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Creating Search Specifications for Forecast Series

The Auto Forecast Search Spec determines which revenue line items are automatically included in the forecast when it is created.

The Associate Search Spec determines which revenue line items can be manually added to the forecast by the sales representative after the forecast is created.

The Auto Forecast Search Spec and the Associate Search Spec can vary from one forecast series to another, and can be based on revenue type, revenue class, probability, or any other field on the revenue record. The user sees the results of the Associate Search Spec displayed as a list of records in the Add New Records pop-up on the Forecast Details form.

The Auto Forecast Search Spec uses the same syntax and grammar that the Associated Search Spec uses. However, it is usually more restrictive in scope. For example, you can create a forecast series with the following search specifications:

Associate Search Spec: [Revenue Type] = 'Shipped' or [Revenue Type] = 'Booked'

Auto Forecast Search Spec: ([Revenue Type] = 'Shipped' or [Revenue Type] = 'Booked') and [Committed] = 'Y'

In this example, the user can manually copy into the forecast any revenue record with a Revenue Type of Shipped or Booked, whether it is committed or not. However, the automatically included forecast details only include revenue records that were actually marked as committed.

As in this example, typically the Associate Search Spec is slightly less restrictive than the Auto Forecast Search Spec, allowing users to copy into their forecast some revenue records that did not meet the more restrictive Auto Forecast Search Spec criteria.

The Rollup Search Spec determines which detail records are included in the forecast summary.

The Rollup Search Spec can vary from one forecast series to another, and can be based on revenue type, revenue class, probability, or any other field on the forecast detail record.

Rollup Search Spec is used in scenarios where the History View Date and History Edit Date fields are specified in the dates for the forecast series. If when rolling up the forecasted revenue, the user wants to include only those revenues having a close date between the specified Start Date and End Date of the forecast series, the administrator must define the following Rollup Search Spec:

([Detail Date] >= "&FCST_START_DATE" and [Detail Date] <= "&FCST_END_DATE")

Table 7 shows some common search specifications.

NOTE:  Test the search specification before deploying the forecast. To test the search spec, navigate to the Revenues screen and create a new query. Type or paste the exact search specification into the Description field in the query and then run the query to see if it delivers the correct results.