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How Siebel CRM Desktop Sets the Primary Employee of an Activity

This topic describes how Siebel CRM Desktop sets the primary employee of an activity for an appointment or a task.

How Siebel CRM Desktop Sets the Primary Employee of an Appointment

Siebel CRM Desktop sets the Primary Owned By field of an appointment according to the following priority:

1. Resolves the email address of the native Microsoft Outlook appointment to a Siebel CRM employee. If Siebel CRM Desktop finds an employee record that contains this address, then it sets the meeting organizer of the Outlook Calendar event as the primary.
2. If Siebel CRM Desktop does not find an employee that contains this address, then it compares this address with addresses from email accounts in the Microsoft Outlook profile. If it finds a match, then it returns the employee from the employee object. This situation can occur if the email address that is set for the current employee is not the same as the account address in the native Microsoft Outlook record for this employee.
3. If Siebel CRM Desktop does not find a match among the email accounts in the Microsoft Outlook profile, then no employee is found. In this situation, Siebel CRM Desktop sets the primary employee to the value in the Generic Siebel Owner system preference. For more information, see How Siebel CRM Assigns the Meeting Organizer.

For more information, see Administering an Appointment That a Non-Siebel User Creates.

How Siebel CRM Assigns the Meeting Organizer

A Siebel user is a user who is registered to use Siebel CRM Desktop or a Siebel application, such as Siebel Call Center. The meeting organizer is the user who creates the meeting. If a user creates a meeting, then Siebel CRM does the following:

• If the meeting organizer is a Siebel user, then Siebel CRM sets the value in the Owner field of the activity to the following value:

  Meeting Organizer

• If the meeting organizer is not a Siebel user, then Siebel CRM sets the value in the Owner field of the activity to the value that you specify in the Generic Siebel Owner system preference. For more information, see Administering an Appointment That a Non-Siebel User Creates.

How Siebel CRM Assigns the Meeting Organizer if This Organizer is Not a Siebel User

Siebel CRM requires the following:

• Every activity must include an owner.
• A Siebel employee record must exist for this owner.

Assume a Siebel user creates an appointment in Microsoft Outlook. In this situation, an employee record exists for this user, so Siebel CRM Desktop sets this user as the owner, and then synchronizes this appointment to the Siebel Server.

An employee record does not exist in the following situations:

• Assume employee A in your organization is not a Siebel user. This employee creates a meeting and then invites another employee in your organization who is a Siebel user to this meeting. A Siebel employee record does not exist for Employee A, and this employee cannot own a Siebel CRM record.
• A contact who is external to your company creates a meeting. A Siebel contact cannot own a meeting.

To create the meeting in this situation, Siebel CRM must first determine the owner for this activity. To avoid duplication errors and access conflicts between users for this meeting, Siebel CRM does the following:

1. Creates a meeting.
2. Assigns the value that you specify in the Generic Siebel Owner system preference as the owner of this meeting.

How Siebel CRM Desktop Sets the Primary Employee of a Task

Siebel CRM Desktop sets the primary employee for a task according to the following logic:

• If a user creates a shared task that is shared only with the user, then Siebel CRM Desktop resolves the user as the owner of the Siebel CRM activity.
• If a user creates a task that is shared and delegated, and if the user keeps a copy of the tasks in the user mailbox, then Siebel CRM Desktop creates an activity and sets the owner according to the following rules:
  • If the user delegates the task only to another employee, then Siebel CRM Desktop does the following work:
    • Creates an activity in Microsoft Outlook for the user
    • Sets this employee as an association to the employees team
    • Sets the first employee in the To line as the owner
  • If the user delegates the task of a shared contact to a mixture of shared, unshared, or native Microsoft Outlook contacts, then Siebel CRM Desktop does the following:
    • Creates the activity
    • Sets the user as the owner
    • Associates all shared contacts that it resolved from email addresses in the task To line. It makes these associations in the Contacts list.
  • If the user delegates the task to shared contacts and employees, then Siebel CRM Desktop does the following work:
    • Sets the first employee in the To line as the owner
    • Associates the creator with the Employee team
    • Associates contacts with the Contacts list
    • Does not create associations with other employees

      This configuration helps to avoid having two similar activities for the same employee:

    • For each assigned employee who accepts the task, Siebel CRM Desktop creates an activity with this employee, sets the owner, and associates the task creator to the Employees team. Siebel CRM Desktop does not create any other associations.
    • The activity that Siebel CRM Desktop creates in Microsoft Outlook for the first employee in the task To line is the same as the activity that it creates in Microsoft Outlook for the task creator.
  • If the user delegates the task to an external contact, then Siebel CRM Desktop creates an activity and sets the creator as the owner.
• If a user receives and shares a task, then Siebel CRM Desktop creates the activity, sets the employee who received the task as the owner, and adds the employee who sent the task to the Employees team as a nonprimary member.