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About Activity Templates and Activity Plans

Activity templates are created by an administrator and are blueprints for sets of activities. Activity templates can be invoked by end users to create activity plans.

You can select an appropriate activity template for the goal you want to achieve, which generates a list of activities associated with the activity template. This generated list of activities is an activity plan. An activity plan saves you from creating a new list of activities for each sales call, corporate visit, and special event. Typically, activity plans incorporate a company's best practices. Using activity plans, you can locate, assign, schedule, and track the progress of related activities.

For instance, the following list of activities can serve as an activity template for a corporate visit with clients for product demonstrations:

• Book a conference room
• Set an agenda
• Confirm the date and time with the customer
• Make arrangements for presenters

This set of tasks, when defined as a template and applied to create the activity plan, helps sales team members follow the steps your company recommends to prepare for a corporate visit. The list drives critical tasks and defines the recommended lead time for each activity within the template.

Each activity template is associated (through its Type value) with a certain business object. See Table 66 for a list of business object and screens that use activity templates. In activity plans views, only activity templates that have been associated with the active business object can be invoked. For example, on the Opportunity screen, only templates for opportunity activities are visible. Selecting a template creates all the activities defined by that template.