About Language and Seed Data

When you use Siebel CRM in a particular language, you see the values for that language. For example, when selecting the status for a customer account record, an English user sees values such as New Customer or Active, while a French user sees Nouveau client or Actif. For this behavior to work, LOVs must be converted to MultiLingual List of Values (MLOV) through the MultiLingual List of Values conversion process.

To understand how the MLOV conversion process works, consider how Siebel CRM stores data when MLOV conversion has not been performed.

The following image is a List of Values (LOV) in Siebel CRM. Each LOV has one record per language. There is one record each for English-American and French languages. The Display Value displays in the user’s selected language, while the Language-Independent Code (LIC) is the same for each pair. The LIC is often the same as the English Display Value because the Oracle engineers who originally created the LOV created everything in English and the Oracle translation team later created the translated records. However, this is not required. For example in the following image, you can see that the English "New Customer" value and French "Nouveau client" value share the same C LIC value.

When the MLOV conversion has not occurred, picklists display all values from all languages. This is undesirable behavior since the user only wants to see values in their own language. The following image shows a Status picklist that displays values in both English and French (for example: Inactif, Red Customer, Client rouge, New Customer, Nouveau client, Other, Autre, and so on).

The Display Value is stored in the database and whatever value is stored there is visible to all users. Therefore, if an English-speaking user selects Active, the Active value is stored in the database. A French user who views that same record will also see Active (not Actif).

The following image displays what an English user sees when the New Customer value is selected – that is, an empty form with the following sections where the user can input data as required: Account Information, Pricing and Purchasing Information, Account Administration Details, DUNS, Reference Information.

Siebel CRM stores the New Customer value in the database as follows:

• Name: A1 Manufacturing

• CUST_STAT_CD: New Customer.

A French user viewing the same record sees the English version, as opposed to the desired French version of the record. The following image shows what a French user sees (when the New Customer value is selected) – in this image, the Statut field with the "New Customer" value is highlighted; the other sections on the form are: Informations sur le compte, Informations sur les achats et la tarification, Détails de l'administration de comptes, DUNS, Information de référence.

The MLOV conversion process resolves these issues. The LOVs themselves are marked as Multilingual (the Multilingual check box is selected), indicating to the Siebel CRM platform that they must be treated as MLOVs and automatically translated.

During the MLOV conversion, existing records in the database are updated to contain the LIC value, rather than the language-specific Display Value. The record is stored with the LIC value in the database as follows:

• Name: A1 Manufacturing

• CUST_STAT_CD: C.

When a record is retrieved from the database, Siebel CRM automatically performs a mapping from the stored LIC values to the correct Display Value for the user's language. For example, the following image is what an English user sees after a MLOV conversion has been performed and the CUST_STAT_CD of C is stored in the database – – in this image, the Status field with the "New Customer" value is highlighted. The Status picklist will now show all options in English only.

The following image shows what a French user sees for the same record after the MLOV conversion process – in this image, the Statut field with the "Nouveau client" value is highlighted. The Statut picklist will show all options in French.