Bookshelf v7.5.2: Understanding Attributes with a Business Component Domain

Product Administration Guide > Attributes with Business Component Domains >

Understanding Attributes with a Business Component Domain

The Product Administrator has created a customizable product called Premier Service Package. The Product Administrator wants users to be able to select an account name when configuring the product.

This product has been assigned to a product class that has the attribute Account defined on it. Account has been added to a group in the Product UI Designer and will display in a selection page.

In the selection page, the Account attribute displays with a blank text field and a select icon. When the user clicks on the select icon, a dialog box displays containing available accounts. When the user selects an account, the account name is transferred to the Account text box.

In this scenario, the user was able to access a Siebel business component to display account records. When the user selected an account record, the account name field in the record was transferred to the selection page and became the value of the Account attribute. The domain of the Account attribute is the records retrieved by the business component and displayed in the dialog box, also called a pick applet.

Attributes with a business component domain differ from attributes with other domain types in several ways:

Attributes with a business component domain should only be used with customizable products that are configured using selection pages. This means that only customizable products or products that will always be components of customizable products should be assigned to a class where this type of attribute is defined. If you assign a simple product to the class, attributes with a business component domain display in quotes, orders and so on with a text box but no select icon.

The attribute values are not defined by a range or a list of values. The user selects the attribute's value directly from a pick applet, which displays information from a business component.

Attributes can be defined so that when the user selects the value for one attribute (the primary attribute), the values for other attributes are automatically selected. For example, if the user selects a value for Account Name (the primary attribute), the value of the Address attribute is filled in automatically. Configuration rules can be written only on the primary attribute. You cannot write configuration rules on attributes whose values are automatically selected based on the value of the primary attribute.

You associate a business component with an attribute using the same process as creating a pick applet in Siebel Tools, with the following modifications:

Configuring the originating applet. The selection page takes the place of the originating applet. You replace this procedure with steps that define the attribute and insert it in the selection page. To do this step, see Adding the Attribute to a Selection Page.

Configuring the pick applet. You can use an existing pick applet or define a new applet. If you define a new pick applet, there is no change to the procedures described in Siebel Tools Reference.

Configuring the originating business component. These procedures are replaced by defining a series of UI properties on the attribute. These UI properties specify the pick applet name, pick business component name, and pick map definitions. You can define multiple pick maps that display the content of several fields from the same record. You can also define UI properties to constrain the pick list.

Configuring the pick business component. You can use an existing pick business component or define a new one. If you define a new one, there is no change to the procedures described in Siebel Tools Reference.

Assuming that the pick business component and pick applet are already defined in Siebel Tools, associating an attribute with a business component has the following steps:

Add the attribute to a selection page. See Adding the Attribute to a Selection Page.

Associate the attribute with a business component by defining UI properties on it. For information on these UI properties see Understanding the UI Properties. For information on associating an attribute with a business component, see Associating the Attribute with a Business Component.

You can set up attributes so that selecting a value for one automatically selects the values for others. To do this see Setting Up Multiple Fields for Display.

You can constrain a pick applet so that it displays only the records having a specified field value. See Creating a Business Component Field Constraint.