Creating administrative Siebel user accounts

Logging on as the Siebel Administrator (SADMIN) should only be done to verify the installation and to undertake special activities as directed by the Oracle documentation. General administrative tasks should be carried out using our own account, which allows easier tracking and troubleshooting of our activities.

In order to create a new administrative user, we use the Siebel application (where we are logged in as SADMIN) and navigate to the Administration - User screen using the Sitemap. In the Employees list view, we use the Query functionality to find the employee with a User ID of "SADMIN" and use the Copy Record command (Right-click and select Copy Record or press CTRL+B) to copy the SADMIN employee record.

In the new record, we modify the First Name, Last Name, and User ID fields to reflect our own account. The following screenshot shows a new example employee account for Alexander Hansal with the User ID AHANSAL created as a copy of SADMIN.

Copying the Siebel Administrator employee ensures that we have the same user rights assigned and can therefore carry out the same administrative tasks.

Before the new user is able to log on, we must register the user ID and password (note that we did not enter a password in the Siebel Client) with the authentication system. As we selected the default authentication via the RDBMS account management in which the Siebel database is located, we have to create a user account in the RDBMS.

We will accomplish this by simply copying the set of commands to create a user account from the grantusr.sql file that we used during the Siebel database installation. It is highly recommended to create files and store them in a central location rather than typing the commands directly into the system console. Storing the scripts we used to alter the system configuration allows for easier tracking of changes, troubleshooting, and reuse of the scripts in other environments.

The following code can be imagined as part of a .sql input file used to create the AHANSAL user account in an Oracle database.

rem Create user account AHANSAL
create user AHANSAL identified by TZ7yxc99;
grant sse_role to AHANSAL;
alter user AHANSAL default tablespace SIEBELDB_DATA;
alter user AHANSAL temporary tablespace TEMP;

The script creates a user account whose name matches exactly (case is important) the user ID of the new Siebel employee. The user will have the password TZ7yxc99 and has the role and tablespace assignment of a typical Siebel user.

Note that this method of creating user accounts in the RDBMS is suitable for small evaluation or development environments. For production environments with thousands of users, companies normally decide to use LDAP or Microsoft Active Directory as the authentication system. User accounts typically already exist in those directories. Setting up authentication via directory services will be discussed in a later chapter.

We can now log off the user SADMIN (by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+X) and log in using our new administrative account. We should use that account rather than SADMIN from now on.

Tip

The Siebel Web Client supports keyboard shortcuts.

As we strive for professional and efficient use of the tools provided, we should acquaint ourselves with the most important keyboard shortcuts. A list of keyboard shortcuts can be easily found in the Siebel online help, which can be opened using CTRL+H. Click the Contents hyperlink and then click Getting Started: Using Keyboard Shortcuts.