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Siebel Innovation Pack 2013 (aka 8.1.1.11 / 8.2.2.4) is available for a while now. During discussions with customers and students, almost every project wants to be on this release sooner or later. The reason for this might well be Open UI . Regarding the version numbers, going from 8.1.1.x to 8.1.1.11 might well be " but a patch ". But alas, this couldn't be further from the truth. In reality, installing IP 2013 "on top of" a previous 8.1.1.x version is more than a full upgrade than a patch. Recently, I had the privilege of going a full round, upgrading an existing 8.1.1.0 (yes .0, but it could have been any version up to 8.1.1.7) installation to 8.1.1.11. In this two-part article, I would like to share my findings with you. So this is what I had in front of me: A Windows machine with a Siebel 8.1.1.0 server, connected to an Oracle 10g database and also a SWSE/web server machine. 1. Download and create installers First, I duly downloaded, extracted and created

The battle for supremacy in CRM space is just getting more intense. Open UI has come up to rescue Siebel in arena where they were dislodged by a weak team.  Here is the Fortune article that takes a dig at history, what went wrong for the giant and how new bee scored. A member of the founding executive team, Bruce Cleveland had a ringside seat for one of the seminal technology industry battles of the last decade - Siebel Systems vs. Salesforce.com. He shares his perspective and lessons learned and on what went right and what went wrong for the company. Not too long ago, I was asked to speak to a class of MBA students at INSEAD. Before I began my presentation, I asked the students how many were familiar with Siebel Systems, where I had spent 10 years as one of the members of the founding senior executive team. Only about a third of the class raised their hands. Seven years had passed since Oracle acquired Siebel, which created the customer relationship management (CRM) business, now dom

As a follower of news and articles revolving the Siebel world, you might have stumbled upon the Fortune article titled " Siebel v Salesforce — Lessons from the Death of a Tech Goliath " written by former Siebel Systems executive Bruce Cleveland . Despite the somewhat misleading title which suggests that Siebel is dead ( which it is clearly not ), I enjoyed reading the article and following the discussion it spawned. In the article, Bruce confronts the "nice tale" that David Salesforce defeated Goliath Siebel in the first decade of this century. Bruce argues, and I go 100% with him, that Siebel Systems was definitely on its knees between 2001 and 2004 due to a global recession but it didn't share the same market segment with the new player in the CRM SaaS market, Salesforce.com. Image source: Wikipedia I joined Siebel Systems in 2001 and witnessed how its upper management tried to avoid the unavoidable. Imagine, you have to go full stop from being the fastest gro

by fellow author Jan: In a previous post we looked at how applets can be made collapsible by using the Default Applet Display Mode applet user property in Siebel Tools. In the following we look how we can use the same feature in a custom physical renderer (PR) without the need to change the repository (or SRF). How  ClientPMUserProp works Let's investigate what happens when we add a value to the ClientPMUserProp applet user property: First, Siebel passes all values that are in the list of the values of ClientPMUserProp to the client. Next, the values are encapsulated in a property set of type apm which is read in the the  Setup  method of the Open UI proxy file pmodel.js and put into properties of the PM. As we can see the value of the user property Default Applet Display Mode is stored in the PM property defaultAppletDisplayMode. Click to enlarge The PM property defaultAppletDisplayMode is read in the method ShowCollapseExpand of the Open UI proxy file phyrenderer.js which i

If you are following the various articles on Siebel Open UI on My Oracle Support (hopefully using the great Open UI I nformation C enter   available  as Document   1511846.2 ), you might have stumbled upon  Oracle Support Document 1535281.1 ( Latest recommended maintenance pack for Siebel Open UI on Siebel Version 8.1.1.x and Version 8.2.2.x ) which holds some interesting information regarding Oracle's strategy for releasing quick fixes, maintenance releases or patches for future Siebel versions. The biggest news is that from Innovation Pack 2013 (i.e. version 8.1.1.11 and 8.2.2.4) onwards, Oracle will provide monthly patchsets which introduce a fifth digit in the version number. Source: My Oracle Support So the January patchset for 8.1.1.11 is 8.1.1.11.3, as you can see in the above screenshot. The patches can be downloaded as usual from My Oracle Support. Bringing the new monthly patchset strategy together with the traditional version paths results in the following diagram: Exa

As announced in an earlier post , this is a review of the book Oracle Fusion Applications Development and Extensibility Handbook  by  Vladimir Ajvaz ,  Anil Passi  and Dhaval Mehta. Overall, the 500+ page oeuvre is a "must" for the aspiring Fusion Applications developer. Extending and customizing Fusion Applications can be challenging and should not be done without proper education. This book is a perfect companion alongside the training path offered by Oracle University. The first chapter is dedicated to the architecture of Fusion Applications with a strong focus on Fusion Middleware components such as WebLogic Server, Enterprise Service Scheduler and Enterprise Crawl and Search Framework. Chapter 2 introduces the various types of customizations such as personalization, run-time customization, application extensions and design-time customizations and extensions and doesn't shy away from Metadata Services (MDS), sandboxes and layers. A separate chapter on flexfields follo

Among the many changes and new features delivered with Siebel Open UI is the way how reports are delivered to end users. You might have noticed the following changes: After submitting a report, the application gets focus, so the end user can continue to submit (other) reports or use the application. When a report is complete, the user is notified by the message broadcast icon in the upper right corner. The message is implemented as a link, which allows the end user to download the report (see screenshot below). Recently, we discussed the new features around message broadcasts in Open UI and personally, I was quite intrigued by the possibility of creating a download link in a message. So I decided to do some research. When you take a closer look at the message which is automatically generated, you find it similar to the following: Click to enlarge Abstract : [D] ' Account List... ' report has completed. Message : BO: Report Administration; BC : Report Output BC; Field :  Report

As described in an article earlier last year, Siebel Open UI enables us to display individual applets as "portlets" in any web portal. As of the early versions 8.1.1.9 and 8.1.1.10, this was supported but the functionality was to be considered "basic". As of Innovation Pack 2013, there have been some major enhancements around the possibility to display data from Siebel Open UI in external applications . In the following article, I would like to point out these enhancements: Standalone Applets One of the enhancements in IP 2013 is the ability to display applets in external web pages as "standalone" applets, that is without a surrounding view. However, we still have to establish the context to a business object, which we do via a new applet user property named Business Object . So in order to prepare an applet for display as a standalone applet, you must set that applet user property in Siebel Tools and compile the applet. Siebel Tools: Quote List Applet wi

Recently, two books on Oracle Fusion Applications have been released: Oracle Fusion Applications Administration Essentials  (this post) Oracle Fusion Applications Development and Extensibility Handbook  (future post)  If you happen to be on the "Fusion Path", you might find these worth purchasing (and reading of course). In this and another article to be published soon, I will provide a review of the new publications. Oracle Fusion Applications Administration Essentials by  Faisal Ghadially and Kalpit Parikh . I found this book to stay true to its own abstract (quote from the book): "The book provides detailed how-to steps. However, it does this by ensuring that the high-level context and purpose of these activities are clearly understood. Our purpose in writing this book is to give you a jump-start to managing Oracle Fusion Applications from a technical perspective. Readers who have worked with other Oracle ERP products will find this is an insightful introduction to

GetService and theApplication() are Not Working In Browser Script In Siebel 8.1.1.11 (SIA) SOLUTION Engineering Team is currently working on fixing these issues. In the mean while you can use the below work around. The work around requires changing a standard .js file from the Siebel Client framework. Files to be modified: $siebsrvr_location$\webmaster\siebel_build\scripts\applicationshadow.js Steps to apply the fix   1. Replace the function theApplication() implementation in applicationshadow.js with the below change. Existing implementation of the function theApplication() function theApplication () {    if ( App() == null )        return null;         if(SiebelAppFacade != undefined && SiebelAppFacade.InterfaceSI != undefined && SiebelAppFacade.InterfaceSI.App != undefined)        return App().GetShadow();    else        return App().shadow;   } Implementation with Fix function theApplication () {    if ( App() == null )        return null;         if (IsOpenUI())   

8.1.1.11 Installation Fails when attempting to create a backup of the current Installation Oracle provide a solution for this issue In the installation location ...\Siebel_Enterprise_Server\Disk1\install there is a file named oneclick.properties Open it into an editor and locate the line BACKUP_FOLDER= Please specify the location where the backup should be taken. The backup will be made to $BACKUP_FOLDER\$SIEBEL_ROOT e.g In Siebel is installed in /sblqa, and the BACKUP_FOLDER=/temp/backup, then the backup will be made to /temp/backup/sblqa The installer then needs to copy the contents of the existing installation to backup location specified above and then try to delete the contents of existing installation directory. Modify the backup command line to do a copy instead of a move command: e.g. #UNIX_BACKUP_CMD will be used in case BACKUP_FOLDER parameter has a non empty value. Do not change %SOURCE_ORACLE_HOME_LOCATION% and %BACKUP_LOCATION% in command UNIX_BACKUP_CMD=cp -r ORACLE_HOME_