Bookshelf v7.8: About the Incorporate Custom Layout (ICL) Upgrade Option

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About the Incorporate Custom Layout (ICL) Upgrade Option

Upgrades: Release 7.x using ICL.

Environments: Development environment only.

If you are upgrading from Siebel 7.x, you can choose to preserve the layout of applets and views. This reduces the workload required to reconfigure customized UI objects after upgrading to a new release that has significant UI changes.

For example, if you are upgrading from Release 7.0.x or Release 7.5.x, you can preserve Release 7.0.x or Release 7.5.x layouts when you upgrade.

An ICL upgrade preserves the layouts of both standard and customized UI objects.

When to Use ICL

To determine when to use ICL, assess both your current implementation and your future implementation plans.

Use the following factors to assess your current implementation:

The higher the number of customizations of standard UI objects, the greater the benefit from choosing ICL.
If you have customized only a few standard UI objects, choosing ICL may not be cost effective.
If you have customized many standard UI objects but these objects are in applications that do not support ICL, performing an ICL upgrade may not be cost effective.

It is important to assess your future development plans because you can select ICL for only every other upgrade. This means you should choose ICL for upgrades where your customizations are heaviest.

For example, your current release has a moderate number of customized standard UI objects. At the next release, you plan to make heavy customizations of standard UI objects. Consider not choosing ICL when upgrading your current release. This enables you to choose ICL at the next release, when your customizations will be heavier.

You Can Preserve Layouts for Only One Upgrade

You can preserve a release's layouts for only one upgrade.

If you select ICL for an upgrade, then at the following upgrade, the repository merge process requires that you do the following:

Before the repository merge, you must upgrade the UI objects preserved in the prior ICL upgrade to the standard objects for the release from which you are upgrading. This brings your UI forward to the installed release.
Perform the repository merge for the new release. Selecting ICL for this merge is not recommended.
After the upgrade to the new release, you must reconfigure customized layouts for applets, views, and screens.

How Layouts Are Preserved

When you select ICL during a repository merge:

The layout of applets in the Prior Customer Repository is preserved.
The location of controls in applets is preserved.
Except as noted later in this topic, no new controls from the New Siebel Repository are added to applet layouts.
The association of applets to views is preserved.
The layout of views is preserved.
The association views to screens is preserved.
View locations and groupings within screens are similar but not identical.
Changes to navigation in the release you are upgrading to are implemented.
For example, in Release 7.7, a new navigation scheme was introduced. If you are upgrading from a release prior to 7.7, this navigation scheme is implemented during upgrade regardless of whether you choose ICL. If controls in applets conflict with the new navigation scheme, they are handled as described later in this topic.

How the Repository Manages an ICL Upgrade

Repository objects are affected as follows during an ICL merge:

View and applet Web templates, including some child objects, in the New Customer Repository are inactivated and made read-only. Their names are appended with the string -UPG. You cannot delete these objects from the repository or change their modification time.
The inactivated Web templates and child objects are replaced with corresponding records from the Prior Customer Repository. This preserves the layout of the release from which you are upgrading.

The ICL Option Does Not Affect All Repository Objects

Since Release 7.7, Siebel Tools objects have a property called Upgrade Behavior:

If this property is set to NULL or Preserved and ICL is selected during repository merge, ICL preserves the layout of the previous release.
If this property is set to ADMIN, then ICL does not attempt to preserve the layout of the previous release. Layouts in the current release are applied to the object. The Upgrade Behavior property is set to read-only when the value is ADMIN.

The following types of objects have the Upgrade Behavior property set to ADMIN. The layout of these objects is not preserved even if ICL is selected during the repository merge:

Siebel administrative views and applets where core functionality must be upgraded to include feature enhancements. In some cases, these enhancements have such a large impact on the user interface that preserving layouts from a prior release is not practical.
Screens and views in Siebel products that are significantly enhanced in a release:
- Release 7.7: Applets and views for Siebel Employee Relationship Management (ERM) and Siebel Marketing.
- Release 7.8: Applets and views in the Quotes and Orders screens and related customer management applets and views.

How ICL Affects Specific Repository UI Objects

When you select the ICL option, you use a new set of Web templates and certain child objects that preserve the layout of the release from which you are upgrading. ICL affects UI objects in the ways described in the following sections. This applies only to UI objects that do not have Upgrade Behavior set to ADMIN.

General UI

The following characteristics apply to uncustomized and customized UI objects in the Prior Customer Repository when you choose an ICL upgrade:

Layouts are preserved.
Attributes defined on Web templates are preserved. This includes relative positioning of fields and layouts.
Properties of controls or list columns are not preserved. For example, height, width, caption, and pop-up icons are not preserved.
ICL preserves existing controls. No controls are removed. Location of controls is also preserved.
System pages such as Help, About View, About Record, and Technical Support are not preserved.
Font style, color, text size, and object alignment are not preserved.
Stylesheets are not preserved. Web template files are approximations of their 7.x counterparts.

Applets

The following characteristics apply to uncustomized and customized applets in the Prior Customer Repository when you choose an ICL upgrade:

Associations to views are preserved.
The upgrade converts certain form-based applets to grid layout. If ICL is selected, the postmerge utilities converts them back to flow-based.
Applet drilldown child objects are preserved.
Applet-level and application-level menus are not preserved.
For flow-based applets, field labels are placed on top as in 7.0.x and 7.5.x However, you can choose to put the labels on the left when setting up the merge.
In Release 7.8, the New File and New URL buttons are added to attachment applets. If you select ICL, these buttons are not added to applets.
In Release 7.8, MVG dialog boxes display an OK button to close them. If you select ICL, MVG dialog applets have both OK and Cancel buttons.
New buttons from the New Siebel Repository are not added to applets. You must add these buttons as desired after completing the upgrade.
In Release 7.8, the UI contains the Query Assistant and Quick Print features. If you select ICL, these buttons are not added to applets. You must add these buttons as desired after completing the upgrade.
Release 7.8 applets have three default buttons—New, Delete, and Query. If you select ICL, applets keep their existing default buttons.
In Release 7.8, the Reset button is not displayed on applets. If you select ICL, applets will keep the Reset button.
In Release 7.8, Pick and Association applets support in-line queries. This feature is implemented regardless of whether or not you choose ICL.

Views

The following characteristics apply to uncustomized and customized applets in the Prior Customer Repository when you choose an ICL upgrade:

Applets appear in the views they reference.
Their location in the view is preserved.
View Web template child objects are preserved.
On parent list views, view tabs do not display in a row near the middle of the view as they do in 7.0.x and 7.5.x. You must select a record in the parent list applet to display the view tabs.

Screens

The following characteristics apply to uncustomized and customized screens in the Prior Customer Repository when you choose an ICL upgrade:

Screens contain the views they reference.
The view locations and groupings will be similar but not identical.

Navigation

The navigation method used in Siebel 7.8 is applied to the UI regardless of whether or not you select ICL during the repository merge.

How ICL Affects Web Template Files and the Style Sheet File

When you upgrade to the new release, each Siebel Server and Siebel Tools installation receives a fresh set of Web template files. Each installation also receives a new style sheet file (main.css). These files help define the look and feel of the new release.

They are located as follows in the Siebel Tools installation directory (Windows path syntax):

Web template files directory: \webtempl
Style Sheet file: \public\lang\files\main.css

In the paths, lang is the installation language, for example enu.

When you select ICL during a merge, the postmerge utilities perform the following steps in the installation directory of the Siebel Tools that you used to perform the merge:

Moves the new Web template files from webtempl to \temp\webtempl.
Copies Web template files from reppatch\web_templates to \webtempl.
For example, if you selected the 7.5.3 and Label on Top ICL options, the postmerge utilities copy Web template files from the 753 and TopLabel subdirectories of reppatch. These files provide the look and feel for Release 7.5.3.

These are the out-of-the-box Web template files for Release 7.5.3. You must evaluate customizations you have made to Web template files and determine whether to reimplement them in the Web template files in the new release.

When you select ICL, the postmerge utilities make no changes to the style sheet file installed with the new release:

If you have customized this file, you must evaluate the customizations and determine whether to reimplement them in the style sheet file in the new release.

If you select the ICL option Label On Top, you must edit the style sheet file to obtain proper text-label alignment. This step is included in the process steps in How to Perform the Upgrade.

How ICL Works with the Upgrade Ancestor Property

Use the Upgrade Ancestor property and ICL together as follows:

For ICL and non-ICL upgrades, set the Upgrade Ancestor property on business component integration object and reports descendants. This ensures that your customizations to descendants are upgraded in the same fashion as the associated standard-object.
If you are using ICL, set the Upgrade Ancestor property on descendant applets and child objects. This makes sure that ICL preserves the look and feel of your customizations.
If you are not using ICL, setting the Upgrade Ancestor property on applets and child objects is not recommended. If the merge causes UI layout problems with the UI standard object, this prevents the problem from being propagated to the descendant UI object.

The postmerge utilities implement the ICL changes to objects in the New Customer Repository. This includes overwriting customizations to Web templates and Web template items. However, the postmerge utilities do not overwrite customizations to applets and control objects.

What Happens at the Next Release

At the next release, before you run the repository merge, you must run a Siebel Tools utility that restores repository objects to the standard UI. The utility makes the following repository changes:

Removes the active Web templates and child objects in the repository. (These are the objects that were preserved from the Prior Customer Repository.)
Activates the Web templates and child objects with the -UPG suffix and removes the suffix. These -UPG objects are from the New Customer Repository for the current release (the release you are upgrading from). This reverses the effect of ICL and upgrades your UI to the current release.

A Tools utility provides a method for defining a filter to identify Web templates and child objects that have been customized since the prior upgrade. If an object has been customized since the prior upgrade, it is not replaced by its corresponding -UPG object. You must manually reconfigure these customized objects after the merge.

The postmerge utilities make no changes to the Web template files or style sheet file included in the new release.

Repository Merges That Do Not Use ICL

For upgrades from Release 7.x that do not use ICL, new Siebel objects and controls, usability enhancements, and layout changes are applied. This modifies the layout of applets, views, and screens and attempts to merge rather than preserve customizations.

After the upgrade, you will need to identify those areas of the upgraded interface where you want to reapply customizations.

If you have customized Web template files or the style sheet (main.css), these customizations are not merged into the Web template files or style sheet in the new release. You must evaluate these customizations and determine whether to reimplement them.