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Process of Creating an Advisor Application

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

In Advisor, 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 Advisor application to an Configurator 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 Advisor. For more information, see Creating Dynamic Defaults for Interactive Designer Applications.

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

Figure 3.  Siebel Advisor Application at Runtime

To create an Advisor application, go through the following process:

1. Create a project. For more information, see Creating an Interactive Designer Project.
2. Create one pageset for each possible solution. For more information, see Creating Interactive Designer Pagesets.
3. Create feature tables. Customers should arrive at a solution by answering a few questions. About five questions is the best practice for end-user usability. After you design your questions, create a Feature table for each question.

   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 Process of Creating Interactive Designer Feature Tables.

4. Create configuration tables. Create a Configuration subtable for each recommendation and reference the subtable from a subtable column in the MAIN Configuration table. In the Configuration subtables:
   1. create an input column for each Feature table (question).
   2. Add an output column to store pageset IDs for the recommended product or solution.

      Enter all valid combinations for the Advisor questions and recommended solutions into the configuration subtables. For information on creating configuration tables, see Process of Creating Interactive Designer Configuration Tables. For information on changing default values in controls based on how a user answered previous questions, see Creating Dynamic Defaults for Interactive Designer Applications.

5. Create the contents list. For more information, see Creating a Contents List Record.
6. Add Input UI controls. The input controls display the questions on the inputs page. For more information, see About Interactive Designer Input UI Controls.
7. Add Output UI controls. The output controls display information about the recommended solution on the Results page. For more information, see About Interactive Designer Output UI Controls.
8. Add controls to display the solution. Add a link labeled "Get My Product" to the Inputs page and add a UI control to the Results page to display the configured solution when the user clicks on the link.
9. Allow the user to configure the solution (optional). On the Results page, add a link which the user can click to further configure the recommended solution. The following is an example of a link:

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

   For more information, see Siebel Interactive Designer API Reference.

10. Preview the project. For more information, see Previewing an Interactive Designer Project.
11. Deploy the application. For more information, see Deploying an Interactive Designer Project.
12. Give users access to the application. Link the application to quotes, the shopping cart, and other Siebel products, so users can access it. For more information, see Working with Deployed Interactive Designer Applications.