Getting started with Taleo Connect Client (TCC)

 

 

I have recently switched tracks to the cloud world of enterprise computing, and am going through Taleo. It is Oracle's recruiting/onboarding HR system, which has still not been fully integrated to HCM Cloud. Taleo Enterprise Edition runs on the web in any browser, however for batch integration purposes, it provides a standalone executable program called the Taleo Connect Client ie; TCC. (The last TCC I knew was the Turbo C Compiler from Borland Systems). If you need to import/export records in Taleo in bulk, TCC is the way you go.

 

1: First, log on to Oracle eDelivery, and choose the Taleo family of products. I am choosing the 32 bit windows version, because I can.

 

 

2: The current & latest version of Taleo, as of writing this, is 14A. You see, Taleo pushes three fixes in a year, and call them A,B and C. Be sure to click the link "Oracle Taleo Enterprise Editoin 14A", the other links are for older releases. The latest release came out just yesterday !

 

3) On the next page, you will see multiple links, and have to choose only two. Choose the windows version of the Application Installer and Data Model.

 

 

4) Now unzip the files and run the installers. I am going to run the top two installables in the screenshot above.

 

5) First install the data model. The Application installer requires the path were the data model is installed.

 

 

 

6) After running both installers, start the Taleo Connect Client.

 

 

 

7) OK, you will now get this window to start using the Tool. All the fields above need to be filled.

 

8)  Choose a product name from the latest version, don't worry, you can always change the product later.

The Protocol will be HTTPS.

The Host will be the address of your cloud instance. You need to register with Oracle to get this. It is also the place where you will configure and use the Taleo Application. Choose 443 as the port value.

Authentication:  I chose User Name Token authentication.

Now enter the credentials of the user allowed to use Taleo Integration Services, usually the administrator login.

 

9) Ahaa…Finally. The TCC window opens up.  But there is still lot of steps involved to start exporting/importing data to the system.

Siebel BIP Performance Tuning

 

1) Increasing the amount of heap memory available to the Java Virtual Machine (JVM)

Increasing the memory available to the JVM can improve the performance of the report generation and ensure that this error is not encountered.

"C:\OraHome_1\jdk\bin\java" -XX:MaxPermSize=128m -Xms512m -Xmx512m -Duser.language=en -Duser.dir=C:\OraHome_1\oc4j_bi\bin -Duser.country=US -jar "%OC4J_JAR%" %CMDARGS%

OS

Memory Value

Windows (32-Bit)

Any value of up to 1.4GB (based on available RAM)

Windows (64-Bit)   

1.4 GB or higher (based on available RAM

2) Changing the Server Request Processor DB Polling Interval

By decreasing the polling interval the Server Request Processor can check the S_SRM_REQUEST table more regularly thereby reducing the period before the request processing is started. Once the change has been made it is necessary to shutdown and restart the affected Siebel Server before the change will take effect.It is recommended that this change be made only on the Siebel Servers hosting the XMLPReportServer component as this change will result in an increased number of queries being issued against the S_SRM_REQUEST table in the database.

change param PollIntvl=1 for comp SRProc

3) Minimize the size of Integration Objects/Components

An excessive number of unrequired fields in the report will lead to increased data generation times from the XMLPReportServer component and will result in an increased data file size for BI Publisher to process.

4) Minimal Force Active fields on  BC-

Ensuring that a minimal number of fields are flagged as Force Active will help to ensure that the number of fields being returned when querying against the Integration Component for report generation is further reduced.

5) XMLPReportServer PreloadSRF parameter to TRUE

Prelolading the SRF into the process ensures that any performance overhead during the SRF load is encountered during component startup and not during report processing. This parameter is listed under Advanced tab.

6) Inactive Web Services not used in Enterprise

Due to Bug 10587893 at present the component will load all of the active webservices configured in the enterprise rather than just those which it may access, such as PublicReportService or PublicReportService_v11. This leads to a performance overhead during the first report request for any process as these can take a significant period of time to load. In order to reduce the impact of this loading process review the webservices configured as 'Active' in the Siebel Enterprise through the Administration - WebServices > Outbound Webservices and Inbound Webservices views.  Set any webservices which are not used in the enterprise to 'Inactive'..

7) Minimize logging levels on all report generation components

This will include the requesting Object Manager, the XMLPReportServer component, the EAI Object Manager, the File System Manager component, and the BI Publisher Server itself.

8) Eliminate any un-necessary scripting during report generation

 

9) Create Separate Named Datasource For Siebel BI Publisher Reports With Large Data Volume

Generating Large Reports (over 10,000 records) - When running report generation there may be scenarios in which more than 10,000 records need to be retrieved. The standard ServerDataSrc within the Siebel Enterprise has a row limit of 10,000 for any single query and therefore in order to support large report generation a custom data source is required without this restriction.

IP 2014 - Aurora theme

 

 

This is my reaction on seeing the new Aurora theme in Siebel IP 2014.

Cisco VPN Auto Connect

 

Happy New Year !

I was hoping the new year brings some change in my professional or personal life, and looks like things are changing. I have wrapped up another Siebel + BIP On Premise deployment and now moving onto the cloud. We were having some bad network related issues on the last project, the VPN would timeout sporadically. Then we would have to open it up and again enter the VPN credentials to get back in.

Here is a BAT file I wrote to automate the connection sequence. Save the following into a text file with .bat extension.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

 

cd "C:\Program Files\Cisco Systems\VPN Client"

start vpngui.exe

vpnclient.exe connect <VPN Connection entry> user <userid> pwd <password>

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Assumption is that Cisco VPN software is installed on your C: drive.

The executable vpnclient.exe is the actual software which makes the connection, but then, it does not put an icon in the taskbar. So when the connection terminates, it does not tell you so. That's why we open the vpngui.exe windows executable as well. This tool will show the connection status in your taskbar, so you will alert you when the VPN disconnects.

Hope it helps !

Siebel Quizzes !

 

If you haven't already checked out SiebelHub.com, I suggest you head there right now. Specially their Quiz section. Its the best place to brush up your brain cells, and learn of the latest happening in the Siebel world. You will need a linkedin account to participate.

Good Luck Quizzing !

On Siebel Tools Wizards

 

The other day I was debugging a business component configuration to identify the cause of wrong data appearing in the UI, as well as a degradation in performance. After spooling the SQL, I found the reason was that some Multi-Value-Fields were configured incorrectly. I showed the developer an easier and more accurate way of doing configuring MVFs, turns out he or no-one in the team knew about Siebel Tool's many wizards.

 

To add an MVF to , say the Service Request BC:

1: Lock the BusComp, and right click.

 

2: Choose the "New MVG" option from the menu:

3: Now you just need to follow the Wizard. Enter the Detail Business Component name and name for the MVL:

4: The link has to be configured ahead and should be available in the next screen. Here I am adding a BusComp for BIP reporting purpose. There is a small bug in this Wizard, it shows the caption of Link's SearchSpec and SortSpec are swapped. so that Sortspec is actually the link searchspec.

If there is no direct link between the entities, the Wizard will allow you to use indirect links, where you have to specify the Source field from the Master Business Component

 

5: The next screen is the most important, it allows setting of Primary options in the MVL:

6: Further configuration in the link, since this is a reporting link, I have made it read only by setting NoInsert,NoUpdate and NoDelete to true.

7: Now the MVL is configured, you can start configuring which all fields from the Detail Business Component should appear in the Master Business Component, in this case, Service Request:

8: That's it !

9: On Clicking Finish, Tools will start another Wizard to help you configure the MVG applets. After the first screen , the rest is similar to the Applet Wizard.

 

 

 

 

When I need to find in which applets a certain field is exposed, I use the similar PickList Wizard to find that out quickly.

1: For instance, to see all applets where the "Abstract" field of Service Request BC is exposed, simply right click on the field and choose "Add Picklist"

 

2:  The first screen of the Wizard shows all the applets where this field is exposed:

3: Nope, the list cannot be exposed from the wizard, you can only see the applet names. But if there are too many applets, I use Sys Exporter (that's a bad name for useful software) to export out the list into CSV:

 

There are rumours that in future releases, Oracle might remove Siebel Tools completely, I just hope they retain all those wizards to speedup development.

BIP: If , then ,else

 

Looks like whole of the Siebel community has moved onto Open UI, but I am spending more and more time into Siebel-BI Publisher reports and their Integration. I had to setup a really, really complex report template for our Order Management module. The final report has 65 for loops and 162 if conditions , and 85 set_variables ! Though BIP’s function set is nicely documented, there are times, I felt, when a requirement could not be implemented as easily as it seemed. Specially when it comes to condition checks. Here are a few pointers if you get lost.

1: If condition: The function is

<?if:[condition]?>
[statements]
<?end if?>

The actual condition has to be provided after the colon (:) after the if statement. The statements to be executed are to be provided before the <?end if?> tag. For some reason, BIP inserts a new line in the report whenever it sees an if tag.

2: If Inlines:

<?if@inlines:[condition]?>
[statements]
<?end if?>

Same as the if condition above, but @inlines statement prevents BIP from inserting a new line in the output report.

3: If @row  and @column. 

<?if@row:[condition]?>
[statements]
<?end if?>

<?if@column:[condition]?>
[statements]
<?end if?>

 

These are to be used in grid layouts/tables to ensure the output of the condition is printed in the same row or column. Otherwise the output gets wrapped into next rows/columns.

4: If @ context.

<?if@incontext:[condition]?>
[statements]
<?end if?>

The '@incontext' is a useful addition to the 5.6.3 release shortening code requirements further to update attributes, when dealing with text output.

As long as the condition checks are straight, these functions prove enough. But things start getting tricky when you need the else clauses , or to build else-if ladders.

5: if-else. Syntax

<?xdoxslt:ifelse([condition],[true statements],[false statements])?>

A simple if-else check, this function is in the xdoxslt namespace. the [true statements] are executed if the condition is evaluated to true, and [false statements] are executed if not. New lines are not inserted for this function.

6:  else if ladder. Syntax

<?xdofx:if [condition 1] then [true 1] else if [condition 2] then [true 2] end if?>

This xdofx function is used when complex else-if ladders need to be built. It can also be used as simple if else condition, so the second if [condition 2] is not required. New lines are not inserted for this function.

 

The @inlines, @incontext, @row, @column statements can only be used with for-each loops, to avoid the newlines inserted automatically by BIP

eg:  <?for-each@inlines:

 

Hope this is useful, Happy BIP !