What you see is what you get @ Siebel

My colleague called me up this morning to show an amazing behaviour that he was observing while working on a Form Applet web layout. Actually he was creating a new applet : "Service Request Form Applet" and creating the web layout for that. He placed various field as per the requirement on the UI and it was lookinng good in Siebel Tools. To be on the safer side right clicked on the web layout of the applet and clicked on "preview" and applet was looking good. Then he asked me, "Eveything is looking fine?", I said, "yes absolutely" and he just smiled and compiled and SRF and showed me the applet in the application and I just got surpised to see that the UI was totally different what I just saw in the web layout of applet in Siebel Tools.

And my reaction was ...... hmmmmm, how it could had happen?? Isn't Siebel follow the "What you see is what you get" science?

I know, you must be thinking that whether we had exposed the correct "Applet Mode" in View Web Template Item or not. OR whether we are working on the applet's "Edit" layout or not. But don't worry, this was not the case :)

Well, both of us started scratching our heads and looking for the cause for it. Lot many things we tried, like a) deleted all controls from the UI b) Added some of the controls c) Changed the Web Layout by placing control on diff diff places...... but nothing worked. Still in the application UI, there is no change.

Lastly we found one OOB tools feature by which you can verify whether what you are placing on the UI is correct or not and most of you already must be knowing .... i.e. "Check Mappings".

So finally we right clicked on the web layout of the applet, clicked on "Check Mappings", and found there was many invalid mappings exists on the applet. System asked me to delete those and I just clicked "Yes" and now created the Web Layout again, compiled the SRF and wwwwooooooooooooo...... yes we were seeing what we were expecting.

We still believe, Siebel follow the "What you see is what you get" science. :)

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