Applications Administration Guide > Activities >
About Activities
Siebel applications use activities to organize, track, and resolve a variety of tasks, from finding and pursuing opportunities to closing service requests. If a task requires multiple steps that one or more people may carry out, activities greatly simplify the job. Activities can help:
- Define and assign the task
- Provide information to complete the task
- Track the progress of the task
- Track costs and bill for the task
These are the major advantages of breaking down a task into one or more activities:
- The ownership of the problem can remain at the management level, when required.
- The employee looking at assigned activities can identify only the required information.
- Reporting is simplified.
- Activities can be assigned to more than one person.
Activities are used to represent tasks in many situations such as scheduling and recording meetings, appointments, and interactions with customers and prospects. If one task leads to follow-up tasks, it is possible to associate follow-up activity records with a parent activity record. Activities can be viewed in several different locations, including the following:
- My To Do List in the Activities screen. This list shows all the user's activities, regardless of status. Access this list by navigating to the Activities screen and choosing My To Do List from the Show drop-down list.
- My To Do's in the Calendar screen. This list displays a subset of the data displayed in the My To Do List in the Activities screen, activities that have not been completed. For general information about using the Calendar screen, see Fundamentals.
Assignment Methods
Activities are assigned to employees. Activity assignment can take place in a number of ways:
- Manual assignment
- Automatic assignment to the creator of the activity (by predefaulting the Owner field to the activity's creator)
- Automatic assignment using Assignment Manager (see Siebel Assignment Manager Administration Guide).
Business Objects Associated with Activities
Siebel activity objects may be associated with other Siebel business objects. Some common associations are listed in Table 57. In most cases, this association is with a set of activities defined by an activity plan and individual (or stand-alone) activities. In a few cases, an object is associated either with an activity template or with stand-alone activities (not both).
Table 57. Association of Activity Object with Other Siebel Objects
|
|
|
Activities from Templates |
Accounts |
Account |
Yes |
Yes |
Agreements |
Service Agreement |
Yes |
Yes |
Assets |
Asset Management |
Yes |
No |
Campaigns |
Campaign |
Yes |
No |
Contacts |
Contact |
Yes |
Yes |
Messages |
Messaging |
Yes |
No |
Opportunities |
Opportunity |
Yes |
Yes |
Orders (Order Line Items view) |
Order Entry |
Yes |
Yes |
Preventive Maintenance |
FS PM Plan Item |
No |
Yes |
Programs |
Program (DBM) |
No |
Yes |
Projects |
Project |
Yes |
Yes |
Quality |
Product Defect |
Yes |
No |
Repairs |
FS Repair |
Yes |
Yes |
References |
Reference |
Yes |
No |
Service |
Service Request |
Yes |
Yes |
|