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Oracle® Real-Time Decisions for Siebel E-Commerce Installation and Reference Guide
Version 2.2.1

Part Number E12261-01
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4 Configuring the RTD Siebel ECommerce Inline Service

This chapter outlines the steps that you can take to configure the RTD Siebel ECommerce Inline Service.

These steps are not an exhaustive list of the modifications that users can perform in the RTD Siebel ECommerce Inline Service. However, they represent the most common tasks for users to perform to align the Inline Service to their specific business process requirements.

This chapter contains the following topics:

4.1 Utilizing the Category/Catalog Eligibility Rules

As part of the provided Inline Service, Oracle RTD provides an eligibility function, Catalog/Category Eligibility. This eligibility function enables Oracle RTD to determine which promotions from Siebel are eligible, based on either the current category or catalog that the user is on within the E-Commerce Web site. This function is part of the RTD Siebel ECommerce Inline Service metadata and is defined in the Choice Eligibility tab of the Siebel Promotions choice group.

As released, the use of the RTD Catalog/Category Eligibility function is enabled for both the current catalog and current category that the user is on within the E-Commerce Web site. To disable the use of either of these functions, change the value of the isEnabled parameter to this function to False.

  1. In Oracle RTD Studio, navigate to the Siebel Promotions choice group - which is located under the Promotions parent choice group.

  2. Within Siebel Promotions, navigate to the Choice Eligibility tab.

    The Choice Eligibility tab is where the Catalog/Category Eligibility rules are defined.

  3. For the desired rule, set the value of the isEnabled parameter to False, if the rule is not be used.

  4. You can identify the rule for Catalog eligibility by the rule input parameter, session/web interaction/current catalog name.

    The corresponding identifier for the Category eligibility rule is the rule input parameter, session/web interaction/current category name.

After you have made your desired changes, you are ready to redeploy the Inline Service with the updated eligibility rules.

4.2 Modifying Promotion Attributes Sent to Client

The choice group Siebel Promotions, as released, has the following attributes that are sent to the client when the Get Promotions Advisor is called:

  1. Image Name

  2. Inclusive Eligibility Flag

  3. Promotion Description

  4. Promotion Id

  5. Promotion Name

  6. Promotion Type

To add a new attribute to be sent with the promotion, perform the following steps:

  1. If necessary, add to the Promotions data source any corresponding data columns that store the desired promotion attributes.

  2. For each new data source attribute, create a new attribute in the Promotions entity.

  3. From the Promotions List Entity, if the new attribute is to be extracted from the Promotions data source, map the newly created attribute to the corresponding column.

  4. On the Promotions choice group, create a new choice attribute corresponding to the entity attribute.

  5. Map the entity attribute to the choice attribute, from the attribute Value column

  6. Right click the entity attribute and select Properties.

    From the Properties window, check the Send to client option.

Note:

Additional configuration or customization may be required within the Siebel E-Commerce front end application to process or present any newly created attributes tied to an Oracle RTD promotion.

To remove a Promotion attribute from the set of those sent to the client, simply delete the appropriate choice attribute from the Promotions Choice group.

4.3 Adding More Oracle RTD Data Sources

Section 3.2, "Data Sources" describes which data sources have been defined in the released version of the RTD Siebel ECommerce Inline Service.

To add an additional data source, refer to the Oracle RTD platform documentation for steps that apply to your database.

4.4 Adding Attributes to Existing Entities

Section 3.3, "Entities" describes which data attributes have been defined in the released version of the RTD Siebel ECommerce Inline Service. These attributes are a combination of derived attributes and attributes mapped to values extracted directly from Siebel OLTP table columns.

In order to map additional columns directly from Siebel, perform the relevant steps as described in the following sections.

For Data Sources already defined in the Inline Service

For each column that you want to add, perform the following steps:

  1. Add the additional column as an output column to the appropriate data source.

  2. In the Definition tab of the appropriate entity tied to that data source, create a new corresponding entity attribute.

  3. From the Mapping tab of the appropriate entity, map the entity attribute to the desired data source column added in Step 1.

For Mapping Columns from New Tables

  1. Add the additional table as a new data source in the RTD Siebel ECommerce Inline Service.

    Specify the output columns and input columns as appropriate. Refer to Oracle RTD platform documentation for instructions on how to add a data source.

  2. If needed, create a new Oracle RTD entity.

    Associate the new entity to either the Session Entity directly or to another Oracle RTD entity that is already part of the session.

  3. From the Definition tab of either the new entity or the existing one, create the new, desired entity attributes.

  4. From the Mapping tab of the appropriate entity, map each of the new entity attributes to the appropriate Data Source columns.

    If necessary, specify the source value for the required input columns for that appropriate data source.

Note:

If the desired table does not reside in the Siebel OLTP, refer to the Oracle RTD platform documentation for how to add a new JDBC data source first, before adding the table to the Inline Service.

For Derived Attributes

  1. Create the desired entity attribute within the appropriate entity.

  2. You can either map the attribute directly to a data source column, or use a function to populate the attribute.

    The function may be a transformation function or a new custom function that you create that assigns the value of this attribute.

    You can add the function as the default value to the attribute, or you can create code which populates the attribute directly.

4.5 Modifying Scoring Logic

Scoring in the released version of the RTD Siebel ECommerce Inline Service is based on two performance goals, Maximize Acceptance Likelihood and Maximize Customer Consistency.

For the performance goal, Maximize Acceptance Likelihood, the Inline Service is set up to extract the likelihood value based on the calculated scores determined from the Promotions Acceptance Model.

For Maximize Customer Consistency, the scoring method has been left blank. This is to enable customers to add scoring rules to rank promotions according to their own initiatives (for example, hard coded rankings or outside scores) as opposed to the Oracle RTD models.

4.6 Enabling the RTD_WEB_HISTORY Table

The RTD_WEB_HISTORY table is a table in the Oracle RTD database created specifically for the Siebel E-Commerce solution. When enabled, this table stores the web transaction record of the Oracle RTD session when the Oracle RTD session is closed. Logic to write to this table appears in the "cleanup logic" section of the Session entity.

In the Inline Service, the Application parameter Enable RTD Web History controls whether the "cleanup logic" is executed.

To enable Oracle RTD to write to the RTD_WEB_HISTORY table, set the Application parameter Enable RTD Web History to True.

Note:

In the released version of the RTD Siebel ECommerce Inline Service, the value of Enable RTD Web History is set to True.

Creating the RTD_WEB_HISTORY Table

If the RTD_WEB_HISTORY table was not created as part of your installation, you will need to create the RTD_WEB_HISTORY table within the RTD database (SDDS or SDDB.)

For more information on how create the RTD_WEB_HISTORY table, refer to Section 1.7 in the Installation chapter of this document.