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Dock Object Visibility Rules

To determine which records in a dock object to download to each mobile user, the Siebel application evaluates the dock object visibility rules for that dock object. Dock Object Visibility Rule is a child object type of Dock Object, as illustrated for Opportunity in Figure 76.

Figure 76.  Dock Object and Dock Object Visibility Rules
Click for full size image

Each visibility rule has a Comment property that explains specifically what the rule checks. For example, the dock object visibility rules on the Opportunity dock object include the following: "You are on the sales team of the Opportunity," "You are the manager of the primary sales rep on the Opportunity's sales team," and so on. In addition, each dock object visibility rule has a Visibility Strength property and a Sequence property.

Siebel applications determine which database records to propagate to each mobile user (for dock objects that have limited visibility) by evaluating the visibility strength of the user for a dock object, and comparing this with the visibility strengths of the tables it contains.

The user's visibility strength for a dock object is determined from the child dock object visibility rules. For each dock object record, and for each mobile user, the Siebel application sequentially evaluates the rules in order of descending visibility strength and ascending sequence until one of them "passes" (that is, evaluates to TRUE). As soon as one of the rules passes, the Siebel application stops this evaluation process, and gives the current dock object record to the current mobile user.

When a dock object visibility rule passes, the mobile user gets the parent dock object record with a visibility strength value obtained from the corresponding property in the dock object visibility rule that caused him or her to get the record. If none of the dock object visibility rules passes for a given dock object record and a given mobile user, then that user will not receive that particular record.

For example, consider two different dock object visibility rules in the Opportunity dock object:

If users are on the sales team for a particular opportunity, they get that opportunity record with a visibility strength of 100. However, if they are not on the sales team for that opportunity—and if the next four visibility rules also fail—they still get the opportunity record with a visibility strength of 50 if they have full visibility to the account for that opportunity.

Visibility strength values are integers between 0 and 100. A visibility strength of 100 denotes full visibility, while a visibility strength of 0 denotes no visibility. Any value between 1 and 100 (typically 25 or 50) implies partial visibility.

NOTE:  The integer range for a visibility strength value is actually 0-254, but a value of 100 is, by convention, considered to mean full visibility. If your configuration does not require the use of values higher than 100, use values in the 0-100 range rather than 0-254.

The user's visibility strength (obtained from the successful dock object visibility rule) is compared with each dock object table's visibility strength, as specified in its Visibility Strength property. For users to receive the records from a particular dock object table, their visibility strength must be greater than or equal to the visibility strength specified for that table.

For example, suppose that a particular mobile user receives a particular logical record from the Opportunity dock object with a visibility strength of 50. The Siebel application will then propagate to the user's local database all physical records that are related to the given opportunity on any of the dock object tables that have a visibility strength less than or equal to 50 in the Opportunity dock object.

For more information on routing (visibility) rules and their implementation, see the chapter about Siebel Remote administration in Siebel Remote and Replication Manager Administration Guide.


 Siebel Tools Reference
 Published: 20 October 2003