About Automatically Updating Notification Text

As an administrator, you can customize notifications to automatically update message text that changes frequently. For example, a call center's queue statistics frequently change. Every few minutes, an administrator has to update the statistics to make sure agents have the most accurate information. This manual approach is very time consuming and inefficient when dealing with frequently changing data.

You can use Siebel EAI to automatically update notification text. Your CTI middleware or ACD switch can provide the data for the Siebel application to distribute.

The Broadcast Message business component manages the messages. Table 13-1 lists and describes the fields of this business component. These field names are necessary for developing the integration object.

This task is a step in "Process of Administering Notifications".

Table 13-1 Field Names for the Broadcast Message Business Component

Field	Description
Abstract	A short summary for identifying the purpose of a message, such as Calls In Queue.
Activation Date/Time	The beginning of the notification.
All	The designation to send the message to all employees with positions defined.
Body	The text of the message.
Division	The designation to set recipients using division.
Division Id	The internal identification value for Division.
Expiration Date/Time	The end of the notification.
Position	The designation to set recipients using position.
Position Id	The internal identification value for Position.
Recipient	The designation to set recipients using employee.
Recipient Id	The internal identification value for Recipient.
Type	The severity of the message as defined in the type BRDCST_MSG_TYPE in the List of Values.
Via Broadcasting	The designation to send the message using notifications.
Via Interactive	The designation to send the message using Siebel eBriefings.

Sample Notifications Script

The script can be created through a button, an Excel macro, or another VB application. Because it is a script and not an application, it does not need the VB Set command. All the commands are standard to VB coding.

This script is designed to update a message without an expiration date, not to create a new message every time. For more information about how to get or create a Siebel Application Object, see Configuring Siebel Business Applications

Note: The code in this example updates single value fields. For information about how to update multi-value fields, see Configuring Siebel Business Applications.

'Get "Broadcast Message" BusComp
   Set BusObj = SiebelApplication.GetBusObject("Broadcast Message", errCode)   Set BusComp = BusObj.GetBusComp("Broadcast Message", errCode)
'Find "Calls Waiting" message   BusComp.SetSearchSpec "Abstract", "Calls In Queue", errCode   BusComp.ExecuteQuery 0, errCode
   If BusComp.FirstRecord(errCode) <> True Then
'We need to create a new message   BusComp.NewRecord 0, errCode   BusComp.SetFieldValue "Abstract", "Calls In Queue", errCode   End If
&rsquor;Prepare message using middleware API info.   Set Msg = "[N]Calls Waiting: [U]10"
'Update the record   BusComp.SetFieldValue "Body", Msg, errCode   BusComp.SetFieldValue "All", "Y", errCode
Write the record   BusComp.WriteRecord errCode

In addition to writing a script, you can use Siebel Business Process Designer to create or update a message. For more information, see Siebel Business Process Framework: Workflow Guide.