A Closer Look at Siebel Open UI

Last week, Oracle has released the Siebel patch set 8.1.1.9 (and 8.2.2.2) for the general public. Also dubbed "Innovation Pack 2012", it is full to the brim with treats such as BI Publisher 11g support and of course the long awaited Open UI which breaks the barrier of browser (read IE) lock-in and provides a brand-new, standards-based, open (hence the name) web interface suitable for any modern browser and device.

In today's post I would like to explore some of the most intriguing features of Siebel Open UI. This can only be an incomplete and unordered list, but nonetheless it tries to convey the message that there are a lot of changes among a somewhat familiar appearance.

Site Map Filter

Tired of using the browser text search on the site map? Open UI comes with a search box on the site map. Just type in a search term and the site map entries will be filtered on the fly.

Siebel Open UI Site Map Filter

Browser Feature Support

Siebel Open UI supports most (if not all) of the browser's native capabilities such as zoom, print or save to file. However, Quick Print is still the better option to produce printable output.

LOV Auto Complete

Now there is true auto complete for static pick lists. For example you can type 'pp' in the Sales Stage field of an Opportunity and the dropdown box will present 'Approved' as a matching value.

Tabs or Tree?

Navigate to Tools - User Preferences - Behavior and set your preferred layout and theme. Administrators can also provide custom themes.

Now this brings up some memories...

Bye bye, Shuttle Applet

After opening a Multi Value Group (MVG) Applet (good news: the F2 keyboard button still works), you only see the MVG Applet. The concept of shuttle applets has been introduced in Siebel 7.5 and obviously it was put down for a Show Available button, which brings up the Associate Applet.

Bye bye, Message Bar. Hello Notifications

Gone is our beloved message bar (the "ticker" at the bottom of the view). In Siebel Open UI, message broadcasts are now transmitted via the Notification icon next to the PDQ dropdown. The number on the icon represents the number of unread messages. After clicking the icon, the message list is displayed. You can click on a message to view its details.

Extensibility? Yes, please.

With its new open framework (based on jQuery), Open UI is an adventure park for script kiddies. Good old browser script (written in Siebel Tools and extracted from the SRF) is still supported, but there is a brand new JavaScript API.

So if you fancy anything out of the ordinary, you can put in some effort and produce something like this:

The above screenshot shows the contact affiliations as a carousel. The technique of extending Open UI with JavaScript is not for the faint of heart but I will dedicate some posts to it in the future.

What Open UI cannot do (at the moment)

We must be aware that despite the awe-inspiring features and extensibility, Siebel Open UI is still in an early stage of evolution. For example, you should get used to seeing this:

Some applet types are just not supported at the moment. In addition to that, special modules like Siebel Marketing are explicitly mentioned in Oracle documentation (on My Oracle Support) as being on the list for the next release.

Summary

What I have described above is merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I hope the above post makes clear that Siebel Open UI is a great, promising endeavour. The learning curve for end users and developers alike is held quite low and I'm sure we will see Open UI grow in the future.

Stay tuned for more posts on Open UI on this blog.

have a nice day

@lex