Siebel Community Poll - Thank You!

Two weeks ago, a group of ten dedicated Siebel bloggers announced and subsequently hosted a public opinion poll asking their readers to express their opinion on the future of Siebel CRM. By putting our fingers on the pulse of the Siebel community, we try to understand the sentiment of Siebel professionals when they look into the near and not-so-near future.

A sight to behold. The Siebel Essentials blogroll on the first day of the poll.

As the poll is now closed, we are expressing our gratitude to everyone who cast their votes and participated in discussions. I would also like to thank all fellow bloggers who participated in hosting the poll for this great success, namely:

Rahul from CRM Conundrum
Nitin from GeeKs Blogging @ dotCOM
Jason from Impossible Siebel
Richard from On Demand Education
Ryan from Only Siebel
Bruce from Siebel Observer
Oli from Siebel Tech Blog
Neel from Siebel Unleashed
Peter from Wentari

The poll drew nearly 600 responses from across the globe. The number clearly surpasses our wildest expectations. Below is a world map showing the location of respondents.

Click to enlarge.

Please stay tuned for a detailed analysis of the poll results.

have a nice day

@lex

Book Review: Oracle ADF 11gR2 Development Beginner's Guide by Vinod Krishnan

Regular readers of this blog know that my professional learning path includes Oracle Fusion Applications. While Siebel CRM still consumes most of my work day, I also deliver training on Oracle's next generation application suite and in general I follow the technologies involved in the Fusion project very closely.

If you are an application developer and want to get a grip on the framework which is used to build the core layer of Fusion Applications, namely Application Development Framework (ADF), there is nothing in the way of a good book.

I am glad that Vinod Krishnan has taken up the task of writing a book - Oracle ADF 11gR2 Development Beginner's Guide - aimed at those at the bottom of the steep slope that marks the learning curve for ADF.

I have been invited by Packt Publishing to take a look at the oeuvre and am glad to share my findings with you:

After a thorough first chapter on installing JDeveloper and taking first steps in the IDE, Vinod lays out the concepts of ADF. The book facilitates learning by encouraging the reader to take action and become a true hero by taking their own steps.

Naturally, the book contains detailed instructions to create a sample ADF application. Once the sample application is up and running, Vinod takes us into a deeper dive on the ADF components such as Entity Objects, View Objects and Application Modules.

In chapter 4, while discussing validation, we are exposed to the first piece of (generated) Java code and the APIs of the ADF components. This is followed by solid chapters on data binding and user interface design with ADF pages.

A chapter on navigation flows is next, discussing ADF Task Flows in great depth.

The "skinning" chapter is most welcome, introducing the ADF skin editor.

Application security is also covered in a separate chapter, adding much value to the information provided so far.

The book's closing chapters are on deploying ADF applications and advanced features.

All in all, it's a solid and actionable book, with its content assured by reviewers Frank Nimphius and Sten E. Vesterli, most distinguished ADF experts in the community. If you want to ensure that your ADF knowledge is built on a solid foundation, this book is for you.

have a nice day

@lex

Siebel 8.1.1.10: Object Tagging and SDF Files

The latest maintenance release 8.1.1.10 / 8.2.2.3 of Siebel CRM not only brought features like Workflow Comparison or Incremental Repository Merge but also a new concept of tagging objects in Siebel Tools and a new variety of archive files, namely the Siebel Delta File (SDF).

The latter two are related, so I thought I share some first impressions. Of course, it all starts with a bit of reading, so here is the obligatory link to the Siebel Bookshelf. The Using Siebel Tools guide has been updated with a new chapter with the intriguing title "Managing Modifications That Multiple Developers Make" (MMTMDM ;-).

First, let's talk about Object Tagging itself. It means that from 8.1.1.10 onwards, Siebel development teams can enable a feature which allows them to:

• Create and assign tags to developers
• Automatically assign objects to tags while developers create and modify objects in Siebel Tools
• "Touch" objects (assign a tag to an object they don't modify but want to include in a tag list) manually or in batch.
• Review list of modifications and conflicts
• Generate mid-level releases and export SDF files based on tags

1. Enable Object Tagging

After having patched your Siebel Environment to 8.1.1.10 or 8.2.2.3, you can enable Object Tagging by setting the following system preference:

Enable Object Tagging = TRUE

2. Expose the Tag Administration screen (if necessary)

As mentioned by reader JMacZ in a recent comment, the Tag Administration screen is not added to all applications by default. In fact, I found that it is added only to the Siebel Universal Agent application which we all know by the name of Siebel Call Center. So you might find yourself in the situation where you have to add the Tag Administration screen to your application's site map, compile the application and administer responsibilities to include the new views of that screen.

3. Administer Tags

Now you can log in to your application and navigate to the Administration - Tag screen. There you see the tags provided by Oracle as seed data. You can create your own tags and specify users (developers). When you check the Admin Flag, the developer will be able to use all tags. The Siebel Development tag seems to be the default tag, as Siebel Tools will prompt that the user is not assigned to this tag when a developer who is not assigned to any tag tries to log in to Siebel Tools.

4. Choose Tag at Siebel Tools start-up

Launching Siebel Tools is now quite a difference, as it displays the list of all available tags to the developer:

Siebel Tools displaying tags to select for a developer marked as "Admin"

Once the developer selects a tag and clicks Ok, Siebel Tools starts as usual. The chosen tag is always visible in the Siebel Tools title bar and in the General tab of the Siebel Tools Options dialog as shown in the screenshot below.

5. Automatic tagging

As the developer checks in or out, creates and updates object definitions or imports them, Siebel Tools will automatically assign the object to the current tag.

The All Objects view within the Administration - Tag screen allows us to see a complete list of all object definitions created or updated within a tag:

6. "Touching" Objects

In order to make an unmodified object definition available for exporting it into an SDF file, developers can right-click the record and select Touch Object... from the menu. Siebel Tools will assign the current tag to the object and prompt a message that it has done so.

And so am I...

7. Exporting SDF files using tags

The new archive file format introduced with 8.1.1.10 / 8.2.2.3 is Siebel Delta File (SDF). SDF files are similar to the traditional SIF files but they only contain - as the "D" suggests - the information about modifications to an object.

The Mid-Level Release dialog now includes the option to create SDF files based on Tag-Time combination, Tag or Time only.

The Tools Guide nicely describes a new command-line option to run the mid-level release export in batch mode.

SDF files can be used for import activities such as manual archive import and ADM just like SIF files. The major benefit of SDF files is their minimal size compared to their SIF siblings. In addition they are the base for the new standard of deploying innovation packs to Siebel customers rather than a bunch of .zip files with ACRs.

Summary

The latest release of Siebel CRM is full to the brim with new features and enhancements. The Siebel developer community will be highly interested in the Incremental Repository Merge feature which adds many new utilities to Siebel Tools such as the Object Tagging and SDF export described in this article.

Please also take some time to review the free online training available for Siebel 8.1.1.10 on the Oracle Learning Library.

have a nice day

@lex

Spring Cleaning in Siebel CRM

In the northern hemisphere, spring has sprung and many people use their renewed energy to clean up their houses and do their gardens.

For the ambitious Siebel administrator, there might be reason to do some spring cleaning as well. In recent discussions with students we found out several functional areas of Siebel CRM where data could pile up over the years.

As a spring cleaning admin you might want to know where to look and clean up those tables. Here is an (incomplete) list of areas which are known to amass records in the number of millions quite easily which could make you look like James T. Kirk in "Trouble with Tribbles".

Captain Kirk drowning in data tribbles.

Audit Trail: If your company has enabled Siebel Audit Trail for tracking changes to records or even read and export operations, and you have a large amount of those operations and end users or external interfaces it is very likely that huge amounts of data are sitting in the respective tables (S_AUDIT_ITEM or S_AUDIT_READ).

Data Validation Manager: While it is quite clear that a feature like Audit Trail tends to accumulate  hoardes of data, it is unbeknownst to many that Data Validation Manager can do this too. The well-established business service has an input argument which enables or disables the logging of validation events. The default is true. So if you make use of Data Validation Manager in your project, check the amount of records in S_VALDN_INST.

EAI Queues: Many Siebel developers working on EAI solutions involving EAI Siebel Adapter swear by the EAI XML Queueing Service which makes it easy to place Siebel messages in a "queue" and retrieve them later. This could not only clog the table named S_EAI_QUEUE_ITM but also the Siebel File System as the messages are uploaded as XML files.

Workflow Monitoring: With higher monitoring levels set for active workflows, the S_WFA_INSTP_LOG (step instances) and S_WFA_STPRP_LOG (properties) can become quite saturated very quickly. So make sure that on production systems, workflow monitoring is only enabled in exceptional situations and for a very short time. Siebel even provides OOB "Purge" functionality to erase all recorded instances with a cut-off date from the web user interface.

Siebel Remote Transactions: Quite notoriously, the S_DOCK_TXN_LOG table is filled pretty quickly when Siebel Remote is enabled. Not only do Siebel Remote admins fear the ungracious backlog (see photo above) but sometimes, the feature is enabled without any transactions ever being consumed by mobile clients.

"Big Data" by design (or no design): Sometimes, developers go the easy way and use some well known business components such as Action (aka Activities) to track system events. In addition to the out-of-the-box generated activities ,for example with Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) or when sending mass e-mails, the result is often that the poor S_EVT_ACT table is suffering a case of morbid obesity.

Do you find this list too incomplete? Please find the comment section and share your insight.

Clean-up Strategies

Of course, we cannot just truncate those tables or delete all files in the file system and call it a day. Instead we must find a suitable housekeeping strategy which allows the business or the system to find all the data it needs and archive and subsequently delete data which we no longer need. There is no single best solution but to arrange a meeting with the leading developers and architects and find one. This is an ongoing process and should not be neglected.

have a nice day

@lex

Oracle BI Apps 11.1.1.7.1 and Why Fusion is More than just Applications

The arrival of the latest version of Oracle Business Intelligence Applications, namely 11.1.1.7.1 has ignited quite a buzz (and a bit of confusion) in the OBI community.

Fellow bloggers and the Oracle documentation as well as the official data sheet do a good job explaining what the major new features of this milestone release are.

Image source: Oracle data sheet

It is truly worthwhile to spend a few minutes to marvel at the new features:

E-T-L is now E-L-T and done by Oracle Data Integrator, the former Sunopsis product and data integration platform of choice for Oracle customers. Yes, loading the Oracle Business Analysis Warehouse is no longer performed by Informatica which is used in the 7.9.x and previous 11.1.1 product lines (see below).

Of course this raises a few eyebrows especially among customers who intend to upgrade from Informatica-based OBI Apps 7.9.x to the new architecture introduced with 11.1.1.7.1. As Mark Rittman reports, customers will have to migrate existing customizations from Informatica to ODI on their own, or start from scratch with 11.1.1.7.1. Nonetheless both paths (Informatica and ODI) will be supported by Oracle for a while.

Time to say goodbye also for DAC, the Datawarehouse Administration Console which was developed by Siebel Systems. The new tools on the block are Oracle BI Configuration Manager (BICAM) and Functional Setup Manager (FSM).

Mentioning the latter will ring some bells for Oracle applications professionals who spent time with Oracle Fusion Applications recently. Both FSM and BICAM are around since the first release of Fusion Apps which came with - you guess - Oracle BI Applications 11.1.x.

So Oracle has been working a while on OBI Applications 11.1.x and I think it is safe to say that the development of the new general release 11.1.1.7.1 has greatly benefited from the the Fusion Applications development initiatives.

Interestingly, the Oracle BI Apps for Fusion Applications still use Informatica for ETL.

Besides the new ETL E-L-T tool and administrative components like BICAM and FSM, the data sheet points out the other new features which shall be listed quickly below to make this post complete.

• A new planning application - Indirect Spend Planning - directed at procurement users.
• Student Information Analytics for academic institutions.
• Enhancements in many analytic applications such as HR analytics.
• Optional deployment of Oracle Golden Gate for real-time ETL.
• And, last but not least, a new Data Lineage tool (in a future patch release, thanks to Florian for the update on that).

have a nice day

@lex

The Future of Siebel

With the discussion (and poll) in full spin on the future of Siebel CRM, here are some thoughts from fellow Siebel observer Bruce Daley on the (inevitable) future of Oracle's flagship CRM product.

***

All good things must come to an end. The fact that there must be a last cookie in the jar, a last day of vacation, a last Iron Man movie is as certain as it is inevitable. Even our own sun will disintegrate in a hot helium flash someday. Since this is not predicted to happen for another 7 billion years, I am not very worried about the effect it will have on my career as a ski instructor (although it would have a big impact if it happened during ski season).

Similar to these other good things coming to an end we all know the clock will run out for Siebel technology at some point. Like cookies, vacations, and suns; Siebel too will eventually disappear. Will the demise of Siebel impact your career? The simple answer is only if you decide to let it change the course your career. For like the sun, and unlike cookies, the end of Siebel is not likely to happen soon enough to force you to abandon your skills unless that is your choice. To understand the future of Siebel we must begin with the last foreseeable point and work backwards and begin with the end in mind.

Someday, and I predict a day very far in the future (so far in fact that I doubt anyone reading this now will be alive to see it) the very last instance of Oracle Siebel will be turned off.   Although some backup tapes with executable code will still slowly be disintegrating in tape vaults, Oracle Siebel technology will, for all intents and purposes, be consigned to the rubbish heap of history along with the stone axe, the chariot, the trebuchet and all the other tools man has invented to make life easier. Siebel technology could be build into interplanetary spaceships that  carry CRM to the far ends of the galaxy, but the end of Oracle Siebel will still happen. Although it is likely to go unnoticed, the stopping of the last instance will also mark the end of the labor of tens of thousands of individuals who devoted millions and millions of man hours which is poignant.

Before the last instance is turned off, all the other instances must be turned off. The last support call must be answered, the last maintenance release must be installed, the last enhancement made, the last update made available, the last support contract signed, the last new installation, the last Siebel job posting, the last new licence sold, the last appearance of Oracle Siebel on a product roadmap.

Since Oracle's current roadmap for Siebel extends until 2020 it is safe to say that if you are 40 years old and you retire at 65, Siebel will still be in use in 2038. There are three reason why I am confident in making this prediction, COBOL, the mainframe, and current job market.

• 50 years after it was first developed and 40 years after it was first declared obsolete the demand for people with COBOL skills has continued to grow and has never been greater. 
• IBM now sells more mainframes (by dollar value) now than it did in 1980. Year after year those companies that standardized on mainframes have found it more cost effective to continue to run than replace them with newer architectures.
• The demand for people with Siebel skills continues to grow as more people leave the field than are entering it.

Although you might have to change the company you are working for, or the location where you work,  or way you go about your work, if you choose you can do Siebel work for the rest of your career.

***

Bruce Daley's Siebel Observer site's mission is to help Siebel professionals fully achieve their career potential and Siebel customers realize the full value of their investment in Oracle.

The Future of Siebel CRM: Community Poll

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the founding of Siebel Systems. After being acquired by Oracle in 2005, Siebel CRM and the successor of Siebel Analytics, Oracle Business Intelligence, are still flagship products. Thousands of IT professionals worldwide make a living from these two systems.

Siebel CRM itself has been on the market for 17 years, and in the Siebel community there is much excitement about Oracle's commitment to strengthen the product's position, for example by delivering the Open UI framework. At the same time, many people wonder how many years Siebel has left.

Always with our fingers on the pulse of the Siebel community, we - a group of dedicated Siebel bloggers* - are working together to conduct a poll to find out public opinion on that question.

If you want to cast your vote on the poll, you can do it right here. Alternatively you can use this link to access the poll in a separate window or on a mobile device.

Thanks for your vote

have a nice day

@lex

*The following blogs are hosting this poll:
(in alphabetical order)

CRM Conundrum
Impossible Siebel
On Demand Education
Only Siebel
Siebel Observer
Siebel Tech Blog
Siebel Unleashed
Wentari

Did we miss your blog from this list? Do you want to participate? Then please contact Alex via twitter or Google+.

Siebel Open UI: See-Through Applets (A Post Load Update)

Thanks for all the nice comments on the "see-through" applet prototype I published a while ago. And special thanks to all those who commented on my pain point with having to modify the out-of-the-box phyrenderer.js file (which is a non-supported modification and not safe for production).

Many commentators pointed out to use the postload.js file which is loaded by the Open UI framework at the end of the view load cycle, but Ravi earns all the kudos for pointing me in the right direction. Thanks, Ravi.

His solution involves the following loop (pseudo-code):

for(var applet in appletArray)
{
   target = $("#" + appletArray[applet].GetFullId());
   target.jQuerymagic();
}

So I decided to give it (another) try and implemented the following in the postload.js file:

Click to enlarge

The following lines are of particular interest:

var view = SiebelApp.S_App.GetActiveView();

Using the SiebelApp.S_App object (equivalent to theApplication() in traditional Siebel browser script), we can use the GetActiveView() method to get the view object.

var arrApplets = view.GetAppletMap();

Among other useful methods, the view object has the GetAppletMap() method which returns an object array with all applets in the view.

var theApplet = arrApplets[a];

In the loop we can access each applet individually.

var target = $("#" + theApplet.GetFullId());

We can use the applet object's GetFullId() method to create a jQuery selector.

theApplet = view.GetActiveApplet();

In the dblclick event handler, we must ensure that we grab the applet which was clicked using the view's GetActiveApplet() method.

var myPM = theApplet.GetPModel();

As my custom method expects the current presentation model as a parameter, I use the GetPModel() (not GetPM()!) of the applet object to get it into a variable.

The remainder of the code is unchanged and documented in the first post of this series.

Note: The above code snippet contains a quite clumsy approach to determine whether the applet is a form applet or not. If anyone has some better approach, please share.

Test

I removed the custom code from phyrenderer.js (still feeling a bit guilty), emptied the browser cache and restarted the application. And - lo and behold - double-clicking on a form applet still made the labels toggle with BC field and database information as intended.

Summary

With a hat-tip to Ravi and all others who pointed me to the postload.js file, I believe that this file will be a first safe haven for all developers who wish to implement Siebel Open UI extensions which are not limited to a certain applet. But I hear through the grapevine that we should expect something official in the next versions...

have a nice day

@lex

The Very Best of Tom Siebel - A Memoir

By Mei Lin Fung

Editor's Note: Mei Lin Fung's career as a organizer, entrepreneur, and author has spanned the non-profit, technology, and finance worlds. Tom Siebel hired her at Oracle to implement his initial vision of an enterprise CRM system. She has been kind enough to share with us that experience:

*****

Tom Siebel interviewed me for a job working for him in August 1988. A headhunter set up the interview. Apparently he had interviewed many people and none fit the bill for what he wanted in a Division Controller for the Direct Marketing Division. Well that's because he expected a weird combination of skills. Finance, Marketing, Sales, Software, Good people skills and a propensity for risk-taking.

It was a pivotal hour in my life to interview with him. He talked about what he wanted to do: REALLY make it possible for technology to transform sales and marketing. A vision of the future where technology could support the prima donnas of sales in a way that was completely supportive of the quirks of the individual salesperson.

My most recent work at Intel up to that point had been as the alpha user for the Intel Distribution Marketing System - which involved setting up the Intel methodology of forecasting for distribution sales out and bookings. Stagger charts, Actuals vs Forecast variance analysis, rigorous accountability for making projections and tying them to what actually happened.

Tom's boss was head of US Sales, Gary Kennedy who had been an ex-Intel guy. In a way, it was a marriage made in heaven, I was perfectly matched to what he needed. What he wanted to do was make into reality what he had been selling to Oracle customers: The ability of the relational database to truly transform business practice in sales and marketing to support customers in a way they had never before experienced or imagined.

When he told me his vision, I could see that it involved taking what I had just done at Intel and applying it to direct B2B sales - an extraordinary exciting vision.

That was the beginning of the best working experience I ever had, the two years working for Tom Siebel - and the skunkworks project that Kevin Kraemer and I kicked off in September 1988. Oracle MIS told Tom it was impossible, fergedaboutit.

Tom set me, his Division Controller and Kevin Kraemer, the top pre-sales technical guy in the group on moonlighting to create the first integrated sales and marketing application, OASIS, which was the genesis of the CRM industry.

Direct Marketing Division spawned two billionaires so far: Tom Siebel and Vinny Smith, and transformed software sales and marketing, making telemarketing and telesales the most critical sales function for all software companies. People who worked for DMD - Direct Marketing Division and who had used OASIS - the Oracle Automated Sales Information System, were recruited by software companies in order to replicate the "Oracle Sales Model". The next potential billionaire of course is Marc Benioff who took over from Tom when he left Oracle.

*****

This content was originally posted on the Global Connections, Eclectic Selections blog on May 20, 2006. This article has also been published on Bruce Daley's Siebel Observer site whose mission is to help Siebel professionals fully achieve their career potential and Siebel customers realize the full value of their investment in Oracle.

have a nice day

@lex

600 Posts - Siebel Essentials Then, Now and in the Future

Tempus fugit, they say and I cannot agree more. My decision to become a tech blogger was taken almost 5 years ago in summer 2008 and so I posted my first article on the Siebel Essentials blog.

The article actually deals with the "distant" past of Siebel CRM when Siebel Systems was a bold start-up focusing on delivering "Sales, Marketing and Customer Service" information systems. The second article is also worth viewing because you will see Tom Siebel in a TV ad.

Looking at the history of a product allows us to learn and understand better what it is today or even in the future. The future of Siebel CRM is widely discussed on the internet today and while  writing my 600th post today, I can use it to look back and ahead in time.

Looking back, I see a very rewarding time. I am humbled by the impression of being accepted as an authority on Siebel CRM and other Oracle products by the online community. Thanks to all dear readers (of both blog and books) for the great support and informative discussions over the years.

Looking ahead, I and many others see a prosperous future for Siebel CRM (especially since Open UI is available). 2013 marks the 20th anniversary of the founding of Siebel Systems and it is my pleasure to announce that the within the Siebel community we're brewing some events on this date.

So here's to another 600 posts and more

have a nice day

@lex