BIP Reports as Siebel Attachments

Continuing in the vein of BIP Reporting series, lets discuss another reporting requirement.

"Generate the SLA for the Service Request based on the associated Agreement and add the generated SLA as attachment to the Service Request."

The closest solution which i was able to achieve was based on the support web solution "Siebel BI Publisher 8 Reports Business Service [ID 823360.1]". The key idea here is to generate BIP report and associate that report as attachment to the Service Request. Below workflow was created in order to accomplish the desired task.

Lets discuss each step in detail.

1 - Report Output

This subprocess step invokes the "BIP Create Report Output" workflow process. This workflow creates a new record in the "Report Output BC" buscomp to be used in next step.

Input Arguments

SubProcess Input: Report Name

Type: Literal

Value: SR SLA Report

The input is name of BIP Report to be executed.

Output Arguments

PropertyName: ReportId

Type: Output Argument

Subprocess Output: ReportOutputId

2 - Generate Report

This step is the heart of this workflow. "XMLP Driver Service" business service generates the BIP report on the server based on the search specification given in the Bookmark argument using the integration object as mentioned. Generated report is associated with the row id (ReportId) obtained in the earlier step. One can also see generated report in "My BIP Reports view".This step takes following input argument.

Business Service Name:XMLP Driver Service

Business Service Method: GenerateBIPReport

Input Arguments

InputArgument: BIPUserId

Type: Literal

Value: Name of the BIP User Id

InputArgument: BIPPassword

Type: Literal

Value: Pwd of the BIP User Id

InputArgument: LoginId

Type: Expression

Value: LoginId()

InputArgument: MethodName

Type: Literal

Value: GenerateBIPReport

InputArgument: ReportName

Type: Literal

Value: SR SLA Report

InputArgument: ReportOutputId

Type: Process Property

Value: ReportId

InputArgument: ReportOutputType

Type: Literal

Value: PDF

InputArgument: ReportSelected

Type: Literal

Value: SR SLA Report

InputArgument: ViewMode

Type: Literal

Value: All

InputArgument: LanguageCode

Type: Literal

Value: ENU

InputArgument: Bookmark

Type: Expression

Value: "[Id] = '" + [&Object Id] + "'"

InputArgument: IntegrationObject

Type: Literal

Value: BIP SR IO

InputArgument: LDAPEnabled

Type: Literal

Value: True

3 - Get Report Path

Once the report is generted the next step is to get the path of the report file stored in the file system. This could be easily done using "FINS Industry BC Facility Service" business service. The output of this the absolute path name of the report file.

Business Service Name: FINS Industry BC Facility Service

Busienss Service Method: GetFile

Input Arguments

InputArgument: AttachmentId

Type: Process Property

Property Name: ReportId

InputArgument: BusObjName

Type: Literal

Value: Report Administration

InputArgument: FileBusCompName

Type: Literal

Value: Report Output BC

InputArgument: FileNameField

Type: Literal

Value: ReportOutputFileName

InputArgument: RootBusCompName

Type: Literal

Value: Report Output BC

InputArgument: RowId

Type: Process Property

Property Name: ReportId

Output Arguments

Property Name: Sourcepath

Type: Output Argument

Output Argument: Value

4 - Create Attachment

Once we have the absolute path of report in the file system, next step is to associate report as attachment to the service Request buscomp. This is achieved using the same business service used in earlier step but different method.

Business Service Name: FINS Industry BC Facility Service

Busienss Service Method: CreateFile

Input Arguments

InputArgument: BusObjName

Type: Literal

Value: Service Request

InputArgument: FileBusCompName

Type: Literal

Value: Service Request Attachment

InputArgument: FileNameField

Type: Literal

Value: ActivityFileName

InputArgument: RootBusCompName

Type: Literal

Value: Service Request

InputArgument: RowId

Type: Process Property

Property Name: Object Id

InputArgument: SourcePath

Type: Process Property

Property Name: SourcePath

This will create attachment record in the Service Request Attachment buscomp for the specified service Request.

This type of requirement can be frequent across Public Sector or Life Sciences domain and this post might just help in conquering those. During the heist of creating attachment i also found that one can also email the generated BIP report. One can look at Alex post for more details regarding this.

Happy Reporting!!