Creating Links in Siebel Message Broadcasts

Among the many changes and new features delivered with Siebel Open UI is the way how reports are delivered to end users. You might have noticed the following changes:

After submitting a report, the application gets focus, so the end user can continue to submit (other) reports or use the application.

When a report is complete, the user is notified by the message broadcast icon in the upper right corner. The message is implemented as a link, which allows the end user to download the report (see screenshot below).

Recently, we discussed the new features around message broadcasts in Open UI and personally, I was quite intrigued by the possibility of creating a download link in a message. So I decided to do some research.

When you take a closer look at the message which is automatically generated, you find it similar to the following:

Click to enlarge

Abstract: [D] ' Account List... ' report has completed.

Message: BO: Report Administration; BC : Report Output BC; Field :  ReportOutputFileName;File Ext : ReportOutputFileExt; Id: 9SIA-89EK9

As you can see the Abstract field value starts with [D] and the Message field value contains references to the following:

• business object
• an attachment business component within the BO
• a field within that BC containing the file name
• another field for the file extension
• the ROW_ID of the file

I admit that out of curiosity, I created a similar message myself, using [D] as the first characters of the abstract and referring to an attachment BC in the message. For my tests I used the Account Attachment BC and referenced an attachment I created for demo purposes.

The abstract I used:

[D] Click to download an attachment

This is what my test message looked like:

BO: Account; BC: Account Attachment; Field: AccntFileName;File Ext: AccntFileExt; Id: 9SIA-89EK5

(The Id value is the ROW_ID of an actual account attachment file)

I was delighted to see that I got a download link just fine and was able to download the account attachment

Further research showed that internally, the GetFile method is used when you specify the message like shown above.

Navigating to a View

Now when we specify the message like the following, there's a different story to tell:

BO:Account; BC:Account; View:Account Detail - Contacts View; Id:1-63Q9

As you can see, we still specify the BO, (parent) BC and an Id (of the parent BC) but now there is a view reference.

This will create a message with a link that allows the user to navigate to a view and open the record specified by the Id.

Note that there is also a different icon displayed.

Summary

Welcome to the new message broadcast. Three little characters in the message abstract "[D]", change the tune and allow us to create download links for attachments and navigation links to views.

have a nice day

@lex