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Calendar and Activities > Managing Calendars and Activities > Tracking Visits (Sales Calls) to Customers

Tracking Visits (Sales Calls) to Customers

NOTE: This feature is available in Oracle CRM On Demand Life Sciences Edition only. In addition, the information in this topic assumes that your company uses the default set of values for the Status picklist field. However, if your administrator changes the standard set of values in the Status picklist field, then the activity processing in Oracle CRM On Demand might not work as described in this topic.

You can do the following in the Call Detail page:

• Track visits (sales calls) to customers, recording information such as the products you discussed, the samples, promotional or educational items you left, solutions you discussed, and related contacts. You can track visits (sales calls) to customers in one of the following ways:
  • By adding products detailed, samples dropped, sample request, and promotional item information to the parent call.
  • By adding attendees to the parent call and then tracking the products detailed, samples dropped, sample request, and promotional item information for each individual attendee record.

    NOTE: An attendee is an individual who is present for a meeting or phone call.

    If using attendees to track visits (sales calls) to customers, note the following:

  • All attendees will inherit any product detailed information recorded on the parent call.
  • Attendee information will not impact the primary contact information on the parent call.
• Save the information as a template, called a Smart Call. The Smart Call template is helpful when you are visiting multiple customers for the same purpose, such as enrolling clinical investigators. You can keep the template private or make it available for others to use (public).

  When you apply the Smart Call template to a new call, most information from the smart call automatically populates the new record, including the products detailed, promotional items dropped, and samples dropped information related to the call. However, other fields, such as Lot Numbers for the samples dropped, are not saved as part of the template.

  After you apply the Smart Call template to a call, you can then update the remaining fields to track the details of this visit.

  If your company administrator included the Last Call Date field on your Account or Contact Edit page, that field is automatically updated on the linked account and all linked contacts. The update occurs when you change the call record’s status to Completed and save the record. The field reflects the start time and date of the call.

  NOTE: Oracle CRM On Demand Disconnected Mobile Sales can coexist with Smart Call configuration in Oracle CRM On Demand but does not support or respond to Smart Calls.

  For more information on Smart Calls, see Managing Smart Calls.

• Submit the call information for use in the reconciliation process for inventory periods.

  Oracle CRM On Demand Life Sciences Edition does the following after call detail information is submitted:

  • Sets the Call Activity status to Submitted.
  • Locks any Call Detail records with a status set to Submitted to prevent any changes or deletions of those records. For information about record locking for call activity records, see Configuration Guide for Oracle CRM On Demand Life Sciences Edition.
  • Creates a disbursement transaction that is used in the reconciliation process for the Inventory Period. For more information, see Reconciling an Inventory Period, Process of Reconciling the Inventory, Viewing Disbursement Transactions.

    NOTE: If the call record does not contain a valid contact state license or an associated signature record, and the validation checks for these conditions have been set up by your administrator on the Life Science Related Preferences page, then Oracle CRM On Demand displays an error message and prevents the call submission. For information on the relevant preferences, see the information on Enable Contact State License Validation and Enable Signature Validation in Setting Life Sciences Related Preferences.

Limitations When Changing the Primary Contacts Used in Contact Calls

If you have saved a contact call and then change the primary contact used in the call, then the following occurs:

• The call is listed under the original primary contact and the new primary contact.
• The call uses the new primary contact in both places.
• The subject line remains the same in both calls.

The following example explains the outcome of changing the primary contact:

1. You create two contacts: Jack and Jill.
2. You create a contact call for contact Jack, Call_Jack.

   The primary contact is set to Jack in this call.

3. You change the primary contact in the Call_Jack call to Jill.

   Oracle CRM On Demand automatically creates a second call under contact Jill, but it uses the original subject (Call_Jack). The Call_Jack call is now listed under both contacts Jack and Jill. If required, you can change the subject line of the call listed under Jill to something more suitable such as Call_Jill.

Before You Begin:

• To add, edit or submit calls (account calls or contact calls), your role must include the Calls: Enable Call Detailing privilege.
• To manage access to calls and configure an automated call submission to the Oracle CRM On Demand Disconnected Mobile Sales application, your role must include the Calls: Manage Calls privilege. Typically, this privilege is given to company administrators only.

To track a visit (sales call) to a customer

1. On the Accounts or Contacts Homepage, open the account or contact for your visit.

   For instructions on selecting records, see Finding Records.

   NOTE: You can plan a visit (sales call) for up to twenty five customers at one time by using the mass call planning feature in Oracle CRM On Demand. For more information about creating a planned call for multiple customers, see Mass Call Planning.

2. On the Account Detail or Contact Detail page in the Calls section, click New Call or Auto Call to create a new call record.

   NOTE: If the Calls section is not visible on your Details page, click the Edit Layout link in the upper-right corner of the page, and add the Calls section to your page layout. If the section is not available to add to your page layout, contact your company administrator.

   • Clicking New Call brings you to the Call Edit page where you must enter most information manually for the new call record.

     Make sure that you specify Call in the Type field. Otherwise, the following related items will not be available to you: Samples Dropped, Promotional Items, Products Detailed.

   • Clicking Auto Call brings you to the Call Detail page where the following field data is filled automatically in for the new call record:
     • The Status field has a value of Planned.
     • The End Date field has a value equal to the Start Date plus 30 minutes.
     • The Subject field has a value of Automated Call, and it shows the Account or Contact name.
     • The Type field has a value of Call.

       WARNING: Oracle CRM On Demand Life Sciences customers must not attempt to disable or customize Type=Call.

3. On the Call Edit or Call Detail page, do the following:
   1. To populate the new call record with information from an existing smart call template, click the Lookup icon next to the Smart Call field, and select the smart call.
   2. Enter or update the information.

      The table describing call record fields at the end of this procedure provides additional information regarding some of the fields.

      NOTE: Company administrators can customize Oracle CRM On Demand in a variety of ways, such as changing the names for record types, fields, and options in lists. So, the information you see might differ from the standard information described in the online help. Custom fields that your company administrator defined are saved in the Smart Call template.

4. Save the record by doing one of the following:
   • On the Call Edit page, click Save.
   • On the Call Detail page, click either Save as a Private Smart Call or Save as a Public Smart Call.

     For more information, see Saving Call Detail Information as a Template.

5. Next, do one of the following on the Call Detail page as required:
   • Add products detailed, samples dropped, sample request, or promotional item line items to the parent call record.
   • Add an attendee line item to the parent call record, then add products detailed, samples dropped, sample request, or promotional item line items to the attendee record.

     For more information about these tasks, see the following topics:

   • Adding Attendees to Calls
   • Linking Product Detailed Information to Calls
   • Linking Samples Dropped Information to Calls
   • Linking Promotional Item Information to Calls
   • Linking Sample Request Information to Calls
6. Click Submit to submit the call detail information for processing, see Submitting Call Detail Information for Inventory Tracking.
   

   Field	Description
   Key Call Information
   Subject	Limited to 100 characters. The name of the Smart Call template.
   Primary Contact	Automatically populated. If this call is linked to both an account and contact, the call record appears as related information on both the Account and Contact Detail pages. NOTE: This field is not copied to the new record when you create a new call record from a smart call template.
   Account	Automatically populated and read-only. If this call is linked to both an account and contact, the call record appears as related information on both the Account and Contact Detail pages. NOTE: This field is not copied to the new record when you create a new call record from a smart call template.
   Address	Displays the full address, which is taken from the individual address fields for the account or contact record. NOTE: This field is not copied to the new record when you create a new call record from a smart call template.
   Smart Call	If your user role includes the privilege, you can select a Smart Call template. NOTE: This field is not copied to the new record when you create a new call record from a smart call template.
   Status	Status of visit (call), which can be one of the following: Assigned, Completed, Deferred, In Call, In Chat, In Progress, Not Started, Planned, Signed, Submitted, Submitting, Waiting for Someone Else. Oracle CRM On Demand Life Sciences Edition uses the following status values when it is processing calls: Planned. The call appears on the Calendar and in the Planned Calls section on the Calendar pages. To see planned calls on the Calendar and in the Planned Calls section on the Calendar page, your user role must include the Calls: Calendar Planned Calls privilege. Signed. The content of the call has been acknowledged by the call recipient. Oracle CRM On Demand Life Sciences Edition locks the call, and you cannot make any further changes to the dropped samples, dropped promotional items, or sample requests for the call. Submitted. Oracle CRM On Demand Life Sciences Edition has processed the call and created transactions for reconciliation after the user has clicked Submit on the Account Call Detail or Contact Call Detail page. Submitting. The Oracle CRM On Demand Disconnected Mobile Sales application sets this status, which triggers workflow rules that your company administrator configures to update the call record. The Submitting status and workflow rules are used to support the integration of Oracle CRM On Demand with the Oracle CRM On Demand Disconnected Mobile Sales application. NOTE: The Signed or Submitting status triggers a call submission to the Oracle CRM On Demand Disconnected Mobile Sales application if your company administrator has configured the workflow run-time event action for the Activity record. For information on how to configure this run-time event action, see Configuration Guide for Oracle CRM On Demand Life Sciences Edition. For general information about configuring workflow rules, see Workflow Configuration. NOTE: This field is not copied to the new record when you create a new call record from a smart call template.
   Activity Currency	You can select a different currency to convert the price to another currency, if your company administrator set that feature up.
   Objective	Limit of 1,500 characters
   Start Time	Date and time the call starts. Defaults to today’s date and 12:00 p.m. NOTE: This field is not copied to the new record when you create a new call record from a smart call template.
   Duration	Calculated field (in minutes) based on start time and end time. NOTE: This field is not copied to the new record when you create a new call record from a smart call template.
   End Time	Defaults to start time plus 30 minutes. NOTE: This field is not copied to the new record when you create a new call record from a smart call template.
   Type	The can be one of the following: Call, Correspondence, Demonstration, Email, Event, Fax, Meeting, Personal, Presentation, Other, or To Do. To perform samples management, you must choose Call.
   Call Type	(Read-only) Displays Account Call, Professional Call, Attendee Call, or General Call depending on the type of call. NOTE: The Call Type field defaults to Professional Call for contact calls, Account Call for parent account calls, and Attendee Call when adding attendees to the parent account call.
   Ref #	Text field that can be used to store the reference number of a related item such as a signed document. NOTE: This field is not copied to the new record when you create a new call record from a smart call template.
   Additional Information
   Cost	NOTE: This field is not copied to the new record when you create a new call record from a smart call template.
   Paper Sign	NOTE: This field is not copied to the new record when you create a new call record from a smart call template.
   Private	NOTE: This field is not copied to the new record when you create a new call record from a smart call template.
   Description	Limit of 16,350 characters.
   Next Call	Limit of 1,500 characters. NOTE: This field is not copied to the new record when you create a new call record from a smart call template.

Related Topics

See the following topics for related information about tracking visits to customers:

• Dropping Samples During a Sales Call
• Setting the Maximum Number of Times Contacts Can be Sampled
• Authorizing Contacts to Receive Samples
• Tracking the Best Calling Times