Siebel Order Management - Promotions - Interview Questions

On which quote or order line items can a promotion be applied?

Bundle Promotions can be applied to root product line items in quotes and orders, including Network Compound Products. Only promotions without components and with the flag ‘Show in Catalog’ = N can be selected into the childline item of a quote/order product line item.

How does the ApplyPromotion method find the product line items eligible for promotion?

To find the line items in a quote or order that are promotable, the ApplyPromotion method looks up all root line items that:

are not promotions themselves,
are not associated to any promotion yet, and
are not about to be deleted.

It uses the following search specification:

[Prod Prom Id] IS NULL AND ([Product Type Code] <> LookupValue("PROD_CD","Promotion") OR [Product Type Code] IS NULL) AND [Action Code] <> LookupValue("DELTA_ACTION_CODE","Delete") AND [IsRootItem] = 'Y'

This search specification generated internally by special class behavior, which is hard coded, and there is no way that the search spec to be modified.

Why are product line items not indented under the promotion record?

This is working as designed. When you add a promotion the promotion’s products will not be added as child items to the promotion. They will be added as separate line items with a pointer to the promotion in their ‘Promotion’ field. Products within a promotion are not supposed to be indented.

In a quote, order or agreement, is it possible to add several line items for the same product, each with Qty = 1 and each associated to a different product promotion?

Yes, this is possible.

Test steps in Siebel eCommunications v8.0, connected to Sample DB as SADMIN:

Create two product promotions (Type = Coupon, Instances = No Limit) for product Xerco1100.
Create a quote with two line items for product Xerco1100, each with Qty = 1.
In the first line item, select the first product promotion into the Promotion field.
The same promotion also appears in the second line item; however, it can be changed.
In the second line item, select the second product promotion into the Promotion field.
The first promotion still exists in the first line item, and the second promotion exists in the second line item.

The corresponding log file shows that when a promotion is selected into a line item, other line items will only be updated with the same promotion if their promotion field is empty.

What is the meaning of the ‘Show in Catalog’ flag in the promotion definition?

A bundle promotion with flag ‘Show In Catalog’ = Y will be displayed in the Quote / Order > Catalog views, so the end user can choose it in quotes and orders the same way the end user chooses a product.

NOTE: After creating the catalog structure (in the Administration Catalog > Categories) and assigning the product promotion to a category, set the Display Template field for the category to “Product Promotion”, then refresh the cache for the catalog. This will display the Promotions Applet in the catalog according to the Show in Catalog flag.

A bundled promotion with flag ‘Show in Catalog’ = N can also be selected into an existing root product line item in a quote / order, provided that the corresponding root product exists in the promotion definition as a promotion component. This also applies to coupon promotions, which always have ‘Show in Catalog’ = N.

When you have a promotion defined under Opportunity- Product and you execute the AutoQuote functionality, will the quote contain the promotion and the attached product bundle?

The quote will contain a line item for the promotion, but no further line items will be created based on the promotion definition. Promotion specialized functionality is not included in the Auto Quote function.

This is a design limitation and currently the out of the box behavior. There is no easy workaround to get the behavior by some post operations. Please contact Oracle Advanced Customer Support (ACS) if you are interested in a configuration approach.

How to do a deep copy of Product Promotions?

Promotion Deep Copy has not been implemented so far. The current solution is to export the promotion, change the Promotion’s Name and Id’s of that promotion in the XML, then import the XML file.

How can a Promotion definition be deleted?

It is not recommended to delete products and promotions, as this would it invalidate all quotes, orders, opportunities, etc. that they may have been associated with in the past. Currently it is possible to delete product promotions.

Please use Siebel Tools to disable the Delete button on all applets displaying product promotions:

Login to Siebel Tools.
In the Object Explorer, navigate to Applet.
Query for all applets with Business component = “ISS Promotion”.
Make sure that all the applets returned in this query have No Delete = TRUE.
Compile all changes into your SRF.

When a user has accidentally deleted a promotion definition, leaving orphan records in the S_VOD and S_VOD_VER tables, the recommended way to proceed with this issue is as follows: Delete the orphan records from S_VOD and S_VOD_VER tables using SQL directly on the database.

On selection of “Upgrade/Downgrade” for a promotion, “ISS Promotion Upgrade Popup Applet” is displayed with a list of promotions that are allowed. In order to invoke the upgrade/downgrade method, the user must highlight the promotion and click the OK button in the pick applet.

The following configuration will enable double-click to invoke the upgrade/downgrade method for the selected promotion:

1. Add a new applet user property to ‘ISS Promotion Upgrade Popup Applet’:

Name: Double Click Applet Method
Value: Execute

2. Compile the applet. Now double clicking will invoke promotion upgrade/downgrade.

How do promotions interact with aggregate discounts?

Aggregate discounts allow you to give discounts to customers who buy a combination of products. When you define aggregate discounts, you specify a bundle of items and the discount that applies to specific items if the user buys the entire bundle. You use this type of discount to maintain bundle pricing factors in earlier versions of Siebel Pricer.

Product promotions allow you to create coupon promotions or bundle promotions. Product promotions have features such as the ability to display promotions in product catalogs, quotes, and orders, and to recommend these promotions to customers who buy products associated to a promotion.

How is Catalog visibility and Eligibility and Compatibility applied to promotions?

The Siebel application is capable of restricting the Promotion itself via Catalog visibility or Eligibility and Compatibility (E&C) but the application cannot restrict the components of a promotion based on any visibility functionality. Essentially if the user has access to the promotion, then adding of the promotion will add all products.

From a functionality perspective, this is necessary since one may have a minimum requirement of a component of a promotion, and this would fail for a given catalog/category or E&C when the user ‘verifies’ the promotion. If the promotion administrator wants to build a promotion with different components available in different categories, they will need to build copies of this promotion, with each copy representing a catalog/category.

Is it possible to filter the list of records in the promotion editor (ISS Promotion Edit UI Detail List Applet) e.g. by a certain value of Service Type?

Edit Promotion displays all the root components (simple and customizable) of a bundle promotion. The applet “ISS Promotion Edit UI Detail List Applet” as well as the business component “ISS Promotion Edit UI Detail” are of special class. Additionally the business component is a VBC. Hence you cannot modify these in order to constrain that list, for example to display only components where Service Type has a certain value.

The only way to implement this requirement would be to create your own business component as well as applet and implement these instead of the default ones.

Is it possible to define the sequence of records in the promotion editor list (ISS Promotion Edit UI Detail List Applet)?

Edit Promotion displays all the root components (simple and customizable) of a bundle promotion. In one customer’s case this list contains 60 products. The products are displayed in the order in which they were added to the promotion.

The applet “ISS Promotion Edit UI Detail List Applet”, as well as the business component “ISS Promotion Edit UI Detail”, are of special class. Additionally the business component is a VBC. Hence you cannot modify these to define a sort order, for example to sort the records by a custom sequence number.

Is it possible to invoke the promotion editor in Task Based UI (TBUI)?

Edit Promotion is a special functionality and can only be called in the context of the menu item from the Quote or the Order Line item view. You cannot call it from somewhere else, as the context is important for setting up the Edit Promotion view.

The general recommendation is to split the ordering tasks into three domains: pre-ordering, product selection/configuration and post-ordering. Use TBUI for pre and post ordering tasks and do not use TBUI for complex products, promotions and Product Configurator UI. Instead Use native Product/Promotion Configurator UI for product configuration. In other words the suggestion is to set up 2 tasks (Before and Afterwards) and let EditPromotion run separately in between.

How to define Prorated Promotion Penalty Charges?

In the standard Siebel application with the Sample database, you can create a charge plan by taking the following steps:

1. Go to Site Map > Administration - Contracts. 2. Go to Conditional Charge Plan. 3. Add a new Plan with a schedule.

You can then add the charge plan to the promotion as follows: 4. Go to Administration - Product > Product Promotions and select the promotion. 5. Click the Commitment view tab > Charges/Credits. 6. Create a new record and fill the necessary fields. 7. Bring up the Plan pick applet and pick the charge plan which was created in step 2.

When an agreement is generated from a promotion, which promotion components will be displayed in Agreements > Pricing > Assets?

Agreement items are only created for promotion components that have the “Committed” flag set. Therefore, only for promotion components that have the “Committed” flag set will show up in the Agreement > Pricing > Assets applet.