Siebel Email Response Administration Guide > Completing Basic Setup Tasks >

Creating Templates, Catalogs, and Categories

Templates allow agents to respond to inbound email messages by using predefined text that has already been created and approved for specific situations. Your initial templates can be created at any time during the planning process and can be modified or new ones added any time after implementation.

NOTE:  Usually your database contains the same repository data as the SRF file. However, if you create templates on a local database, such as on a mobile Web client, they will be available in the picklist only when you access the local database.

The templates that appear to an agent depend on the agent's Outbound Communications user preference settings and how the templates are filtered. For more information about setting user preferences, see Applications Administration Guide. Templates are filtered in the following ways:

A catalog is the name you give to a group of categories. You can define one or more catalogs for use by Siebel Email Response as follows:

• You need only one catalog if everyone in your organization can share the same categories.
• You need multiple catalogs if some categories cannot be used by everyone in your organization.

A company could have two groups that share one catalog and a third group that has its own catalog.

A catalog must be defined as a response group input argument. It contains categories that you can associate with templates and solutions. During the planning process, you gathered and categorized templates and solutions.

Templates and solutions that contain answers to similar questions are associated with a single category. When agents use categories, they do not have to look through all templates and solutions to find the information that they want to send to a customer. They can use Search Center to look through the templates and solutions that are grouped in the appropriate categories. To use Search Center for this purpose, the categories have to be indexed. For information, see Siebel Search Administration Guide.