Thread Bar Updation

Sometimes Simplicity just does not precede complexity, but follows it. Recently while configuring Thread Bar for some views, we faced a trivial issue. Value of the Thread Field defined was not coming in the Thread bar.  We have specified the correct Thread Applet, Thread Field and Thread Title properties for the related views but only Thread Title was being displayed when we drilldown from List view to Form View. Google resulted this issue being faced by other users without fix.
Things got luckier for me when i found a similar article on support web which stated that this is the intended behavior of siebel when the underlying Business Objects of traversing views are same. However as workaround of this issue there are three options:

1. Have different BO's for List View and Destination View.
2. Remove thread bar and make use of IE back option.
3. If it is business critical to have navigation path in thread bar then one can define Source Field and Destination Field in the drilldown from list View to form view. This setting of source field in the drilldown causes Thread Field to be displayed in the Thread Bar. However it comes with its own inherent issue in a way that user can't traverse through record set in Form view. 

Hope this post helps you while configuring thread bar and keeping business object context in mind. Yup simplicity follows complexity.

Happy Configuration!!

Validation Utility Service

Many  times we have wished that workflows could have ActiveViewName function so that we can perform actions based on the current view. For long i have been resolving this by using profile attributes in workflow but GetProfileAttr('ActiveViewName') is not bullet proof, as when we do Reload/Refresh profile attribute it clears out this profile attribute.

In our quest to overcome profile attribute usage, we discovered another siebel gem, rarely talked,business service "Validation Utility Service". This business service contains a method "GetActiveView" which returns active view name. One can directly use this business service in workflow and can get name of active view.

While writing this piece i also came across another siebel blog which talks about fetching active view details using different business service. Hope either of business service helps your cause.

Happy Crunching!!

Reload Profile Attributes

There are times one has to wear multiple hats as part of job, definitely a mandate if you are married. Sometimes a Manager has to work as team lead or vice versa.

Typically such scenarios are easily handled in siebel using "Change Position" concept. However trouble starts when you have used persistent profile attributes in the search scenarios which fails when user opts for changing position specially if search is based on profile attributes like Job Title, Position Type.

Recently we faced similar scenarios as one of the user had two roles. We used "Division Name" profile attribute to display list of employees while picking SR owner. Trouble started when user did change position and for the other position intended list of employee was not coming. Division Name profile attribute is available in personalization profile BC using join and loaded in session when user logged in. The issue is profile attributes doesn't refresh when you do change position. Even a call to "LoadUserAttributes" method after "Change Position" failed to refresh this attribute.

However one cool thing this method does is it returns correct output for DivisionName function. It doesn't refresh other profile attributes which are pulled from joins but it reloads calculated profile attributes based on functions like PositionName, DivisionName and OrganizationName. This was good for us as we based the profile attribute on DivisionName() function and bingo, the resultant set of employees was perfect.  Hope it helps if you are struggling with similar scenario or planning to use profile attributes in search conditions.

Awaiting some alternate tips in order to refresh profile attributes.

Happy Reloading!!

HTML content in BIP Report

This is war-cry for all BIP gladiators.

Recently while working with BIP reports we hit a road block in displaying HTML content. We need to display a control in BIP report with proper HTML formatting but however when report is rendered it displays HTML tag as is without formatting. The data input is RTCEmbedded control in siebel which saves data encapsulated in HTML tags but instead of transformation those tags are displayed in BIP report as normal text. We tried with integration approach as well as SQL query based reporting architecture but of no luck.

From Tim's blog we got an idea of XSLFO format but it is of not much help as while retrieving the content from database BIP engine process data as & l t; instead of proper HTML < or > tags i.e. they are not escaped. I have already tried below options to fail.

•  Escaping <,> to its ascii equivalent in sql
•  Using clob/Nclob column to store data

As a stop gap solution we are currently chopping HTML tags from the data using XSL and displaying content in a plain format. Any jail break on this trivial issue is most welcome. 

Happy Reporting!!

RTCEmbedded Control

"When the solution is simple, God is answering"- Albert Einstein

Recently we were asked to implement a embedded text editor in a control which could facilitate user for text formatting including features such as bold, italic,font, color etc.  The first reaction was can-we-do-it types with nothing popping in mind (Yeah, thought of Email Templates view never occurred ).But with some help of support web solution turned out to be much much simpler.

We can achieve this by using control of type "RTCEmbedded". This control type provides an embedded text editor which supports below html tag:

• Bold < STRONG>
• italic <EM>
• Underline <U>
• Ordered list <OL>
• List items <LI>
• <P>
• <FONT>
• <BLOCKQUOTE >

However there are certain caveats while using this type:
1 - Control doesn't turn out grey in case of read only conditions.
2 - Throws an error when reaching field length and clears out everything forcing user to renter everything.
3 - It is not currently possible to paste text and graphics (such as graph or image) within such controls.
4 - We can't use this column directly in SQL based reporting purpose without appropriate parsing.

Happy Crunching!!

Error Messages in SI Mode

Time again to stimulate your grey cells. Architectural differences between SI and HI clients are well documented. Recently working with SI application we observed a strange thing. SI client handles processing of error/Validation messages from BC layer and UI layer in different ways.

While invoking RaiseErrorText from BC error message was displayed on the top view bar but while invoking the same from applet was taking to different error web page resulting in context loss. User has to click Back button to go to previous page.

Same holds true for DVM messages. While invoking from BC layer using run time events the error message is displayed on the same view but while invoking from UI layer error message is displayed in different error web page. I am not able to break this thing why it behaves differently on different layers. Any insight/thought on this would be of some help.

Happy Debugging!!

Disabling button in SI Mode

Working with SI applications can be as good as playing with fire. Recently we faced an issue when some naughty users clicked button multiple times resulting in underline action getting executed multiple times. As in case of SI applications, if the method is taking time to execute then button is not disabled it remains active giving end user an impression of nothing-is-happening. So user may end up clicking the button multiple times.

The only way to prevent multiple clicks is to disable button as soon as it is clicked. Fortunately there is an article on support which provides solution to achieve the desired but a scripted one. Following piece of code can be used to disable button after click.

function WebApplet_ShowControl (ControlName, Property, Mode, &HTML)
{
    if(ControlName == "SubmitButton")
    {
      if(Property == "FormattedHtml")
      {
          var index = HTML.indexOf("onclick=");
          var start = HTML.substring(0,index+9);
          var end = HTML.substring(index+9);
          var func = 'setTimeout("a()",10);; ';

          var funcA = "<script>function a(){";

          funcA += "var c = document.getElementById('SUBMIT');";
          funcA += "c.outerHTML='';";
          funcA += "} <script>";
          HTML=start + func + end + funcA;
      }
    }
}

However, we wanted to implement the solution by configuration and yes, we were able to achieve by using following piece of code in "HTML Attributes" property of button.

onclick="function fn(){disabled=true;}setTimeout(fn, 100);"

The idea is to diable button once it is clicked and making a recursive call after 100 milliseconds by using setTimeout function so that it gives user an impression that button is disabled. There could be alternates to achieve this. Again piece of advice/comment is always welcome. 

Happy Crunching!!