Siebel Interactive Designer Administration Guide > Building an Application Using Interactive Designer >

Creating an eAdvisor Application

Using Interactive Designer, you can create an eAdvisor application for analyzing a user's needs and presenting a solution or configuration.

In eAdvisor, each question is tied to a Feature table. Based on the user's answers to the questions, the Configuration table determines which solution (pageset link) to display. If you tie your eAdvisor application to an eConfigurator application, you can use dynamic defaults, in which the UI controls for the configuration display the appropriate default values based on the answers the customer provided in eAdvisor. For more information, see Creating Dynamic Defaults.

Figure 3 shows an example of an eAdvisor application at runtime.

Figure 3. Siebel eAdvisor Application at Runtime

Click for full size image

The following workflow describes how to create an eAdvisor application.

  1. Create a project.

    2. For more information, see Creating a Project.

  2. Create a pageset.

    3. For more information, see Creating a Pageset.

  3. Design your eAdvisor questions.

    4. Customers should arrive at a solution by answering a few questions (~5).

  4. Create a Feature table for each question.

    5. For example, a Feature table named PASSENGER might store the choices for the number of passengers. A Feature table named STORAGE could include size requirements and storage examples. For more information, see Creating Feature Tables.

  5. Create a Configuration subtable for each recommendation and reference the subtable from a subtable column in the MAIN Configuration table.

    6. For more information, see Creating Configuration Tables.

  6. In the Configuration subtable, create a input column for each Feature table (question).
  7. Add a output column to the configuration subtable to store pageset IDs for the recommended product or solution.
  8. Enter all valid combinations for the eAdvisor questions and the corresponding information for the recommended solution into the configuration subtables.

    9. For information on how to enter configurations and exception and guidance messages in Configuration tables, see Creating Configuration Tables. For information on changing default values in controls based on how a user answered previous questions, see Creating Dynamic Defaults.

  9. Create the contents list.

    10. For more information, see Creating a Contents List.

  10. Add UI controls for the questions to the Inputs page.

    11. For more information, see About Creating Input UI Controls.

  11. Add UI controls to the Results page to display information about the recommended solution.

    12. For more information, see About Creating Output UI Controls.

  12. Add a link labeled "Get My Product" to the Inputs page and a UI control to the Results page to display the configured solution when the user clicks on the link.
  13. On the Results page, add a link to the recommended solution so that users can further configure it using browser-based technology. The following is an example of a link:

    14. <A>
    <SCRIPT>
    document.write(ISS.BuildTarget("LINK",window,"REC_PROD",true));
    </SCRIPT>
    Click here to further configure your vehicle.
    </A>

  14. Preview the project.

    15. For more information, see Previewing a Project.

  15. Deploy the application.

    16. For more information, see Deploying a Project.

  16. Link the application to quotes, the shopping cart, and other Siebel products.

    17. For more information, see Working with a Deployed Application.


 Siebel Interactive Designer Administration Guide 
 Published: 18 April 2003