Oracle’s letter to Siebel Customers

 

Oracle today sent out this e-mail to their Siebel Customers.

 

Siebel Log files - Top Errors

 

I am working on a brand new Siebel implementation, and we are seeing a lot of errors..Really. Huge log files with repeating errors on them. If you increase the Siebel component logging to maximum, Siebel will spit out Warnings to Errors, and everything in between. It becomes difficult to find out where the actual problem is.

I figured one way is to find out the most commonly occurring errors. Fortunately, we are on a Linux server system. So a little bit of googling, and using linux’s many commands solved the problem.

Running this command in the ses/siebsrvr/enterprises/*/logs folder prints the top occuring errors in the last 10 log files in reverse order:

grep "SBL-" `ls –tr *.log | tail -10`   | grep -v "Warning" | grep -v ".spf" | grep -v 'err=' | cut -f 6-10 | uniq -c | sort  –n

Here is a screenshot of errors for me. The command ignores Siebel Warnings, and errors related to .spf files, and also some errors from source files.

Hope it helps !

And what about Windows you ask ? Well, Windows guys are on their own. You can download windows ports of Unix commands.

Oracle BI Sample Public Instances

 

 

http://slc02ojl.oracle.com:7780/analytics

http://slc02ojw.oracle.com:7780/analytics

username is prodney and password is Admin123.

Check boxes not appearing–BI Publisher Reports

 

Today I lost a whole day trying to get BI Publisher to print check boxes in PDF output reports. Though this issue is common on most implementations, and lots of solutions documented, none of that worked for me. I am documenting the changes I made to get it working here, hopefully it will help some one else.

My requirement was to get Siebel-BI Publisher reports to print checkboxes, for boolean fields in PDF output, for the same fields where Siebel displays checkboxes.

Siebel version : 8.1.1.11 SIA [23030] ENU  (Open UI)

BI Publisher version : 10.1.3.4

Server OS: Solaris 2.6.39-400.17.1.el6uek.x86_64

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RTF Template:

After you have installed the BIP Word Addon, you need to enable the Developer tab, to insert the CheckBox form control.

Ensure that the “Check box enable” option is checked. Also, you may specify default value, here I have selected “Not checked”, so the box would appear without a check in it be default.

Map the control to a field in the XML, and ensure it works on your local machine.

Now if the mapping is correct you should see a checkbox on it when you preview the report. If the font setup is incorrect on you Windows machine, you will see a Rhombus instead of a checkbox.

PDF Output:

This means that BIP is able to map the field to a checkbox, but the font installation is not complete on your Windows machine. This is OK, we need to ensure the fonts are installed correctly on the server.

 

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Server side setup:

1. On you BIP server, upload the Wingdings 2 fonts. This is a .ttf file, you may also find this in your Windows machine at C:\Windows\Fonts\
2. Upload this .ttf file to your BIP server onto …jdk/jre/lib/fonts. This will change depending your BIP server installation. For me the path is

/oracle/apps/OraHome_1/jdk/jre/lib/fonts

3. Now log into your BIP server as Administrator. Navigate to Admin –> Font Mappings. 
4. Click on “Add Font Mapping”. In the next screen, check if your new font appears in the target font mappings dropdown list.

If the font appears in the list, select it under Truetype. In the top Field, enter Windings2. Leave the Style and Weight as Normal. Leave the TTC Number blank.

5. Click on “Add Font Mapping”. In the next screen, check if your new font appears in the target font mappings dropdown list.
6. Edit your xdo.cfg file. It will be somewhere under Configuration folder     …/OraHome_1/xmlp/XMLP/Admin/Configuration/xdo.cfg
7. Open the xdo.cfg file in notepad. BIP would have already added the font mapping into it. You now need to add the character code for the “Yes” and “No” values to toggle the Checkbox. Add the below line in the properties container:                                                                                        <property name="rtf-checkbox-glyph">Wingdings2;0082;0163</property>. This is what my file looks like.
8. Restart BIP Server.
9. When you generate the PDF output of the report, the checkboxes should appear properly now. 
10. However, if you generate an HTML output report, you might see “R” in place of the check box. This is because in Wingdings2 font, capital R is mapped to the checked checkbox (decimal code 82) .  And the pound symbol is mapped to the unchecked checkxbox (decimal code 163).

 

Hope it helped !

 

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Notes:

I was getting tired triggering the report from Siebel every time I made a change, so I created a new standalone report directly in BIP, with a xml file for its input. This way, I could test changes directly in BIP without logging into Siebel.

I found that although Wingdings1 font had checkboxes, this would not appear in PDF output. The easiest way to see the chars in Word is to Insert ->Symbol.

Word will show you the code for each symbol when you insert them.

Wingings 1 font works right when you’re report has HTML output. But won’t work with PDF, it would come out as some junk chars. For PDF to work, you have to use Wingdings 2.

This is inputted in the cfg file :

<property name="rtf-checkbox-glyph">Wingdings2;0082;0163</property>

BIP - Siebel functions

 

If you use Siebel functions in your BIP reports for date conversion, you will get “class-not-found” errors during your report generation.

 

 

The fix for this is to point BIP to the path where your Siebel JARs are installed.

In your Work designer: Go to Addins-> Tools –> Options, and add a the path to the Java option field, under Preview.

For me, Siebel is installed on D drive.

-Xmx256M  -Xbootclasspath/a:D:\Siebel\8.1\Tools_1\CLASSES\SiebelXMLP.jar;D:\Siebel\8.1\Tools_1\CLASSES\XMLP.jar;D:\Siebel\8.1\Tools_1\CLASSES\siebel.jar;D:\Siebel\8.1\Tools_1\CLASSES\XSLFunctions.jar;D:\Siebel\8.1\Tools_1\CLASSES\SiebelCustomXMLP.jar;D:\Siebel\8.1\Tools_1\CLASSES\SiebelCustomXMLP_SIA.jar

 

Take a shot at the Siebel 20th Anniversary Quiz

 

The good folks at On-Demand education have setup an online Quiz to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of Siebel. There competition seems fierce, till last week I saw only 30 names on the leaderboard, now it’s double that.  The questions are from everywhere, technical and functional Siebel thingies and some history.  You can find some of the answers of the questions on @lex’s awesome Siebel site, and he was involved in setting up of the questions.

The page is still open, but the correct answers are not disclosed. So go ahead and give it a try !

Siebel Anniversary Quiz

Spread Discount Button

 

 

 

This post is intended as a brief overview of the purpose and nature of the Spread Discount Driver Workflow Process which is used when a user uses the Spread Discount Button in the Quote Line Items Totals Applet. It's the sort of button most of us have seen more than once, and maybe you just ignored it.

User Behaviour and Options

As a side note, this button, and the underlying processing that we will investigate, is according to the documentation, the recommended way of entering discount over the total Quote or Order, as opposed to the Discount field in Quote Header.

So when the User gets round to clicking the button, the user must first decide how to apply the Discount – as a target price, a percentage or discount amount. This will be used in the process that follows.

The default behaviour of the Spread Discount button will be to update the Quote, based on the value entered in the Manual Discount field (visible in the Pricing View Tab). If the user had already entered a Manual Discount, Manual Price Override is updated instead.

Note – One Time Line Items

It is important to note that Spread Discount will only update Line Items with the Type of “One Time”. Any items with the Type “Recurring” or “Usage” will be ignored.

Note – Spread Discount Button Scope

The User is not limited to applying the Spread to the whole of the Quote. For example, the User can select two or more items in the Line Items Applet and proceed to click the Spread Discount button, choosing “Selected Items” from the Applet.

The User may of course also make use of the other options (Product, Service, Training) which will apply the Discount to only Sales Products, Service Products or Training Products in the Quote or Order.

Note – Maximum and Minimum Prices (in Price List)

When maximum and minimum prices are configured, Siebel will respect these rules while spreading the discount.

Discount Amount and Target Total

When the User clicks the Spread Discount button and chooses one of the above options, a calculation is performed based on the choice of the User in the Source Field of the Pop-up Applet.

If you enter a Discount Amount or Target Total, Spread Discount first calculates a weighted average before distributing discounts. It calculates the weighted average as follows:

If the Source is List Price

Weighted Average = Line Item List Price / Total List Price

Manual Discount Amount = Weighted Average * Discount Amount

If the Source is Net

Weighted Average = Line Item Net Price / Total Net Price

Manual Discount Amount = Weighted Average * Discount Amount

For complete details of the calculations performed, see the relevant documentation .

Workflow Process

The Spread Discount Driver Workflow Process is responsible for the actual work of the discount spreading. From the above picture, in order to understand the process at a high level it is important to note the following steps as being pertinent to the Spread Discount principle.

Execute SearchSpec

• 
  
  As mentioned previously, not all items can be discounted, only one-time price items and this is the filtering step

Spread Discount

• 
  
  This Business Service is supplied by Oracle. The Method SpreadDiscount is hidden in Siebel Tools. For details of the basic calculation see the section below.

Dispatch Service

• 
  
  Further PSP Processing happens at this stage – the Pricing Engine may have other work to do

Sync Row Set

• 
  
  The Row Set representing the Quote, obtained in the first step of the Workflow Process but now with the successfully discounted Line Items, is returnedto the Quote and the Database

Readers familiar with Order Management will observe that many of the Business Service steps are using the Row Set Transformation Toolkit.

SpreadDiscount Method Algorithm

Below is a basic outline of the logic applied by the SpreadDiscount Method of the Business Service.

Siebel begins by obtaining the Base Price from the Pop-Up Applet and converts the Base Price and Minimum andMaximum Prices to the Currency specified in the Applet.

Suppose 2 items, as follows:-

Widget Quantity 1 Base Price 10 Minimum Price 7
Grommet Quantity 3 Base Price 5
Amount to Discount 5.50

Siebel then adds up all Base Prices up (multiplying each by Quantity) to get the Total Base Price. Then Siebel proceeds to get the Target Price (calculated from Amount To Discount or Percent To Discount depending on what theUser entered, as necessary). So it might look something like this, in our example:

Total Base Price = 10 + (3*5) = 25
Target Price = 25 - 5.50

Then Siebel will calculate the total to discount: Total To Discount = Total Base Price – Target Price.

Target Price = 19.50

The logic will loop through the rows of the Quote, following the logic below.

• 
  
  Loop through all Rows that have not reached the Min/Max Price.
  
  
• 
  
  Discount each amount by (Base Price/Total Base Price) * Total To Discount
  
  
• 
  
  If that discount pushes the Line Item Price beyond Min/Max:
  
  
  
  
  • 
    
    Set the final price of item to its Min/Max
    
    
  • 
    
    …and remove that row from further discounts

First Line of Quote Discounted Price: (10 / 10) * 5.5 = 5.5
But that would push it below Minimum Price so set it to Minimum Price = 7.00 and remove from further adjustments

• 
  
  After round completes, make adjustment so "removed" rows are not taken into account in the next round's calculation. For each of these rows:
  
  
• 
  
  
  
  • 
    
    It’s Base Value * Quantity will be subtracted from the Total Base Price
    
    
  • 
    
    It’s Discount Amount*Quantity will be subtracted from Total To Discount

Subtract price of first item from Total Base Price (25 -10) = 15
Discount Amount * Quantity (3 * 1) subtracted from Total to Discount so Total to Discount is now 2.5

Looping continues until:

• 
  
  Total To Discount can be spread evenly across all remaining line items
  
  
  
  
  • 
    
    or All items have been discounted to their respective min/max

So in our case, the next line would be processed like this:

Second Line Discounted (5/15)* 2.5 or 0.83 / item with Quantity of 3

Then Siebel will loop through all rows to convert each row back to the Line Item Currency and to round each to line item precision. Finally Siebel will add up rounding remainders and amount discounted.

The rounding remainder is added to the element with highest Base Price*Quantity that has not already reached its Min/Max. This continues until the rounding remainder rounds to 0 or until no items can be discounted further.

Summary

The Spread Discount Driver Workflow Process delivers reliable and understandable discounting to line items or entire Quotes in a simple to visualize way. The Workflow Process could be further customized to take into account custom logic. Functional Consultants who study the functionality would do well to familiarize themselves with the functionality to be able to predict the outcome.