MS Office Integration for Siebel CRM

Sometimes it's the tiny features that best show off an application's ability to
integrate into a service-oriented architecture. In this and the next post we'll talk
about the Microsoft Office Web Service Integration (for Excel now and Word later)
which is a nice example for integrating the desktop world of MS Office with Siebel
CRM using web services.

To demonstrate or evaluate the MS Office integration we have to

• copy the .SAF files to the Siebel File System and download the templates
• fire up the Siebel Server and EAI Object Manager
• Configure the Excel and Word templates

Let's discuss this step by step

1. Copy the SFA SAF files (no typo) and download the templates

In your Siebel server installation folder locate the temp/sfa folder and copy all .SAF
files to the ATT folder of your Siebel File System.

In the Siebel Web Client, navigate to Administration - Documents | Literature and

query for the seed records for the MS Office templates.

The "Excel Reports and Analysis" document is an .xls file with macro code that will
establish a connection to the Siebel Server using web services.

The "Word Integration for MailMerge.dot" document is a .dot file (with macros as
well) that will be discussed in a future post.

Download the templates to your local drive.

2. Engage the EAI Object Manager

If not already done, enable the EAI component group on your Siebel Server and
ensure that the EAI object manager is online.

3. Configure the Excel Template

Open the template in MS Excel (allowing macro execution) and navigate to the
advanced custom file properties. Set the SFAServer property to "server_host-or-
ip/eai_language". The two other properties starting with "SFA" should be ok. If not,
change them as well. SFA stands for "Sales Force Automation" which is the
flintstonian name for Siebel Sales.

Click OK and save your changes. You can now make copies of the .xls file and
distribute to the end users.

Using the MS Excel Template

The macros in the Excel file use the Siebel Web Service integration to get metadata
information on integration objects and the data itself. If you're into it you can open
the macros in the debugger and have a ball...

First we have to connect to the Siebel environment by clicking "Configure Siebel

Report" in the toolbar (or ribbon if you have Office 2007). After logging in, the dialog
allows you to select an object such as Opportunity. We can create a new report
definition specifying filters and fields.

When we run the report, data is fetched (under full access control for the user) and
the spreadsheets are populated. Now we can for example create charts or functions
for analysis.
The screenshot shows an existing report in the background and the dialog for field
selection in the foreground.

The Excel file can be saved and opened later again. To refresh the data from Siebel,
we use the "Refresh Siebel Report" button.

SFA web servcies for Microsoft Office integration with Siebel CRM. These
templates are provided for MS Excel (discussed in the previous post) and MS Word.

They contain macros which connect to Siebel CRM using web services over http
provided by the Siebel Server infrastructure.

How to use the MS Word mail merge template to create personalized letters or
emails to customers and write back activities to Siebel CRM. As we discussed how to
download the templates in the last post, we'll start right away and open the Word
template file (allowing macro execution).

1. Get Siebel Data

In the toolbar (or ribbon in MS Office 2007) that is generated by the code in the
template, we can select the Get Siebel Dataoption. The following objects are
supported in the current version:

• Contacts
• Opportunities
• Accounts
• Service Requests
You will be prompted for username and password and the connection to the Siebel
web server will be established. We can then apply filters and select fields.

2. Select Data

The retrieved data is stored as a separate .doc file on the disk and can be opened
offline. We can repeat the data retrieval process and refresh the list file. From the
local file we can select all or individual records.
3. Create the document and insert merge fields

The next step is very similar to working with the MS Word merge functionality. We
can put placeholder fields in the text which are to be replaced with the data during
the merge.

Below we see the result when we click the Preview button. "Guest Customer" is the
first and last name of a contact.

4. Merge the document

Also in a well known manner we can generate the merged document, save it, print it
or email it.

5. Create activities in Siebel CRM

An even more interesting part of the MS Word integration is that we can create
activities (one for each contact) in the Siebel CRM database. In order to do so, we
select "Log as Siebel activity" and specify key fields for the future activity records.
When you click Save, an activity for each contact in the list is generated with the
content specified in the form.

Summary

Both the Excel and Word templates provide an entry point of using predefined web
services for integrating Siebel with MS Office.