CRM On Demand Learning Blog

When you have a question about CRM On Demand, there are several places you can go to get an answer. The Training and Support link in the CRM On Demand application is your pathway to information. From there, you can access:

• Training Webinars
• Instructor-Led Training Courses
• Solutions
• Service Requests
• Forums

Forums allow you to search for answers or exchange tips and information with other users that have similar needs...maybe even people in the same industry or related companies. We have a strong community that visits our forums, including Oracle employees, partners, and user experts. In addition, each forum is monitored by a CRM On Demand specialist that can help answer the questions that arise.

We now have four forums to meet your specific information needs:

CRM On Demand Administration Use this forum to get information about application customization, company administration, user management and access controls, data import, workflow, data rules and assignment, or content management.

CRM On Demand Analytics and Reports
Use this forum to get information about reports, dashboards, and Oracle CRM On Demand Answers.

CRM On Demand Integration Development
Use this forum to get information about Web Services, Oracle PIM Sync On Demand, Oracle Offline On Demand, or Oracle Outlook Email Integration On Demand.

Contact On Demand
Use this forum to get information about the use and administration of the Contact On Demand application and integration with CRM On Demand.

You do not need to sign in to search for answers or read forum discussions, but you must be a registered member of the forums to post a question or reply.

To sign in:

1. Click the Training and Support link, and then click Access Forums > Go to Forums to get to the Oracle CRM On Demand Forums page on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN).


2. Click the Sign in link. Sign in using your Oracle Web account credentials. If you do not have an Oracle Web account, you can register for free.

To register:

1. Click the Register link.


2. Enter an email address and password.




To avoid confusion, we recommend using the same password that you use for CRM On Demand.

3. Complete all required details about yourself and your company.


4. In the My Community Memberships section, mark the check boxes that correspond to the communities you wish to join. You must select the Oracle Technology Network check box in order to access the CRM On Demand forums.



5. When finished, click the Confirm button to complete the profile process.


6. After completing the profile process, sign in to OTN Forums. You should see your user ID in the upper-right corner. If you see Guest, you are not signed in.

Our mothers taught us to wait our turn. We learned that lesson, but it's much easier said than done. When we do things like import records into CRM On Demand, we expect immediate results. Usually, our imports are processed in 4 minutes or less and we move along happily, but every once in a while there appears to be a delay. That can be frustrating, I know, but just as Mom said, "We must wait our turn."

The first place to check when you don't see your imported records is the Import Queue. To get there:

1. Click the Admin link.
2. In the Data Management Tools section, click the Import and Export Tools link.
3. In the Import and Export Queues section, click the Import Request Queue link.

Rush hour - Yes, you even experience traffic in cyberspace. Most CRM On Demand customers share a multi-tenant pod (a CRM On Demand instance or environment) with other companies. During certain times of day and certain days of the month, there may be more import activity and slower queues. Doing imports during off hours, like non-working times will keep you out of most traffic jams. If you're not sure of the best time for your import, do a test run.

Data Loads - Larger imports take more time. If another person on your pod is trying to import a lot of data, you'll have to wait longer. To maintain your own sanity and the sanity of those behind you in line, make sure you understand the business need behind your import and only import the records you MUST HAVE to meet your business needs.

Work in Progress - Before you get in the import queue, check to be sure that your import won't coincide with planned maintenance or downtime for your pod. To view your maintenance schedule, click the Service Information link at the bottom of any Oracle CRM On Demand page.

If the status of your import is In Progress, you're waiting on your own import. To make sure your import processes as quickly as possible, it's best to prepare in advance. Data preparation and planning are VERY important steps to ensuring a smooth import. We have a few resources to help you:

Free Webinars:
Importing Your Data - Part 1
Importing Your Data - Part 2
Consulting Best Practices for Data Import

Instructor-Led Course:
Data Import Workshop

Solutions and Tools:
Before You Import Data
Data Preparation and Cleanup Guide
Address Mapping Template and Phone Mapping Guide

Help Topics:
Click the Help link on any page in the CRM On Demand application and find the Import and Export Tools topic on the Contents tab under Administering Oracle CRM On Demand > Data Management Tools.

Forum:
CRM On Demand Administration forum

You can now view your company's maintenance schedule at any time from within CRM On Demand.

On your home page, scroll to the very bottom.

Click Service Information.

The new Service Information screen lets you see the following:

• Your upcoming scheduled maintenance dates for the year, for both your production and staging environments


• Any maintenance you had recently


• Details about these maintenance sessions


• Your production environment's availability


• Your application version

For customers on multi-tenant pods, your regular maintenance windows are now monthly.

For single-tenant subscribers, your regular maintenance windows are still required, but they are established jointly with your administrator.

On rare occasions, an unplanned outage may occur; this information will be made available on the home page of the Training and Support Center, in the System Notifications section.

A big thanks to Charles McGuinness, who initially sent out this information!

How easy is it to add a Twitter feed to CRM On Demand? Try these steps and then you tell us! Our example lets you track the "tweets" of your CRM On Demand contacts.

Step 1: Create a Twitter ID field on the contact record
First, you need to create a custom field to hold the Twitter user ID, which is used to retrieve the correct RSS feed from Twitter.

1. In CRM On Demand, go to Admin > Application Customization > Contact > Contact Field Setup.
2. Click New Field.
3. On the Contact Field Edit page, enter Twitter ID for Display Name, and select Text (Short) for Field Type.
4. Click Save.

Step 2: Add the field to the contact page
Next, you need to add the new field to the page layout so that CRM On Demand users can see it on their layout:

1. Go to Admin > Application Customization > Contact > Contact Page Layout.


2. Click the Edit link for Administrator (or whichever layout you wish to use).


3. Click Step 3 Field Layout.


4. Move Twitter ID from Available Fields to some place on the page layout, such as the second Key Contact Information box.



5. Click Finish.

Step 3: Create the Twitter Web applet
With the Twitter ID field on the layout, you can now build an RSS Web applet for it:

1. Go to Admin > Application Customization > Contact > Contact Web Applet.


2. Click the New button.


3. On the Contact Web Applet page, set up these values:


• Name: Contact Twitter Feed


• Location: Detail page


• Type: Feed


• URL: http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline.rss?id=%%%stTwitter_ID%%%&count=10


• Let users override URL: No


• Open Records in: Current Window


• Description: Twitter Feed for Contact


• Height: 200

View image

4. Click Save.

Step 4: Add Web applet to page layout
Next, you need to add the newly created Web applet to the Contact page.

1. Go to Admin > Application Customization > Contact > Contact Page Layout.


2. Click the Edit link for Administrator (or whichever layout you wish to use).


3. Click Step 4 Related Information.


4. Move Contact Twitter Feed to Displayed Information.



5. Click Finish.

Step 5: Set up Contact / Layout
All the administration work is finished. The last step is to enter a Twitter ID into a contact record and make sure the user's personal layout includes the Twitter applet.

1. Sign out and then back in to CRM On Demand.


2. Open a contact record, enter a Twitter ID into the field, and save the record. You can use "oraclecrm," if you have nothing else.

NOTE: If you cannot see the Contact Twitter Feed related information section, click the Edit Layout link, and make sure that you have the Contact Twitter Feed in the Displayed Related Information column.

View image

3. Click Save.

And you're done!
One caveat -- if you don't have a Twitter ID for a contact, Twitter returns an error for the RSS feed, which is shown in CRM On Demand.

Have fun!

If you have a CRM On Demand account, you might already know that My Oracle Support (formerly MetaLink) includes a knowledge library where you can search for specific answers to your CRM On Demand questions. You can also browse these categories:

• Recorded Webinars


• Quick Guides


• Implementation Templates and Tools


• Downloads (free add-on applications)

• You sign in with the same username and password.


• You see the same Service Requests.


• You see the same Knowledge Base content.


• You see the same Profile information.

New to My Oracle Support? Then review this how-to guide for finding solutions and training in My Oracle Support.

Already familiar with MetaLink/My Oracle Support? Watch this 15-minute Webinar to see what has changed in the new version.

If you experience any issues getting into My Oracle Support, contact Customer Care. From within CRM On Demand, click the Training and Support link at the top right, then Contact Us in the left frame.

If you have any specific questions about CRM On Demand-related content on My Oracle Support, email us.

I really like the reporting capabilities of CRM On Demand. Building simple reports is very easy to do, which is great. But the flexibility of Answers On Demand, the reporting tool built into CRM On Demand, also allows reporting experts to write very complex reports - which may or may not be so great. Like anything else, if you know what you're doing, having a lot of options can be a very good thing. But, if you're less confident, you might end up frustrated by a report that doesn't seem to do what it should. So, I'd like to point out some resources that can help you report developers out there - from novice to expert.

Post a comment if you know of other resources that I didn't mention. And be sure to tell me if you think something is missing that would be helpful - we want to hear about what people look for but don't find in our knowledge library.

The Basics
The Build Your Own Reports series of Webinars can help you get started with the basics of creating custom reports. You can find these on the My Oracle Support portal (click Training and Support > Knowledge & Training > Sign into My Oracle Support).

Build Your Own Reports:

1. Control Visibility to Report Data
   
2. Create List Reports
   
3. Format Custom Reports
   
4. Create Charts for Reports
   
5. Create Pivot Tables for Reports
   
6. Control Access to Reports
   

The Creating Custom Dashboards Webinar shows how you can group several reports together on a dashboard page.

Beyond the Basics
For real go-getters, the Advanced Analytics Workshop goes into depth about the capabilities of Answers On Demand. Lots of tips, typical reporting scenarios, and best practices for building reports are included in that course.

The Analytics and Reports user forum is a great resource because it connects you with a community of other CRM On Demand users and experts.

And here are a few documents from our knowledge library on My Oracle Support that you should check out.

• Optimizing Analytics Performance in Oracle CRM On Demand (Doc ID 804313.1)
  Read this document before you create any reports. It gives tips about creating reports that return results quickly and points out options that are likely slow reports down. You might decide to use those options anyway, but it helps you make informed choices.
  
• About Analytics Visibility (Doc ID 434851.1)
  Everyone should read this to understand the different settings involved in controlling access to data in reports.
  
• What Session and Repository Variables are available in creating reports? (Doc ID 601662.1) - if you don't know what a session or repository variable is, you probably don't need this document. If you do, this lists the variables you can use to filter data.
  

Title: Oracle CRM On Demand Reporting
Author: Michael Lairson
The book on Amazon.

Mike put together a nice resource site to detail the prebuilt reports available in CRM On Demand, too: CRM On Demand Resource Library. It's always a good idea to take a look at what is already available to see if you can just modify one of the prebuilt reports a bit to get what you want - so this resource might help.

(Thanks to Thea O'Connell for her contribution to this content!)

Right now, you can access a PDF version of Release 16 Online Help in these languages supported by CRM On Demand:

British English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish
Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Thai

Just 3 clicks to get to those files:

1. Go to the Oracle CRM On Demand Documentation library located on OTN (Oracle Technology Network).

Just as always when accessing OTN, you initially need to sign in.

2. Click the View Library link for Release 16:



3. From the library list of documentation, click the Additional Languages link:



Voila!




NOTE: When the localized versions are released in the application (within the next few weeks), you can always access the PDFs by switching your language settings and then clicking the PDF link from any Help page. But accessing them all from this page is probably more convenient and makes them available sooner!

Stay tuned: The Online Help for CRM On Demand Release 16 is currently being translated into the following languages: Swedish, Polish, Russian, Finnish, Danish. The PDFs will be posted as soon as localization is complete.

While you are in the neighborhood: Download the most recent versions of the Configuration Guide for Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and the Web Services On Demand Guide. Bookmark this page and check back routinely. Release 16 guides are dynamic and updates are posted on OTN regularly.

We’re always interested in finding better ways to share our favorite CRM On Demand resources with you. However, depending on where you are in your CRM On Demand experience, your needs for information will most likely vary. So, we started to think that maybe this is where social applications and sites can play a role in training.

Instead of our “pushing” out information to you, perhaps everyone visiting our site could “pull” content from one another as well. We could add an interactive or social element to our training resources, so customers or partners could add content and share “tribal knowledge” from their experiences with CRM On Demand.

Give us your opinion on this idea! Would a social element to a training site be something you would find useful? Is this something you would contribute to? Do you have something better in mind? Post a comment on this article and let us know what you think!

People in our sales groups hear a lot of good questions from potential customers who are evaluating CRM On Demand. So, it’s not surprising that some of the best solutions to real use requirements come from the people in those sales groups. I saw one such solution this week that I thought might be useful to many – a very straight-forward way to make sure that sales people don’t re-open an Opportunity record once it has been closed, using field validation. Of course, not every company has this requirement, but you could also use it in other contexts, so keep it in mind for your “how can we…” –type discussions.

Here's how it works:
(Many thanks to Karthik Jayagovind for providing this content.)

You might want to prevent users from changing the Opportunity Sales Stage picklist value from ‘Closed/Lost’ or ‘Closed/Won’ back to any of the earlier stages (say, ‘Short List’, ‘Negotiation’, etc.). This can be achieved by writing a field validation rule for the ‘Sales Stage Id’ field in the Opportunity record-type. Usually field validation rules are written directly for the field that one wants to control, but in this case, you cannot write these rules for the Sales Stage field, because the field validation option is disabled. Instead you can use the Sales Stage Id field to achieve the same result.

To do this:

1. Locate Sales Stage Id on the Opportunity Field Setup page and click the Edit link.
   
2. Enter the following rule in the Field Validation field:
   PRE('')<>'Closed/Won' AND PRE('')<>'Closed/Lost'
   If you want only users with a certain role, such as the Administrator, to have the ability to change a closed opportunity to one of the earlier stages, then you can exclude that user role in the field validation rule:
   (PRE('')<>'Closed/Won' AND PRE('')<>'Closed/Lost') OR (UserValue('')='Administrator')
   
3. Enter the error message that should display when a user tries to change the sales stage value on a closed Opportunity record.
   
4. Click Save.
   
5. Test the field validation rule to make sure it works as you expect.
   

If you want to see more detail, including more pictures, check out this document on My Oracle Support: Restricting Opportunity Sales Stage Value Using Field Validation (Doc ID 841398.1). (You'll need to sign in with your My Oracle Support account to access the document.)

Note: I developed this article from discussions with Cari Aves, so thank you, Cari!

Why is the ability to customize related information sections such a popular enhancement in Release 16? Well, displaying certain fields in the sections lets users review their most critical information without drilling down on related information records. You can eliminate that pesky go-back-to-the-previous-record step!

Even better, if the Inline Edit feature is enabled at your company, users can also update that information right there in the related information sections, saving them a lot of time.

Let’s take the Product Revenue section linked to opportunities as an example. Here’s how the default section appears when a sales rep goes to an Opportunity Detail page:

Notice that the first column is Product Name, second is Quantity, and so on. From this related information section, the sales reps can update the quantity and pricing fields. If your company bases forecasting on products, clicking the Update Opportunity Totals also lets them see the impact of those changes—maybe discounted prices on a specific product—on the opportunity total revenue. This helps your sales reps work through several scenarios before deciding on one.

However, let’s say that your sales reps also want to specify which line item is included in the Forecast field when forecasts are generated. They want to see the Forecast check box as the first column and the Revenue field as the second column. Their final layout should look like this:

To make this requested change, you first need to create the related information layout. In our example, you’ll be customizing the Product Revenue related information layout linked to Opportunity records (the "primary record"):

1. Click Admin > Application Customization > Opportunity > Opportunity Related Information Layout. This takes you to the list of related information sections available for Opportunity records.


2. Click Product Revenues.


3. Copy the standard layout and name it: Forecast & Revenue.


4. In Step 2, add Forecast to the Selected Fields box, and then move Revenue up in the list:



5. Click Finish.

1. From the Admin page, click Application Customization > Opportunity > Opportunity Page Layout.


2. Click the Edit link next to your role so that you can test it. Later, you’ll follow these steps for the roles whose layout you want to change.


3. Go to Step 5 in the Page Layout wizard.


4. In the Product Revenue row, select the new layout: Forecast & Revenue



5. Click Finish.

You can go immediately to any opportunity record to make sure the change has been applied. Scroll down to the Product Revenue section and verify that the Forecast check box appears in the first column, where sales reps will be able to select or deselect a line item:

To test it further, update a product price in the Product Revenue section using Inline Edit:

The Revenue field is updated immediately:

Then click the Update Opportunity Totals button to recalculate the Revenue number on the opportunity record itself:

Just to round out our discussion, I want to remind you of a few things:

• Other fields, such as Close Date, determine what products and opportunities are included in the generated forecasts. For more information on forecasting, see online Help, My Oracle Support, and specifically the Sales: Accurate Forecasting and Pipeline Analysis Webinar.


• Related information sections can be different for different primary records. In other words, the contact records linked to accounts can display certain fields in one sequence. For activities, the linked contact records can display other fields or display the same fields but in a different sequence. That’s why the first step in setting up related information sections is to go to the section for customizing the primary record.


• You can use the same primary record-related information layout across different roles. The new layout appears in the drop-down list for all roles (Step 5 in the Page Layout wizard).


• The Record Preview feature allows you to see some important fields for linked records in the top section of the Detail pages themselves. This is another feature that is enabled across your company, giving users visibility to the right information in the quickest fashion and without moving from one page to another!

OK, now that you’ve seen this example, what other ways can you effectively use this capability? We’d like to know so that others can learn from you! Just comment on this article to share your knowledge!