Siebel Field Service Guide > Setting Up and Using Scheduling > Reloading the ABS and Optimizer Caches >

Reloading the Appointment Booking System Cache Using Workflows

This task is a step in Process of Setting Up Scheduling.

You can reload service regions automatically using the predefined Server Requests business service to call the Appointment Booking Engine server component (alias ApptBook). You can set up a workflow process to submit the server job to ApptBook.

You can also set up workflows to specifically handle the following:

• Unscheduled activities. During a reload, if the capacity in a service region has changed (due to personnel changes or manual changes), some activities may become unscheduled. One way to handle this is to create a workflow that emails the service region manager about the unscheduled activities—or alternatively, creates an activity to do a reschedule with a customer.

  NOTE:  You can also set up a predefined query (PDQ) to look for those activities where Status = Unscheduled, particularly if this occurs frequently.

• Manual changes. If the users are making manual changes to activities, and these changes need to be reflected in the cache immediately (without waiting for the next reload), you can create a workflow that calls LoadActivity as soon as a change is made to the Owner, Planned Start, or Planned End values.

See Siebel Business Process Designer Administration Guide for more information on setting up workflows. See Siebel System Administration Guide for more information on creating repeating component jobs.

CAUTION:  When loading the ABS, use either eScript or a workflow process—do not use the business service Appointment Booking Service for this purpose.

Appointment Booking System Methods

For more information on the various inputs and outputs used with the ABS methods, see ABS Methods and Invoking the ABS and Optimization Engine Methods.

To create a workflow to automatically reload service region data

1. Create a workflow process with the following steps:

   Start > Business Service > End

2. When defining the Business Service step, specify the Server Requests business service and Submit Requests method.

   CAUTION:  You can use the business services Server Requests, Asynchronous Server Requests, or Synchronous Server Requests to submit a request to the Appointment Booking Engine. However when using any of these in eScript or as part of a workflow, you must provide an appropriate value for the SubmitRequest method's input argument Request Key. The Request Key input argument's value is the activity's Service Region Id value. Each service region can be mapped to a different process number; the business service must use the Request Key value to identify the correct ABS process to which each request should be sent. Without the Request Key input argument, the request can be sent to the wrong ABS process, causing the Appointment Booking Engine to return an error message. See Setting Up Server Key Mappings for more information.

3. Define the following input arguments.

   Input Argument	Type	Value
   ApptBook.ServiceRegionId	Literal	The required service region's ROW_ID
   Request Key	Literal	The required service region's ROW_ID
   Component	Literal	ApptBook
   Method	Literal	ReloadServiceRegion
   Mode	Literal	Sync/Async Use Sync if you want the workflow process to wait for the ABS to finish. Use Async if you want the workflow process to submit requests to the ABS and then end the workflow without determining whether or not the ABS successfully reloaded the service region.

4. Deploy and activate the workflow process.
5. Create a new repeating component job, selecting Workflow Process Manager as the Component/Job field value.
6. Create a new job parameter, specifying Workflow Process Name in the Name field and the name of the workflow process (ReloadServiceRegion) in the Value field.
7. Start the job.

   A new instance of the job is created with a Queued status. Once the start date arrives, the queued instance is executed.