Bookshelf v7.5: About Content Broker

Siebel eBriefings Administration Guide > Integrating External Content >

About Content Broker

Content Broker is the feature in eBriefings that allows you to integrate and display content from Siebel eContent Services or any external source that is properly configured. This content appears in context with your Siebel data. For example, when a user opens an Account Briefing for an account such as Acme, Inc., in addition to account data from their Siebel database—opportunities, contacts, service requests—the user also sees recent news articles related to Acme, Inc. Content Broker searches external sources, finds information related to Acme, and displays it in context with Acme data from the Siebel database.

Content Broker involves three components:

The Account Topic Manager. The Briefings Administration view that allows you to link accounts and competitors to topics. Topics are what Content Broker uses to search external content sources, such as Siebel eContent Services. Siebel has adopted the D&B D-U-N-S Number as the topic identifier for companies. When you link accounts and competitors to topics, you link them to the D-U-N-S Number. Siebel eBriefings uses the D-U-N-S Number when searching external content sources.

For more information on using the Account Topic Manager, see Associating Accounts with Topics.

Content Agents. Defines authentication, URL, and syntax parameters needed for requesting information from external sources. Content agents for Siebel eBriefings are configured to collect news and company profiles distributed by Siebel eContent Services. You can also create your own content agents for other external content sources.

For more information on content agents, see Defining Content Agents.

Siebel Company Vocabulary. Siebel Systems hosts this database of company identifiers based on D&B D-U-N-S numbers. For each D-U-N-S Number in the Company Vocabulary table, Siebel Systems also maintains other company identifiers, such as the stock ticker symbol for public companies. Figure 3 shows a conceptual view of the Siebel Content Broker.

Figure 3. Conceptual View of Content Broker

Content Broker provides the structure for you to integrate your own external content. It allows you to define content agents and use Siebel Tools to configure Siebel eBriefings objects to be able to request data from external sources. Defining content agents in the Integration Administration views gives you the flexibility to change the agents without having to recompile the Siebel repository (.srf) file or reboot the server.