http://slc02ojl.oracle.com:7780/analytics
http://slc02ojw.oracle.com:7780/analytics
username is prodney and password is Admin123.
http://slc02ojl.oracle.com:7780/analytics
http://slc02ojw.oracle.com:7780/analytics
username is prodney and password is Admin123.
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
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.
Server side setup:
/oracle/apps/OraHome_1/jdk/jre/lib/fonts
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.
Hope it helped !
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>
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
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 !
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.
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.
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.
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.
When maximum and minimum prices are configured, Siebel will respect these rules while spreading the discount.
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 .
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
Spread Discount
Dispatch Service
Sync Row Set
Readers familiar with Order Management will observe that many of the Business Service steps are using the Row Set Transformation Toolkit.
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.
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
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:
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.
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.
Java was responsible for 91 percent of all computer compromises in 2013. Most people not only have the Java browser plug-in enabled — they’re using an out-of-date, vulnerable version. Hey, Oracle — it’s time to disable that plug-in by default.
Oracle knows the situation is a disaster. They’ve given up on the Java plug-in’s security sandbox, originally designed to protect you from malicious Java applets. Java applets on the web get complete access to your system with the default settings.
Defenders of Java tend to complain whenever sites like ours write that Java is extremely insecure. “That’s just the browser plug-in,” they say — acknowledging how broken it is. But that insecure browser plug-in is enabled by default in every single installation of Java out there. The statistics speak for themselves. And we’re a website that keeps telling our readers to uninstall Java or at least disable the plug-in.
Internet-wide, studies keep showing that the majority of computers with Java installed have an out-of-date Java browser plug-in available for malicious websites to ravage. In 2013, a study by Websense Security Labs showed that 80 percent of computers had out-of-date, vulnerable versions of Java. Even the most charitable studies are scary — they tend to claim more than 50 percent of Java plug-ins are out-of-date.
In 2014, Cisco’s annual security report said 91 percent of all attacks in 2013 were against Java. Oracle even tries to take advantage of this problem by bundling the terrible Ask Toolbar and other junkware with Java updates — stay classy, Oracle.
The Java plug-in runs a Java program — or “Java applet” — embedded on a web page, similar to how Adobe Flash works. Because Java is a complex language used for everything from desktop applications to server software, the plug-in was originally designed to run these Java programs in a secure sandbox. This would prevent them from doing nasty things to your system, even if they tried.
That’s the theory, anyway. In practice, there’s a seemingly never-ending stream of vulnerabilities that allow Java applets to escape the sandbox and run roughshod over your system.
Oracle realizes the sandbox is now basically broken, so the sandbox is now basically dead. They’ve given up on it. By default, Java will no longer run “unsigned” applets. Running unsigned applets shouldn’t be a problem if the security sandbox was trustworthy — that’s why it’s generally not a problem to run any Adobe Flash content you find on the web. Even if there are vulnerabilities in Flash, they’re fixed and Adobe doesn’t give up on Flash’s sandboxing.
By default, Java will only load signed applets. That sounds fine, like a good security improvement. However, there’s a serious consequence here. When a Java applet is signed, it’s considered “trusted” and it doesn’t use the sandbox. As Java’s warning message puts it:
“This application will run with unrestricted access which may put your computer and personal information at risk.”
Even Oracle’s own Java version check applet — a simple little applet that runs Java to check your installed version and tells you if you need to update — requires this full system access. That’s completely insane.
In other words, Java really has given up on the sandbox. By default, you can either not run a Java applet or run it with full access to your system. There’s no way to use the sandbox unless you tweak Java’s security settings. The sandbox is so untrustworthy that every bit of Java code you encounter online needs full access to your system. You might as well just download a Java program and run it rather than relying on the browser plug-in, which doesn’t offer the additional security it was originally designed to provide.
As one Java developer explained: “Oracle is intentionally killing off the Java security sandbox under the pretense of improving security.”
Thankfully, web browsers are stepping in to fix Oracle’s inaction. Even if you have the Java browser plug-in installed and enabled, Chrome and Firefox won’t load Java content by default. They use “click-to-play” for Java content.
Internet Explorer still automatically loads Java content. Internet Explorer has improved somewhat – it finally began blocking out-of-date, vulnerable ActiveX controls along with the “Windows 8.1 August Update” (aka Windows 8.1 Update 2) in August, 2014. Chrome and Firefox have been doing this for much longer. Internet Explorer is behind other browsers here — again.
Everyone who needs Java installed should at least disable the plug-in from the java Control Panel. With recent versions of Java, you can tap the Windows key once to open the Start menu or Start screen, type “Java,” and then click the “Configure Java” shortcut. On the Security tab, uncheck the “Enable Java content in the browser” option.
Even after you disable the plug-in, Minecraft and any other desktop application that depends on Java will run just fine. This will only block Java applets embedded on web pages.
Yes, Java applets still exist in the wild. You’ll probably find them most frequently on internal sites where some company has an ancient application written as a Java applet. But Java applets are a dead technology and they’re vanishing from the consumer web. They were supposed to compete with Flash, but they lost. Even if you need Java, you probably don’t need the plug-in.
The occasional company or user that does need the Java browser plug-in should have to go into Java’s Control Panel and choose to enable it. The plug-in should be considered a legacy compatibility option.