Siebel Interactive Selling Applications Upgrade Guide > Upgrading to eSales Version 7 > Preupgrade Tasks >

Planning Your Implementation

Before beginning your Siebel eSales upgrade, you should review your current implementation while considering the new Siebel 7 features available to determine the implementation structure that best meets your business requirements. This review process will help you understand how you may need to prepare for the upgrade.

New Web Templates

Siebel 7 introduces a new user interface style. Therefore, all Web templates from Release 6.x have been updated for Siebel 7. Review any customizations made to Release 6.x templates and determine if they should be replicated to the Siebel 7 templates.

To determine the template being used by the applet or view in order to modify it

  1. Launch Siebel Tools.
  2. In the Explorer view, navigate to Applet and click Applet Web Templates.
  3. Query for the Applet Web Template.
  4. Scroll over to the Web Template field and note the name in this field.
  5. Navigate to Web Template in the Explorer view.
  6. Query for the Web Template name.
  7. In the Explorer view, click Web Template File and look at the File Name field for the name of the file to modify.
  8. Repeat Step 1 through Step 7 to find and modify the View Web Templates. This time at Step 2, navigate to View and click on View Web Templates.

    9. For more information, see User-Interface Customizations and Reapplying User Interface Template Customizations.

User Types and Responsibilities

Siebel eSales version 6 used the proxy employee to associate responsibilities to .COM users. There were three standard responsibilities: Unregistered Visitor, Registered Customer, and Delegated Customer Administrator. Siebel eSales version 7 adds the concept of user types and separates user types from responsibilities. The new setup of user types and responsibilities allows you to provide different functionality to different types of users. In Siebel 7, responsibilities are now directly associated with user records.

The Siebel 7 user types and responsibilities are listed alongside the Release 6.x user responsibilities in Table 5.

Table 5. Siebel eSales Version 6 and Siebel eSales Version 7 User Types and Responsibilities
Release 6.x User Responsibilities
Siebel 7 User Responsibilities
Siebel 7 User Types
Unregistered Visitor
Web Anonymous User
N/A
Registered Customer
Web Registered User (if not associated with an account)
Web Registered User
Web Corporate User (if associated with an account)
Web Corporate User
N/A
Web Purchasing Manager
Web Purchasing Manager
Delegated Customer Administrator
Web Delegated Customer Administrator
Web Delegated Customer Administrator

See Upgrading Employee Login Names and Proxy Employees to Responsibilities and User Types for information about running the necessary upgrade scripts.

Parametric Search

If you decide to use the new parametric-search feature, then you must also use the product classification system and assign your products to classes. For more information, see Siebel eSales Administration Guide and Product Administration Guide.

Product Catalog Structure

If your categories have more than one parent catalog or category in eSales version 6, you need to restructure the hierarchy so that each category has only one parent.

For more information on server-based catalogs, see Siebel eSales Administration Guide.

Shipping Business Service

Make note of any scripts written in eSales version 6 to calculate shipping costs. You will likely be able to modify the Siebel 7 Shipping Cost Service (eScript) business service to meet your needs.

If you wrote Siebel eScript or Siebel VB in eSales version 6 to calculate shipping costs, you may want to use the same script in eSales version 7. In eSales version 6, when the Continue button in the Quote Account Shipping View (eSales) or Quote Personal Shipping View (eSales) is clicked, the CalculateShippingCost method is called. If a script was written for this method, it can be found in Siebel Tools.

For more information on setting up shipping charge calculations, see Siebel eSales Administration Guide.

To find the CalculateShippingCost method

  1. In the Explorer view, click Business Component.
  2. Search for the Quote business component.
  3. Right-click and select Edit Scripts.

    4. This is where you would have defined the CalculateShippingCost method. You may want to use your existing custom script in Siebel 7, or you may want to modify the out-of-the-box Shipping Cost Service (eScript) business service. See Modifying the Shipping Cost Service Business Service.

New Credit Card and Tax Business Services

As the new business services provide the same functionality—with enhancements—as in eSales version 6, the Release 6.x business services will not be carried forward. If you modified these integrations, you should make note of the changes you made and apply them to the new integrations if necessary.

Displaying Quotes

In Release 6.x, only quotes created in the eSales application were displayed in eSales. For example, quotes created in Sales or Call Center by employee users were not displayed to customers in eSales.

In Siebel 7, all quotes created for a contact or user will be displayed in eSales. So quotes created in Sales and Call Center will be visible to customers in eSales. Auction quotes will also be visible in eSales.

You should determine if this will have an effect on your deployment. You may need to hide some quotes. If this new feature will have implications for your implementation, see Hiding Quotes.


 Siebel Interactive Selling Applications Upgrade Guide 
 Published: 18 April 2003