Bookshelf v7.8: About Automatically Updating Message Broadcasting Text

As an administrator, you can customize message broadcasting to automatically update message text that changes frequently. For example, a call center's queue statistics frequently change. Every few minutes, an administrator has to update the statistics to make sure agents have the most accurate information. This manual approach is very time consuming and inefficient when dealing with frequently changing data.

You can use Siebel EAI to automatically update message broadcasting text. Your CTI middleware or ACD switch can provide the data for the Siebel application to distribute.

The Broadcast Message business component manages the messages. The fields of this business component are listed and described in Table 15. These field names are necessary for developing the integration object.

Table 15. Field Names for the Broadcast Message Business Component
Field	Description
Abstract	Short summary for identifying the purpose of a message, such as "Calls In Queue"
Activation Date/Time	When the message broadcasting should begin
All	To broadcast the message to all employees with positions defined
Body	The text of the message displayed in the message bar
Division	Used to set recipients using division
Division Id	The internal identification value for Division
Expiration Date/Time	When the message broadcasting should end
Position	Used to set recipients using position
Position Id	The internal identification value for Position
Recipient	Used to set recipients using employee
Recipient Id	The internal identification value for Recipient
Type	Severity of the message as defined in the List of Values type BRDCST_MSG_TYPE
Via Broadcasting	To send the message using message broadcasting
Via Interactive	To send the message via Siebel eBriefings

A sample Visual Basic (VB) script follows, which demonstrates how to create and update a broadcast message with information, using the call center queue as an example. The sample Visual Basic script is generic; your CTI middleware's API determines the structure of syntax like the Msg command.

Sample Message Broadcasting Script

The script can be created through a button, an Excel macro, or another VB application. Because it is a script and not an application, it does not need the VB Set command. All the commands are standard to VB coding.

This script is designed to update a message without an expiration date, not to create a new message every time. For more information on how to get or create a Siebel Application Object, see Configuring Siebel Business Applications.

CAUTION: The code in this example updates single value fields. For information on how to update multi-value fields, see Configuring Siebel Business Applications.

'Get "Broadcast Message" BusComp
   Set BusObj = SiebelApplication.GetBusObject("Broadcast
      Message", errCode)
   Set BusComp = BusObj.GetBusComp("Broadcast Message", errCode)

'Find "Calls Waiting" message
   BusComp.SetSearchSpec "Abstract", "Calls In Queue", errCode
   BusComp.ExecuteQuery 0, errCode
   If BusComp.FirstRecord(errCode) <> True Then

'We need to create a new message
   BusComp.NewRecord 0, errCode
   BusComp.SetFieldValue "Abstract", "Calls In Queue", errCode
   End If

'Update the record
BusComp.SetFieldValue "Body", Msg, errCode
BusComp.SetFieldValue "All", "Y", errCode

In addition to writing a script, you can use Siebel Business Process Designer to create or update a broadcast message. For more information, see Siebel Business Process Designer Administration Guide.