1. Developing and Deploying Siebel CRM
  2. Siebel CRM Workspaces

Siebel CRM Workspaces

Understanding Workspaces is critical to modifying the Siebel Design and Siebel Runtime Repositories, and to accommodating specific customer business requirements effectively.

A Workspace is a sandbox environment in which you can update Siebel CRM application configuration, and in which you can validate those configuration changes before deployment. You can also use Workspaces for parallel development, geographically distributed teams, and, in conjunction with Siebel Approval Manager, providing a governance process to changes to the application.

We will illustrate the basic use of Workspaces through a simple example: you want to display contact home phone numbers instead of work phone numbers on the Contact List Applet.

The steps in the configuration process, as illustrated in the following image, are as follows: Understand Requirements, Create Workspace, Configure Changes, Test Changes, Deploy Workspace to Runtime Repository.

Process of implementing changes to a Workspace: This image is described in the surrounding text.
Before diving into configuration changes, it is important to have an understanding of the scope of the requirement and have a clear plan for addressing it in the most appropriate way. By way of example, there are multiple ways that this requirement could be met, including the following possibilities:

  • Modify the label on the existing column in the list applet to be: Home Phone #. Analysis: While this approach would work, the underlying field and physical database storage would still be using the Work Phone # field. There may be other areas of the application or other types of users who want to continue to use this field for the Work Phone #, so relabeling it here would cause confusion and possible data loss.

  • Create a new physical column at the database layer, map a BusComp Field to that column, and add it to the list. Analysis: This would also work, but by examining the existing Table and BusComp definitions, we can observe that a column already exists for this purpose. Creating a new column would mean that home phone numbers could be stored in two different columns–the original and our new column. This is clearly not desirable.

  • Make use of the existing Home Phone # field on the Contact BusComp. Analysis: This is the best approach–it will ensure that the types of problems inherent in the first two approaches are not encountered. It will also be the fastest and easiest, as there is no requirement to make changes at the data or business object layers–all changes are done at the user interface layer.

Having performed our analysis, we can confine the scope of the change needed to meet the requirement to the following two changes:

  • Expose the existing Home Phone # Field on the Contact List View so that users may see and edit it.

  • Remove the existing Work Phone # Field

For more information about Workspaces, the Workspace Dashboard, and how to use and administer Workspaces, see Using Siebel Tools.