December 28, 2013

Google Analytics with Siebel

I have seen couple of questions regarding use of Google Analytics with Siebel CRM, but no one seems to answer completely. This article is created to answer those questions.

When it comes to web analytics there is no parallel to Google Analytics, I am not selling Google Analytics, but people who have already used GA before can understand the need of powerful web analytics tools and how Google Analytics fills the gap.


This article will give you steps to create Google Analytics account and to embed the tracking code in Siebel.

Google Analytics can be used with Siebel CRM applications for both internal like Siebel Financial Services and external customer facing applications like eService or eSales. Only requirements from Google to use tracking are:
  • User must be able to reach the ga.js/analytics.js JavaScript file at http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js or https://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js.
  • Intranet Application must be accessible through a fully qualified domain name such as http://intranet.example.com, application need not to be internet hosted application to use google analytics.

If your application can satisfy these requirements then you can create GA code and embed it to the Siebel Application.Once it is setup one can report on user behaviour demographic and many more metrics in GA.

I have used GA's Universal Analytics(newer version of GA) and created custom dimensions to store Active View Name, Application Name and Login User on Google.






Additionally I created events to capture the user interaction application. You can create event to business specific needs like: product configurator or service request creation or tasks.

How to embed Google Analytics tracker in Siebel Open UI?

Add the following code in postload.js file under the public directory, this code will be executed always when ever view is refreshed in Open UI. Code shown in bold is added after creation of dimension shown above.

(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
  (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
  m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
  })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');
  ga('create', 'YOUR_CODE', 'yoursitename');
  ga('send', 'pageview');
ga('set', 'dimension2', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("Login Name"));
ga('set', 'dimension1', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("ActiveViewName"));

ga('set', 'dimension3', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("ApplicationName"));
ga('send', 'event', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("ActiveViewName"), 'click', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("Login Name"));

How to embed Google Analytics with Siebel HI? 

Add following code to the  swecommon.js for high interactive applications, this js is also executed allways after page refresh in HI applications. 

(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
  (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
  m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
  })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');
  ga('create', 'YOURCODE', 'yoursitename');
  ga('send', 'pageview');
ga('set', 'dimension2', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("Login Name"));
ga('set', 'dimension1', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("ActiveViewName"));
ga('set', 'dimension3', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("ApplicationName"));
ga('send', 'event', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("ActiveViewName"), 'click', theApplication().GetProfileAttr("Login Name"));

Caution : Do not track customer information such as user details using custom dimesions and metrics as it is against the google analytics policy and could be against the organisation policy as well.

After all this is done you would be able to see the analytics information in your google account.










Now you can do full fledged analytics on your user interactions. My favorite is real time analytics, which one is your favorite??

Happy Analytics :)

December 26, 2013

Getting Started with Siebel Order Management

This is the first article in series of Siebel Order Management Tutorials. These tutorials will consists of short articles in form of questions and answers on Siebel Order Management particularly Siebel Product Configurator and Siebel Pricing.

I will be tracking the complete Siebel Order Management tutorials here, you can refer to it as index.

What is Siebel Order Management?

Order Management is one of the most successful CRM vertical to help telecom operator to manage customer base and order management. It consists of customer creation, order creation and tracking and modification of the assets.

Most important parts of Order Management is Product Configurator and Pricing engine which helps users to configure the product offering for the end customer and provide them the service.

How to get started with Order Management?

Technical name of the Siebel Order Management Application is Siebel Power Communications and cfg name is scomm.cfg. I will be using sample database on Siebel 8.1.1.10 with Open UI turned on for all the tutorials.

Order Management is a complex application it does not work out of the box even with Sample database. Please follow these steps to get started. I recommend to follow these steps before starting with the upcoming tutorials.

Step 1: Activate all the workflows related to Order Management , Product Configurator and Pricing.
Bookshelf provides list of workflow which should be activated, however the list is not exhaustive thus I usually activate the following workflows:
*Product*
*Pric*
*SIS*
*Asset*
*Order*
*Quote*
If you try to activate all the product related workflows you might get the following error:
[1]Cannot register runtime event for branch 'Cancel.DECISION' in step 'Get User Name & Password'.(SBL-BPR-00116)
[2]Cannot register action for runtime event.(SBL-BPR-00115)
[3]Invalid operation when not executed.(SBL-DAT-00471)
Please ignore the error and try to proceed with the workflow activation from the next available workflow.

Step 2: Fix all the issues with OOB sample database by following instruction on support web article. Doc ID 788942.1
You might see these errors if the signals and variable maps are not resolved in this step:
We detected an Error which may have occurred for one or more of the following reasons:
 Error invoking service 'Context Service', method 'GetRowSetData' at step 'Get Row Set'.(SBL-BPR-00162) 
 If you are facing the same issue again even after following the steps in support web article then go to CalculatePrice_Configurator signal and release the workspace a new version.

Step 3: Go to Administration Product View and try to validate any customizable product.
If you are successful then you should see screen something like this:

Product Configurator with Auto Reprice Templates

Product Configurator with Manual Reprice Template


Comments are welcome.

Next in series: Order Management Entities  - HUG

-Jim

December 14, 2013

EAI JSON Converter


Siebel does not provide any out of the box functionality to convert Siebel data into JSON string or vice versa. Developers end up with string manipulations or giving up on integration. I have created custom EAI JSON Converter business service which uses Java capabilities and Siebel-Java integration EAI Java Business Service to produce fully compliant JSON strings and convert the external JSON into Siebel Property Sets.

The service built on the lines of methods of EAI XML Converter which converts Property set to XML Doc and XML Doc to property set.
Methods available in EAI JSON Converter are:

  1. JSONToPropSet
  2. PropSetToJSON


Input data to this service is sent to EAIJSONConvert java class using Siebel API(Siebel.jar) which converts the data in required format using GSON 2.2.4 Java API . The Gson library was originally developed for internal purposes of Google, and Version 1.0 was later released on May 22, 2008 under the terms of Apache License 2.0. The latest version, 2.2.4, is used for the service.

How to set up:

1. Download and place java files in the CLASSES folder of Siebel Client the binaries 
Files:
EAIJsonConverter.class
gson-2.2.4.jar
Siebel.jar

2. Download the sif file for EAI JSON Converter from github
3. Update the cfg file to include gson-2.2.4.jar file. My cfg file look like:
[JAVA]
DLL = C:\Program Files\java\jre6\bin\client\jvm.dll
CLASSPATH = C:\Siebel\8.1\Tools_1\CLASSES\Siebel.jar;C:\Siebel\8.1\Tools_1\CLASSES\SiebelJI_enu.jar;C:\Siebel\8.1\Tools_1\CLASSES\gson-2.2.4.jar;C:\Siebel\8.1\Tools_1\CLASSES\.
VMOPTIONS = -Xrs -Djava.compiler=NONE -Djms.log=C:\logs\

4. Simulate the service

How to use:

Service can simply be used in place of EAI XML converter to convert the Siebel message into JSON or convert back JSON to property set.




Please feel free to use comments for any questions or to post any difficulty faced in using the service.

Hope it helps.

-Jim

December 09, 2013

100 Siebel Interview Questions: Workflows

 You are reading, the most read article of this entire blog. Please share in comments if it helped you, if you would like to any other question to the list. 💙

This article has been added on reader's request, and these are not the 100 questions as of now ( ideally there should not be 100 question in an interview :) ). My intention with this article is to point all the minor doubts of Siebel Consultants regarding workflows. Feel free to suggest any other question on this topic, I will be more than happy to add it to the list.


Question: What are the different ways to invoke workflows in Siebel?

Answer: Some of the known ways of executing workflows are:
1. Named Method User Property
2. Calculated Field expression
3. Script on BusComp, Applet, Application, Business Services
4. Workflow Policy
5. RCR & Server Requests
6. Asynchronous Server Request - Business Service
7. Run Time Events
8. Command line using Server Manager
9. Web services & Receiver components(JMS,MQ)
10. Through Siebel URL 
11. Commands
12. Order Management Signals

Question: How to invoke workflow on specific server?

Answer: Workflows executed through workflow process manager business service are executed on the same server where request is made. Asynchronous Server Request and Server request business service can send request to other servers for workflow execution; this can be done by specifying server name as input argument.

Question: What are different ways of error handling in workflow process?

Answer: There are two ways of error handling in Siebel workflows. Most popular to handle error in workflows are exception branches(the red arrows :) ), they can be created for each step in workflow to handle error for the step.Secondly  we can use Error Process Name property of workflows to call another workflow process to handle in case of any error.

Question: How to configure a workflow policy?

Answer:
1. Ensure Workflow Policy column is created in Siebel tools & Added in workflow policy object
2. Create workflow policy action to execute workflow
3. Create workflow policy record and create conditions and associate action to the workflow policy.
4. Execute “Generate Trigger” task to create triggers
5. Restart Workflow Monitor Agent

Question: What is the difference between Synchronous and Asynchronous workflow execution?

Answer: Synchronous workflow is executed in user session and user has to wait till workflow is executed. Workflow is executed synchronously usually through button click or record operations like set field value or write record, where user need to know the outcome of the workflow.

Asynchronous workflow requests are executed by server in background and does not requires user to wait for the outcome. These type of workflows are usually interface workflows.

Question: What is the difference between Stop step and End Step?

Answer: Stop step sets the status of workflow to “In Error” and End step set the status to “Completed”
Stop steps should be avoided in integration workflows and workflow policies as they may cause server component to error out.

Question: What is the difference between Workflow policy and Run time events?

Answer: Workflow policy adds the workflow execution request to the queue and executes the workflow from server components.
Runtime event executes workflows as and when requested and process is executed in user session user has to wait for the workflow to complete.

Questions: Is it possible to create Workflow without Business Object ? If yes how ?

Answer: Yes it is possible to create workflow without business object. Business Object is not a required field on Workflow. It is only required when workflow need to use any siebel operation.

Question: How to get current date in Siebel Workflow?

Answer:  Property can be populated with current date by using Timestamp() in Siebel Workflow. Syntax of Timestamp in Siebel Workflow.

Question: What is stored in Siebel Operation Object Id when Query method from Siebel operation step returns more than one record?

Answer: Siebel Operation Object Id contains * if more that one records or updated are queried using Siebel operation.


Question: How to pass hierarchical property set from custom business service to Workflow?

Answer: To pass hierarchy from custom business service to workflow, type of property set should be the same as the name of output argument. 



http://howtosiebel.blogspot.com/2015/10/download-siebel-interview-questions-pdf.html
Download Siebel Interview Question eBook

See Part :2 of Siebel Workflow Interview Questions

See more EAI Interview Questions here.