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About Unified Messaging


The Unified Messaging framework is the mechanism used by Siebel Business Applications to display messages to users. The foundation of the Unified Messaging framework is the Unified Messaging Service (UMS) business service. For Siebel Order Management uses, UMS messages recommend products and promotions, explain eligibility, provide price waterfalls, and display results of checks on promotion commitments and integrity. For example, a message prompts a customer service representative (CSR) to cross-sell batteries and a camera case when a customer is purchasing a camera. Messages come to the user in the form of a pop-up applet or rows in a list applet in a view.

The Unified Messaging framework supports the display of dynamic, actionable messages. The framework is an entity independent of the source and type of messages displayed. The Unified Messaging framework natively supports advanced features such as translation of message text, substitution of textual values into the message template, logging of message responses, and suppression of duplicate messages when appropriate (such as advice to a CSR against trying the same upsell if the customer has already rejected it).

In Siebel Order Management, a message is guidance, a recommendation, or an explanation presented to an end user in response to a button click or an action the end user takes. For example, the Order Catalog view might display the following message when an end user orders an item that is temporarily unavailable:

The product you have selected is on back order until [date].

A message's text is constructed from a fixed message template as well as substitutable text fragments, such as the name of a product.

Messages displayed are sorted by score. The message-generation algorithm sets the score. For the simple preconfigured rules-based messages, the user enters the score in an administration view. Make sure that your messages use a consistent scoring scheme so that the most important messages of any type appear at the top of the list. The default message-generation algorithms can be extended to call out to a propensity-based scoring algorithm to dynamically score the messages that are displayed based on self-learned rules.

Concepts of Unified Messaging

A message type stores the definition of a message, including message text, bitmap (such as a graphic of an exclamation point), and display mode (active or passive). A message type with an active display mode means that a dialog box is displayed to the user and the user must provide a response; a passive message type means that the message is displayed to the user without requiring a response. A message type group is a list of values used to group message types, making them available in picklists.

Payload is the contents of the message delivered to the end user. The message type payload is a list of all payload fields that must be provided with every message of a certain type.

A message type response is an allowed response to a message. The allowed responses and their associated actions are soft-coded in an administration view. For example, a preconfigured upsell message has Accept and Reject responses. You can configure an additional Send E-Mail response that automatically emails the upsell product details to the customer.

A message response is a logged response to a message.

Message Types Administration

You implement Unified Messaging for Siebel Order Management in the Administration - Application screen, Message Types views, as follows:

  • All Message Types view. Create new message types. Work with existing message types. Enter text for messages. Attach titles and bitmaps to messages. Specify whether messages are active or passive. Specify the group to which the message type belongs.
  • Payload view. Create and work with payload variables, which substitute values into message text and which are used for automated response processing.
  • Responses view. Create the possible responses for a message type. Control response logging. Control message suppression. Enable automated processing of responses.
  • Translations view. Enter translations for message text.
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