About D&B Data

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D&B is a leading provider of business information. D&B's information and technology solutions help businesses find profitable customers, reduce credit risk, manage receivables, and manage vendors. D&B's database of commercial information consists of over 75 million records world wide.

For connected users, you can use your Siebel application to integrate with D&B data and reports. As a mobile client, you can access D&B data for accounts and contacts that have been promoted from D&B marketing data.

This allows you to:

• Use D&B marketing data within your Siebel application.
• Access D&B business and credit reports from within your Siebel application.

You can use this D&B data to support the following:

• New Business or Customer Acquisition. By querying on company size, line of business, and other criteria provided by D&B, you can generate lists of prospects to add to the sales pipeline or to support outbound marketing programs. By using the D&B corporate family linkage information, you can identify new prospects and opportunities within a company's extended family.
• Customer Segmentation and Penetration. You can profile specific market segments such as geography, industry, size, and other criteria to identify untapped opportunities or better align sales territories.
• Customer Qualification. Use your access to D&B business and credit reports to obtain detailed background and risk information on a company in order to focus sales efforts on higher-probability accounts and shorten the sales cycle.

The D-U-N-S (Data Universal Numbering System) number is a crucial component of D&B data. A D&B D-U-N-S number is a nonindicative, nine-digit number assigned to each business location in the D&B database. Each D-U-N-S number has a unique, separate, and distinct operation and is maintained solely by D&B. Industries and organizations around the world use the D&B D-U-N-S number as a global standard for business identification and tracking.

Each company has a unique D&B D-U-N-S number associated with it. It acts as a unique identifier for a company in the D&B database.

To uniquely identify the association between different companies in the D&B database, each company also has associated D&B D-U-N-S numbers.

Several categories of D&B D-U-N-S numbers exist:

• D&B D-U-N-S Number—each unique business location listed in the D&B database is assigned a D&B D-U-N-S number. This column is called simply DUNS Number in your Siebel application.
• Global Ultimate D-U-N-S—the D&B D-U-N-S number belonging to a business's worldwide ultimate parent company.
• Domestic Ultimate D-U-N-S—the D&B D-U-N-S number belonging to the highest-level family member within a specific country.
• Parent/HQ D-U-N-S—the D&B D-U-N-S number belonging to a business's immediate headquarters or parent.

These numbers allow D&B to establish the relationships between different companies.

For more information on D&B please refer to Wiki or the official website.

Common Error messages occured during server installation and their expansions

Facility	Description
ADM	Server Administration
GEN	Siebel Generic
NET	Siebel networking layer (common/sisnapi)
OMS	Object Manager Server Subsystem
OSD	Operating system dependent layer (common/osd)
SCC	Server Common Configuration
SCM	Server Configuration Manager
SMI	Server management infrastructure (server/smi)
SRB	Server Request Broker
SRM	Server Request Manager
SSM	SISNAPI Session Manager
SVR	Server common layers (server/common)

Synthetic Events in Siebel

A synthetic event is a specialized run-time event that is dedicated to controlling workflow navigation.
You will stumble upon these concepts if you get a chance to work with interactive workflows.
To control the way a user navigates through the Siebel application, you can create buttons on applets within views and then associate synthetic events with the buttons.
A sample case is when you get a Warning Pop up Applet while you try to modify a product in the SIS OM Edit Complex Asset Workflow.

To create synthetic event buttons

1. In Siebel Tools, select a view to which a User Interact step navigates the user.
2. Configure a  button  for eg "OK". button
3. Specify the MethodInvoked property of the button control as the name of the associated event, for example, FrameEventMethodWFOK for proceeding further.
4. In the Palette Designer, associate the applet type run-time event, for example, FrameEventMethodWFOK, to the outgoing branches of the User Interact step in the workflow process that will receive the event. Assign the event the following properties:
   • Event Type = Applet
   • Event Obj = AppletName
   • Event = InvokeMethod
   • Sub Event = [method name, for example, FrameEventMethodWFOK]

Hope this post was useful; stay tuned



Scripting event flow in Siebel

Above figure shows the flow of events when a usual UI action (Click of New Record Button) takes place. The dotted lines shows the boundary between browser side scripting and server side scripting.
The sequence of events starts from Applet_PreInvokeMethod at Browser Script followed by pre runtime and pre Bus_Comp events. Soon after the pre events are fired the class level C++ code is executed where the Business Component User Property(Named Method n) is fired.As seen in the figure all the Post events lie on the right hand side.The last event to fire is the Applet_Invoke method.

Hope this post was informative.Stay tuned

About the SIS OM PMT Service and other BS in C/OM

OM can be broadly classified into two categories

1. Normal Ordering Flow. (Orders play the key role)

2. Asset Based Ordering Flow (Asset centric flow)

Asset Based Ordering is often nicknamed or abbreviated as ABO flow.

In Siebel 8.0 log in to Tools and in the Object explorer select Business Service and query for the SIS OM PMT Service. PMT stands for "Product Manipulation Toolkit". Now this business service is one of the most important object with regards to Customer order Management. It has got 45 methods and each one of them is interestingly the key driver for many OM actions.

There are many User Properties of this BS which would be used while you configure during customization part of COM.

Another important BS is the "FINS Data Transfer Utilities" often abbreviated as the DTU.

This BS allows you to transfer data between a source BC and destination BC.

One should be familiar with "Data Object Maps" to utilize the power of this BS.DTU was provided as a sustitute to ISS Copy Service.

This post surely would confuse a newbie but believe me all these objects are going to be true companions for any C/OM developer.

Stay tuned

Siebel Customer Order Management

COM(Customer Order Management) in Siebel is a very interesting and challenging module. The main reason behind this is that most of the business requrements can be transformed to application functionalities by declarative configuration techniques rather than going for commonly used escript techniques.

Before working in an OM module in siebel; one should be well aware of the following configuration techniques.

1.Configuration ( Good hands on experience in Workflows and Object hierarches;i.e familiar with most of the objects in object explorer)

2.Working Priciple of a Business Service.

3.Knowledge of EAI will be very helpful; if not be aware of Integration Objects; Integration components and Data Maps and Data Object Maps.

4.Signal Mechnism.

5.Variable Maps

6.Product Configuration and Pricing(will need seperate expertise without which COM is incomplete)

7.Knowledge of Runtime Events and Data Validation Manager.

Well you might feel that this results in a long list of raw materials for COM but believe me getting familiar with all these things will hardly take more than two weeks.

I will get into the details in the next post.Till then stay tuned.