siebel

This is a repost from February 2009, seems that upgrading Siebel CRM doesn't go out of fashion anytime soon, especially with Innovation Pack 2013 . It appears that many of those Siebel consultants are busily upgrading and I think that timeframes are challenging as always ;-) The following command line utilities are here to help you during the upgrade and save your precious time (you'll need it for other tasks ;-). Please note that the list below is not complete. 1. Log Parser When Siebel Upgrade Wizard performs the Upgrade Database Schema (upgrep) and Upgrade Physical Schema (upgphys) and any other step against the database, it forwards the command line utilities' log files to a central directory, a subfolder of the Siebel Server's log directory. You can run the logparse executable from the command line and generate a nice and pretty html summary. The logparse utility is also useful to summarize tasks not related to an upgrade such as a repository migration (notorious...

With a huge hat tip to fellow Siebelite Duncan Ford, here is a quick solution to show rows in list applets with alternating colours. Like this: Duncan has provided the following CSS rules which, when added to a custom style sheet, do the trick. Totally without any JavaScript coding. .ui-jqgrid .ui-widget-content:nth-child(odd) {     background: #e4bf66; } .ui-jqgrid .ui-widget-content:nth-child(even) {     background: #f9e6b7; } tr.ui-state-highlight {     background:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) !important; } .ui-jqgrid .ui-state-highlight, .ui-jqgrid .ui-widget-content .ui-state-highlight, .ui-jqgrid .ui-widget-header .ui-state-highlight {     background:initial; } As you can see, CSS can distinguish odd and even children of a selection. I have seen quite a lot of jQuery code which accomplishes the same (and of course allows for a more dynamic colouring). But you can't deny the purity and simplicity of CSS. Many thanks to Duncan for sharing this. have a ni...

In his Siebel Observer publication, Bruce Daley informs us about the recent acquisition of Germany based legodo ag by Actuate . For seasoned Siebelians, Actuate rings a lot of bells as it was the primary reporting tool integrated with many versions of Siebel CRM until Oracle replaced Actuate Reports with its own BI Publisher tool. Actuate Corporation (NASDAQ: BIRT) has acquired legodo ag. Based in Karlsruhe, Germany, legodo develops software to allow organizations to tap into information stored in existing applications to create personalized customer communications.  More than 40,000 people have used the software in organizations like Deutsche Bahn, Deutsche Telekom, GEHE Pharmahandel, Lufthansa, Swisscom, Telenor, and Telefonica. The company has a catchy tag line - Now it's personal. “The acquisition of legodo extends Actuate’s offering with tight integration to Siebel among other packages,” said Steve Jones, Co-Vice President and Co-General Manager of the Content Services Group...

One of the many new features in Innovation Pack 2013 for Siebel Open UI are different visual display modes for list applets. Using tiles makes sense on mobile devices as they are easier to select by tapping. But also in desktop applications, tiles can make dull lists more visually appealing. The Contact List Applet for example comes with two new buttons which allow us to toggle between "Grid" (i.e. classic list) and "Tile" mode. Below is a screenshot of the Contact List Applet in tile mode taken using the Siebel Sample Database. Apart from the as-delivered fields such as full name, address, email address or phone number, the ability to store and display an image along with the contact data stands out. Alas, the sample database does not provide sample images... In addition, it is not too obvious how to add an image (or a reference/link) to a contact record at first glance. After a bit of investigation and with a little help from my friend and fellow author Jan, h...

Introduced in IP 2013, Manifest Expressions can be used to evaluate conditions whether a certain set of JavaScript files or a certain web template file should be loaded for a given user interface object. Oracle ships some interesting standard expressions: Some Siebel standard Manifest Expressions in 8.1.1.11 We can inspect those standard expressions by navigating to the Administration - Application screen, Manifest Expressions view. Most of the standard expressions use either the GetProfileAttr() method or the new GetObjectAttr() methods to match the value of either a profile attribute or an attribute of an applet with a string. My first impression was that obviously we can use Siebel Query Language to construct complex expressions. So I started experimenting... One of my first experiments was built on the idea that it could be worthwhile having a central "switch" for enabling or disabling Open UI customizations. Here is the cookbook I came up with: 1. Create a System Pr...

Yesterday, Oracle has released the 4th patchset for Siebel CRM Innovation Pack 2013 which provides cumulative fixes and features for Siebel 8.1.1.11 and 8.2.2.4. The official version numbers are 8.1.1.11.4 and 8.2.2.4.4. (a feast for numerologists ;-) As a frequent reader of this blog, you are aware that Oracle has started shipping monthly patchsets for the latest Siebel Innovation Pack releases. As with all patches, the package is available for download on My Oracle Support. The Readme document combines release notes and installation guide. Good old opatch is taking care of placing the new files onto your disk, so make sure you follow the instructions to avoid surprises. Here are some areas which benefit from the patchset in terms of issues addressed: Siebel Order Management Open UI Mobile Applications (connected and disconnected) have a nice patch @lex

by Jan Peterson In a previous post we already looked at physical renderers for views . Today we look at an example that was in a similar form part of the first pre-beta demos of Open UI (yes - the version that was shown during OOW 2011 :-) ) - a toolbar of buttons where each button represents an applet. In our example, clicking the button will collapse all other applets (which is slightly different to the OOW 2011 demo where the corresponding applet was floating to the top): Click to enlarge The code structure of the PM is essentially the same as in the previous example: Click to enlarge Most of the logic resides in SetRenderer : Click to enlarge First, we create two buttons - one for collapsing all applets and one for expanding all applets. Afterwards, we iterate through all applets and make sure that they are collapsible - a trick we looked at in a previous post . Afterwards we create a button for each applet. The button-text is the label of the applet. As a small gimmick we add the ...

In the second part of our notes on an upgrade from Siebel 8.1.1.x to Innovation Pack 2013 , we are back waiting for the Siebel Upgrade Wizard to finish its arduous task. When suddenly... 8. Backup the Database and execute DB stats At this step, the Upgrade Wizard stops with the above dialog and urges us to take a backup of the database and then execute DB stats. This is obviously a manual step. The Database Upgrade Guide shares with us the necessary lines for executing DB stats as follows (Oracle database example): EXEC DBMS_STATS.gather_schema_stats (ownname => '', cascade =>true,estimate_percent => dbms_stats.auto_sample_size); The above command (with the correct table owner name which usually is SIEBEL) must be run using a SYSDBA account. Alternatively you can run the more sophisticated stats package available from My Oracle Support as Document Id  781927.1 (thanks to Oli for the link). Because I encountered problems with too many open cursors on a previous occasio...

In Siebel Open UI, user can change theme from their user preferences.  If they did not choose any thing a default theme will get loaded. By default that is "Gray Tab". Suppose you created a new theme called "Golden Tab" and you have to make it by default, Otherwise we have to force our clients to change their theme from their user preference and that is not recommended. You can change this thing by using some tool level change. In order to do that please follow the steps. 1. Using Siebel Tools, navigate to "User Preferences" BC. 2. Update the calculated value for field "Behavior/DefaultTheme" to "<custom theme>" 3. Update the Predefault value for field "Behavior/DefaultTheme" to "<custom theme>" 4. Compile the changes and re-test the behavior You will need to remove the user pref file (spf) file to make the changes take effect.

Thanks to Jan again for this guest article *** In prior releases of Open UI most configurations were limited to a single applet. Presentation Models (PMs) and Physical Renderers (PRs) could be reused for different applets but - apart from CSS changes - there was no documented way to provide changes outside of applets or enable configuration that spawned more than a single applet. Most of the time such changes ended up in the (undocumented) postload.js. A feature that didn't make it into the first release of IP2013 but ended up in the first patchset are PMs and PRs for views  (I am pretty sure that I saw this documented in the release notes of patchset 1 - unfortunately I am unable to find the note - please drop me a note with the link if you have the URL at hand). In case you are unfamiliar with the new concepts of patchsets have a look at Latest recommended maintenance pack for Siebel Open UI on Siebel Version 8.1.1.x and Version 8.2.2.x [Document 1535281.1]   which sta...