2Overview of Product Administration
Overview of Product Administration
The Siebel Enterprise Server installer provides two installer options:
Siebel Product Configurator
Siebel Product Configurator integration with Oracle Advanced Constraint Technology
The Siebel Product Configurator integration with Oracle Advanced Constraint Technology is available as a developer preview. It provides the option of installing the Siebel Enterprise Cache (formerly called Siebel Cache Server), and the Siebel Management Console includes tasks for configuring and managing the Enterprise Cache Server and the Enterprise Cache Client. The Siebel Enterprise Cache, which is based on Oracle Coherence, is used by the Siebel Constraint Engine. For more information, see Siebel Installation Guide for the operating system you are using.
The Siebel Constraint Engine is part of this integration, which also requires the Siebel Enterprise Cache. The Siebel Enterprise Server installer now provides options for installing both the Siebel Enterprise Cache and the Siebel Constraint Engine, and the Siebel Management Console includes tasks for configuring and managing these modules. For more information on the Siebel Constraint Engine, see About the Siebel Constraint Engine.
This chapter provides an overview of product administration. It includes the following topics:
Product Administration
This guide explains product administration for a number of different types of products. You only have to read the chapters that apply to the types of product your company sells.
Simple Products Without Attributes
This is a product that only comes in one form, such as a book. The customer does not make any decisions about features of the product.
To create simple products without attributes, read Basic Product Administration.
Product Bundles
A product bundle is a group of products sold together. It cannot be customized.
For example, you might offer customers vacation packages that include airfare, hotel accommodations for a specific number of days, and specific special events, all for one price.
To create this sort of product, you must read:
Simple Products with Attributes
A product with attributes has features that the customer can choose but does not have components the customer can choose.
For example, a customer buying a t-shirt might be able to choose the shirt's color and its size. The shirt has two attributes, color and size. Each of these attributes has several possible values, such as white, gray, black, and S, M, L, XL.
For information about creating simple products with attributes, see Roadmap for Creating Simple Products with Attributes.
Products with Components
This is a product with components that a customer can select.
For example, a customer buying a computer might have to select a mouse, a floppy disk drive, a monitor, and other components.
For information about creating products with components, see Roadmap for Creating Products with Components.
Product Compatibility
You can define global rules that specify which products and promotions are compatible with each other.
For more information, see Product and Promotion Eligibility and Compatibility
Product Eligibility
You can define global rules that specify which customers are eligible to buy products and promotions.
For more information, see Product and Promotion Eligibility and Compatibility.
Product Validation Rules
For special cases where you want to create custom business services to check the compatibility of products, you can use product validation rules.
For more information, see Creating Validation Rules for Customizable Products.
Translations
If you are working with any of these types of products and you have to translate the interface into multiple languages, you must also read: Multilingual Translations for Product Data.
Roadmap for Creating Simple Products with Attributes
A simple product with attributes has features that the customer can choose but does not have components the customer can choose.
For example, a customer buying a t-shirt might be able to choose the shirt's color and its size. The shirt has two attributes, color and size. Each of these attributes has several possible values, such as white, gray, black, and S, M, L, XL.
To create a simple product with attributes, perform the following tasks:
Create the product. You create this in the same way you create other simple products. See Basic Product Administration.
Define the attributes of the product. You must define what attributes the product has and the valid values for each attribute. See Products with Attributes.
For a more advanced method of defining attributes, see Product Attributes with Business Component Domains.
Decide whether to use the default user interface or create a custom user interface. For information about the default interface, see About Default and Custom Siebel Product Configurator User Interfaces.
Design the custom user interface. If you decide to create a custom interface, see Creating Custom Siebel Product Configurator User Interfaces. For more advanced methods of designing a custom interface, see Siebel Product Configurator UI Properties and Siebel Product Configurator Web Templates.
Create constraints for the product with attributes. For some products with attributes, you create constraints to define which attributes are compatible. For example, a shirt may come in five sizes and ten colors, but some colors may not be available in all sizes.
To create simple constraints, see Configuration Constraints.
For more advanced methods of creating constraints, you can use the same methods used to create advanced constraints for products with components, described in Roadmap for Creating Products with Components.
Create scripts for the product with attributes. Optionally, you can enhance the behavior of Siebel Product Configurator by writing scripts in the Siebel eScript or the Siebel VB language. When the user selects certain attributes or does things like updating the shopping cart, you can use scripts to check the configuration, verify and adjust pricing, or forward information to other applications. See Siebel Product Configurator Scripts.
Create smart part numbers. If necessary, you can automatically generate a different part number for each combination of attributes that is available. For example, you can have part numbers for size S white shirt, size M white shirt, and so on. This allows you to pass the part numbers to back office applications used for filling orders. See Smart Part Numbers for Products with Attributes.
Testing Products with Attributes. After you have designed the product, user interface, and constraints, it is recommended that you test the product to make sure that it works with the products that are available now and in the future. See Testing Products and Using Workspace Projects.
Releasing Products with Attributes. After you have tested the product, you can release it to customers. See Releasing Products and Other Versioned Objects.
Roadmap for Creating Products with Components
A product with components has components that a customer can select.
For example, a customer buying a computer might have to select a mouse, a floppy disk drive, a monitor, and other components.
Before you create a product with components, perform the following task:
Decide which rules to use for compatible products. You can define rules that specify which products are compatible by using configuration constraints, compatibility rules, or product validation rules. To decide which to use, see When to Use Siebel Product Configurator, Compatibility, Eligibility, and Product Validation Rules.
If you decide to use Siebel Product Configurator, perform the following tasks:
Create the product with components and the component products. You create these in the same way you create simple products, as described in Basic Product Administration. If the product with components or any component products have attributes, create them in the same way you create simple products with attributes, as described in Roadmap for Creating Simple Products with Attributes.
Define the structure of the product with components. You define the structure of the product with components by specifying which products are its components. See Designing Products with Components.
For special techniques for defining and managing products with components, see Managing Products with Components.
Decide whether to use the default user interface or create a custom user interface. For information about the default interface, see About Default and Custom Siebel Product Configurator User Interfaces.
Design the custom user interface. If you decide to create a custom interface, see Creating Custom Siebel Product Configurator User Interfaces. For more advanced methods of designing a custom interface, see Siebel Product Configurator UI Properties and Siebel Product Configurator Web Templates.
Create constraints for the product with components. For most products with components, you must create constraints to define which components are compatible. For example, if the product with components is a computer, you must define constraints to specify which processors are compatible with which operating systems, and so on. To create simple constraints, see Configuration Constraints.
For more advanced methods of creating constraints, you can perform the following tasks:
Designing Links. Links provide access to other types of information besides products. You can define links to fields in a business component, to the login name of the user, or to the current system date. This lets you write constraints that affect only certain login names, are conditioned on dates, or are conditioned on business component information. See Configuration Links.
Designing Resources. Resources keep track of configuration-related amounts in a customizable product. For example, you are designing a customizable product that is a computer. This product has several choices of chassis, each with a different number of card slots. Several of the components in this product are expansion cards that consume these slots. To keep track of the number of slots available you could define a resource called Slots Available. When the user selects a chassis, a constraint associated with the customizable product would add the number of slots in the chassis to a Slots Available resource. Thus, you can write constraints that monitor slot usage. For more information, see Configuration Resources.
Modifying Siebel Product Configurator Constraint Templates. The Constraints view provides constraint templates that allow you to create a wide variety of configuration constraints. See Configuration Constraint Template Reference.
Writing Constraints using Siebel Product Configurator Rule Assembly Language. Rule Assembly Language (RAL) is for users who are more comfortable working in a programming environment rather than using templates. See Siebel Product Configurator Rule Assembly Language.
Designing Siebel Product Configurator Scripts. Optionally, you can enhance the behavior of Siebel Product Configurator by writing scripts in the Siebel eScript or the Siebel VB language. Scripts allow you to add procedural logic to the configuration process. When the user selects certain items or does things like updating the shopping cart, you can use scripts to check the configuration, verify and adjust pricing, or forward information to other applications. See Siebel Product Configurator Scripts.
Testing Products with Components. After you have designed the product with components, user interface, and rules, it is recommended that you test the product with components to make sure that it works with the products that are available now and in the future. See Testing Products and Using Workspace Projects.
Releasing Products with Components. After you have tested the product with components, you can release it to customers. See Releasing Products and Other Versioned Objects.
Set up cache administration. You specify how product models will be cached during run time, in order to improve performance. For information about cache administration, see Siebel Performance Tuning Guide.
For additional information about products with components, see:
Siebel Product Configurator Technical Reference. This chapter includes information about a number of features that can be used by developers.
Siebel Product Configurator Version 6.x, 7.0 and 7.5. If you are upgrading from version 6 to version 7 of Siebel Product Configurator, read this chapter describing the differences between the products.
When to Use Siebel Product Configurator, Compatibility, Eligibility, and Product Validation Rules
There are three ways to write rules to specify that products are compatible or incompatible with each other:
In addition, write rules to determine which customers are eligible to buy products using Eligibility Rules. Use these methods in different cases.
Configuration Constraints
Configuration constraints are used to specify that components of a product with components are not compatible with each other.
For example, a computer is a product with components, and its components that may not all be compatible with each other. A specific model of monitor or keyboard may work only with some CPUs and not with others.
When you define configuration constraints, they only apply within the product with components. If you have many different computers that use the same keyboard, you must write separate configuration constraints for each computer to specify which CPUs that keyboard is compatible with.
Use configuration constraints if the exclude rules and require rules apply to just the component products within a configuration model.
For more information about Siebel Product Configurator, see Roadmap for Creating Products with Components.
Compatibility Rules
Without configuration, compatibility rules are global. While configuration constraints apply to products only when they are components of a given product with components, compatibility rules apply to products globally.
For example, if you created a rule saying that a given computer keyboard is incompatible with a given CPU, without configuration, the rule would apply whenever that computer and CPU are ordered. It would not apply only to a specific model of computer.
Use compatibility rules without configuration if the exclude or require rules apply across a customers entire asset base, open sales orders and current quote. This is the scope of compatibility rules by default; it is possible to change this scope by configuring the application.
With configuration, it is possible to have compatibility rules apply only to products within the same root product, as configuration constraints do. If you are using only product excludes rules, this approach may be useful, because it avoids the overhead of the Siebel Product Configurator constraint engine.
For more information about compatibility rules, see Product and Promotion Eligibility and Compatibility.
Product Validation Rules
Product validation is most useful when you create your own business services to solve specialized business problems that cannot be addressed using Siebel Product Configurator.
For more information about product validation rules, see Creating Validation Rules for Customizable Products.
Eligibility Rules
Eligibility rules are used to specify which customers are eligible to buy products or promotions.
You must always use eligibility rules for this purpose. You must not use configuration constraints to specify which customers are eligible to buy products.
For more information about eligibility rules, see Product and Promotion Eligibility and Compatibility.
About Working with Product Administration
This topic gives you background that you need for working with product administration.
Logging On as the Siebel Administrator
The Siebel database server installation script creates a Siebel administrator account that can be used to perform the tasks described in this guide. For more information, see Siebel Installation Guide for the operating system you are using and Siebel System Administration Guide.
To log on as the Siebel administrator, start the application and log on using the user name and password assigned by your database administrator. Generally, the Siebel administrator connects to the server database.
License Key Requirements
This guide describes basic product management tasks. It also describes how to use Siebel Product Configurator to create and manage products with components and products with attributes. To use Siebel Product Configurator, you must have the appropriate license keys installed.