Open UI just doesn't work!

I recently met a group of people who basically vented out their first reactions on Siebel Open UI. Group consisted of both technical staff and non technical end users, thus I was able to validate and confirm issues.

At the end of discussion I was left with long list of things that doesn't work in Open UI. On researching support web, picture became more appalling.

Following is the list of very basic things that just don't work in Open UI, and sad part is that Oracle is not acting on them at all.

Please share your views in the comments below.

1. Scrolling through list applet does not work with keyboard shortcut.

   When you get a list applet displayed in Open UI and before you click on any data row you navigate with the keys <CTRL>+<ARROW-DOWN> the focus will jump to the next record.But the previous record is still highlighted.
   Oracle raised couple of bugs for it, but didn't provided any fix for IP2013
   
   

2. Drag and Drop of attachment does not work in IE9 and IE11 in IP2013 however it works in other browsers.

   
   
   
   Open UI Product Management recommends :
   ..."Drag and drop will not work in any IE version in Siebel 8.1.1.10 release and below. The biggest issue here is that IE8 and IE9 simply don’t support standards based drag and drop in HTML5. For IE10 there is a defect in a third party being used to provide this functionality. The third party has resolved the issue and it will be included in a future Siebel release. We would not encourage customers to upgrade the third party themselves, but rather they should wait for the next Siebel release when a fix will be made available"....
   In one of the SR oracle has gone one step further and recommended to change the browser.
   
   

3. Open UI doesn't show hour glass while running query.

   This has been reported to oracle by many customers and since earliest open UI release, still oracle hasn't provided any fix yet.
   Steps to replicate:
   1) Log Into Open UI enabled siebel application
   2) Navigate to Accounts > All Accounts View
   3) Select the field to be searched using In Line Search(dropdown on top of list applet)
   4) Query for a field which can take some time to return records
   5) hourglass not shown and user doesn't know whether the system is querying or not!
   
   

4. Vertical scroll is not present in open ui list applets.

   
   

   

   Siebel HI List Applet

   This one is the annoying thing of open UI. I don't understand why oracle has gone ahead picked up jqgrid for designing list applets. Grid is not capable enough to handle the large amount of data thus vertical scrolling is difficult to implement. This is also the reason of bad performance of Open UI client.
   
   

5. Text area fields in open UI does not pops up.

   
   This is the second most annoying thing for an experienced HI user. Suddenly after upgrade Siebel losses it's popout text areas and no solution was provided till date. I have seen long time wasted to resolve this thing by many developers.
   

We all know list of issues with Open UI doesn't end here. I will create another list of Top 10 annoying things of Open UI to share it with you.

Till the time if you any problem that was just rejected by oracle to fix and think that should get slot in top 10 the please share it in comments below.

#ShameOnOracle

How to pass arguments by reference in Siebel?

Yes! it is possible to pass arguments by reference to Siebel functions. This technique is not documented in bookshelf and most of developer use this unknowingly while passing true or false to CanInvoke property in WebApplet_PreCanInvokeMethod Event of applets to make controls active or inactive.

Lets see how it works.

Nothing special needs to be done by calling function, only change made is in callee function in declaration of arguments by prefixing & ampersand just like &CanInvoke in PreCanInvokeMethod.

 Lets see an example :

function Service_PreInvokeMethod (MethodName, Inputs, Outputs)
{
if(MethodName == "PassByReferenceTest")
{
var privatePS = TheApplication().NewPropertySet();
privatePS.SetProperty("test","something");
subFunction(privatePS);
TheApplication().RaiseErrorText(privatePS.GetProperty("test"));
return(CancelOperation);
}
return (ContinueOperation);
}

function subFunction (&parameter)
{
parameter.SetProperty("test","TestSuccesful");
}

Above script declares a new property set and sets value of a process property to a string("something"), which is over written("TestSucccesful") by subFunction by directly accessing it through the memory pointer.  When business service is executed RaiseErrorText whill print "TestSuccesful" instead of "something".

 
This trick will potentially save you memory allocation and speed up you code a bit. Please be mindful that this code is just an experiment and should not be used in production environment without proper testing.


Happy coding :)

Not all control paths lead to a return statement. (SBL-SCR-00128)

Not all control paths lead to a return statement. (SBL-SCR-00128)

  This issue was fixed in version 8.1.1.7, but has been reported re-occurring in IP2014 patchset 3, it is caused due to product defect. This can cause interruptions in full compile of srf.

While compiling srf, if any script which has try catch block which has return statement in try block and does not have return statement outside catch, then this error will interrupt the srf compilation. 

To resolve this disable the "Deduce Types" scripting option in Siebel Tools as shown below.

How to change color of screen tab in Open UI?

I think this configuration should available out of the box in Siebel. Never the less I am happy that it is possible to customize the View PR layer in Open UI to change the colors of view bar of specific views.

In this example we will see how can we change the view bar background conditionally using Open UI View level PR customization.

This is how grey tab theme looks out of the box for Manifest File view :

 

Open UI Manifest File View

And this is how Manifest Administration view looks with Open UI PR Customization:

Open UI Manifest Administration View

May be savvy developers would like to have pale yellow for read only views or red for administration screens???


Part 1 : Create CSS class
This customization requires extending the theme in theme.js and creating new class to add different color. New Class should look something like :

custom-theme.css

When this class is associated with any control, it will change the background of the element to transparent and change the background color to blue.

Part 2: Create View PR Customization 
Now the task left is to find the view bar element in the DOM and assigning the class, this can be done with these two commands:

            $("#s_sctrl_tabView").addClass("custom_viewbar");
            $("#s_sctrl_tabScreen").find("li.ui-tabs-active[role='tab']").find("a").addClass("custom_viewbar");

Additionally we need to handle the browser resize event and reassign the class on change of size of browser. Sadly resize event is not passed on the View level PR as described in bookshelf and it has to be done with help of jQuery bind function. Code handling resize event looks like :

        $(window).bind("resize", OnPRResize);

At last we need to handle the cleaanup in the EndLife event of jQuery bind and the class allocation.

$(".custom_viewbar").removeClass("custom_viewbar");
$(window).unbind("resize", OnPRResize);

The final code of PR looks like:

if (typeof(SiebelAppFacade.testPR) === "undefined") {
    SiebelJS.Namespace("SiebelAppFacade.testPR");
    define("siebel/custom/testPR", ["siebel/viewpr"],function () {
    SiebelAppFacade.testPR = (function () {

    function testPR(pm) {
                SiebelAppFacade.testPR.superclass.constructor.apply(this, arguments);
    }
    SiebelJS.Extend(testPR, SiebelAppFacade.ViewPR);

    testPR.prototype.Init = function () {
        $(window).bind("resize", OnPRResize);
        SiebelAppFacade.testPR.superclass.Init.apply(this, arguments);
    }

    testPR.prototype.ShowUI = function () {
        SiebelAppFacade.testPR.superclass.ShowUI.apply(this, arguments);
    }

    testPR.prototype.BindData = function (bRefresh) {
            SiebelAppFacade.testPR.superclass.BindData.apply(this, arguments);
    }
    var OnPRResize = function OnResize(){
            $("#s_sctrl_tabView").addClass("custom_viewbar");
            $("#s_sctrl_tabScreen").find("li.ui-tabs-active[role='tab']").find("a").addClass("custom_viewbar");
    };
    testPR.prototype.BindEvents = function () {
            SiebelAppFacade.testPR.superclass.BindEvents.apply(this, arguments);
    }
    testPR.prototype.EndLife = function () {
        $(".custom_viewbar").removeClass("custom_viewbar");
        $(window).unbind("resize", OnPRResize);
        SiebelAppFacade.testPR.superclass.EndLife.apply(this, arguments);
    }

    testPR.prototype.Setup = function () {};

    testPR.prototype.SetRenderer = function () {
                $("#s_sctrl_tabView").addClass("custom_viewbar");
                $("#s_sctrl_tabScreen").find("li.ui-tabs-active[role='tab']").find("a").addClass("custom_viewbar");
    };

    return testPR;
    }()
    );
    return "SiebelAppFacade.testPR";
    })
}

Part3: Configure Manifest
Now when this PR script is associated to any view in Open UI Manifest, view bar color and screen tab color of that view will change to blue.


Hope it helps, if you like this article and would like to see more articles like this please leave a comment or +1

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

Siebel Open UI Interview Questions

Read Latest Open UI Interview Questions here.

What is Siebel Open UI?

Answer: Siebel Open UI is HTML 5 based Siebel High interactive client which is released by Oracle to replace older Active X based HI client. It is available in Siebel CRM from version 8.1.1.9 onwards. The name derived from Open source JavaScript libraries which it is based on.

Siebel Open UI

It is fully HTML 5 compliant user interface, which is based on jQuery and jQueryUI frameworks. It does not uses any active x component thus it can be accessed using any HTML 5 compliant browser like chrome, safari and Firefox along with latest Internet explorer.

Question : How to enable Open UI in Siebel?

Answer : To enable Open UI create new application object manager and set following parameters

Enable Open UI = true
HighInteractivity =true

Siebel Open UI exists parallel to existing Siebel clients. It references same srf and database and shares the same object definition with High Interactive application. 

 

Question: What are major customizable components of Siebel Open UI ?

Answer: Open UI can be customized extensively with help of jquery classes(known as presentation mode and physical renderer), which can override the default behviour of controls and can mash up with other HTML widgets.

 

 Question: What is the difference between presentation model and physical renderer?

Answer : Physical renderer is JavaScript layer in Open UI stack that is responsible for building the UI and showing the data. It communicates with presentation model to fetch data.

Presentation model is second layer which maintains the data state in Client. All the events and methods(such as delete record, write record or update record) are managed by PM layer. It communicates with proxy layer to get and set data on server.

 

Question: What is the difference between the PM of List applet and Form Applet?

Answer: Class of PM Layer is of list applet is different from Form applets and is extended as : 

SiebelJS.Extend(CustomClassName, SiebelAppFacade.PresentationModel); for form applet

and List applet uses SiebelJS.Extend(CustomClassName, SiebelAppFacade.ListPresentationModel)

Recommended way to customize PM and PR layer is use code creators
Duncan ford template generator 

 

Question : How to access Applet's Client User properties in Presentation Model?

Answer: Client user properties specified in siebel tools can be retrieved in Siebel Presentation Model JS by accessing the constants in the Setup method. Example:

CustomPM.prototype.Setup = function (propSet){
var consts = SiebelJS.Dependency("SiebelApp.Constants");
var apm = propSet.GetChildByType(consts.get("SWE_APPLET_PM_PS"));
var value = apm.GetProperty("User Property1");

Question: Does open UI support browser script events defined in tools?

Answer: Yes open UI supports browser scripts specified in tools. All the browser script events are supported. In addition to those events Open UI supports presentation model and physical renderer js class files to leverage HTML 5 capabilities.


Recommended Reading from Bookshelf:
Deploying Open UI
Configuring Open UI

Read for More Open UI Interview Questions - New

Siebel Interview Questions : Scripting

See collection of Date functions in Siebel eScript

Siebel Scripting is one the most interesting areas of Siebel, if it is done properly it can do wonders for business, otherwise it can lead to ever increasing technical debt.

Siebel Tools Scripting IDE

Before jumping to questions let us look at some lessor known facts of Siebel Scripting:

1. Siebel support two scripting languages: eScript and VBScript
2. Full name of eScript is ECMA script which developed further to become javascript. 
3. Garbage collection of Siebel scripts in not automatic
4. Siebel eScript does support prototype overriding and classes
5. Siebel eScript can pass arguments by value and pass by reference

Question: Which Siebel objects supports scripting?

Answer: Script can be written on following objects in Siebel:

1. Business Services
2. Client Side Business Services
3. Business Components
4. Applets
5. Application
6. Product Configurator Events
7. Smart Scripts
8. Workflows (via business services)
9. Open UI js class files
10. Browser scripts on Applets, BusComps, Application, Business Services
11. Siebel Webtemplates SWTs
12. ?????

Question : How to change primary record of MVG using scripting?

Answer: Primary record of MVG can be changed by setting the SSA Primary Field of the associated record. 

Script could look like:  

        bcOpty.ClearToQuery();
        bcOpty.ExecuteQuery();
        if(bcOpty.FirstRecord())
        {
            var bcMVG = bcOpty.GetMVGBusComp("MVF Name");
           bcMVG.ActivateField("SSA Primary Field");
            bcMVG.ClearToQuery();
            bcMVG.SetViewMode(AllView);
            bcMVG.SetSearchSpec("Id", "1-12345");
            bcMVG.ExecuteQuery();
             if(bcMVG.FirstRecord())
            {
               bcMVG.SetFieldValue("SSA Primary Field", "Y");
               bcOpty.WriteRecord();
            }
        }

Question : How to set pick list field using script?

Answer:  GetPicklistBusComp() Pick() methods are available in eScript by which system can search on pick list buscomp and pick desired record.

Syntax for pick method can look like:

oPickBusComp = buscomp.GetPickListBusComp("FieldName");
oPickBusComp.ClearToQuery();
oPickBusComp.SetSearchSpec("Id","12345");
oPickBusComp.ExecuteQuery();
oPickBusComp.Pick();
buscomp.WriteRecord();

Question : How to show a confirmation(Ok/Cancel) dialogue box in Siebel?

Answer: Confirmation Dialog box should be implemented through browser script using javascript confirm method. This method prompts users with option to proceed or cancel the process.

Click here for example.

Question : How to call batch file through scripting?

Answer: Siebel provides C libraries to access the host of Siebel server.
Clib.system() is one of those functions which allows script to pass some instructions to command processor of server host.
Using this method, a batch file can be invoked from Siebel which can do OS level changes.
Following instruction can execute Siebel.bat file on the server:

Clib.system("C:\\Scripts\\Batch\\Siebel.bat");

Question : How to update read only fields in Siebel?

Answer: Fields in Siebel are configured as read-only using "Field Read Only Field" and "BC Read Only Field" user properties. These user properties does not work on views where admin mode flag is set to Y.

BusComp.InvokeMethod("SetAdminMode", flag)

Question: What is the difference between SetAdminMode and SetViewMode(AllView)?

Answer :

• SetAdminMode mimics the behaviour of Admin Views, and is used to update read only fields
• SetViewMode instruction changes the default view mode of the business component, it used to access records which are not visible with default view mode.

Question : Is it possible to invoke workflow through browser script?

Answer: Workflow can be invoked through browser script if "Workflow Process Manager" declared as Client side business service in Application's User Property. 

Question : What type of error handling is available in Siebel eScript?

Answer: try catch finally instructions helps to handle run time errors in e-script.

• try block marks the code which needs to handled
• catch block declares commands which should be executed in case of error,
• finally block is executed after try and catch has completed executing.

try
{
   statement_block
}
catch
{
   exception_handling_block
   [throw exception]
}
finally
{
   statement_block_2
}

Finally block is always executed no matter if there was error encountered or not.

Question: How to get language of Object Manager?

var lang = TheApplication().InvokeMethod("LANGUAGE");

Question :  What is difference between ActiveBusObject() and GetBusObject() methods?

Answer: ActiveBusObject is mostly used in UI based scripting requirements, this method can only return the handle of current BO instance.

For example: In Accounts screen ActiveBusObject will return Account BO and subsequent .GetBusComp().GetFieldValue will return the information from the record selected by user.

Same script in Contact Screen will return the Contact BO.

Important Points about ActiveBusObject: 
- It is not recomended to use ClearToQuery and ExecuteQuery on BC of ActiveBusObject as UI context for user will get lost.
- ActiveBusObject is the only way to get BO in browser script.

GetBusObject method should be used when current BO instance does not have the BC of interest. We can get handle of any BO in application using GetBusObject This is mostly used in background processes and workflows.

 

100 Siebel Interview Questions : Workflows : Part 2

On readers interest, creating Part 2 for the post on Siebel Workflow Interview Question, feel free to leave a comment for any specific question that you faced difficulty in answering or would like to know more about any specific area in Siebel.

Question: Is it mandatory to specify Business Object on a Workflow?

Answer: No, Business Object needs to specified only when there is need to use Siebel Operation in Workflow.

Question: What is the difference between Expression business component and Filter business component in Siebel Operation?

Answer: These business components fields are used in Siebel Operation when search spec is built by referencing another business component field.

For Example: To find Account records where Account Id is specified in Contact's Account Id field, expression will be created like :

"[Id] = [Account Id]"

And Filter Business Component will be set as : Account and Expression Business will be set as Contact. Thus it will be evaluated as :

"[Account.Id] = [Contact.Account Id]"

read more on :
How to create Siebel Operation Expression 
Bookshelf: Defining Siebel Operation Search Spec

Question : How to compare two properties in Siebel Workflow?

Answer: Expression on Siebel Conditional branch can be used to compare two properties.  To see how to create expression in siebel workflow please see.

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.  

Responsive UI Demo of Siebel Open UI IP2014

With IP2014 Siebel has adopted responsive UI design which adapts the UI in real time to the screen size and HTML5 capabilities available on the device. Following video is the best Siebel demo we have ever seen so far.

Please watch and Share!!  

Demo showcases :
- Differences between desktop and tablet devices(ipad)
- HTML 5 Compatibility test
- Application menu adapts to screen size (hides context menu on iPad)
- Icons are larger on tablet device for easy navigation.
- Calendar changes the layout for easier navigation in iPad
- Fluid Grid adapts to the resolution of desktop application into a tablet mode and further to mobile resolutions 
- Checkbox adapts to slider using plugin wrapper on iPAD
- MVG shows both shuttle applet and list applet.
- MVG on iPAD shows as pre IP2014 application.
- iPAD enables multi-select checkboxes.
- Scrolling in remains the same in desktop as in IP2013
- Infinite Scrolling is available in iPAD with progress bar!!! No need of IP2013 Solution  

How to get current timestamp in JavaScript?

Following Javascript code returns current date and timestamp of client. This is quite handy for Open UI development, one can call following code from console.log() method to record the invocation sequence which is otherwise very difficult.

function displayTime(str2) {  
    var str = "";
    var currentTime = new Date()
    var hours = currentTime.getHours()
    var minutes = currentTime.getMinutes()
    var seconds = currentTime.getSeconds()
    var milliseconds = currentTime.getMilliseconds()
    if (minutes < 10) {
        minutes = "0" + minutes
    }
    if (seconds < 10) {
        seconds = "0" + seconds
    }
    str += hours + ":" + minutes + ":" + seconds + ":" + milliseconds;
    return str2 + ": " + str;
    }

Siebel Open UI Example:

 console.log("PR Invoked" + displayTime("@"));

Hope it helps. 

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 :)

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.

Fixing title of Siebel Open UI

It is one of the well known problems of Siebel Open UI. Browser title of Open UI application is not static and is not set by AOM's "ApplicationTitle" parameter.  

There are numerous other problems with it other than being static, like:

1.Title shows "-the end-"  if the application is refreshed by browser refresh button.

Title showing as -the end- in home screen

2. Dynamic title for every view, which does not contains application name.  

Home page is showing Contact Home Title on navigating back.

3. Home Page View does not show the title correctly if user navigates back from any other screen tab.

Activity home screen show Account Home Title

4. Home Page of screen tabs shows first record information. 

Contact Home shows record details.

Solutions: 

1. Update Title property for all the views in application with correct title or a static title. 

This solution requires changing lot of objects in repository and does not fixes issues with home page views.
read more on bookshelf

2. Update the document title using Open UI Postload event. 

Although this will cause title to title to flicker from the original title to a static title, but it is the only solution which is as close as to the HI application title. 

Change you postload.js or create new custom js and add following script to the application. 

 If(typeof (SiebelAppFacade.ChangeTitle) == "undefined") {
Namespace('SiebelAppFacade.ChangeTitle');

(function(){
SiebelApp.EventManager.addListner( "postload", OnPostload, this );
function OnPostload( ){
try{
document.title="Siebel Call Center";
}
catch(error)
{
SiebelJS.Log("Error caught in postload: "+error);
}
}
}());}

However this solution does not help in case of record navigation. Choose wisely. Hope it helps.

Mouseless Siebel?

I am fan of keyboard shortcuts and I don't like applications which are dependent on mouse clicks and one of such application is Siebel especially Open UI. Many shortcuts of HI does not work in Open UI as browser overrides like Control +N and Cntrl + Arrow Keys.

This forced me to find this alternative and I found the Mouseless browsing add-in for Firefox.

It is not exactly command line interface but it is the closest you can get in Siebel Open UI, once this plugin in enabled you can browse entire Siebel application with keyboard shortcuts with this plugin.

Install Mouseless Browsing Firefox add-in (by Rudolf Noe) from following URL:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/mouseless-browsing/

It works with both Siebel dedicated and thin client. Some screenshots:

Siebel Open UI Home Page with Mouseless Plugin

Invoking Navigate Menu

Siebel Open UI Sitemap

Navigating in Siebel Open UI Using keyboard shortcuts.

This plugin indexs all the links on web page and assign a sequence number to it which becomes the keyboard shortcut for it. The shortcut is displayed along with every clickable link. Incase you are in a editable field you can still use the shortcut by pressing Ctrl Key.

I am using it from past week and hasn't faced any issues yet. Give it a try and let me know how you like it.

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.

Quiz: How to change the destination field of MVG?

This could be one of the most difficult Siebel Configuration Interview Question, it took me some time to understand it and found it quite amusing. Let us see how many of us could answer this. :)

Requirement: To change the destination field of an MVG. Siebel Provides option to change the source field of an MVG so that child records for some other key field can be fetched.

From Siebel tools help: 

MVG Source field Definition

Source Field (O)
Specifies the name of a source field that Siebel CRM uses to link the child business component with the source business component. The source business component is the business component that includes the object definition for the multivalue link. If the source field is different from the Id, then the Source Field property is required.

Requirement is to change the destination field, please bear in mind the MVG is based on M:M relation using a inter table. 

Update:  Sorry guys to being so late in responding to the comments.


Answer to the question is: Source Field and Destination Field of the M:M links can be modified just like 1: M link. Siebel supports having source and destination fields as well as inter-table on a link, this makes the links most configurable.

I have explained all the links in my latest post : Links Demystified

Siebel - Twitter Integration - Part 1: Authentication

This is post is second in series of Siebel Twitter Integration and will talk about logging in to twitter as an application.

Twitter has support two form of authentication, O-Auth Authentication and Application only authentication. For pulling tweets in Siebel we need Application only authentication, luckily which is technically easier than O-Auth and have more generous rate limits.






Before starting with Siebel configuration follow these steps:

1. Create account on http://dev.twitter.com by agreeing to terms and conditions.
2. Request to create your access token, and copy your Consumer Key and Consumer Secret.

Now copy paste following code to your repository, I prefer client side scripting as it easy to change.

StringToBase64 encoder

http://www.siebel-tech.com/2013/07/escript-base64-encoder/
This is piece of code is required for encoding the Client Key and Client Secret to Base64 before sending it to twitter. Developers at siebel-tech.com has done wonderful work in converting String to Base64, which saved me lot of time. Thanks Iain.

function StringToBase64(Inputs, Outputs)
{
  // *************************************************************************
  // Purpose: Encodes to a Base64 string
  // Author: Iain Ollerenshaw
  // Date: 30-Jul-2013
  //
  // Inputs: InString - string to be encoded
  // Outputs: Base64String - string in Base64
  //
  // Modification History
  //
  // Date          By                Details
  // 25-Jul-2013   Iain Ollerenshaw   Created
  // 2-Feb-2014    Jim  Updated
  // **************************************************************************

  try
  {

    // Define the Base64 codex
    var sCodex = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/=";
    var sOutput = "";
    var sInput = Inputs.GetProperty("InString");
    var iLen = sInput.length;
    // Parse input string
    var iPos = 0;
    while (iPos < iLen)
    {
      var sChr1 = sInput.charCodeAt(iPos);
      iPos++;
      var sChr2 = sInput.charCodeAt(iPos);
      iPos++;
      var sChr3 = sInput.charCodeAt(iPos);
      // Shift bytes
      var iEnc1 = sChr1 >> 2;
      var iEnc2 = ((sChr1 & 3) << 4) | (sChr2 >> 4);
      var iEnc3 = ((sChr2 & 15) << 2) | (sChr3 >> 6);
      var iEnc4 = sChr3 & 63;
      if (isNaN(sChr2))
      {
        iEnc3 = iEnc4 = 64;
      }
      else if (isNaN(sChr3))
      {
        iEnc4 = 64;
      }
      sOutput +=(sCodex.charAt(iEnc1) + sCodex.charAt(iEnc2)+ sCodex.charAt(iEnc3) + sCodex.charAt(iEnc4));
      iPos++;
    }
    Outputs.SetProperty("Base64String", sOutput);  }
  catch(e)
  {    throw(e);  }
}

Get Description / Set Description

This is a small piece of code which helps to get the description of any LOV value, I have used LOV as scratch pad to store access token in this example, I will explain to store an maintain these in custom Twitter dashboard. I thought of saving them in system preferences first, but it only has 100 char limit thus had to switch over to LOV Description column.

function GetDescription (sType,sName)
{
var boListOfVal = TheApplication().GetBusObject("List Of Values");
var bcListOfVal = boListOfVal.GetBusComp("List Of Values");
bcListOfVal.ClearToQuery();   
bcListOfVal.ActivateField("Description");
bcListOfVal.SetSearchSpec("Name",sName);
bcListOfVal.SetSearchSpec("Type",sType);
bcListOfVal.ExecuteQuery();
if(bcListOfVal.FirstRecord()){
return(bcListOfVal.GetFieldValue("Description"));
}else return("none");
}

function SetDescription (sType,sName,sDesc)
{
var boListOfVal = TheApplication().GetBusObject("List Of Values");
var bcListOfVal = boListOfVal.GetBusComp("List Of Values");
bcListOfVal.ClearToQuery();   
bcListOfVal.ActivateField("Description");
bcListOfVal.SetSearchSpec("Name",sName);
bcListOfVal.SetSearchSpec("Type",sType);
bcListOfVal.ExecuteQuery();
if(bcListOfVal.FirstRecord()){
bcListOfVal.SetFieldValue("Description",sDesc);
bcListOfVal.WriteRecord();
}
}

LOVs look like:

Main code for Twitter login is as follows:

//Get Consumer Key and consumer Secret from LOV Description
var sConsumerKey = GetDescription("TWITTER_TOKEN","ConsumerKey");
var sConsumerSecret = GetDescription("TWITTER_TOKEN","ConsumerSecret");

//Encode Key and Secret into Base64
var inp = TheApplication().NewPropertySet();
var op = TheApplication().NewPropertySet();
inp.SetProperty("InString",sConsumerKey + ":" + sConsumerSecret);
StringToBase64(inp,op);


//Use EAI HTTP Transport to call Twitter API to login.
var httpSvc= TheApplication().GetService("EAI HTTP Transport");
var httpIn = TheApplication().NewPropertySet();
httpIn.SetProperty("HTTPRequestURLTemplate","https://api.twitter.com/oauth2/token?grant_type=client_credentials");
httpIn.SetProperty("HTTPRequestMethod","POST");
httpIn.SetProperty("HTTPIsSecureConn","TRUE");
httpIn.SetProperty("HTTPContentType","application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8");
httpIn.SetProperty("HDR.Authorization","Basic " + op.GetProperty("Base64String"));
httpIn.SetProperty("HDR.Accept-Encoding","identity");
httpIn.SetProperty("HDR.User-Agent","something");
httpSvc.InvokeMethod("SendReceive", httpIn, Outputs);


//Transcode the JSON response into UTF-8
var oTransService = TheApplication().GetService("Transcode Service");
var oTransOutputs = TheApplication().NewPropertySet();
Outputs.SetProperty("ConversionMode", "EncodingToString");
Outputs.SetProperty("TargetEncoding", "UTF-16");
Outputs.SetProperty("SourceEncoding", "UTF-8");
oTransService.InvokeMethod("Convert", Outputs, oTransOutputs);
var sResponse = oTransOutputs.GetValue();


//Convert the JSON response to property set
var oJSONConverter = TheApplication().GetService("EAI JSON Converter");
oJSONConverter.InvokeMethod("JSONToPropSet",oTransOutputs,Outputs);

//extract access_token and clip
var token = Outputs.GetChild(0).GetProperty("access_token");
token = token.substring(1,token.length-1);


//Save the token for future use
SetDescription("TWITTER_TOKEN","EncodedTokenCredentials",token);

This access token will be used in all the future communications with twitter as authorization code.
Post version: Draft :) keep checking for more updates on explanations over the HTTP transport.

Siebel Twitter Integration - Overview

What is Siebel?

Siebel is Oracle's CRM(Customer Relationship Management) product suite, which offer to manage customer relationships through various touchpoints. Siebel suite is designed mostly for all industry verticals and horizontals, and help business to manage customer data, order information, partner information, sales force automation, customer self service and many more customer interactions.

With its powerful integration capabilities Siebel can interact with other enterprise systems (like billing, back office systesms) on many protocols(like MQ Series, JMS, HTTP, Webservices, database connections, COM, Java, DLL and more..).

What is Twitter?

Does anybody need introduction? Twitter is first and biggest microblogging platform having billions of users accross the world. Some features like verified accounts, hash tagging and trending has made it one of the biggest social network platform.

User can vent their spleen out to the world lietrally about any topic and can follow any user or topic accross the world. From couple of years people have started venting about the poor customer service and problems on twitter. Business are forced to act on the complaints and provide response to keep the brand image. Recently angry customer's tweet about his lost baggage forced British airways to conduct a massive search operation, and helped passenger to get his lost baggage.

Does Siebel Provides Out of the box way to integrate with twitter? No!
Siebel recommends a third party product Buzzinet to handle the twiiter interaction and provide processed information back to Siebel. Which is a very tacttical solution and provides some benefits too. Thus it comes with premium licensing cost and service agreement.

Siebel Twitter Integration

In this series we will discuss a solution which can be implemented to integrate Siebel with twitter without the need of any another enterprise application or middleware.
Twitter only support REST API 1.1 for integration with other applications, current Twiiter API only accepts and provide response in JSON strings. That does not mean Siebel can not integrate Twitter. By using Java based EAI JSON Converter Siebel can create JSON strings and convert back string to data. Follow these links to understand more about EAI JSON Converter..

Twitter REST API v1.1 (@twitterapi) have three major ways of pulling and posting tweets into the cloud.

1. O-Auth User authentication

This method is used by mobile application and third party websites to allows users to acccess twiter features without leaving their environment.

2. Applicaton Only authentication

This type of authentication allows application to execute search queries on twitter and follow topics. With this type of authentication Twitter provides little more generous rate limits for querying twitter, and are best suited for CRM applications.

3. Streaming API

This is firehose of twitter tweets, and it streams live tweets to the applcation using long lived open HTTP connections. This feature should only be implemented if some serious research of user analytics need to be performed.


For the purpose of this series we will demonstrate a solutions which will help organizations having, to follow topics on twitter and post replies to the tweets all by using Siebel on premise application.

Later in this series:

• How to implement Twitter -Application only authentication in Siebel?
• Implementing Twitter search API in Siebel & How to import tweets in Siebel?
• Posting replies to tweets.
• Twitter - Administration Console

 Stay tuned for coming up posts.

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