Oracle Web Services On Demand Guide > Oracle CRM On Demand Objects Accessible Through Web Services > Core Parent Objects (Web Services v2.0) >

Activity

The activity object stores information on an activity that a user must carry out, for example, a call-back activity for an account. When an activity is created, the user must set the Activity field explicitly to Task or Appointment.

Usage

Oracle On Demand Web Services uses activities to organize, track, and resolve a variety of tasks, from finding and pursuing opportunities to closing service requests. If a task requires multiple steps that one or more people can carry out, activities greatly simplify the job. Activities can help to:

• Define and assign the task
• Provide information to complete the task
• Track the progress of the task
• Track costs and bill for the task

NOTE:  The Owner field is not accessible for the activity object in Web Services v2.0.

NOTE:  The CMSId field is accessible in the WSDL file for Activity although it is not available in the Oracle CRM On Demand UI. This field is for internal use only and is not intended for use by customers.

Creating attendee calls

You can create an attendee call using the Activity service by passing an account call as the parent activity Id.

To create the attendee call, you insert an activity object where the CallType field is set to AttendeeCall and the ParentActivityId field is set to the row Id of an account call.

Support for Recurring Events

The Activity service allows access to the iCRMId field. This field is used to support the synchronization of recurring appointments between Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop and Oracle CRM On Demand.

Microsoft Outlook supports a variety of recurring appointments (for example, meetings) where an appointment can occur daily, weekly, monthly, and so on. In addition, Outlook also supports exceptions within a recurring series of appointments, for example, a meeting that occurs at the same time each day in the week apart from one day where the meeting is at a different time. However, Oracle CRM On Demand does not support recurring activities, so each occurrence of a recurring appointment is created as an individual activity in Oracle CRM On Demand.

The iCRMId field contains a representation of the recurrence parameters and is required to reassemble the recurring appointment and its exceptions within Outlook if there are any changes to the individual activities in Oracle CRM On Demand. The field is 450 characters in length, is indexed, and contains:

• The unique Id of the recurring appointment generated by Outlook.
• The recurrence rule (RRULE), for example:

  FREQ=MONTHLY;UNTIL=20110207T144325;INTERVAL=2;BYDAY=MO,TU,WE,TH,FR;BYSETPOS=-1

• VTIMEZONE, the timezone specified for each Outlook appointment, for example:

  BEGIN:VTIMEZONE

  TZID:(UTC+02:00)

  BEGIN:STANDARD

  DTSTART:16011028T040000

  TZOFFSETFROM:+0300

  TZOFFSETTO:+0200

  END:STANDARD

  BEGIN:DAYLIGHT

  DTSTART:16010325T030000

  TZOFFSETFROM:+0200

  TZOFFSETTO:+0300

  END:DAYLIGHT

  END:VTIMEZONE

• The offset of the occurrence from the start of the series (int).
• The hash value of the original series fields (int). This includes the hash value of location, appt startdate, appt enddate, subject, and description.

For more information about the synchronization of recurring appointments between Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop and Oracle CRM On Demand, see Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Administration Guide.

Reading Private Activities

Users who have the View Private Activities privilege and the Can Read All Records setting for the Activity record type enabled in their user role can use Web service calls to read all activities that are marked private, regardless of the owner of the activity. The ViewMode argument must have a value of Broadest (which is the default value).

The View Private Activities privilege does not allow a user to update or delete an activity that is marked private and is owned by another user.

Synchronization of Events and Appointments

If your company administrator enables the Display Events in Calendar setting in the company profile, then Oracle CRM On Demand automatically maintains an associated appointment record for an event record. When a user creates, updates, or deletes an event record through the UI, the Import Assistant, or Web services, Oracle CRM On Demand creates, updates or deletes the associated appointment record. Conversely, Oracle CRM On Demand automatically updates or deletes the original event record whenever you update or delete the corresponding appointment for the event.

The associated appointments are known as shadow appointments, and in Web service calls, are identified with the <EventMirrorApptFlag> element.

For more information about the Display Events in Calendar setting and about synchronization of events and appointments, see Oracle CRM On Demand Online Help.

Child Objects

Address, Attachment, Attendee Call, Contact, Contact Best Times, Custom Object 1 through 3, Custom Object 4 through 15, Message Response, Products Detailed, Promotional Items Dropped, Sample Dropped, Sample Transaction, Sales Assessment, Sales Assessment Value, Signature, User.

Methods Called

Table 325 details the methods called by the Activity service.

Fields

Table 326 details the required and read-only fields for the activity object.

Table 327 details the pick map fields for the activity object.

Table 328 provides a list of the user key combinations for the activity object.

Table 329 details the picklists available for the activity object.