What is Operational CRM

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By TechOneStop
What is Operational CRM

Operational crmCRM or Customer Relationship Management software enables organizations to manage their relationships with customers. It helps to retain existing customers, acquire new customers and analyze customer data. There are mainly three types of CRM applications – Operational CRM, Analytical CRM and Collaborative CRM. Here we will discuss about what is Operational CRM.

What is Operational CRM?

Operational CRM streamlines the business process of an organization. It mainly focuses on automation and improvement of customer facing and customer touching business processes. It includes Sales automation, Marketing automation and Service automation. Main purpose of Operational CRM system is to generate leads, convert them into contacts, capture all required details and provide support throughout customer lifecycle.

Sales Force Automation:

Operational CRM - Sales AutomationSales Force Automation (SFA) helps an organization to automate sales process from lead generation to closing sale. Main purpose of sales automation is to set business standard within the organization to acquire new customers and deal with existing customers. It includes various CRM sales modules like

  • Lead Management
  • Contact Management
  • Account Management
  • Tracking Customer Preferences
  • Performance Management
  • Quote-to-Order management
  • Sales Forecasting

Marketing Automation:

Operational CRM - Marketing AutomationMarketing Automation helps the organization to streamline marketing process, automate and measure marketing task to increase sales and earn revenue faster. It includes various CRM marketing modules like Campaign Management, Event Based Marketing.

Campaign Management helps business to design campaign, decide communication channels (like email, call, website, social media, TV ads), segment contacts, allocate budget and analyze effectiveness or quality of the campaign.

Event based marketing helps to reach out customers with more relevant products or services based upon what’s going on in their lives at that moment, like first job or buying new car or getting married.

Marketing Automation can automate response to customer queries, inform sales team about new opportunities.

Service Automation:

Operational CRM - Service AutomationService Automation enables business to provide best quality of customer service by automating the service process. It includes various service modules like call management, case or incident management, knowledge management, service level management.

Call Management automation helps to route customer call to the most appropriate help desk person and retrieve all required information related to the call.

Case/Incident Management helps the organization to assign customers’ problems to the right person, provide solution within the time limit, capture customer response and analyze effectiveness.

Knowledge Management captures information from various sources and makes a pro active approach to give value addition to customers.

Service Level Management enables business to analyze quality of service based on key performance indicators.

Increase sales and improve customers’ loyalty are two main purposes of Operational CRM. There are lots of Operational CRM applications with different features and platforms (SaaS, On Premise, Hybrid). So before choosing any Customer Relationship Management application, organization should have defined goal and strategy to ensure success. You could read our article on ‘How to choose the best CRM software for your business’.

Do you have any question? Please feel free to comment below.

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Clean up Siebel File System – Sfscleanup Utility

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By TechOneStop
Clean Up Siebel File System

Clean up Siebel File System is one of major server maintenance activities. Over the time, Siebel file system becomes loaded with lots of invalid and orphan files. If you don’t clean up such files, it may impact on performance of Siebel application and also block hard disk space unnecessarily. To clean up such invalid and orphan files, Oracle provides an utility ‘Sfscleanup’. Here we will discus how to use sfscleanup utility to clean up Siebel file system.

But why files become invalid and orphan?

Well! there could be many reasons, like

  1. If you attach a file with a record and then delete that record
  2. If you attach a file and then change the URL type without deleting the record
  3. If you attach a file against a record and then without deleting that record, attach another file with the same record

How to run Siebel file system cleanup utility ‘Sfscleanup’?

Before running this utility, make sure you have SIEBEL_REPOSITORY environment variable set properly because sfscleanup utility refers environment variable to execute properly. To set SIEBEL_REPOSITORY environment variable correctly, you cloud run another utility ‘siebenv.bat’. We will discus about ‘seibenv’ utility in another article. Sfscleanup utility is located in ‘bin’ sub directory within Siebel server root directory. This utility processes each and every file in the file attachment directory.

Steps to clean up Siebel file system directory using ‘Sfscleanup’:Sfscleanup Siebel Utility

  1. Open command prompt and change the directory to the bin sub directory with in the Siebel Server directory
  2. Run sfscleanup.exe using below parameters

Prompt>sfscleanup /U <User ID> /P <Password> /C <ODBC Data Source> /D <Siebel Table Owner> /F <Path of the Siebel File System Directory> /X <Path of output file, mainly log file> /M <Path to move invalid file>

It would look like:
sfscleanup /U sadmin /P sadmin /C TECHONESTOP /D SIEBEL /F D:\sba81\FS /X D:\sba81\siebsrvr\log\sfscleanup.log /M D:\sba81\siebsrvr\log

Parameter Value Description Required
/U Username Username Id Yes
/P Password Password of the given user Yes
/C ODBC data source name Set this value to ODBC data source if SIEBEL_DATA_SOURCE environment variable is not set properly No if SIEBEL_DATA_SOURCE is set
/D Siebel table owner Set this value to Siebel table owner if SIEBEL_TABLE_OWNER environment variable is not set properly No if SIEBEL_TABLE_OWNER is set
/F Path of the Siebel file system directory Set this value to Siebel file system directory, do not append ‘att’ to the path directory Yes
/X Path of the output file Set this value to the path of out put file, mainly log file No
/M Path to move invalid files Set this value to the path where invalid/orphan files will be moved No
/N Remove older file versions * Set this value to ‘Y’ if you want to delete older version of file attachment. By default Siebel will keep these files marked as ‘ANCIENT’ No
/G Remove garbage file Set this value to ‘Y’ if you want to delete non siebel files from Siebel file system No
/R Generate report file Set this value to ‘Y’ if you want to generate report with File name and File Type No

 

* Older version file means that corresponding attachment record exists in Siebel database but not the file revision number.

If you want to know more about Sfscleanup parameters, refer Cleaning Up the Siebel File System provided by Oracle.

Output file, generated by /X parameter, looks like below. It has three parameters – file name, file type and file operation.

sfscleanup utility

File Name:

This column contains the name of each file that was processed during the execution of Sfscleanup utility

File Type:

This column lists the type of each file that was processed. Below we have listed down all file types and associated operations that this utility performs to clean up Siebel file system.

File Type Description File Operation
CURRENT This file is valid file, it has corresponding record in file attachment table. KEPT
NEW This file is less than one hour old and sfscleanup utility does not check such file in file attachment table. KEPT
ANCIENT This file has corresponding attachment record in database but file version does not match KEPT if /N or /M parameter is not used

  • If /N parameter is set to ‘Y’, operation will be DELETED
  • If /M parameter is set to ‘Y’, operation will be MOVED
INVALID This file or directory is not a valid attachment. KEPT if /G parameter is not set to ‘Y’, otherwise DELETED
ORPHAN This file does not have corresponding record in File attachment table DELETED if /M parameter if not set to any value, otherwise MOVED

File Operation:

This column lists the type of operation performed on each file.

Operation Type Description
KEPT File is not deleted
DELETED File is deleted from file system
MOVED File is moved to the directory specified by /M parameter. Files will only be moved to the directory if the /M parameter is used.
KEPT_DIR Its a directory, not a file and need manual intervention to delete it
KEPT_ERROR File is kept as an error occurred during delete or move operation

 

Except Sfscleanup, there are another two important utilities ‘Sfspartition‘ and ‘Sfsutl‘ for Siebel file system. We will discuss these in our next article.

Now it’s time for action! Go and Clean Up Siebel File System!

Do you have any question? Please feel free to comment below.

Keep in touch, follow TechOneStop on Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / Goolge+.

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Highlight required fields in Siebel Open UI

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By TechOneStop
highlight required fields in Siebel Open UI configuration

Highlight required fields in Siebel Open UI – sounds interesting?

Let us discuss in details.

We all know about required fields in Siebel, right?

It means, users can not save the record keeping such fields blank.

Also, we know that in Siebel, every required field on form applet comes with a red asterisk on right hand side.

But,

What if we highlight all required fields beside red asterisk?

Does it look good?

Let’s take a look…

Highlight required fields in Siebel Open UI
No doubt, highlighted required field has better visualization than the other one.

In this article, we will discuss how to highlight required fields in Siebel Open UI.

Wait a minute,

Let us tell you few more real time scenarios as well except this one.

– Highlight all required fields if users do not enter any value and try to save the record. But when the application loads, required fields come with a red asterisk only.

– If users enter wrong value in a field, highlight that field with error message.

For example, if users enter numeric value in ‘Name’ field, highlight the name field.

There are n number of business requirements related to highlighted fields in Siebel.

Now,

Back to our topic…

Steps to highlight required fields in Siebel Open UI:

Step 1: Determine CSS tag (Optional step)

You know,

For any kind of visual requirements in Siebel Open UI, very first step is to find out the corresponding CSS tag for that particular element.

But why this step is optional for this requirement?

It is optional because we are not configuring our application for a particular field. We are going to highlight all required fields throughout application.

However, it is better to know the CSS tags behind required fields.

So, right click on the field and click on ‘Inspect element‘ to launch browser developer tool.

Browser developer tool is nothing but a vanilla tool provided by almost all modern browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, IE 8+.

To know more about browser developer tool, read our article on ‘Debugging in Siebel Open UI‘.

Step 2: Build the new CSS file

You know about Cascading Style Sheet (CSS), right?

If not, try to get a basic idea about CSS. It is very much required to be Siebel Open UI developer.

To learn CSS, we would suggest you to go through w3schools – CSS tutorial.

Here,

We are going to use a simple notepad to write CSS rules. You could use any tool as per your choice.

CSS rules are –

input[aria-required=”true”], div.mceGridField input.siebui-ctrl-mvg[aria-required=”true”], input[aria-required=”true”] [readonly=”readonly”]

{

border-color: #CC0000 !important;

background: #FFCCCC !important;

color: red !important;

font-weight: bold !important;;

}

All CSS rules are self-explanatory except ‘!Important‘, isn’t it?

Purpose of using this CSS property is to override the default CSS priority rule. Any CSS property with ‘!Important’ will always be applied on the selector, no matter what all other rules appear in the CSS file.

Now save the file with .css extension. We have named our file – highlight_required_fields.css.

Remember, you must save the file with .css extension.

Step 3: Copy the CSS file

Did you go through our Siebel Open UI configuration best practices tutorial?

Yes! then you know,

According to Open UI configuration best practices, you should keep all custom CSS and JS files under custom folder/s.

But,

Do you know why Oracle suggests to keep all custom CSS and JS files under custom folder/s?

This is to avoid any unnecessary conflicts during application upgrade.

If you follow this practice, all vanilla files will be migrated to upper version without affecting any custom file.

So,

If you don’t have a custom folder already, create one and keep all custom CSS and JS files under that folder only.

Now, copy the .css file under ‘custom‘ folder and register it in theme.js file.

For dedicated client, copy the custom CSS file under ..Client/PUBLIC/<lang>/files/custom.

For Webclient, copy the file under ..webserver/PUBLIC/<lang>/files/custom.

Well,

Do you know how to register .css file in theme.js file?

Read the next step…

Step 4: Register the file in Theme.JS file

Once your .css file is ready, next step is to register the file in theme.js file.

You’re probably wondering…

Why theme.js file?

It is because we are doing this customization for ‘GRAY_TAB‘ theme only. This ‘GRAY_TAB’ theme is based on theme.js file.

And

Where do you find theme.js file in Siebel Open UI?

For dedicated client, navigate to  ..Client/PUBLIC/<lang>/<ver no>/SCRIPTS/siebel

For Webclient, navigate to ..webserver/PUBLIC/<lang>/<build>/SCRIPTS/siebel

Now open the theme.JS file in any text editor, register the CSS file and save it.

Script to register –

var ua=navigator.userAgent;

var re=new RegExp(“MSIE ([0-9]{1,}[.0-9]{0,})”);

if(re.exec(ua)!=null&&parseFloat(RegExp.$1)<=8)

{

var IE8inc=”files/ie8-compat.css”;

var IE8incTangerine=”files/ie8-compat-tangerine.css”

}

else

{

var IE8inc=””;var IE8incTangerine=””

}

SiebelApp.ThemeManager.addTheme(“GRAY_TAB”,{css:{sb_theme:”files/theme-base.css”,sc_theme:”files/theme-gray.css”,

sn_theme:”files/theme-nav-tab.css”,

sca_them:”files/theme-calendar.css”,

highlightreqfld:”files/custom/highlight_required_fields.css”,

sd_theme:IE8inc}

,objList:[]

});

Step 5: Register theme.js file (Optional step)

Another optional step to highlight required fields in Siebel Open UI application…

You may have theme.js registered already but it is better to verify!

To do so, login into application and navigate to Sitemap > Administration-Application > Manifest Files.

Here, query for theme.js file.

Customize Siebel Open UI

If the file is already there, no need to do anything.

But if not, create a new record to register theme.js file like below screenshot..

Now navigate to Administration-Application > Manifest Administration and create new UI objects, Object expression and add the file.

siebel open ui customization - highlighted required fields

Step 6: Verify changes

Finally,

Clear browser cache and reload the application…

You should see all required fields highlighted on Form applet.

Simple!

If you have any question, please let us know.

Also if you want us to discuss any business scenario in this ‘Configuring Siebel Open UI‘ series, please leave your comment below.

Don’t forget to leave your feedback in the comment section!

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Watch our YouTube Video on how to configure Siebel Open UI to highlight required fields: