Following on from our previous discussion around installing and setting up BIP, I thought I’d drop in a quick article to talk briefly about additional Siebel server and application configuration. We’ll start off with some useful information:
As you know, Actuate Reports were defined in Tools and associated directly with Views within the Repository: Report and View Report object types should be familiar. Tools generated a Report Library (ROL) file which would be incorporated into the Report Design (ROD) to feed data into the report. The View definition, along with the Report object definition, then allowed a user to select and run a report. Unsurprisingly, things are different in Siebel 8.1!
First of all, the only work done in Tools is to specify Integration Objects. That’s it. When it comes to deploying reports, things are a lot easier than before! Take a look at the Administration – BIP Reports screen: here you’ll find where to create new Report definitions (think Report objects in 7) and associate them to Views (thing View Report objects in 7). There are also views which allow you to generate sample data to assist with developing reports and a view to purge completed report items. The ‘Views’ view is self explanatory and is a lot nicer than the old Tools mechanism: associate the Report here and users will immediately see it in the ‘Reports’ icon menu.
An important view in this screen is the Report Template Registration screen. Once you have the server up and running, as per the previous post, this is where you’ll need to come to progress further.
Much like Actuate, BIP hold report designs independently of Siebel. In the case of BIP, RTF files represent the report designs. Having got everything else working, you must now populate the BIP repository with the standard Siebel Report Designs. From within this view, highlight the reports to upload and click the ‘Upload Files’ button. Log in to the BIP Portal and have a look under Shared Folders > SiebelCRMReports: you should see the report objects appearing here as they are uploaded from Siebel.
You should now be able to run vanilla reports from the Thin Client in Siebel 8.1: navigate to an appropriate view, click the ‘Reports’ icon and you’ll see available reports under the ——- BI Publisher Reports ——- header.
Common problems at this point again seem to relate to the Web Service definitions and configuration and the BIP Security Model config. See the previous post for a link to an article on MOS that covers these off. Also remember that the ‘XMLPReportServerxxx_xxxxxx’ log file is your friend!
As ever, please feel free to post about any issues you have or have resolved.
Next time, I’m going to look into report design within BIP and how to upload and execute custom reports.
