Siebel Life Sciences Guide > Planning Calls > Process of Planning Calls >

Setting Up a Meeting

Use the Meetings subviews of the Activities screen to manage information about activities, speakers, and invitees associated with meetings. Meetings themselves are activities that appear in the My Activities view.

NOTE:  A MedEd event is similar to a meeting activity, but offers planning, budgeting, and cost aggregation functionality. MedEd activities are only associated with the separate Siebel MedEd module. For more information, see Managing Pharma Medical Education Events.

Setting up a meeting involves the following steps:

• Create a new meeting record. For more information, see To create a meeting.

  NOTE:  Users can also create a meeting by clicking the New Meeting button in the Activities list of the My Activities view.

• Create activities for the meeting. For more information, see To create a meeting activity.
• Add speakers for the meeting. For more information, see To add a meeting speaker.
• Add invitees for the meeting. For more information, see To add a meeting invitee.

This task is a step in Process of Planning Calls.

Creating a Meeting

The following procedure shows you how to create a meeting.

To create a meeting

1. Navigate to the Activities screen, then the Activity List view.
2. In the Activities list, click New Meeting.
3. In the Meetings form, complete the necessary fields.

   Some fields are described in the following table.

   Field	Comments
   Account	The account associated with this meeting. Select an account from the Pick Account dialog box. The Location and Site fields are automatically filled based on the account you specify.
   Cost	The application calculates this field based on costs entered for meeting activities. For more information, see To create a meeting activity. The application calculates this field when you click the Distribute Costs button in the Meeting Invitees view and updates it each time you click the Distribute Costs button again. For more information, see To add a meeting invitee.
   Start Date	The application automatically populates this field with the date and time that the record was created. If needed, make additional changes.
   Status	This field is hard-coded so that its value cannot be set to Submitted to avoid interference with other activity types, such as contact calls and account calls that are based on the same class of Siebel business components.

Creating a Meeting Activity

The following procedure shows you how to add activity information to a meeting.

To create a meeting activity

1. Navigate to the Activities screen, then the Meeting List view.
2. In the Activities list, do one of the following:
   • Create a new meeting. For more information, see To create a meeting.
   • Select an existing meeting and then drill-down on the Name field.
3. Click the Meeting Activities tab.
4. In the Meeting Activities list, create a new record and complete the necessary fields.

Add information about speakers and invitees, as described in the following procedures.

NOTE:  Meetings are activities that appear in the My Activities view. However, activities that you create for a meeting are child records of the meeting. These records appear in the Meeting Activities tab view and as activities in the Calendar views.

Adding a Meeting Speaker

The following procedure shows you how to add speaker information to a meeting.

To add a meeting speaker

1. Navigate to the Activities screen, then the Meeting List view.
2. In the Activities list, do one of the following:
   • Create a new meeting. For more information, see To create a meeting.
   • Select an existing meeting and then drill-down on the Name field.
3. Click the Meeting Speakers tab.
4. In the Meeting Speakers list, create a new record and complete the necessary fields.

   Affiliated contacts are those associated with the account (if any) specified in Step 3 in the To create a meeting procedure. For more information, see Indicating an Affiliation Between an Account and a Contact.

Adding a Meeting Invitee

The following procedure shows you how to add invitee information to a meeting.

To add a meeting invitee

1. Navigate to the Activities screen, then the Meeting List view.
2. In the Activities list, do one of the following:
   • Create a new meeting. For more information, see To create a meeting.
   • Select an existing meeting and then drill-down on the Name field.
3. Click the Meeting Invitees tab.
4. In the Meeting Invitees list, create a new record and complete the necessary fields.

Updating the Cost Field in the Meeting Invitees List

The application calculates the value of the Cost field the Meeting Invitees list based on values entered in Cost field of the Meeting Activities list. It then distributes the costs across all invitees whose Invitee Status field is set to Attended.

To update the Cost field in the Meeting Invitees list

1. Click the Meeting Activities tab.
2. In the Meeting Activities list, record the costs associated with each meeting activity in the Cost field.
3. To distribute the meeting costs across those individuals who attended the meeting, click the Meeting Invitees tab.
4. In the Meeting Invitees list, update the Invitee Status for each invitee.

   Selecting the status Attended includes the selected invitee in the count of contacts for distribution of meeting costs.

5. Click Distribute Costs.

As you add costs and attendees to the meeting, repeat the previous steps as many times as needed.