BI Publisher and Siebel, new and improved!

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!

Another major improvement is that automatic report generation has been greatly enhanced. This has already been so since an earlier QuickFix, but also comes as part of 8.1.1.1. You can now use workflows to generate reports for you. This means you can now trigger reports by Runtime Events or from eScript. A great improvement, as you are no longer bounded to the user interface only.

Lastly, Siebel now allows you to enter parameters right before the report is generated. This is great, because it allows you to show data in the report without having to store it in the Siebel data model. You can enter these parameters in a pop-up that shows up right before generating the report.

Both these improvements were our main reasons to upgrade and we’re quite satisfied with them. However, we encountered some pitfallts, the most important ones being:

1) A bug that prevents you from uploading new reports without physically deleting the old template from the BI server. When you try to upload a new template for an existing report (that is: with the same name), Siebel cannot overwrite the existing folder. The result is that your browser session just hangs. The solution is to first delete the folder from the BI server and then upload the new one. Usually report designers won’t have direct access to the reports server, so this may be an issue. Should be solved in 8.1.1.3.

2) The pop-up in which end users can enter report parameters always shows up, even when the report does not allow you to enter extra parameters. This means an extra click for end users.

3) Then the worst of  them all: the reports show up after clicking on the reports button in Siebel. This list can be quite extensive when your organization uses more than about 20 reports. That’s no problem when the list would be nicely sorted alphabetically or even by a sequencing variable. However, the lists gets sorted randomly! It may even differ per view. End users are left confused, looking for where in the list the report shows up this time… This issue was present already before the upgrade, and is promised to be solved in Siebel 8.1.1.3.

What is your experience with Siebel and BI? Feel free to share it in the comments.

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Posted by: Rick van Haasteren (3 post(s)).

Rick is a Siebel 8.0 Certified Expert since September 2008. He operates well between the IT side and the business side of an organization, specializing in marketing and CRM. During his studies, he has gained extensive experience with marketing research and marketing strategy. He also has experience with CRM and data analysis. During his Siebel Core Consultant Course, he has gained knowledge with Siebel. Rick has worked in various projects in the public sector, gaining experience with BI Publisher, Siebel Configuration and business analysis. Experienced in: • Siebel configuration • BI Publisher • Siebel Smartscripts • UPK • Business Analysis • Market Analysis • Marketing strategy • Web development & Web design