Siebel Configuration Interview Questions - Picklists

This post focusses on the interview questions that are related to picklists fields in Siebel. I have tried to list all the possible questions and will keep updating it in future.

Question: What is the difference between dynamic picklist and static picklist?

Answer:Static picklist always show a static list of values which are store in List of Values buscomp. Values in static picklists can only be modified by Siebel Administrator from Administration Data> List of Values view. Example: Salutation pick list on contact form applet.

Static Pick list in Siebel

Dynamic Pick list in Siebel

Dynamic picklist source its data from user buscomp such as contact, account and product.
Examples:
1. Product pick applet on Order line item
2. Account pick applet on contact form applet

*** Static picklist are generally dropdown and dynamic picklists are configured through pick applet.

Question: How to create a new static picklist in Siebel?

Answer:
1. Create new LOV_TYPE by creating record in Administration Data> List of Values view. Keep:
Type :  LOV_TYPE
Language Independent Code : CUSTOM_PICKLIST
Display Value : CUSTOM_PICKLIST
Language : English-American
Active : Y
2. Create List of values by using newly created LOV_TYPE in step 1. Set the following values:
Type :  CUSTOM_PICKLIST
Language Independent Code : Value1
Display Value : Display Value1
Language : English-American
Active : Y
3. Create new picklist in tools and set:
BusComp :  PickList Generic
Static : Y
TypeField : Type
Type Value : CUSTOM_PICKLIST
4. Associate picklist to the field, by selecting this new picklist on the field. And set the PickMap as:
Field: "New Field Name"
Picklist Field : Value
5. Place the field on to the applet and set runtime=true

Question: What is the difference between bounded picklist and unbounded picklist?

Answer:Bounded picklist allows user to select value only from the list. User can not type in new value into the field.
On the other side Unbounded picklist field can accept values which are not available in dropdown.User is allowed to type in new value and can save the record.

**Both Static and Dynamic pick list can be bounded or unbounded.

 

 

Question : What is the difference between Picklist and MVG?

Picklist allow user to select on value from list of valid values.
Example : Account Field on Opportunity BusComp.

MVG stands for multi value group is used to associate multiple values to a record. MVG show relationship of one entity to other multiple entities.
For Example: Contacts on opportunity, each opportunity record can be related to multiple contacts records, however it can only be related to one account.

 

 

Question: What is the difference between Constraint pick map and Copy pick map in Siebel?

Answer: Copy pick map copies the selected value to the field. This type of picklist shows all the values from the pick list buscomp.

Constraint pick map is used when there is requirement is to limit the values which are shown on UI. Field value of constraint pick map is used to filter values shown in picklist.
For Example:  Contact Field on Sales Order only shows the contacts of the selected account, this is because account id in mapped as constraint pickmap in account.

Question: How Multilingual LOV works in Siebel ?

Answer: When Multilingual LOV is configured, Siebel save LIC (Language independent code) on the database and shows Display value on the UI depending upon the language of the object manager.

For Example: Event Status will show "Zugewiesen" if user is using German application and for same record English application will show value as "Assigned" and the database column will have "Assigned" value.

Multilingual LOV

Popular Interview Questions:

• How to fix a picklist field?

• What is the performace impacts of using applet toggles?

• What are different forms of applet toggles?

• What is the difference between Constraint pick map and Copy pick map in Siebel?

• What is the difference between Picklist and MVG?

• How to create a new static picklist in Siebel?

More to come...

please feel free to use comments to share any question that you had difficulty in answering?

Siebel EAI Interview Questions - EAI Siebel Adapter

Question: Explain the methods of EAI Siebel Adapter

Answer: EAI Siebel Adapter is pre-build business service which interacts with Siebel Object manager to perform CRUD operations on Siebel Database. Following methods are available on the service:

Query

1. Query method is used to query data from Siebel, output of this method is Integration Object instance.
2. Query can be executed using :
1. Row id of the primary BusComp
2. Search spec consisting of parent and child buscomp fields.
3. Integration object instance - which is also known as Query By Example
3. Only required input argument of this method is Output Integration Object Name which is the name of integration object which is queried by the service.

Whats wrong with EAI Java Business Service?

What is wrong with EAI Java Business Service?? This was my reaction after struggling with EAI Java Business Service and trying to execute small Java code from Siebel. Actually there is nothing wrong with the service, it is our lack of knowledge and less experience with Java development which makes it difficult to configure.

I am going to list down steps required to get the Sample bookshelf code working with Siebel web client.



1. Siebel is not compatible with Java 1.7.
If you compile from Java 1.7 or above you will get the following error while calling service from Siebel

Class name incorrect or does not extend SiebelBusinessService : AddBusinessService -- JVM Exception:java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: AddBusinessService : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0(SBL-EAI-05010)

For workaround Siebel Tools comes with a older version of jdk which can help you to compile and get rid of the above error.

JSON and Siebel

View new eScript based solution to create JSON Strings in Siebel.

JSON(JavaScript Object Notation) is a new lightweight integration message format which is replacing XML in thin client integrations. There are no meta tags and data description in JSON as in XML, it is just a string representation of JavaScript Object, it is designed to help javascript code to convert data to string and string to data without considerable overhead.

JSON vs XML

Many companies have started replacing XML with JSON in APIs. All the APIs of Google (Maps,Mail,Calendar, plus etc are now serving JSON), Twitter API,  Facebook apps and interfaces are built using JSON.
Read more on JSON on : http://www.json.org/

Siebel lacks in support of JSON on server side. Oracle support recommends use of workarounds such as using custom scripting to parse JSON response received by Siebel.

So how to interpret json in Siebel? Answer lies in the escript engine of Siebel. Siebel eScript as we know is actually ECMA script which was basis of Javascript. That is why the syntax of Javascript and eScript closely matches each other.

ECMA adopted JSON before it became standard in javascript. Thus our well known Siebel eScript also have some support.

How to Pre-populate CC or BCC in Siebel F9 Functionality?

Siebel F9 Email Client no doubt is one of best out of the box functionality of Siebel. It has lot of its logic built into the classes thus presents some limitations. In our previous post we saw how we can bring data from child business component data into email body.

In this posts lets see how we can pre-default CC or BCC recipients using some scripting. Out of the box
when ever Send Email method is invoked from on any Siebel Applet, Send Communication Applet is opened, and "To" email field is populated with the value of the field specified in Recipient Email Address Field  user property on the BC.

However there is no way we can pre-default CC and BCC fields out of the box. With the help of small script on  Send Communication Applet can set the value of To Email, CC, BCC and Email Body as well. This can be useful little customization that can help to pre-populate data which can not be achieved using email templates and recipient groups.

function WebApplet_Load ()
{
    var oBC = this.BusComp();
    oBC.SetFieldValue("Email BCC Line","a@a.com");
    oBC.WriteRecord();
}

Siebel Email Client - Siebel 7.8

Hope it helps

-Jim