you have done something like this with Siebel which is not recommended but saves you time then please share it with us in comments section below.

7 Siebel Tools hacks every developer should know!

These are my favorite Siebel Tools tricks that I use day in day out. I thought of sharing this before good old Siebel tools is made completely obsolete by new "Siebel Composer". Would be good to compare this with composer features in future when it is fully developed and available.

Repository search

This is Siebel tools inbuilt search feature. It can be used to find all objects with specific keyword in entire repository. I use it to find the use of profile attributes in scripts or in calculated fields, search spec etc... Pretty neat.

To start search go to Tools> Search Repository

Enter keyword and click Search Now

It's not super fast but it's best way to be sure.

Alternative of genbscript.exe

I still meet few developers who run genbscript every time after compiling srf. There is much easier way to generate browser scripts available.

Scripting options

As shown above, one can configure tools to update browser scripts automatically after every compile.

Add multiple objects to one sif file. 

There is no need to create separate sif file for each object. After adding one object just leave the archive window aside and go to object explorer to pick another object and add to save archive.

Siebel sif files.

Create list of values from tools

Yes, One can create list of values from Siebel Tools. For this menu to appear your login needs to have Siebel administrator responsibility. I love this interface, it is so much better than Siebel client.

Compare objects 

Siebel Tools provide unique way of comparing objects, its not limited to comparing objects with a sif file. Once can compare two similar objects like two business components or applets in same repository or a different repository.

Compare objects in Siebel Tools

Copy items from one object to other

This is one of the neat hidden feature of Siebel tools. While comparing two objects one can use this feature to copy some objects from one object to other.

Button to copy items from one object to other

 As shown on press of button one can copy fields from one BC to other.

Bookmarks!

This is one of my favorite hack. I bookmark all the objects of projects that I am working on, it makes really easy to navigate back an forth without typing.

To bookmark any object list just open the bookmark pane and click the plus sign. And double click on the list to find the objects again, no typing required!

Siebel Tools Bookmark icons

Siebel Tools Bookmarks in Action

Shown above is my current bookmark list. I have bookmarked Order BCs(thin and thick :)), Quote BCs, and custom business services.

Some bonus keyboard shortcuts :

F7 to compile all objects
Cntrl + F7 compile single object
Alt + H + R about record
F5 starting Siebel dedicated client
Shift + F5 restarting Siebel dedicated client

Interview with Yvette Francino

Recently I came across a very talented IT Manager Yvette Francino, unlike any another project manager blogging is one of her passions. She has worked as manager for Siebel Projects and have been working in Agile from a quite a long time, she has spent time in coaching teams for Agile. I took opportunity for asking hers some questions regarding Agile and she kindly shared some very useful resources which can help new team members to get started with Agile.

Here is the interview.

Question : Please shed some light on your experience with Siebel. Were you a Siebel developer?

Yvette: I was a development manager at Sun Microsystems from 1999-2009. For a short time around 2000, I managed a team that was using Siebel. I took the training, but didn't have much more hands-on experience than that.

Question : As almost every Siebel project suffers from scope creeps and effort overruns due to un-planned tech issues. Do you feel Agile is not suited for Siebel Projects?

Yvette: Projects that typically suffer from scope creep are the ones that are best suited for Agile methodologies. The more you don't know up front (which is true of most software projects), the better suited an empirical model, such as Agile, is because it allows you to let your requirements evolve and become refined over time as you learn more.


Question: What are the most important things without which you will never run an Agile project?

Yvette: Agile training for everyone, including management, is important, so that everyone has a common understanding of the processes they are using. Retrospectives, in which the teams regularly assess what worked well, what could be better, and what they want to do differently in the next iteration are also important so the team continually improves.


Question: How to plan for project with relatively un-known area of development? Do you recommend any special technique?

Yvette: Again, the more unknowns there are, the better it is to use an Agile methodology so that learning more is part of the process. There are techniques called "spikes" that allow development teams to do "time-boxed stories" to allow them to learn more about the unknown area.  They could do a small proof of concept or prototype, for example, to discover more and reduce the level of uncertainty.

Question : After so much experience do you feel Agile is actually more expensive than SDLC methodologies?

Yvette:  It depends on a lot of things. It can be expensive to change all your tooling and processes, so if the organization is heavily invested in traditional methodologies, it can be quite expensive to change. On the other hand, studies show that Agile projects are more successful than traditional Waterfall projects, and, obviously, unsuccessful projects are very costly.

Question: Please share a conflicting situation you had on project and how did you gone about resolving it.

Well, in the Agile world, one common conflict might be disagreement about how long it might take to code something (or how many "story points" a user story is). One way to resolve this is to maybe have a "spike" story (as described above), or to make the story smaller so there are less unknowns.  (A "story" is a small unit of working code or what might thought of is a "requirement" that results in working code.)


Do you have any or recommend cheat sheet/mantra for Agile projects for newbies?

Yvette: There are so many Websites and classes available that it's hard to recommend one. Scrum is the most common methodology by far, and the Scrum Guide is available for free. I also think Mike Cohn is a great teacher and there are online courses available from his site, Front Row Agile. You might also check The Agile Alliance for resources. It would be good, though, if teams were learning from the same courses or resources, though, since there can be quite a bit of variation in opinions, terminology, and Agile methodologies.

I would recommend all Agile newbies to download the scrum guide and refer Agile Alliance to get your head around the buzz words of Agile.
Thanks Yvette for your time!!

How to shutdown Siebel server in < 5 seconds?

Getting late for lunch date with girlfriend and damn Siebel server won't stop. Ever been in such situation??

Well I have been. This is my actual story, don't worry I am not going tell stories about my partner, it's about our favorite Siebel server which sometimes won't come down for good 10 or more minutes, don't expect anything for starting up.

Before I tell you the trick how I made it to my date on time, let me warn you about the repercussions. It's highly dangerous way of shutting down the siebel server, don't try this in important environments, use it only if you have no regards for your employer. And be aware that this could corrupt your installation or cause data corruption.  But hey! do partners care? if you kept them waiting, you will have to face the music for entire year or more.

For the siebel people in love, this is what you have to do to get to your date on time:

1. Open command prompt on Siebel server host(I have tried this windows host only).Get the process id (PID) of Siebel server by running this query:
   
   

   sc queryex siebelservicename

2. And then run following queries in exact sequence by replacing PID found in output of above statement :
   

   taskkill /f /pid 10116
   taskkill /im siebmtshmw.exe /f
   taskkill /im siebmtsh.exe /f
   taskkill /im siebsess.exe /f
   taskkill /im siebprocmw.exe /f
   taskkill /im siebproc.exe /f

Voila ! Siebel server is down . If you are successful you will see memory getting free faster than ever, srf will  be available for update and you can start the Siebel server the way you like.

Siebel Server memory consumption

And will see output like:

Shutdown Siebel server by command line

If you like this post and would like to see more like this, then please plus one this blog.

Is siebelhub.com down?

Is siebelhub.com down ? Probably not. I am sure team is working hard to keep it up , by the time you will read it, site will be back up.

Today for siebelhub.com CDN and host keep erroring out every now and then :( You might see following error if that happens.

Server Error:

Siebel-Hub is down?

or Cloud flare :

I know the feeling, when you are in middle of doing something and best siebel resource "Siebelhub" goes down, bummer!

Today I am going to share tricks that I use to view offline sites. It's not specific to siebelhub.com and can be very useful.

Solution 1: Use wayback machine. 
This will be simplest  and the best solution to view any website in past point in time. Way Back Machine has cached copies of nearly all websites in world and copies are available to search quite easily. I found a good cached copy of siebelhub.com on : http://web.archive.org/web/20150130060038/http://www.siebelhub.com/main/blog

Solution 2 : Use chrome's offline mode
Use this solution if you are offline. Like other browsers offline feature is also available from chrome, however it is hidden in chrome://flags . Good part of this is that you can view cached websites from your mobile device as well.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

To enable cache views open chrome://flags on any device and enable show saved copy button. After this whenever you are offline you will be presented with an option to view the cached copy from your device. However it is not guaranteed that all the webpages you opened will be available in device cache.

BTW, Do you know chrome has on offline game and it starts when you click on the dinosaur?

Solution 3: Use https://www.httrack.com - Desperate Measure
Don't try this at home. This is an open source tool which copies the whole website to your local pc. and the data is cached on your device for as long as you want.

Hope it helps.

PS: Posted just for the love of information present on siebelhub.com. hats off to guys who built it.

JavaScript Execution Sequence of Siebel Open UI

Hope everyone remembers Siebel event model explained by +Alexander Hansal 

No doubt that is one the best post in Siebel blogosphere till date, in case you haven't read it, I would recommend you to go through it here. This model still holds true and has helped many businesses to model processes. However with introduction of Siebel Open UI there are few more events available for customization on browser side. 


In this post I will show you how Open UI invoke different events and methods on custom PM and PR JavaScript files.

For this proof of concept I have created and associated PM PR files with some logging for all the applets and views. I have also wrote some browser script in applet load event in tools. Following summarizes what I found.

Sequence of JavaScript Execution in Open UI

What I found out that view PM layer is the first in sequence of execution, it is executed even before preload event. Thus all the data is available in preload to build the UI. Preload.js is not the event if someone is looking to execute at very start of view building.

Sequence of execution breakdown

Breakdown of events shows that List applet are executed first by Siebel Open UI (even if they are child objects). I suspect it is done to improve performance.

Additionally Applet load event are executed at last. Thus technically it is possible to override events available in "pre" Open UI era browser scripts in Open UI.

Points to be noted here that:

1. Prelaod.js is not the first thing which gets executed during a view load.
2. Open UI executed PM layer for view first and then applets, however for PR layer, applets were loaded first then view.
3. Open UI also seems to execute list applet code first than form applet irrespective of hierarchy in tools!!
4. After all the processing of PM PR layers(including view), Siebel at last executes applet load event of tools browser script.

Console Outputs:

Hope this will help developers to know the correct event they need to code and execution sequence in which Siebel will execute the code.


For this experiment I have created following PM / PR files .

• OpportunityFormAppletPM
• OpportunityFormAppletPR
• OpporunityContactListAppletPM
• OpportunityContactListAppletPR
• OpportunityDetailContactViewPM
• OpporuntiyDetailContactViewPR
• OpportunityListViewPM
• OpportunityListViewPR
• OpportunityListAppletPM
• OpportunityListAppletPR

All files I have used is available will be available for download soon.

Thanks to Duncan Ford for helping us in getting us code ready by creating the beautiful template generator.

Happy to discuss in detail on slack community or in comments below.

Chrome's hidden menu for Open UI

If you are working on css or js changes for Siebel Open UI, you would be struggling with browser caching. I have noticed some cache even when I am using incognito mode of chrome.

Out of frustration one might end up installing chrome app/plugin to forcefully clear cache. One of them is "Clear Cache" 

Interestingly chrome has now created a very discreet "Empty Cache and Hard Reload" option for developers. To see this option open developer tools by pressing F12 and then press and hold reload button. I have been using this option from past one week and it worked every time as expected.

Chrome Hard Reload for Open UI

Please be mindful that this is an hidden menu and only shows up when chrome's developer tools are open.


Happy coding :)

My top 5 Siebel Mistakes in 2015

I received a very candid email from a reader, asking me what mistakes I make in Siebel development and how do I overcome those?

Surprisingly I had a long list of mistakes, and I wasn't doing anything about it. So I decided to write this post to attempt on reducing these mistakes.

I believe in learning from mistakes, thus I challenge all my readers to list down their mistakes and leave them in comments below. Remember no one is perfect, so don't be shy and leave comment.

1. Using InvokeServiceMethod in calculated fields.

This is biggest performance degrader.I regret this one the most, I used this trick to calculate an status of opportunity and it turned out to be biggest technical debt of all time. No one want to fix it now and it is stuck there churning away time, memory and CPU every time it is referred.

2. Not checking CountRecords() Or FirstRecord() before get field value.

This is one of my most frequent mistake in Siebel. It goes unnoticed because the logic works for mostly all scenarios but one, what if there are no records retrieved from query? Siebel is going to throw it back to you, logic won't proceed and service will halt making you accountable.

So please don't be a Jim and always check for record count or First Record before proceeding.


3. No comments

Leaving no comments on blog post is ok, but leaving no comments in script is a big no no. Have your ever noticed how much easy it becomes if there is one of two line of comments in script? just one or two line makes it so convenient for developer to understand the code without going into details.

My self plead guilty of committing this some time.

If I have to create a standard I will try to use following template for comments:

/*
[jim] [25 Dec 2015] [ added code for xxxxx reason, code is invoked from xxxxx places]
*/

simple isn't it? Please share in comments below what type of comments you use.

3. Not nullifying objects after use.

Developers believe that ST script engine will clear up memory for them. But no memory leaks are real still in Siebel 8. So please Jim don't make that mistake again.

4. Try catch finally block

This is the only way for keeping some dignity, and we still avoid it to save time.  Do you also make that mistake?

5.  Using profile attributes.

They work like magic in some scenarios, but it is so difficult to trace them back, and using it in Open UI is like calling Mayhem. Please share your thoughts on this. How do you trace back the creation of profile attributes?

Please don't forget to leave your list of mistakes in comment below.

Links Demystified

I feel no shame in admitting that it took me years to fully understand the extensibility of Siebel links. I hope after reading this post you will start appreciating the Siebel even more as I did.

Let's look at the simpler links first.

1:M links
These links creates simple parent child relationship. One parent can have many children. And children records have parent id (foreign key field).

Order Entry - Orders : Order Entry - Line Items link

Order Entry - Orders and Order Entry - Line Items is perfect example. Source Field is "Id" of "Order Entry - Orders" BC and destination field is "Order Id"  of Order Entry - Line Items. Whenever system creates a line item under an order record, Siebel populates order id on order item record with ROW_ID of Order to create relationship.



M:M links
These are also comparatively simple links. Two entities (table) are related to each other using an intersection table. Intersection table helps to associate one child to other parents as well.

Account Contact link using S_PARTY_PER

For example Account and Contact link. This link allows to associate one contact to multiple accounts. In addition to the inter table Siebel stores id of primary record ( primary id field) to improve performance.

Now let's look at the interesting bits.

M:M links with source id field specified.

In standard M:M links these fields are blank and inter table stores the ID of both parent and child records. When parent id field is also specified with inter table Siebel uses field value instead of ROW_ID of parent to create intersection record.These types of links are not very common but are possible.

For Example:

M:M link with Source Field specified

Lets consider Action/FINCORP Account link, this link has Source Field specified as Primary Contact Id which means when child records are created using this link Siebel will populate Contact Id into Inter Parent Column instead of Action Id.

M:M link with both inter table and source and destination field specified.
Things now gets more interesting when both source and destination fields are specified and inter table is also specified.This way Siebel uses fields specified on the links instead of Id to create association.

Link with both Source Field and Destination Field along with inter table.

The link shown above specifies Campain Id and Destiation Field as Contact Id, thus while creating record in inter table Siebel will use Campaign Id fields instead of Id and Same applies for destination field. Interesting isn’t it???



Finally links which are overridden by MVL's
If you are following it correctly then you might think all these complicated links should be able to satisfy all possible scenarios. Just then Siebel steps up the game with multi value links. On these MVL's definition Siebel allows to override the parent id being used on the link.

So with help of primary id field override, potentially in action to contact mvl instead listing all the contacts of selected activity, Siebel can show all the contacts of parent account selected on activity. :) This over riding is allowed both on 1:M link and M:M link.


Cheat sheet for your desk:

If you have understood all of the above then I would recommend you to explore how links are used for access control and visibility of detail bus comps.

Hope it helps.

Using MVG aggregate functions

Originally posted on blog.notesonsiebel.com on April 5th, 2007 by stuandgravy

Karan asked a question the other day: how to prevent the Status of a Service Request changing until all child Activities have been completed? This type of business rule is exactly what State Models are designed for: set up a model on Service Request Status and restrict transitions to the target status unless a condition has been satisfied. The difficulty in this example is how to write a rule based on child records?

State Model Rule Expressions use the same format as calculated field values, so the same MVG aggregate functions are available. The functions Count, Sum and EXISTS all derive a single value from a Multi Value Group and are an underused way to reduce scripting.

In the example given, Service Request has an MVG Action linked to the child Activities, so we can add a Multi Value Field to point to Action.Status.

A rule expression Not EXISTS([Action Status]<>'Done') in the State Model transition gives the desired restriction.

There’s a good example of the EXISTS function in use in the vanilla Siebel 7 repository: see BC Contact field Exists New OutBound Email Activities.

How to make Open UI textarea fields flexible in IE?

As you would know that IE doesn't have flexible textarea even in version 11. When rest of all modern browser allow to open drag one corner of the text area to change its size, IE doesn't let user to change size of elements because of Trident layout engine???

Fixed size multiline fields in IE

Because of this limitation Siebel Open UI users suffer big time. All the multiline textarea fields in open UI are fixed size and there is no way to pop them up as in HI or expand them. read more. 

Flexible multiline fields in chrome

There are many jquery based plugins available for this problem however all of them needs to maintained and lacks in one thing or the other, probably you will end up using one of those plugins at the end. However If someone looking for simple straightforward stop gap solution, then you can use jQueryUI Resizable function to make the textareas flexible just like chrome or firefox.

To implement in simply add following one line in postload.js file on the web server.

 $("textarea").resizable(); 

This will make all the textarea controls which are used for multiline field flexible and show tiny blue cue to expand or decrease the size of element and mimic chrome or firefox textarea elements.

Hope it helps.

How to build Siebel Workflow Expression?

I remember my days when i started with Siebel, I just couldn't get the syntax of workflow expression correct. I still see newbies of siebel struggling to get it right the first time. In this post I would try to make the basic rules of workflow expressions as simple as possible.

Basic Rules of Siebel Workflow Expression are :

1. Siebel Workflow takes String as input.
2. + (plus) is the concatenation operator.
3.  Process properties can be referred using & operator like this > [&Object Id] 
4.  Don't worry about spaces in process property names, they are allowed.

Let's take an simple example where we want to build the expression to search for records with Contact Id specified in Object Id the search spec would be:

if Object id contains : 1-12345 then expression will be evaluated as :

Did I say its a H.U.G ?

See what is the difference between Expression Business Component and Filter Business Component


Hope it helps. If you know similar topic and want to share with Siebel community, please post it in comments below. I will post it as blog post.

How to Invoke Siebel Business Service using URL?

SWEAPI is no doubt is one of the most neglected yet powerful feature of Siebel. It allows applications to integrate with Siebel as RESTful HTTP requests. SWEAPI is well documented and is powerful enough perform most of business operations similar to navigating around views and invoke methods of business services.

URL can be invoked from any HTTP client (likes of cURL) and is independent of User Agents. Output of business service can be transformed using XSLT style-sheets.

Following URL is an example for invoking business service through single URL. It is capable of logging into application and execute a business service(did I say workflows as well?).

http://host_name/fins_enu/start.swe?SWEDataOnly=1&SWESetMarkup=XML&SWECmd=ExecuteLogin&SWEUserName=SADMIN&SWEPassword=Password&SWEAC=SWECmd=InvokeMethod&SWEMethod=RunProcess&SWEService=Workflow%20Process%20Manager

This URL can give following output:

SWEDataOnly : Removes unnecessary navigational information from output
SWESetMarkup : Forces the output format to XML
SWEUserName : Application login user name
SWEPassword : Application password
SWEAC : Secondary command that is executed after login

SWEMethod : Method of business service to invoke

SWEService : Business service name

How to invoke siebel workflow through Command Line?

Siebel provides very simple way of handling this situation via server manager. Server manager is command line interface of Siebel which primarily designed to perform system administration activities like starting and stopping components, it can also be used create requests for the server components.

To execute a siebel workfow through command line first we need to connect to the server manager through this command:

srvrmgr /g gateway1 /e enterprise1 /s server1 /u sadmin /p pwd

 And then execute following command

run task for component WfProcMgr with processname='Test Workflow'

You additionally pass SearchSpec and use workflow process batch manager to execute workflow for multiple records.

run task for component WfProcBatchMgr with processname='Test Workflow', SearchSpec ='[Date]=Today()-1'  

This solution has only two limitations,  

First, we can not pass values for process properties of the workflow. This has to be done by querying the values first and then calling the actual workflow.

Second, if the batch size is huge it might take few hours to serveral hours to process depending upon the workflow process. This happens because Workflow Process Batch Manager executes the workflow in sequence. That means it will only start the workflow for second record when first is finished.

Please share your experiences with Batch processes designed through command line.  

How to traverse javascript object?

For in loop is one of my favourite commands of JavaScript and it just one step behind the modest alert() ;) 

It is a very powerful command and helps you to loop through any JavaScript object without knowing what object is all about. You don't need to know the types that exists in the object or number of child objects that object has. You just need have the handle of the object and you can loop through all its properties.

It is quite handy if you cant get your head around Siebel Open UI and you want to know what else is available in that object and how the functions are implemented in an object.

Examples:

MyPM.prototype.Setup = function (propSet) {       
    for(var x in propSet){console.log(x + "" + propSet[x]);
    }
        SiebelAppFacade.MyPM.superclass.Setup.call(this, propSet);
}

In this example I am trying to find what else is passed through the property set by Siebel to the Setup function of Presentation Model. and the following I am trying to all the methods that are available by theApplication() object.

for(var x in theApplication()){
console.log(x + " " + theApplication[x]);
}

For those who don't know, For in loop is just plain old JavaScript and is not some thing the jQuery offers.

Happy Hacking :)