Monday, December 27, 2010

Creating Assignment Rules

Assignment Rules

Assign one or more candidates to assignments objects based on one or more criteria
Are specified using several key concepts



Creating Assignment Rules

General process to create assignment rules:
Design the rule
Create the rule record
Define the criteria
Specify the candidates

Example: Assigning Data by Sales Region
1. Design the Assignment Rules
2. Create the Rule
3. Specify the Criteria
4. Specify the Candidates

Design the Assignment Rules
Determine the criteria to identify each sales region
Example: Sales regions are based on account state
East region includes MA, VT, NH, ME, RI, CT
Determine the candidates to be assigned in each sales region

2. Create the Rule
Navigate to Administration - Assignment > Assignment Rules List
Create a new rule for each sales region
Select the assignment object
Set Person Candidate Source to From Rule
Select the Assignee Filter
Assign a rule group

3. Specify the Criteria

Drill down on the rule
In the Criteria view, create a new Rule Criterion to be used to assign data
Example: Only opportunities with an account state in the East region will be assigned
Specify the Comparison Method
Specify the attribute value(s) to be used in the comparison

4. Specify the Candidates

Navigate to the Position Candidates view
Add a new record for each position to be assigned
Optionally assign organizations using the Organization Candidates view

Introducing Siebel Assignment Manager

Business Challenge:
Companies need to assign business data in a timely fashion and in a way that consistently follows their business rules and policies
Sales leads
Contacts
Accounts
Service requests
Typical characteristics
Large volumes of data
Short response times
Multiple rules and policies
Complex
Conflicting

Business Solution: Siebel Assignment Manager
Allows companies to automatically assign business data to the most appropriate positions, people, and organizations
Consists of:
Administrative functionality to define assignment rules
Server components to automatically assign business data according to the rules

Assignment Rules
Assignment Manager uses assignment rules to assign data
Rules assign one or more candidates to assignment objects based on one or more criteria



Assignment objects identify the type of data being assigned
Several assignment objects are pre-configured in the as-delivered application
Examples:
Account
Contact
Service Request

Assignment Candidates

Candidates are instances of entities to which data can be assigned
Position
Employee
Organization
Examples of candidates for pre-configured objects:
Accounts can be assigned to both positions and organizations
Activities can be assigned to employees
Service Requests can be assigned to both employees and organizations
Types of candidates must be consistent with the allowed access control mechanisms for the object

Assignment Criteria
Criteria express conditions that must be satisfied for data to be assigned
Are expressed in terms of attributes of objects and/or candidates
Examples:
Account State = CA
Account Product = a product that candidate has expertise for
Rules often include multiple criteria

Administering Assignment Rules
Rules are created and administered using the Siebel Web Client
Are not part of the Siebel repository
Are not compiled into the .srf file
Can be deployed during run time

Examples of Assignment Rules
Assign Accounts by Sales Region
Assign Service Requests to Skilled Agents

Assign Accounts by Sales Region
ABC Company assigns accounts to its sales organization
ABC Company also assigns accounts to its sales reps by sales region
Opportunities in the Western Region (CA, OR, WA) are assigned to Sales Rep – West
Opportunities in the Eastern Region (CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, VT) are assigned to Sales Rep – East

Rule to Assign Accounts by Sales Region
Rule includes
Candidates (desired organization and positions)
Criteria for determining region to assign the account



A separate rule is required for each sales region




Two assignment rule records are created
Candidates are listed in the Position Candidates view
Applicable states are listed in the Criteria view

Assign Service Request to Skilled Agents
XYZ company assigns service requests to employees with the correct skills to resolve them
Skills are properties that reflect the candidate’s abilities in various areas such as:
Product expertise
Installation and upgrade skills
Languages

Rule includes
Criteria for assigning request
Employee skill matches the area of the service request
Candidates to be considered
Can list select employees or consider all available employees

Running Assignment Manager

Assignment Manager can be invoked in three modes
Batch Assignment: Can be used to submit batches of data for one-time assignment or reassignment
Dynamic Assignment: Automatically invokes Assignment Manager to assign data in near real time as records are created or modified
Interactive Assignment: Can be used to manually assign candidates in real time
Enabled for Service Request and Activity assignment objects

Siebel Assignment Manager

Introduction of Assignment Manager : Siebel Assignment Manager routes business entities and work items to the most appropriate candidates by enforcing business rules set by sales, service, and marketing organizations. Assignment Manager does this by matching candidates (that is, employees, positions, and organizations) to predefined and user-configurable assignment objects. To assign the most qualified candidate to each object, Assignment Manager applies assignment rules that you define to each candidate.

Three major terms used in Assignment manager

Assignment Objects
Candidates
Criteria
Assignment Objects—the data that need to be assigned. Identify the types of data being assigned, such as accounts, opportunities, and service requests. An assignment rule may be used to assign one or more assignment objects

Candidates—the people, positions or organizations that will be assigned to that data. Assignment Manager assigns data to: Employee candidates, Position candidates, Organization candidates. An assignment rule may

Contain a list of candidates who are assigned if the rule passes
Match data to candidates based on their skills
Criteria—define which data will be assigned to which candidates. There can be multiple criteria per rule. Examples of criteria:

Does the Position Type = Sales Person?
Does the candidate have a skill with the product associated with this service request?
Below figure shows the entities in Siebel that are used in Assignment Rules







To define assignment rules, we need the following:

Objects to which each assignment rule applies
Rule groups to which each assignment rule belongs
Candidates.person (employee or position), organization, or both.for each assignment rule
Criteria for each assignment rule
(Optional) Values for assignment criteria
For the Assignment rules we can also mention the below

Scores for each assignment rule, criteria, and value and a personal score for each individual candidate For example: In a sales organization, you can create an assignment rule that scores positions (candidates) based on territory definitions (criteria) for an opportunity (object).

We can also customize the way Assignment Manager makes assignments by:

1. Defining how attributes are matched by:

Using different comparison methods
Making criteria required (compulsory) or optional
Using inclusion and exclusion methods
Using workload distribution rules
2. Defining how assignment rules are matched by using:

Assignment rule groups
Assignment rule sequencing
3. Defining how candidates are assigned based on person and organization relationships using multitiered assignment.

4. Creating and configuring your own entities, including:

Assignment objects
Assignment criteria
Assignment attributes
Dynamic candidates and candidate teams that are assigned dynamically depending on the object row assigned
5. Running Assignment Manager in different operating modes to process assignments:

Interactively in real time
Dynamically when object rows are created or attributes on object rows are changed by connected or mobile users for example as soon as a Service Request is created it gets assigned to a resource depending on the skills or workload etc.
Periodically assigning objects in batches(Manually running the batch assignment to assign objects for example Accounts )
6. Checking availability before assigning employees to objects

Siebel Workflow

Siebel Workflow Process is an ordered set of steps executed in response to a defined set of conditions. Siebel Workflow is a customizable business application that allows you to define, manage, and enforce your business processes, thereby establishing process automation within Oracle’s Siebel applications.

Siebel Workflow orchestrates the various Siebel process automation technologies. A workflow Process graphically sequences a series of automation steps that support a business process, and it specifies inputs and outputs for individual steps and for the workflow process as a whole. A workflow process can be simple, such as entering a product order, or complex, such as managing call center workflow. A complex workflow process can include multiple sub processes.

Siebel Workflow provides:

A set of tools to graphically define business processes
An engine to automate these processes



Related posts:

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http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B14099_19/integrate.1012/b14062/app_siebworkflows.htm

Siebel Tools - Check In - Check Out an Introduction.

Siebel Tools - Check In - Check Out an Introduction.
Check In - Check Out are the very common terms that Siebel Developers hear. A rather simple but a very important feature for development. Without this feature their would be an absolute chaos during development. I will try to explain Check In - Check Out (CICO) with the help of simple Analaogy:

Imagine a room full of documents. You are allowed to make a copy of document take it home and work on it. What If everybody was allowed to go in at any time into the room and modify any document they want? The answer is again Absolute Chaos. Imagine working really hard on the document and to see next day that what you have taken home is invalid because somebody took a copy and made some changes to and you have to do the rework.

Based on above analogy we can map 'Room' as 'Siebel Server Repository', Documents as 'Siebel Objects', Home as 'Local Environment'

So, the only way to control this is to have a some sort of mechanism to prevent you from taking that document while somebody else is working on it. Siebel Check In - Check Out process is precisely that chaos saving mechanism.

We all know that siebel is based on Client - Server Architecture and the same architechture is followed in case of siebel tools. You have siebel server repository and you siebel client dbf or local database where you perform you development.

Check In - Check Out in siebel refers to the process of getting a copy of siebel objects in the your local environment, work on it and then update it back to the server after you are done.

There are various terms in siebel that you need to understand the check in - check out process

Check Out : Process of getting a copy from Server Repository to your local database and also locking he object on server so that nobody else can modify it.
Check In : Process of putting the object from local environment back to server and also release the lock so that others can work on it
Get : Process of getting copy from Server Repository to your local database without locking the object.
Full Get : Process to update you local tools repository will the latest objects from Siebel Server Repository. Unlike Get you don't select a particular object to update but all the projects

You can check out a single object or a whole project. If you check out a whole project then all the objects that are part of that project will be locked with your Id and nobody else will be able to work on them. So, It is not a good idea. General practice is just to check out a single object.

Now, I will explain the steps to perform each operation mentioned above

Check - Out :

1. Query for the object that you want to check out.
2. Right Click and Choose Check Out. (You can also press F10 or choose Tools Menu ==> Check Out)
Tip:The option of check out single object will only be available if your tools.cfg as parameter EnableObjectCOCI set to true.
3. Again Click on Check Out in the new window that appears.

Check In :

1. Click Tools (Menu) ==> Check In (You can also press CTRL + F10)
A new window will appear. It will show the objects that have check out by your id
2. Select the Object that you want to check in and click Check In

Get :

1. Query for the object that you want to Get.
2. Right Click and Choose Check Out. (You can also press F10 or choose Tools Menu ==> Check Out)
Tip:The option of check out single object will only be available if your tools.cfg as parameter EnableObjectCOCI set to true.
3. Again Click on Get in the new window that appears.

Full Get :

1. Click Tools (Menu) ==> Check Out
2. Select 'All Projects' Radio button in the new window that appears
3. Click Get.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Using the Siebel WebClient

Application URLs

A Siebel application’s URL is formed from :
Application’s Web server name
Application name
Suffix identifying the application language
Examples:
http://AppServer0.MyCompany.com/callcenter_enu
Web server name: Appserver0.MyCompany.com
Application name: callcenter (Siebel Call Center)
Language suffix: _enu (American English)
http://public.MyCompany.com/esales_fra
Web server name: public.MyCompany.com
Application name: esales (Siebel eSales)
Language suffix: _fra (French)

Views are made up of one or more applets
List applet displays records in rows
Form applet displays a single record in a two-dimensional layout

Picklists

Picklists allow user to select a field value from a list
Two types of picklist:
Static: User selects a value from a fixed drop-down list
Dynamic: User selects a value from list of changing values
Examples: Accounts, Opportunities, Contacts

Multi-value groups (MVGs) assign one or more values to a field in a record
Only the primary value will be displayed in a list or form

Intro To siebel CRM

Siebel Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enables you to manage interactions with customers, partners, and employees
Typically deployed as a single application with broad functionality
Supports multiple communication channels
Web and email
Call center
Field service
Uses a single database to:
Allow all users access to the same set of data
Example: The correct customer order status is seen by all relevant users
Ensure changes to data are made once and only once
Example: An address needs to be updated in only one place
Is a packaged application with built-in best practices

Siebel CRM Applications

Are available tailored for:
Different types of customer, partner, or employee interactions and channels (horizontal applications)
Different industries (industry applications)
Examples:
Horizontal applications
Siebel Sales
Siebel Call Center
Siebel Partner Portal
Siebel Remote
Industry applications
Siebel Finance
Siebel Consumer Goods

Types of Siebel Enterprise Applications

Employee applications
Are used by internal employees
Examples include:
Siebel Call Center
Siebel Sales
Customer and partner applications
Are used by customers and partners
Examples include:
Siebel eSales
Siebel Partner Portal


Common Siebel Application Business Entities

Siebel applications use common business entities
A business entity is something of business interest in the real world
Siebel applications refer to these entities as business components
Examples:
Accounts
Contacts
Opportunities
Service requests
Assets

Accounts

Are businesses external to your company
Represent a current or potential client, a business partner, or a competitor
Are associated with a team

Contacts

Are people with whom you do business
Can be public or marked as personal
Are associated with a team (public contacts) or a user (personal contacts)

Opportunity

Are potential revenue-generating events
Have the following characteristics:
A possible association with an account
A probability of completion
A close date
Are associated with a team

Service Requests:
Are requests from customers or prospects for information or assistance with your products or services
Have the following characteristics:
A status
A severity level
A priority level
Are associated with a single owner

Assets:

Are instances of purchased products
Have the following characteristics:
An asset number
A product and part number
A status level