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Creating Workflows to Reload Data for Service Regions to the Appointment Booking System Cache

You can automatically reload service regions by using the predefined Server Requests business service to call the Appointment Booking Engine server component (alias ApptBook). You can set up a workflow process to submit the server job to ApptBook. For more information about setting up workflows, see Siebel Business Process Framework: Workflow Guide. For more information about creating repeating component jobs, see Siebel System Administration Guide. For more information about the various input arguments that the ABS methods use and about the values that the ABS methods return, see Methods for the ABS and About Calling the ABS and Optimizer Methods.

You can also set up workflows to specifically handle the following situations:

• Unscheduled activities. If the capacity in a service region changes (due to personnel changes or manual changes), then some activities can be unscheduled during a reload. To handle these unscheduled activities, you can create a workflow that sends an email to the service region manager about the unscheduled activities or that creates an activity to perform rescheduling with a customer.

  NOTE:  You can also set up a predefined query to find those activities with a value of Unscheduled in the Status field.

• Manual changes. If the users make manual changes to activities, and these changes must appear in the cache immediately (without waiting for the next reload), then you can create a workflow that calls the LoadActivities method when the Owner, Planned Start, or Planned End field values change.

CAUTION:  When loading the ABS, use either Siebel eScript or a workflow process. Do not use the Appointment Booking Service business service for this purpose.

To create a workflow to automatically reload data for service regions

1. Create a workflow process with the following steps:
   • Start
   • Business Service
   • End
2. To define the Business Service step, specify the Server Requests business service and SubmitRequests method.

   CAUTION:  You can use the Server Requests, Asynchronous Server Requests, or Synchronous Server Requests business services to submit a request to the Appointment Booking Engine. However when using any of these business services in Siebel eScript or in a workflow, you must provide an appropriate value for the Request Key input argument in the SubmitRequests method. The value of this input argument is the Service Region ID value of the activity. You can map each service region to a different process number. The business service must use the Request Key value to identify the correct ABS process to which to send each request. Without the Request Key input argument, the request might be sent to the wrong ABS process, causing the Appointment Booking Engine to return an error message. For more information, see Setting Up Server Key Mappings.

3. Define the input arguments in the following table.

   Input Argument	Type	Value
   Appt.SvcRegnId	Literal	The required ROW_ID for the service region.
   Request Key	Literal	The required ROW_ID for the service region.
   Component	Literal	ApptBook.
   Method	Literal	ReloadServiceRegion.
   Mode	Literal	Sync or Async: Use Sync if you want the workflow process to wait for the ABS to finish. Use Async if you want the workflow process to submit requests to the ABS and then end the workflow without determining whether the ABS successfully reloaded the service region.

4. Deploy and activate the workflow process.
5. Create a new repeating component job, and select Workflow Process Manager as the Component/Job field value.
6. Create a new job parameter, and specify Workflow Process Name in the Name field and the name of the workflow process (ReloadServiceRegion) in the Value field.
7. Start the job.

   A new instance of the job is created with a Queued status. When the start date arrives, the queued instance is executed.