My previous post was about the integration between Siebel and BI Publisher that was available since Siebel 8.1. As I mentioned back then, the integration is promising, but presented  some serious limitations to BI as a report generation tool for Siebel, and I promised to touch this issue again in a new post. Well, here we go.

With the patch to Siebel 8.1.1.1, some of the isssues have been resolved, while some serious new ones have been created. Our main reason to upgrade (Siebel to 8.1.1.1 and BI Publisher to  10.1.3.4.1) were issues with Active Directory. The Siebel Security Model provided by BI was not documented nor functioning properly in the earlier version. This has been resolved in the new version. The Siebel Security Model basically works like this: a user requests a report, BI then checks in Siebel whether the user has the right responsibility (yes, you need to add the XMLP_DEVELOPER responsibility to each user that needs to create reports) and then BI creates the report and sends it back to Siebel. Works a like charm!

Oracle OpenWorld 2010 facilitated almost 50 sessions on a wide range of Siebel subjects. Also available were 14 demo’s, a CRM lounge, a CRM Experts forum and a CRM Social Reception. Nevertheless, news reporting on Siebel CRM was very limited and seemed to be overshadowed by the anouncement for Fusion Applications to become available Q1 2011. Below an overview of most important CRM related announcements, based on several news reporting agencies.

Fusion CRM

At a press session on Monday, Anthony Lye, Oracle senior vice president of CRM, defined Fusion as “the most modern set of applications on the planet”. The on-premise and on-demand applications are based on the same code base, enabling the ability to switch between both delivery models. “You can deploy it one way and six months later if you want to change, you can.” He added that firms can run their CRM system on one database and their financials on a separate machine, but they would still get a single view of customer data.

What is the best way to create and maintain workers to PeopleSoft CRM? The correct way to synchronize workers to PeopleSoft CRM is using the Workforce services. This works fine when using PeopleSoft HCM, but what about when your HCM application is non-PeopleSoft? In our case where are integrating PeopleSoft CRM HR Helpdesk with SAP HCM and P&I HCM.

As of version 8.1, Oracle BI Publisher (formerly known as XMLP Publisher) has replaced Actuate as report generating tool for Siebel. During a Siebel Case Management implementation, I got some insights which I’d like to share.

The first step was a rather smooth installation and configuration process. We had BI Publisher up and running within no-time, and only very minimal configuration was required to integrate it with Siebel. By pointing the web services to the right URL’s and adjusting some BI settings, we could start making the first reports.

Siebel ships with a large number of out-of-the-box reports, and it’s easy to create your own. The reports combine RTF-templates from the BI Server with XML data from Siebel into various document types, such as PDF. The templates are easy to maintain using BI Publisher Desktop, a simple plugin for MS Word. XML data is composed by Siebel Integration Objects.

Better late than never is a famous saying and was one of the first things that came up in my mind when I first saw the Oracle Siebel CRM Desktop (released in Fix Pack for Siebel CRM). My actual first thought was: Nice! This looks great! and was immediatly followed by: “this is something we have been waiting for for years!”. I am aware of the fact that this might sound a little bit to enthousiastic. Fact is that I really mean it. And yes; Siebel CRM Desktop still has to prove itself in production. The start, however, is promising.