11Alerts
Alerts
This chapter explains the procedures necessary to create alerts for Siebel Business Applications. It includes the following topics:
About Alerts
Alerts provide a way for administrators and other users with access to the Alert Administration view to send long, complex, and customized messages directly to selected groups of recipients. Typically, these messages are time-critical, but also must have associations with data in the company database (for example, literature or products) and to be customized for the recipient.
For example, to communicate product pricing changes to a sales team with members around the world, a sales manager wants to be able to distribute new pricing structures and product information when they are approved. Traditionally, this distribution is done with email messages, phone calls, or mailed literature. This approach presents the following challenges:
To provide the necessary details, you might have to distribute a large quantity of information, with file attachments or links provided by the manager.
Different team members might require different price list or product information, depending on their organization, division, or position.
Distributing information to remote team members might produce a communication lag time.
Features of alerts include the following:
The abstract of alert messages appear in an applet on the recipients’ home page, listed in order of the priority specified by the sender. Recipients can click the abstract to read the entire message.
Literature items and products can be associated with alerts.
Access to price list and product information available to different team members might be controlled by organization, division, or position.
Scenario for Using Alerts
This topic gives one example of how alerts might be used. You might use alerts differently, depending on your business model.
A multinational software development corporation uses the Siebel Sales application to automate their sales workforce. The company is organized geographically by division for the purpose of access control, and alerts are enabled.
An international sales manager has just received the go-ahead for a new set of software product bundles that include one new product. He must communicate these price changes to his company’s sales force as soon as possible. Because pricing varies by geography, each of the four major geographical regions represented by his company’s four sales divisions must receive a customized message about the new product bundles. He tells the Siebel administrator the details of the alert message that must be sent.
The Siebel administrator creates the alert message, and associates a price list and the new product with the message. She creates keywords that users are able to search on to find the message at a later date, if necessary.
When the Siebel administrator sends the alert, a customized message is sent to all international sales representatives, with the appropriate price list for their division associated. The sales representatives see the alert message on their home pages when they log in to the Web client or download alerts during synchronization. These users can navigate through the home page or Site Map to read the text and any associated literature items or products.
After sending the alert to the sales force, the Siebel administrator continues with other work. The Human Resources director has requested that employees be sent a weekly alert for the next month, reminding them to attend a benefits information session. The Siebel administrator creates this Human Resources alert, using the same process she used to create the sales force alert, but, instead of sending it as a single-message alert, she designates it to recur at weekly intervals.
Creating Alerts
When you create an alert, all designated connected users receive the alert at the date and time the alert is activated. Mobile users, such as sales field representatives, receive an activated alert after synchronization.
To create an alert
Navigate to the Administration - Alert screen, then the Alerts view.
In the Alerts list, create a new record, and complete the necessary fields.
Some fields are described in the following table.
Field Comments Priority
Select the priority of the message. The priority of the message determines where the message appears in the list of alerts on the users’ home pages. Messages with the highest priority are at the start of the list.
Keyword
Type the keywords that the user searches on to find this message.
Type
Select a value to determine who receives the alert, as follows:
Employee Home Page Alert. Displays the alert on all employees’ home pages.
Partner Alert. Displays alerts to employees of registered partner companies.
Program Information. Displays the alert to self-registered, individual partners.
Public Information. Displays the alert to unregistered, anonymous users.
Abstract
Type a brief abstract that summarizes the message. This field appears as a hyperlink on the appropriate users’ home pages.
Activation
Select the date when the message first appears to users.
Expiration
Select the date when the message no longer appears to users.
Partner Alert
Select the check box to indicate that the alert is seen by users in partner companies.
Employee Alert
Select the check box to indicate that the alert is seen by employee users.
All Users
Select this check box to indicate the alert is seen by all users, as indicated by the Employee Alert or Partner Alert check boxes.
For example, if the Employee Alert check box is checked, and the All Users check box is checked, then all employees see the alert.
Message Body
Type in the text of the message, including HTML formatting code if needed.
Alerts can be enhanced by using the following HTML formatting codes:
<b>text</b> for bold
<u>text</u> for underline
<i>text</i> for italics
<h4>text</h4> for font size
<a>href=“http:text"</a> for a hyperlink to Web page or site
Preview
Displays the message as it appears to users.
Drill down on the Abstract field in the new record.
If you want to add literature as an attachment, then complete the following steps:
- Navigate to the Literature view.
In the Literature list, create a new record for the literature item.
Note: Only literature of type Sales Tool can be added.
If you want to add a product as an attachment, then complete the following steps:
- Navigate to the Product view.
In the Product list, create a new record for the product.
If you want to specify the recipients, then complete the following steps:
- Navigate to the Recipients view, then the Recipient Divisions or Recipient Positions view.
Create new records to the Recipient List.
Remember, if you select the All Users check box in Step 2, then the message is automatically sent to all recipients.