Siebel Life Sciences Guide > Planning Calls in Pharma >

Creating a Contact Call (End User)


End users track details about calls made on a contact with contact call records. Although users can create and display contact calls on the Contacts screen, they enter details about the actual call on the Activities screen. Also, as activities, contact call records can also be viewed in the Calendar screen as planned events.

For more information on entering call details, see Recording and Submitting Contact Calls.

NOTE:  Before user can enter information about products detailed, samples, and promotional items dropped during a contact call, they must set up their personal lists. For more information, see Creating a Personal List (End User).

This section presents four different methods of creating contact calls:

From the Activities Screen

To create a contact call from the Activities screen

  1. Navigate to the Activities screen > Activities List view.
  2. In the Activities list, click New Contact Call.
  3. In the Contact Call form, create a new record and complete the necessary fields.

    Some fields are described in the following table.

    Field
    Comments

    Last Name

    The contact to be visited during this call.

    Ref #

    A reference number for this call. This reference number becomes the transaction number (Transaction # field) for a samples transaction corresponding to this call. For information on samples transactions, see Managing Pharma Samples.

    Smart Call

    The Smart Call template to be associated with this call. Make a selection from the Pick Smart Call dialog box.

    A Smart Call is a template that you apply to contact calls that defines information about the products detailed, samples and promotional items distributed, and issues discussed on a call. Once you apply a Smart Call template to a call, you can make additional edits any fields in the Contact Call Detail view. For more information on Smart Calls, see Creating Smart Calls.

    Status

    The status of this call. The default value is Planned. This value changes to Synchronized after synchronization.

    Be aware, you cannot select the value Submitted. To change the status of the call to Submitted, you must submit the call. For more information, see Recording and Submitting Contact Calls.

For more information on how to enter information in Call Products Detailed, Sample Products Dropped, Promotional Items Dropped, and Issues lists, see Recording and Submitting Contact Calls.

NOTE:  If you applied a Smart Call to the call (as described in Step 3), you may only need to verify that all the information in the four lists is accurate.

From the Contacts Screen Using the Schedule Button

When you use the schedule button to create calls, the auto-scheduling function:

  • Tries to schedule a call at a best time for each contact
  • Schedules a call even if it does not find a best time
  • Distributes the calls over the time period (For example, if you select 10 contacts to be scheduled over a 5-day week, two calls per day are scheduled.)

To automatically schedule contact calls using the Schedule button

  1. Navigate to the Contacts screen > Contacts List view.
  2. In the Contacts list, select one or more contacts.
  3. Click Schedule.
  4. In the Auto Schedule dialog box, review the displayed values, make any needed changes, and click OK.

NOTE:  The auto-scheduling function does not check for scheduling conflicts. Therefore, users need to verify that automatically scheduled calls do not conflict with other activities in their calendar.

From the Contacts Screen (Manually)

To manually schedule a contact call in the Calls view tab

  1. Navigate to the Contacts screen > Contacts List view.
  2. Drill down on a contact.
  3. Click the Calls view tab.
  4. In the Call list, create a new record and complete the necessary fields.

    NOTE:  You cannot change the call's Status field to Submitted from this view. To change the status of the call to Submitted, you must submit the call. For more information, see Recording and Submitting Contact Calls.

  5. To go to the Contact Call Detail view, drill down on the date hyperlink in the Start Date field.

    The Contact Call Detail view appears.

For more information on recording calls, see Recording and Submitting Contact Calls.

From the Calendar Screen

To schedule a contact call in the Calendar

  1. Navigate to the Calendar screen > Calendar view.
  2. Select either the Daily or Weekly view tab.
  3. Navigate to the day on which you want to schedule the call and click New Contact Call.

    The Contact Call Detail view appears.

For more information on recording calls, see Recording and Submitting Contact Calls.

Siebel Life Sciences Guide Copyright © 2007, Oracle. All rights reserved.