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Defining Content Agents

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This section provides you with an overview of the Content Agent component of the Content Broker feature in Siebel eBriefings. Content agents allow you to request information from Siebel eContent Services or other external sources that you would like to integrate with eBriefings.

Understanding Content Agents

Content agents define the authentication, URL, and syntax parameters required to submit requests to an external content source. These are defined using the following three Integration Administration views from the Site Map:

Host Administration. Specifies the name of an external host, its virtual name, the authentication type, and the credentials that are used to access the host. You specify the credentials in the Authentication Value field as username:password. Customers who subscribe to Siebel eContent Services should refer to Connecting to eContent Services for more information on setting up host and authentication credentials.
Symbolic URL Administration. Defines the names of symbolic URLs that are used to request information from external content hosts. This is also where you define the syntax, arguments, and required arguments for the content search. The symbolic URL name is defined as the calculated value of the business component's field. See Configuring a Business Component to Handle External Data.
Fixup (Content) Administration. Defines the link target and view that will display the link. This allows you to control how content is displayed, such as inside an applet. The Content Fixup Name updates a relative link with the server name and other necessary information.

How Business Components Map to Content Agents

Business components refer to content agents when making requests to external content sources. They refer to the content agent using the calculated value of the business component's field.

Figure 4 shows the fields and calculated values for the SI Account External business component. This business component is preconfigured to request data from Siebel eContent Services. Notice that the CompanyNews field contains the calculated value AccountNews.

Figure 4. SI Account External Business Component Field Properties

In Figure 5, you can see that AccountNews is the same as the Symbolic URL name defined in the Integration Administration > Symbolic URL Administration view. The calculated value of the business component's field matches the name of the symbolic URL. The Symbolic URL Administration view stores the information that the Web Integration Business service uses to build an HTTP request to an external content host.

Figure 5. Relationship Between Business Components and Content Agent

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