Getting Started with Your Implementation

About Setting Up Oracle Social Network with Oracle Sales Cloud

Oracle Social Network is a secure, private social network that integrates with Oracle Sales Cloud and connects you with all your colleagues.

You can use Oracle Social Network for:

Discussing projects, plans, and issues in public forums, membership groups, or one-on-one.
Reviewing and publishing files.
Following the daily activities of the people you choose.

The real power of Oracle Social Network is how easily it integrates with common sales objects. For example, you can bring an Oracle Sales Cloud opportunity into a Conversation where you can discuss it, plan around it, and share it. You can take the opportunity from possibility to realization without losing any of the casual and formal information that flows from all of this activity.

With Oracle Social Network, you and your teams have the tools you need to collaborate, capitalize on collective experience, and make informed business decisions.

Before you can use it to integrate with your Oracle Sales Cloud objects (such as leads or opportunities), both you as the administrator and your end users must perform some setup tasks. These setup tasks include:

As the administrator, you must enable Oracle Sales Cloud objects for Oracle Social Network.
Your end users can then enable any Oracle Sales Cloud records that they want to include Oracle Social Network Conversations on.

Enabling Oracle Sales Cloud Objects for Oracle Social Network

Before users can make individual Oracle Sales Cloud records available to include Oracle Social Network Conversations in, you must enable the objects. You can enable entire objects or only certain attributes of the objects. You can also decide whether new objects are automatically shared in Oracle Social Network or whether they need to be manually shared.

Enabling Oracle Sales Cloud Records for Oracle Social Network

After you have enabled an object, users must share the object records they wish to collaborate on with Oracle Social Network.

Setting Up Oracle Sales Cloud for Oracle Social Network

With Oracle Social Network, you can create Social Objects and Conversations that are associated with an Oracle Sales Cloud object record, such as an opportunity. Social Objects are Oracle Sales Cloud object records that are mapped into Oracle Social Network. As the administrator, you can expose a record from an Oracle Sales Cloud application in Oracle Social Network so selected people can see it.

Enabling an Object for Oracle Social Network

You want to be able to share information about sales opportunities with colleagues in other teams. Before this can happen, you need to enable the Opportunity object. Once the object is enabled, team members can then enable individual opportunity records for discussion in Oracle Social Network.

However, the sales manager has decided not to allow the sharing of all the information in the opportunity object, since some of it is sensitive and he doesn't want everyone to be able to view it. Specifically, he doesn't want the Level of Risk and Strategic Value attributes shared. Further, he has instructed you to set up the Opportunity object so that each time someone creates a new opportunity record, that record isn't shared automatically but must be manually marked for sharing.

Enabling the Opportunity Object for Manual Sharing

To let users manually control which opportunity records are enabled for collaboration, follow these steps:

Sign in as a setup user or sales administrator.
In the Setup and Maintenance work area, find the Manage Oracle Social Network Objects task.
Click the Go to Task icon for the task.
Scroll down to Opportunity Management, open it and select Opportunity as the object you want to enable.
Click Enable Object.
Since you want users to manually integrate each new opportunity record with Oracle Social Network, select Manual and click OK.
Click Save.
Notice that the Opportunity now includes a Warning icon in the Status column. You still need to enable attributes for the object.

Enabling the Opportunity Object Attributes

To enable the attributes you want to make available to share:

Under Attributes, click the New button.
A list of attributes for Opportunity is displayed. The sales manager doesn't want the Level of Risk and Strategic Value attributes enabled, so select the Enabled check box at the top to enable all the attributes, then scroll down and deselect the Level of Risk and Strategic Value check boxes so they won't be enabled.
Click OK.

Notice that a green check mark now appears in the Opportunity object's Status column.
Click Save.
A dialog box appears, showing your progress. When the process is complete, a confirmation displays.

Enabling Oracle Sales Cloud Object Records for Oracle Social Network

After you have enabled one or more Oracle Sales Cloud objects for use with Oracle Social Network, your end users can share object records for Oracle Social Network Conversations.

Sharing an Object Record

You have enabled the Opportunity object for Oracle Social Network, and now an end user wants to start a Conversation with her team members about a particular opportunity. To do that, she must share the opportunity record so that all her team can see it. She does this by enabling it as a Social Object. To enable a record as a Social Object:

Navigate to the opportunity record you want to share.

Notice that the opportunity record includes a Social link at the top. This was added because the administrator has enabled the Opportunity object for Oracle Social Network.

On the simplified UI, the opportunity record includes a Conversations subtab.
Click the Social link, or the Conversations subtab when in the simplified UI.

On the desktop UI, a panel appears on the right side of the record. Because no one has shared this opportunity record as a Social Object yet, a Share button appears.

Note

If someone had already shared this record, you would see a Join button that would allow you to join the existing Conversation.
Click the Share button
The opportunity record is now shared as a Social Object. Your team members can now join the Conversation.