4Global Deployment of Siebel Email Response
Global Deployment of Siebel Email Response
This chapter covers setting up and configuring Siebel Email Response for a multilingual, Unicode database, or non-Unicode database deployment. It includes the following topics:
Smart Character Set for Siebel Email Response
Siebel Email Response uses the Smart Character Set feature to support global installations by receiving, displaying, and replying to all email messages with no character corruption. This feature works with both double-byte and single-byte character sets (with and without HTML) and applies to the email message body, MIME attachments, and the Subject line of the email.
The Smart Character Set feature saves the incoming character set so that it can be used later when replying to the email sender. For example, if a customer sends an email in Japanese (for example, using the ISO-2022-JP character set), then this information is saved and used when replying to the email.
By implementing Smart Character Set, all incoming messages from Microsoft Outlook and outgoing messages sent to Web-based email clients (such as Yahoo! and Hotmail) appear properly. For information about supported email clients, see Siebel System Requirements and Supported Platforms on Oracle Technology Network.
Although you can set the character set on a driver, if you are not sure the character set you specify is compatible to your Reply Email, then the SMART CHAR SET VALIDATION feature can guarantee that you always reply email in a compatible character set. For example, if the character set from incoming email and driver profile both are unable to represent the characters you input in the Reply Email, then the UTF-8 character set will be used. However the SMART CHAR SET VALIDATION will have lower efficiency comparing to the SMART CHAR SET as it always does validation for each reply email.
The default Response Email Encoding parameter is UTF-8. In replying emails, the character set will always use UTF-8 as default. The character set from inbound email and driver profile will be ignored.
You can configure Response Email Encoding to use SMART CHAR SET or SMART CHAR SET VALIDATION. In this case when an agent replies to this message, the character set is retrieved from the activity record, so the reply uses the same character set. If, however, the character set of the inbound email message cannot be determined, then the character set for the value of the Charset parameter for the driver profile is used.
Smart Character Set and F9 Send Email
For F9 Send Email, Smart Character Set completes the following tasks:
Checks the driver parameter to determine the correct character set.
Sends the email in the UTF-8 character set if the driver parameter that specifies the character set has no value.
Smart Character Set and Siebel Email Response
For Siebel Email Response, Smart Character Set completes the following tasks:
Uses the message header of the inbound email to determine the correct character set (for example, Content - Type:text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1).
Checks the driver parameter to determine the correct character set if no customer record exists.
Sends the email in the UTF-8 character set if no driver parameter exists.
Enabling Smart Character Set
The following activities automatically use the same character set as the inbound email:
Auto Response
Auto Acknowledgement
Server Request Reply
When you manually enable the Smart Character Set feature, you define the character set for all outbound email using the profile.
To enable Smart Character Set
Navigate to the Administration - Communications screen, then the Communications Drivers and Profiles view.
In the Communications Drivers list, select Internet SMTP/POP3 Server or Internet SMTP/IMAP Server.
Click the Driver Parameters view tab.
In the Charset parameter, enter a value.
For information about supported character sets, see Siebel System Requirements and Supported Platforms on Oracle Technology Network.
About Global Deployments for Siebel Email Response
If you want to use Siebel Email Response for global responses, then you must configure it accordingly. Siebel Email Response setup and configuration steps are the same for each deployment type. For more information, see Siebel Global Deployment Guide.
In a global deployment of Siebel Email Response, you must set up an email account (profile) and a response group for each language that your organization supports.
For example, if your organization supports French and German, then set up two profiles and response groups. You might name the French profile and response group fra_support@example.com and the German profile and response group deu_support@example.com. Customers send messages to the address that processes their preferred language.
In a Unicode deployment, the Siebel database is Unicode, and customers can send email messages in different languages such as Japanese, Chinese, English, German, and so on. However, you still must set up a profile for each language.
In a global environment, Siebel Email Response performs the following tasks:
Monitors the response groups that you set up for each language that your organization supports.
Creates an activity record in the Siebel database that stores the content of the email along with the language of the email message. The original email message is also stored as an attachment to the record.
Sends an acknowledgement message using the original language of the message. For example, if a user sends a message in French, then an acknowledgement message is sent to the user in French.
Routes an inbound email message to the agent who can best handle the message. The routing is based on assignment rules you define using Assignment Manager or based on criteria that a custom routing and queueing solution uses. For example, a French message is routed to an agent with a French language skill. For more information, see Siebel Assignment Manager Administration Guide.
Enables an agent to compose and send messages using templates in a preferred language.
Agents review messages using a Siebel client and compose and send response messages using response templates. The list of available templates consists of all templates in all languages. Templates are filtered by the language and locale values that the agent sets in the User Preferences screen.
If the agent does not specify these user preference fields, then filtering is based on the language and locale of the object manager to which the agent is connected. For example, if the agent's browser is connected to the French object manager, then the templates are filtered by using the French language.
Note: You translate templates and solutions into the supported languages that your organization selects during the deployment planning stage of your Siebel Email Response implementation.
Checks spelling for the most common international languages. For more information, see Spell Check.
Planning Global Deployments for Siebel Email Response
Before deploying Siebel Email Response in a global environment, analyze your organization’s requirements by answering the following questions:
Do any groups in your organization receive messages in languages other than English? If so, do you have an email address set up to receive international messages? How do you handle international messages?
What code page does your Siebel Server support? How many languages does your organization plan to support?
If your organization supports three languages (French, German, and Italian), then you must create one profile for each language. You also must create one response group for each language and add the appropriate profile to the response group. Each response group supports one language-specific profile. For example, to support French, the response group named fra_support@example.com supports the profile named fra_support@example.com.
Which routing method will you use to route incoming email to agents?
For example, you can route activities using Assignment Manager and the language of the message.
What communications templates will you use in Siebel Email Response replies?
If your organization plans to support multiple languages and decides to add new templates, then you must translate the template text to the languages that you plan to support. For more information, see Templates for Global Deployments.
Setting Up Global Deployments for Siebel Email Response
Customers can deploy Siebel Email Response in a single environment using different languages if the languages are in the same code page. Agents that use templates for daily replies to inbound messages can filter templates by using the language and locale setting in user preferences.
Requirements for Setting Up Global Deployments
Before you set up global deployment for Siebel Email Response, complete the following tasks:
If your organization plans to support multiple languages, then install the language packs for each of the supported languages. The language pack installs the Siebel Email Response templates in a specific language. For information about language pack installation, see the Siebel Installation Guide for the operating system you are using.
If you plan to use Siebel Assignment Manager to assign activities by using language, then enable the Assignment Management component group. For more information, see Siebel Assignment Manager Administration Guide.
Language Packs and Communications Templates
When you install the seed data for required languages into the Siebel database, the communications templates (containing the correct values for language and locale) associated with Siebel Email Response are installed. You can create additional templates to meet your business requirements. For more information, see Templates for Global Deployments.
Email Accounts for Supported Languages
Set up an email account for each language that you plan to support.
In your email server, create one response group for each language. Each of these response groups handles messages in different languages. If your installation supports French and German messages, then set up two response groups (for example, fra_support@example.com and deu_support@example.com). For French messages, users must send their messages to fra_support@example.com. For German messages, users must send their messages to deu_support@example.com.
Response Groups for Global Deployments
To be able to reply to email messages in more than one language, you must create a response group for each language and associate a profile with the response group. For example, if you plan to receive French messages, then create a response group named FRA Response Group and associate the profile fra_support@example.com with the response group. For information about how to create profiles, see Process of Setting Up Communications Driver Profiles. For information about how to create response groups, see Process of Setting Up Response Groups.
Each response group monitors a language response group. Create one response group for each language. For example, Communications Inbound Receiver for French monitors the profiles that are associated with FRA Response Group.
For each response group, you must pass the MsgDefaultLanguageCode input argument, which contains the default language of the email message, to the following workflows:
eMail Response - Process Message
eMail Response - Process Service Request
MsgDefaultLanguageCode is an argument in the workflow process. It specifies the language that the workflow process uses to set the language of a created activity record. For example, when a user sends an email to fra_support@example.com, an activity record is created with a language of FRA. Assignment Manager can assign the activity to the agent who handles French email by using the activity language. For information about the input parameters to configure for response groups, see Adding Input Arguments to Response Groups.
Templates for Global Deployments
When creating templates for a global deployment, follow the convention of naming the templates in English and including the language and locale to help maintain consistency. Oracle uses this naming convention for translating the standard templates the Siebel Email Response uses into the languages that Oracle supports. It is recommended that you follow the same naming convention.
Additionally, if you create templates, then you must add logic to the workflow so that the workflow process can call the templates and so that Siebel Workflow is able to detect the language of the templates. For information about creating templates, see Creating Simple Templates and Creating Advanced Templates.
Language Support for Global Deployments
Consider the following guidelines in a Siebel Email Response global deployment:
Internet Email Addresses (delivery addresses) must contain ASCII characters. They cannot contain any non-ASCII characters.
Extended Internet Email Addresses can contain a display name in addition to a delivery address. The display name can contain non-ASCII characters if these characters are encoded according to MIME standards to enable them to be transformed into ASCII characters. If these non-ASCII characters in the display name can be transformed into ASCII characters, then the message can be transmitted.
One response group can handle only one language. If you support multiple languages, then you must set up a response group for each language.
Siebel Email Response does not perform language detection. If an email message is sent to the wrong response group, then the language of the activity record is the default language that you specify in the input argument of the response group. For information about supported languages, see Siebel System Requirements and Supported Platforms on Oracle Technology Network.
Messages that are in languages that are not in the Windows code page 1252 or code page 8859-1 appear as characters that cannot be displayed.
When you work with a monolingual or multilingual deployment and a non-Unicode database deployment, you might receive messages in languages that the environment does not support.
Because the subject and body cannot be converted, they appear as characters that cannot be displayed. Siebel Email Response does not process this email or create activities, and sends the email as an attachment in email format to the administrator for review (if you set up the administrator email profile).
The most widely-used character sets, including 1252 / Latin-1, Shift-JIS, ISO-2022-JP (mail JIS), EUC-JP, and UTF-8, are valid for Communications Inbound Receiver and Communications Inbound Processor.
When Siebel Email Response replies to email messages, the prefix strings are in English and not in the various supported languages. For information about supported languages, see Siebel System Requirements and Supported Platforms on Oracle Technology Network.