Scope of Service for Siebel Configuration and Scripting (Doc ID 602189.1)

Last updated on FEBRUARY 20, 2024

Applies to:

Siebel System Software - Version 6.0.1 [2848] to 8.1.1.7 [21238] [Release V6 to V8]
Information in this document applies to any platform.

Details

Note: A Japanese version is also available:

<Document 1436214.1>: Scope of Service for Siebel Configuration and Scripting for Japanese customers

1. Purpose Of This Document

This document explains the scope of service that Oracle Global Customer Support provides for issues with configuring or scripting Siebel applications and for issues related to any problem when using Siebel Tools.

By defining this scope we ensure to deliver service of high quality in an efficient manner.

In this context, “Configuration” refers to Siebel Tools based modifications of the Siebel Repository and to Web Template customization.

“Scripting” refers to internal scripts that can be added to predefined event handlers through Siebel Tools, as well as to accessing the Object Interfaces API by external applications using the provided interface technologies (COM, Java, XML).

2. Areas Of Responsibility

2.1 Oracle Software Support

Global Customer Support provides 2nd and 3rd level support for Siebel product issues where:

the product is not behaving as designed or documented
the customer requires product enhancements to the product
the Siebel Bookshelf, other documentation, or knowledge base solutions need to be clarified or enhanced

Global Customer Support also provides advice and support for customizations to the Siebel products, where the customer is following standard customization methods such as those documented in Siebel training, Siebel Bookshelf, and My Oracle Support knowledge base solutions. Customizations should also follow best practices as documented in the above sources.

2.2 Oracle Solution Support Engineering (AES)

Solution Support Engineering is a group within Oracle Advanced Customer Services that offer customers industry and technology advice and assistance for a fee. Solution Support Engineering advises customers on how to deploy Siebel to optimally meet business requirements, optimize application performance for end users, and strategies to minimize ongoing maintenance costs. These services are billed to the customer separately from that of Global Customer Support. Advanced Customer Services Sales can provide information regarding the cost and necessary steps to engage Solution Support Engineering to work with an Oracle customer.

With regard to product configuration and scripting, AES provides a number of services, including:

Design review
Customization review
Performance review
Usability assessment

Please note that while this document uniformly refers to "Solution Support Engineering", this term may also refer to Professional Services, especially if the question is related to design issues or to evaluating the feasibility of a particular approach.

In order to engage AES services for your business requirement please navigate to the Advanced Customer Services screen in My Oracle Support. You may need to choose this from the more menu option. This leads you to a screen which outlines the Advanced Customer Services - Service Portfolio. At the bottom right hand corner there is a section called CONTACT US which allows you to email Oracle Advanced Customer Services to discuss what options would be available to you and engage if required. Note that you can also engage your Technical Account Manager to engage AES on your behalf.

Actions

The remainder of this document aims to give customers real life examples of the types of questions that fall within the boundaries of product support supported customizations and explain why certain types of questions may be referred on to other groups.

Support topics other than customization, such as installation, administration, integration technologies, or standard application functionality, are not covered by this document.

3. General Differentiation Rules

Configuration and Scripting Scenarios that belong to...
Oracle Software Support	Oracle Solution Support Engineering
A customized product is not behaving as designed or documented. The unexpected behavior can be narrowed down to a particular functional block such as, for example, a particular customized view, or a particular scripted business service.	The issue needs a more complex level of customization than is covered by the standard methods for customization. The issue involves customization methods which diverge from the standard methods for customization as specified by the Siebel documentation. The issue involves a highly customized application or insufficiently documented customization, where the detail is difficult to communicate to an engineer situated remotely.
The customer has a question regarding a particular configuration aspect. (A “How-To” question.) The Siebel Bookshelf, other documentation, or knowledge base solutions need to be clarified or enhanced.	The customer is seeking advice on analysis and design. The customer is asking for risk analysis of custom design or implementation approaches. The customer is seeking advice on performance tuning after the application functionality has been customized

For any Confguration or Scripting scenario, if the customer is not able or does not have sufficiently skilled resources to take an active role in working with Oracle Software Support to analyze and resolve the issue, Oracle Software Support may advise the customer to request billable on-site assistance from Solution Support Engineering.

In the situations that require Solution Support Engineering assistance, Global Customer Support will gather information to categorize the issue, check for the existence of previously recorded causes, and provide generic advice per the standard methods and best practices for customization. If these actions do not resolve the issue they will ask Solution Support Engineering to work with the customer from that point onwards, using information researched by Global Customer Support. Global Customer Support will communicate as early as possible to the customer and to the Customer Service Delivery Manager (if involved) , that the SR may need to be transferred to another group so that scheduling of Solution Support Engineering can be initiated.

4. Configuration

4.1 Definition

Configuration covered by this document

Siebel applications are made of screens, views, applets, business components, links, tables, and other objects. The definitions of these objects are stored in a repository. Applications can be customized by modifying existing object definitions or adding new ones through Siebel Tools, and compiling these changes into the Siebel Repository File (SRF).

Configuration not covered by this document

The Siebel product contains several functional modules that can be configured without changes to the compiled repository (the "SRF" file), for example:

Data Validation Manager setup
Assignment Manager
Predefined Queries
Application preferences
iHelp
Personalization

These are configured through the client user interface rather than through Siebel Tools. Issues with setting up modules like these are usually classified as functionality issues.

Also, Business Processes (Workflows) are developed within Tools; however, they do not get compiled into the SRF but rather are deployed to the runtime tables of the database. Thus, Workflow development is also not covered by this document.

4.2 User Interface (UI) Layer

Configuration and Scripting Scenarios that belong to...
Oracle Software Support	Oracle Solution Support Engineering
Issues with UI configuration steps as documented in Siebel Bookshelf	Assistance with design of new custom UI functionality. This can include the design of new applets, views etc, UI for eConfigurator, and also any specific script which may be necessary to extend functionality. Custom design of UI look-and-feel using Web Templates. Usability assessment
Examples
"We want to disable a drilldown dynamically (that is, inactivate the hyperlink if some expression evaluates to 'false'), can this be achieved through normal drilldown configuration?" "We created a custom drilldown from view X to view Y; however, when drilling down on a record, the target view shows more records than expected, or shows no records at all."	"How can we make our customer facing applications have our company standard look and feel?"

4.3 Business Object Layer

Configuration and Scripting Scenarios that belong to...
Oracle Software Support	Oracle Solution Support Engineering
Issues with BO and BC configuration steps as documented in Siebel Bookshelf	Identifying the best way of implementing custom business requirements. Design changes that require changes to the records synchronized to remote users (such as changing Dock Objects).
Examples
"We have modified the link between business components X and Y, in order to achieve a specific behavior but we get an error message instead." "We have set the Popup Auto All property to TRUE; however, in the context where this property should force All visibility, only Sales Rep visibility seems to be applied." "We have set BC User Property <xyz> but this does not seem to have the documented effect."	"How can we change a specific relationship from 1:M to M: M?" "We have a requirement “X” from our end users. Bookshelf does not cover such a scenario. How should we support that in our application?" "We have three approaches to implement a required business functionality, which one should we follow?"

4.4 Database Layer

Configuration and Scripting Scenarios that belong to...
Oracle Software Support	Oracle Solution Support Engineering
Issues with database extensibility configuration steps as documented in Siebel Bookshelf Troubleshooting of unexpected SQL performance issues	Assistance with modeling custom database schema extensions SQL performance tuning (as opposed to SQL troubleshooting) in a highly customized scenario, including assistance with adding custom indexes
Examples
“A custom extension column was tested successfully on the developer client; however, testing the same on the server we get an error message.” “When a user opens a custom view, it takes minutes until the primary applet is populated with data. We found that the SQL statement is causing this delay.”	"We are thinking of using Table S_OPTY_ORG as a M:M table between Opportunities and Organization. What are the implications of doing this?" "We want to create a new table to support 'X' functionality. Is there a different table we should be using?" "We are facing slow performance of specific user queries, and we believe that there are no good indexes that helps to populate one of my views. Can you help us to create a custom index that will address our needs?"

5. Scripting And The Object Interfaces API

5.1 Definition: Object Interfaces

Siebel applications provide the ability to access certain objects such as business components or business services from internal scripts and from external programs. The collection of objects and methods that are exposed to scripts and programs are called the “Siebel Object Interfaces”.

Siebel Scripts

Internal scripts can be written to trigger on given events, or to be called from sources like button clicks or workflow steps.

Server Scripts execute at the server side, and can be written using either Siebel eScript or Siebel VB.
Browser Scripts execute in the Web browser that displays the Siebel user interface, and are written using JScript, a JavaScript implementation by Microsoft.

COM and Java Interfaces

Siebel applications also provide interfaces for accessing the objects and methods of the Siebel Object Interfaces from external programs, based on the Component Object Model (COM) and on Java.

Scripting technologies not covered by this document

There are some technologies in the Siebel products that are related to scripting or to programming interfaces but that are not subject of this document, including:

Smart Script (which, in contrast to what the name might suggest, is not a scripting language)
Java Business Services (which is considered an EAI technology and does not use the Object Interfaces API)
Java Connector Architecture (JCA) adapter (which also is an EAI technology)
Custom Order Management (which is a highly specialized module within the Siebel application and exposes its own scripting API)

5.2 Siebel Scripting (eScript, Siebel VB, Browser Script)

Configuration and Scripting Scenarios that belong to...
Oracle Software Support	Oracle Solution Support Engineering
Features and behavior of the scripting languages themselves. Behavior of Siebel objects when accessed from a script. Behavior of documented specialized functionality when called or triggered from a script. Questions about the script editor in Tools. Questions regarding what events fire, and when. The impact of using browser scripting in Standard Interactivity vs High Interactivity. High-level suggestions on specific coding requests, such as providing advice and/or pseudo-code for a basic requirement.	Assistance with custom scripting solutions to accomplish customer-specific business requirements. Review of custom script code.
Examples
"How do I use a 'confirm' message to ask the user a question?" "I am not able to get the value of field from the active BC so that I can compare it's value to the value of another field. Why?" "I would like to validate a field when the value changes on the UI, which browser events fire when the user changes the value of the field?" "When I attempt to call a business service from browser script, I get an error.” "I have placed scripting in the event, but it does not seem to do anything." “How do I execute custom script from a click of a button?” “How do I change the primary of a MVG field through scripting?” “How do I open a file and write data to it using scripting?” "When reading in a file using a Siebel VB script, we get garbage characters." "When I query a BC from the UI, it works fine. However, the same query executed from a script returns an error. Why?"	"We have a business requirement and would like help in deciding the best way to implement it." "Can you please review our code and let us know if we meet Scripting Best Practices?" "We would like help with a proof of concept of how to implement our business requirement." “We have implemented some scripts to achieve a certain business requirement. Does our approach have any hidden risks?” "We implemented a new feature through a set of scripts on applets, business components, and business services. Occasionally the scripts create wrong records or throw error messages." "After adding large amounts of scripts, we observed that a standard feature stopped working."

Hint: A comprehensive discussion of recommended scripting practices can be found in document “Siebel Scripting Best Practices” Note 477766.1 on My Oracle Support.
Siebel Bookshelf offers scripting recommendations with regard to optimal performance. See Bookshelf 8.1 > Siebel Performance Tuning Guide > Tuning Customer Configurations for Performance > Best Practices for Siebel Scripting .

5.3 The COM and Java interfaces

Configuration and Scripting Scenarios that belong to...
Oracle Software Support	Oracle Solution Support Engineering
Features and behavior of the COM or Java interfaces. Behavior of Siebel objects when accessed through one of the interfaces. Behavior of documented specialized functionality when called or triggered through these interfaces. Questions regarding what events fire, and when. High-level suggestions on specific coding requests, such as providing advice and/or pseudo-code for a basic requirement.	Assistance with custom solutions for integrating a Siebel application with external applications through the COM or Java interfaces.
Examples
“How do I instantiate COM Data Server from .NET or VB macro code?” “How to write a simple Java program that uses Java Data Bean to connect to Siebel?” “How to a interpret siebel.properties file when using JDB?” "When calling function X from an Excel macro through COM Data Control we get an unexpected error message." "We tried accessing the Siebel server through Java Data Bean and get a connection timeout."	“We want to synchronize service requests with our Java Application Server based portal software through Java Data Bean. We have a couple of business requirements that need to be considered.” "We wrote a custom program to send data to the Siebel server through COM Data Control; however, the program is unable to create more than four records per minute through this interface. How can we achieve a better throughput?" "Our Java application server opens multiple parallel sessions to the Siebel server through Java Data Bean. Occasionally, one of the connections breaks down, with no specific pattern of occurrence. How do we fix it?"

6. Development Environment

6.1 Definition

Siebel Tools can also be used by several tasks beyond configuring and scripting an application. Exporting or importing archive files; running Get, Check In and Check Out processes; managing language issues; managing repository issues; and integrating with third party source control software are other tasks that can be accomplished using Siebel Tools.

6.2 Siebel Tools

Configuration and Scripting Scenarios that belong to...
Oracle Software Support	Oracle Solution Support Engineering
Standard functionality and behavior of Siebel Tools. Tools-supported tasks were executed according to what is specified in Siebel Bookshelf but with unexpected results.	Assistance with designing and implementing any custom solution regarding to integration with some third party source control software that does not follow Siebel Bookshelf recommendations.
Examples
“We tried integrating Tools with a source control system but the script does not check in any changes.” "Editing applet layout in Tools does not work as expected when using Language Override mode." "After modifying a table column definition in Tools, clicking the Apply button generates an error message, and the database schema does not get updated."	“We use a source control system that cannot be accessed through batch file commands as described in Bookshelf. How can we connect this system to Siebel Tools?”

6.3 Compiling Customized Objects, Generating Browser Script Files

Configuration and Scripting Scenarios that belong to...
Oracle Software Support	Oracle Solution Support Engineering
Unexpected results of a compile, such as a broken SRF. Performance of a compile is unexpectedly slow. Browser scripts are not generated during a compile or through running genbscript.exe.	Custom processes for compilation and managing the deployment of SRFs or scripts
Examples
"After importing SIF files into Tools, a full compile fails. A partial compile after the full compile restores normal functionality." “After applying Fix Pack x.y.z, a full compile in Tools takes much longer than before.” “Compiling an applet seems to generate no browser scripts; only when running genbscript.exe, the browser script files are created.”	"After creating custom index in the repository, we cannot see the index located in index tablespace." “We want to use a 3rd party tool for deploying SRFs to user desktops and remote clients.”

6.4 Repository Management And Archive Files

Configuration and Scripting Scenarios that belong to...
Oracle Software Support	Oracle Solution Support Engineering
Unexpected behavior of standard repository tasks: Importing, exporting, deleting, etc. Issues with archive files (“SIF files”) or repository patch files (“SPF files”	Scenarios where the behavior of repository tasks is as expected but additional functionality is needed or the functionality needs to be incorporated into a broader Repository management strategy.
Examples
"When I import a SIF file Siebel Tools pops up a strange error message."	“How do we manage multiple repositories as part of parallel development streams?” "We wish to understand how we can carry out parallel development activities and deal with retrofitting such code merge and recompilation to achieve faster turnaround time."