For those not in the know, Assignment Manager (AM from now on, to save me typing!) is a technology that allows the allocation of objects such as Opportunities, Service Requests, Cases and Activities, to ownership objects within your Siebel implementation: employees, positions and organisations. It does this, is essence, using some key features:

1. Assignment Objects
2. Assignment Criteria
3. Assignment Rules
4. Assignment Skills

Think of objects as a parallel abstraction of the data layer to a business layer. Not quite a Business Component but sharing many of the same properties: imagine a simplified BC definition, where fields are exposed via columns and joins. These make up the SR, Opportunity objects and the key attributes of those which will be the basis of their assignment. Assignment criteria, rules and skills all go towards matching up attributes of the object to equivalent or related attributes of the assignee, be that a person, position, organisation or a mixture of both.

Don’t get too bogged down in the detail of it all though. In the coming weeks, I’ll hopefully show you that’s it’s not all that complicated and defining new Assignment Criteria and associated Assignment Rules is actually pretty straight forward!

If you can’t wait any longer, there’s always the Assignment Manager Guide on Bookshelf!

See you next time!

First up, a number of important observations:

1. This book is NOT a reference guide. Siebel Bookshelf is still the one and only reference library that you will need when configuring, administering and managing Siebel day to day
2. This book is NOT a configuration guide. Do not expect to pick this book up and begin working in Siebel Tools. This is an installation and maintenance guide, not a developers guide
3. This book is NOT a beginners guide to Siebel. In order to get the most out of the contents, you should posses some understanding of Siebel technologies

Bearing in mind the statements above, I’m pleased to say that this book is actually pretty good!

My first observation is that the book is very well written. The language is clear and  concise (especially pleasing as the author is a native German speaker) and it is well illustrated with useful screenshots and diagrams. The contents are laid out logically and each chapter flows well into the next.

In brief, the book covers the basics of getting started with an out of the box Siebel 8 installation. Roughly speaking, it covers the following areas:

1. Overview of the Siebel architecture
2. Installation of the main Siebel components on both Windows and Unix / Linux platforms, including setting up security adapters and SSO
3. Server Administration
4. Siebel Application Deployment Manager (ADM)
5. Monitoring Siebel applications
6. Managing Siebel Remote

There is also a chapter or two around access control and personalization and position and organisation hierarchy, which I did find a little odd. Given the nature of the rest of the content, this seemed to be a deviation into the developers domain. I could be wrong, however, and it’s obviously better to have more than less!

The first chapter will be useful if you’re new to Siebel, otherwise it’s just a recap of what you probably (hopefully!) already know. If you’re moving from 6 to 7 / 8 then it might handy to note the architectural changes in those versions. If so, welcome to the 21st century!

The installation, configuration and administration chapters are excellent and really serve to condense the gargantuan quantities of information available in Bookshelf into a manageable step by step guide. I tested this section on one of my colleagues on my current project and he managed to install a base 8.1 SIA environment just by following the guide. A testament to the content, given he has very little Siebel experience! The process is very well defined and the instructions and screenshots clear and concise. Siebel Remote Administration is also given a lot of attention and the author has done well to introduce features that you will definitely find useful.  Personally, I’ve done more Siebel installations than I can remember and thought I knew it all – there are some great tips and tricks that will appeal to even the most seasoned Siebel architect. Of particular note are the security administration and the Oracle BI Publisher installation sections. These are both complex topics and require much to’ing and fro’ing in Siebel Bookshelf to accomplish. It really is excellent to have these important concepts broken down into easy to follow steps.

The ADM section is welcome but I feel it is lacking in the level of detail that would really make it useful. ADM has been around since Siebel 7 but has yet to appeal to me as a one stop shop for migrating reference and non-repository data between environments. Some real world examples of, say, migrating deltas of hierarchical LOV values from Dev to Test would have made this chapter far more useful; as would an example of setting up custom object types to migrate other types of data. As it is, the chapter is a good overview of ADM and gives you an introduction to what it’s all about.

Monitoring is a great addition and is an area often overlooked by technical references. The core features of the SARM and the Siebel Management Server are covered and this offers a handy introduction to a wealth of performance and debugging information that you can now pull out of your Siebel instance. For me, this was new ground and something I’ll definitely be looking to refer to more often in the future.

Overall, it’s a good book. It’s not a ‘Learn Siebel in 24 hours’ type of book: I would always recommend the Core Consulting course and a couple of years working on a project, if you are really serious about getting into Siebel technology. It’s a companion, rather than a replacement, to Siebel Bookshelf and would sit well on the shelf of any Siebel infrastructure specialist or System Administrator.

You can buy the book direct from Pakt Publishing or from Amazon.

Now, a new book has just been released called Oracle Siebel CRM 8 Installation and Management that aims to further expand the growing knowledge base available to all of us in the industry:

The kind people at Packt Publishing have offered to let me peruse a copy and provide my feedback. I’m really excited about this as previous attempts (Siebel 8 for Beginners, I’m looking at you!) at encapsulating the behemoth of Siebel in paperback form were not, in my opinion, particularly worthwhile.

Stay tuned for a full review in a couple of weeks time!

My articles will be less regular than before, but I’m hoping to release a series on Assignment Manager in Siebel 8.1 over the coming month or so. In the mean time, please peruse the active articles and feel free to add some comments. Even the likes of ‘We deployed SAP CRM and it’s brilliant!’ or ‘Cloud computing – death to Siebel!’ are welcome – I’m always up for a bit of CRM based discussion!

• Application (Siebel Service Wireless)
• Screens (*SWLS Service*)
• Views (*SWLS Service*)
• Applets (*SWLS Service*)

Applets and Views are named according to the relationship that they represent (parent / child) and whether they are list (Display) or form (Detail) type . For example:

SWLS Service Account Activity Display View

This is the Wireless Service (SWLS Service) view that for a parent Account will show a list of Activities

Applets, Views and Screens are all built up in the same way as you’d expect and use a specific Wireless Web Template to allow display on the smaller device screens. Drill down, via Drill Down objects, Picklists are all supported out of the box. More complex functionality, such as buttons, are handled via User Properties on the applet level controls. Note that these are currently undocumented, so a degree of trawling through the vanilla configuration is unavoidable. You’ll soon understand what’s going on but analysis of the existing config against vanilla functionality is highly recommended.

Here are a few useful tips:

1. Application Screen objects determine what will appear in the Home screen – add items as Page Tabs and ensure the Responsibility contains appropriate Views
2. Views are standard though are made up of single applets
3. Applets are standard and made up of two to three fields, as List Columns, or many fields as a form. Controls and List Columns on the applets use a set of specific Wireless User Properties, including:
   • Page – a link to return / navigate to a specific Web Page
   • View – a link to a specific View
   • KeepContext – determines whether to keep the BO context when navigating
   • Popup – whether this displays a popup window
   • UseParent – allows displaying of a parent field value on a child applet (SR number of a list of Activities, for example)
4. Drill down objects work in the same way as normal to provide drill downs to other views
5. Child ‘view’ items are defined as controls on the applet, with a ‘View’ user property
6. Applets will apply search spec as per Bus Comp definition but will ALSO apply the default PDQ!

My recommendation is to modify existing applets and copy existing applets instead of creating new ones from scratch. When creating my Case configuration, I copied the existing Service Request objects and modified them accordingly.

Give it a go and feel free to post comments with problems or success stories!

To set up various capabilities, follow the steps below. I’m using BlackBerry as an example, but the same rules apply for all device and browser types:

1. Navigate to Administration > Web Browsers
2. Query for ‘Blackberry*’
3. Copy the existing record and rename as: Blackberry Parent
4. Drill down to set shared capabilities
5. Create new Web Browser entries, for example Blackberry 9550, with ‘Blackberry Parent’ as parent
6. Drill down to set specific capabilities. Some common settings:
   • User-Agent – user agent specified by browser to web server (for example, BlackBerry9550)
   • NumberOfListRows - number of rows to display, fitting on the device screen (for example, 5)

A great way to test what you’ve done is with Firefox. Within Firefox, you can configure the browser to ‘pretend’ to be any number of different user agents. For example, to test a BlackBerry 9550:

1. Load up Firefox
2. In the address bar, enter: about:config
3. In the filter bar, enter: useragent
4. Double click general.useragent.extra.ofcom and type in your user agent string – BlackBerry9550
5. Restart FireFox and navigate to your Siebel Wireless site

As you can probably see, it’s really easy to set up and use Siebel Wireless out of the box. Delivering the same application to multiple devices is also made easy via Browser Capabilities – and we haven’t even touched Siebel Tools yet!

Coming up next, we’ll look at the Siebel Wireless Tools configuration and I’ll talk through adding your own functionality to the existing application.

Follow these steps to enable Siebel Wireless:

1. You’ll need the Siebel Wireless license key. Go to Administration – Application > License Keys and add it in
2. Restart the Siebel Server service
3. Navigate to Administration > Server Configuration > Enterprises > Component Groups
4. Enable the ‘Siebel Wireless’ Component Group
5. Highlight the ‘Siebel Service Wireless (ENU)’ Component
6. Click ‘Assign’ to enable on server
7. Restart the Siebel Server service
8. Verify the wpserv_enu entry in eapps.cfg
9. Navigate to Administration – User > Employees
10. Create a new record, assign a Position and associate the ‘Field Service Representative – Wireless’ responsibility

That’s it! You can access the vanilla Wireless Service application via the URL: http://<Siebel Web Server Host>/wpserv_enu/. For a slightly more impressive demo, you can use the TestiPhone iPhone Simulator to display your mobile site!

In the next post, I’ll look at how to configure Siebel to support multiple devices and browsers, without any Siebel Tools configuration!

With mobile communications technology advancing as it is, delivering better coverage and faster devices with more screen real estate, the Siebel Wireless option is becoming an attractive one. It provides a cut down pure HTML version of your ‘full fat’ Siebel application and delivers it directly to a mobile device, be it Blackberry, iPhone, Nokia or whatever. It’s a very simple solution but very powerful at the same time. Siebel 8 has delivered a much improved (and much prettier!) Siebel Wireless solution when you put it up against earlier efforts.

I’ve spent some time developing a Case Management Wireless solution that builds on the vanilla Wireless Service configuration. In the next article or two I’d like to share my experience and knowledge around this area. Demo’ing a POC system to board members, via iPhone or a big screen via RIM’s Blackberry simulators, will be sure to raise an eyebrow or two I can assure you!

Stay tuned!

First up, go into Site Map > Administration – System Configuration > Enterprises > Profile Configuration

If you query for Profile = ADSI*, you’ll see a vanilla AD security adapter configuration. If you’re going to try changing stuff, why not take a copy of this so that you can always refer back to the original.

So, here are the values you’ll need to fill in:

Once you’re happy with this configuration, you need simply tell your OM component to use the new profile for authentication. Do this through Site Map > Administration – System Configuration > Servers > Components > Parameters. Simply set the follow parameter values:

That’s it!

You can trouble shoot by setting event logging on the OM, specifically around the Security Adapter Log and Security Adapter Manager events. I’d also recommend reading through the Siebel Security Guide in Bookshelf.

Please feel free to post if you’re having problems with enabling AD authentication in Siebel or if you have anything else to add.

Whether it’s changing times or Oracle’s intervention, the technology is opening right up: blogs galore, open discussion forums hosted by Oracle, free downloads from eDelivery and several books hitting the shelves of Amazon. These are good times for the community and gives us a great opportunity to share our knowledge and skills and help each other out.

So I’ve posted some articles, garnered some responses and hopefully helped a few people out.

What I’d like to know from anyone visiting is, what would you like me to post about? Are there any specific areas that you’d like me to cover? Any burning questions you’d like me to answer?

I’m open to suggestions as at the end of the day this site is about informing and helping other people. Comments or emails welcome!