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About Configuring Revenue and Forecast Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets in Siebel applications allow the end user to view a list of values consolidated into a more concise format. For example, instead of seeing a long list of services delivered over a period of many months, the end user sees just one row of information with the revenues listed out over time, with a series of dates as column headers.

The revenue spreadsheets are combined with revenue lists and revenue charts in Revenues views. You can move between the different displays by clicking the desired hyperlink in a Revenues view. This ability to view information in a variety of formats (list, chart, or spreadsheet) is useful when dealing with recurring revenues over time. This is especially true in cases where multiple products, employees, or revenue classes are involved in one user view.

Revenue and forecasting forms, lists, and charts are configured in Siebel Tools, using the standard properties and configuration techniques typically used for forms, charts, and lists. You can add columns, remove columns, change column headings, and apply calculations in Siebel Tools, using the same approach that you would use for almost any other Siebel applet.

Some revenue and forecast data displays in a spreadsheet-like applet. Spreadsheet applets are configured differently from forms, lists, and charts. This topic explains how to make changes to Revenue and Forecasting spreadsheet applets.

Spreadsheet Column Types

Revenue and forecasting spreadsheets contain a set of static, or nonrepeating, columns on the left, followed by a set of dynamic, or repeating, columns on the right. In the default Siebel application configuration, the Opportunity Revenues spreadsheet view consists of static columns including the Product Name and the Revenue Class on the left, followed by a repeating Revenue field on the right. The Revenue field is a dynamic column that repeats once for each date in the Opportunity Revenues list.

You can configure both the static columns and the dynamic columns in the spreadsheet using Siebel Tools. You can add, hide, or change the order of columns in the spreadsheet. While the default configuration has just one repeating column, it is possible to have several repeating columns such as quantity, price, and revenue, or to have just margin and revenue, for example.

The Add Column button in the spreadsheet view allows users to dynamically add a new date column. The new column must be a valid date, such as 1/1/01. After the creation of the new date column, a new revenue record in the List view is automatically created with the appropriate default values consistent with the parent record, for instance Opportunity Name or Account Name.

Spreadsheet Groups

In the Opportunity and Account Revenue screens, when users click the Revenues view tab, the items in the spreadsheet are automatically grouped together using a field called Dynamic Group Number. Items entered in the spreadsheet on the same row automatically receive the same Dynamic Group Number. Although these items are really individual records in the Revenue list and the Revenue table, they are grouped together in the spreadsheet using the Group Number. In the Forecasting views, it is the Forecast Item ID that ties the items in a row together.

When a user enters a value into a repeating cell in a Revenue and Forecasting spreadsheet view, a revenue record is automatically created with the appropriate default values. Typically, the default values include the static information in the spreadsheet, plus a few additional attributes. Changing the static values in the list can cause a revenue item to look different from other members of its group. In the default configuration of Siebel Sales, such records are automatically moved into their own groups. Changes to static values in the spreadsheet are automatically propagated to each of the corresponding revenue records. While the general behavior of the spreadsheet and list applets has already been defined, you can configure the content of these applets to meet end-user requirements.